Tamara Drewe, Buried and The Town

You have to hand it to Stephen Frears, he does try to make decent British movies and avoid the Hollywood treadmill. Although I prefer it when he explores the seedier side of urban Britain with films such as "My Beautiful Laundrette" and "Dirty Pretty Things". After his success with "The Queen", he is less sure with "Tamara Drewe", a comedy drama set in the rural idyll which is the countryside of Dorset. Moira Buffini has written the screenplay from Posy Simmonds' graphic novel and her inexperience shows. Although I guess that Frears had a huge part to play in it's adaptation. The acting is pretty good, but you would expect nothing else when actors such as Tamsin Grieg and Roger Allam are given parts in, what for them is a major movie. Gemma Arterton plays the title role and does OK, but she is on the screen a lot less than I thought she would be. There were a few funny moments and it was beautifully shot, but there was little intensity and ended up a reasonably diverting couple of hours but without any involvement with the characters or story.

It is very hard to make a judgement on "Buried". A low budget indie movie takes place only in a box below the ground. Ryan Reynolds wakes up to find himself incarcerated by his kidnappers with only a mobile phone they have purposely left him for company. The great strength of the movie is the script by Chris Sparling who must at least have an Oscar nomination lined up. How he and director Rodrigo Cortes ramp up the tension is amazing. If there is one fault, it may be just a fraction too long. There was no reason why it could not have been cut to an hour instead of the obligatory 90 minutes. Then the device of the whole thing being filmed in a box would have worked so much better. Even so, we have a little miracle of film making. I nearly forgot, the only actor on screen is Ryan Reynolds. Who would have guessed he can actually act his socks off.

Ben Affleck revisits Boston after his marvelous movie "Gone Baby Gone". He is assisted on the screenplay once again by Aaron Stockard and this time Peter Craig, based on the novel "Prince of Thieves" by Chuck Hogan. Again the film is shot entirely on location, and what locations they are! It is basically a tale of cops and robbers, but mainly the latter. The Charlestown district of Boston is apparently notorious for breeding bank robbers and it is the lives of it's latest criminals that elevate the movie to such an excellent standard. Ben Affleck not only directs, but stars as the "brains" of the gang while Jeremy Renner is the out of control muscle. However the casting of Rebecca Hall is a gem. She is just brilliant. I have to say that Ben's lead role could have been done by a better actor, but who cares. This could have just have been a great action movie, but the interaction of the main characters elevates the film to being a classic. Stick to directing Ben, we want more like this.