From helping create the groundbreaking Project Greenlight series to The Town to Argo and beyond, good ole Ben has endured and continues to age like a fine wine. His contributions to the art have reached legend status. I did watch the new Amazon original The Tender Bar and he's great in that but the movie and rest of cast is not so I decided to showcase these two movies instead.
Pulling Bounce off the shelf, I hadn't seen it in a good ten years and expected to find it dated and perhaps abandon ship but I was totally surprised and blown away by how it stands up now and is really quite a well produced and directed film. The gooey factor of the rom-com still shoots out the sides of the wrapper but the film has many other nuances. For those that need a refresher, Ben plays the partner of an ad firm that handles a big airline account. On his way back from a business trip, he switches tickets (and flights) with someone at the last minute and that person's plane lands up crashing. He feels sorry for the guy's widow (Gwyneth Paltrow, totally superb here) so he helps her out with her real estate business but a relationship starts developing. When or will he tell her who he really is and that he knew her husband?
I enjoyed the heck out of The Way Back where Ben plays an alcoholic basketball coach asked to lead a Catholic school's team. It's a perfect casting, he could have phoned in the performance but that's not his nature. I was reminded several times of the whole sports movie genre and how far it's come since the 60's and 70's. There's a lot of great sports movies through the years covering a wide array of sports, enough to warrant a cool sports-movie-only blog. A quick but thorough search found no such thing so if anyone out there knows of such a blog, please lmk so we can post it
Bounce (2000) 3.25 stars/5 The Way Back (2020) 3.0 stars/5
Bounce currently stream free on Crackle, Pluto, Plex. The Way Back on Max Go or rent/purchase
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