By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Newsweek: The Top Boston Movies
How I love to see my adopted hometown in the movies. Even though THE DEPARTED is a remake of a Hong Kong film, INFERNAL AFFAIRS, screenwriter William Monahan and director Martin Scorsese give this cops-and-gangstah thriller the vicious-to-the-ears accent that I grew up making fun of, but miss whenever I’m a way.
Newsweek picks the best films ever shot — or at least set — in Boston
Some picks are predictable: Geography is destiny in both THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE and MYSTIC RIVER, two decent movies. But some of Newsweek’s movies seem like list-filler.
I’d put MONUMENT AVENUE, directed by the late Ted Demme, on the list and raise JAWS out of the honorable mentions. Around 1982, Cambridge-based independent filmmaker Jan Egleson made a superior coming of age drama called THE DARK END OF THE STREET, which I still have on VHS somewhere. It holds up better than the incredibly dated THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR.
While GOOD WILL HUNTING may not have amounted to much more than an after school special with razor-sharp dialogue, the MattandBen breakthrough movie did give a real sense of how working class white Boston guys live and speak. (Remember the almost wordless scene of Affleck’s character showing up, styrofoam cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in hand, at his buddies’ houses to drive them to work–wicked early, way too tired for small talk? Grow up in Greater Boston, you know those guys. But until Good Will Hunting, I’d never seen them on film.)
A friend reminds me that I was, as a kid, absolutely terrified by COMA, which gave anaesthesia — and the Xerox building on Rte. 95, Waltham — a bad name.
At least LOVE STORY didn’t get on there. Ewwww.