In honor of the memory of my favorite baseball team, the Boston Red Sox, which recently fell out of playoff contention, I'd like to pay tribute to the team's hometown. Boston has been the setting of a handful of great movies and I'd like to talk about seven of them here.
1. "Good Will Hunting" Matt Damon works as a janitor at MIT whose emotional issues and financial problems stifle his intellectual curiosity and ability. It has a witty script (penned by Oscar-winners Damon and Ben Affleck) and some excellent performances. The movie also established the formula that if Robin Williams has a beard, it must be a serious movie.
2. "Mystic River" Childhood friends Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon are brought back together when Penn's daughter is found dead. Clint Eastwood's doomsday dark morality tale elicited a pair of searing performances by the powerhouse Penn and...
train wreck Robbins.
3. "The Departed." Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon are both cops, but on opposite sides of the law. DiCaprio goes undercover as a flunky for mob boss Jack Nicholson and Damon as Nicholson's right-hand man, goes undercover as a police officer. Arguably Martin Scorsese's best film since "Goodfellas," this film brought the auteur back to his gangster roots and finally won him his long-deserved Oscar for "Best Director."
4. "Gone Baby Gone" Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan are two cops – and lovers – who team up to solve the disappearance of a working-class woman's daughter. Ben Affleck's directorial debut goes to some pretty dark places, but it's handled so well that you forget that the guy from "Gigli" made it all happen. Amy Ryan makes an indelible impression as the hard-living mother.
5. "Shutter Island" It's 1954 and Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo are two U.S. Marshals (Mah-shulls) who go to an insane asylum to look for a missing murderess, but the two discover much more than they bargained for. Scorsese takes a shot at the psychological thriller and comes up just short of knocking it out of the park. Some weird sound design choices and a predictable ending mar an otherwise superbly crafted nail-biter.
6. "The Town" Ben Affleck, an ace thief, has to balance different parts of his life: his feelings for a former hostage, his tense friendship with his unhinged best pal and his freedom in the face of a dogged FBI agent. Affleck directs his second film and hits another home run. An astounding Fenway Park set piece and a brutal performance by "Mad Men's" Jon Hamm as the Fed make this a must-see.
7. "The Social Network" The story of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's meteoric rise to the top – and the people who had to fall for him to get there. Although less Boston-y than the other movies here, David Fincher's claustrophobic masterpiece deserves every bit of recommendation I can give it. Aaron Sorkin's razor-sharp script is worth the price of admission alone.
Sony Cybershot DSC-HX1 9.1MP 20x Optical Zoom Digital Camera with Super Steady Shot Image Stabilization and 3.0 Inch LCD
