Wednesday, September 29, 2010
On The Town
I saw The Town this weekend. Initially I was pretty disappointed because I thought it was going to be a remake of Our Town, starring Blake Lively as the Stage Manager. But once I got used to the idea that there were going to be sets and costumes and no crusty New England accents, it was pretty good. The action sequences were really entertaining, and the inaction sequences were fairly nifty, too. I especially enjoyed the acting of Rebecca Hall, previously known for haunting my dreams from her constant On Demand narration of the plot of Vicky Cristina Barcelona. ("It's about a girl named Vicky and a girl named Cristina and their trip to Barcelona." Seriously.) Ben Affleck was even fairly credible as a human being. I give it four stars, although I refuse to disclose how many stars that is out of, making it a fairly useless gesture.
The other interesting thing about my movie adventure was that it was at the new Icon theater down in the South Loop. I had heard all sorts of raves about how it was really classy and comfortable and fun, but it turned out to kind of be just another movie theater. It's true that it had a really nice lounge area and they served alcohol, but it also had a shocking lack of workable exits and theater-adjacent bathrooms. And the much-celebrated reserved seating just resulted in whispered fights during the first ten minutes of the movie, when the latecomers whose seats had been stolen finally showed up. Although that is a form of entertainment in and of itself.
I saw The Town this weekend. Initially I was pretty disappointed because I thought it was going to be a remake of Our Town, starring Blake Lively as the Stage Manager. But once I got used to the idea that there were going to be sets and costumes and no crusty New England accents, it was pretty good. The action sequences were really entertaining, and the inaction sequences were fairly nifty, too. I especially enjoyed the acting of Rebecca Hall, previously known for haunting my dreams from her constant On Demand narration of the plot of Vicky Cristina Barcelona. ("It's about a girl named Vicky and a girl named Cristina and their trip to Barcelona." Seriously.) Ben Affleck was even fairly credible as a human being. I give it four stars, although I refuse to disclose how many stars that is out of, making it a fairly useless gesture.
The other interesting thing about my movie adventure was that it was at the new Icon theater down in the South Loop. I had heard all sorts of raves about how it was really classy and comfortable and fun, but it turned out to kind of be just another movie theater. It's true that it had a really nice lounge area and they served alcohol, but it also had a shocking lack of workable exits and theater-adjacent bathrooms. And the much-celebrated reserved seating just resulted in whispered fights during the first ten minutes of the movie, when the latecomers whose seats had been stolen finally showed up. Although that is a form of entertainment in and of itself.
