With his slick hair and gigantic cell phone, the Gordon Gekko of Oliver Stone’s original “Wall Street” was the villain who made it OK to think Greed is Good.

Out of the slammer and plopped back into New York just a few months before the financial meltdown of 2008, the Gordon Gekko of Stone’s sequel “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” appears as a reformed man, warning his former colleagues of the impending doom.

As played again by Michael Douglas, Gekko is the same enigmatic figure we remember from the original film. Unfortunately, “Money Never Sleeps” is only a third of a Gordon Gekko movie.

Stone stuffs the movie with multiple storylines– most of them surrounding Shia LaBeouf as an ambitious trader who is lured into Gekko’s world. He’s juggling several complicated relationships: His journalist girlfriend (Carey Mulligan) is also Gekko’s estranged daughter, a ruthless competitor (Josh Brolin) is out to crush him, and his mother (Susan Sarandon) constantly needs money to salvage her fledgling Real Estate business. It takes a good hour and a half for Stone to even begin connecting the strands.

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Just like “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” the high school comedy “Easy A” has a random musical number with no real connection to the plot. There’s a lot of borrowing from other coming-of-age movies too, from “Say Anything” and “Sixteen Candles” to “Clueless” and even “Mean Girls.”

The theft pays off because of “Superbad” alum Emma Stone in a breakout role. Fast, funny and devoid of the plastic Hollywood glamour that defines so many in her age group, Stone could be the younger, prettier reincarnation of 80s-era John Cusack.

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Ben Affleck knows how to make gritty crime dramas about Boston. And how to pull fine performances out of established actors and newcomers with Boston accents.

Maybe it’s just Boston, or maybe the star of “Gigli” really is an excellent filmmaker.

After a sensational debut in 2007 with “Gone Baby Gone,” Affleck is back in the director’s chair for “The Town,” a wonderfully acted heist thriller about desperate men born out of a neighborhood that produces more bank robbers than any other city in the country.

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Former laughing stock Ben Affleck is receiving some of the best reviews of his career for the leading role in this week’s crime drama, “The Town.” Affleck also co-wrote and directed the film, a follow-up to his stellar directorial debut, “Gone Baby Gone.”

While his reputation behind-the-scenes remains perfect (he also won an Oscar for co-writing “Good Will Hunting”), Affleck’s onscreen career has been, well, inconsistent at best. For every respectable entry, there seems to be a couple really embarrassing ones.

But even Affleck’s once pitiful acting career has rebounded in recent years. Which performances stand out as his best? Here are 16 of his most noteworthy (and notorious) films thrown at each other NCAA tournament style.

Behold the Sweet 16 of Ben Affleck!

Bracket 1

Good Will Hunting (1) vs. Gigli (16)

To be fair, not enough people even saw Affleck’s debacle with Jennifer Lopez to rank “Gigli” as one of Hollywood’s biggest disasters. I, however, have seen the film, in its entirety, and it’s definitely as terrible as you heard. Winner: ”Good Will Hunting”

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Labor Day’s gone, the nights are chilly and football has regained its inexplicable hold on the general public. It also means a worthy bunch of quality films will be trickling into local theaters soon. Based on early reviews and overall buzz, here are 10 movies worth getting excited about:

The Town (Sept. 17)
Ben Affleck’s second directorial effort after 2007’s acclaimed “Gone Baby Gone” is another Boston set crime saga about a thief (Affleck) who builds a relationship with one of his former victims. Affleck proved his chops with “Gone Baby Gone,” and another success will cement his status as a Hollywood hyphen power player (actor/writer/director). Jon Hamm and Jeremy Renner co-star.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (Sept. 24)
More than 20 years after the original film, Michael Douglas returns to the big screen as Gordon Gekko in another tale of Wall Street corruption. Is greed still good? Shia LaBeouf and Carey Mulligan co-star.

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