After landing a Best Picture winner that famously left him without a Best Director nomination for Argo, Ben Affleck made his director-star return in 2016 with Denis Lehane adaptation Live By Night. Affleck cast himself as a criminal caught between the Irish and Italian mobs in Tampa (with an ensemble that included Chris Messina, Zoe Saldana, and Elle Fanning) and is a muddied mess of mob movie tropes. The film shuffled release dates and opened with a whiff at the end of the year, failing to catch audiences amid a packed Oscar season and its own floundering reviews. Live By Night was forgotten and out of theatres once nominations arrived.
This episode, we talk about Affleck’s successes and stumbling blocks, including our own conflicting feelings about him as an actor, director, and celebrity. We also look back at Affleck’s shocking Best Director snub, his habitual casting of himself shirtless, and Warner Bros. disappointing 2016 which also included the introduction of Batfleck.
Topics also include our Top 10 films of 2016, Affleck’s meta casting in Gone Girl, Sienna Miller facial blindness.
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