Playing Cops and Robbers: Ben Affleck's The Town

Note: This article addresses specific plot points in the film, The Town.

I first saw The Town back in April as part of an unpaid test screening and, partially out of indifference but mostly because of the vaguely threatening non-disclosure agreement I was forced to sign, didn't have much to say about it. It struck me as a facile but harmless genre film; the latest attempt from film producer/financier Graham King to reposition working class Boston as a modern day equivalent of gangland Chicago or the wild west (The Town is King's third "crime picture" in four years set in Boston following The Departed and Edge of Darkness from earlier this year). Mostly what stood out for me was how ineffective co-writer-director-star Ben Affleck was in the lead role of Doug McRay, a lovable lug of a bank robber who lives a straight and narrow existence where he's insulated (for maximum audience sympathy) from most of the dirty business that's usually associated with being a career criminal. Over the past decade, Affleck has receded from dramatic leading roles, focusing more on attention grabbing supporting performances in films like Hollywoodland and Extract and directing his younger brother Casey to some of the best reviews of his career in Gone Baby Gone. As far as I was concerned, The Town was a reminder of how little Affleck the romantic leading man was missed.

A few months go by and, frankly, I'd forgotten about the film. But when it was selected to play both the Venice and Toronto International Film Festivals I became both confused and a little intrigued, especially once this workmanlike procedural became a huge word of mouth hit. Having personally seen films take shape and improve during the test screening process I was curious to see how the filmmakers had worked around and repaired what I saw were some fairly glaring problems with the film.

I skipped the film's theatrical release, but with The Town due out on Blu-ray and DVD later this month (and with unemployment giving me an unwanted abundance of free time) I thought I'd take another look at the film to see whether I'd missed the boat the first time or whether this is simply the latest example of people automatically equating "dropping your r's" and colorful profanity with gritty authenticity.

By the way it's the second one.

Slightly longer than the version I originally saw--with additional scenes between Affleck and Blake Lively as Doug's would-be baby mama as well as a final shot which only further cements comparisons to The Shawshank Redemption--the finished version of The Town still suffers from the same fundamental problem at its center which is that it isn't remotely believable. I don't believe that these characters (any of them, really) exist in this world, which is problematic when the film seems to pride itself on glamorizing the violent, clan-like behavior of Irish criminals in Boston as though it were lifting the lid off of America's best kept secret. The film seems to be caught in a time warp, torn between two worlds, one of which only existed in the imagination of fiction writers forty years ago. The film depicts modern day (as in 2010) Charlestown as the bank robbery capital of the world; a place where no one bats an eye at one four-man crew knocking over a bank, an armored car and a fucking baseball stadium in the span of a few weeks, leaving a trail of burnt-out cars and bullet-punctured guards and police officers. It's merely business as usual, like the Sox bullpen blowing a late lead or Mayor Menino getting tongue-tied.

What motivates these guys to risk decades in prison and a bullet in the head? Money obviously although it's unclear to what end. The Town is built around three armed robbery sequences, which for convenient dramatic purposes take place in the first, second, and third acts. In the first of these robberies Doug and his crew successfully make off with $90,000 a man.
Essentially little boys still in their mid to late thirties, Doug and his cohorts (which includes Jeremy Renner as Gem, a variation on the wild man, "Johnny Boy" role DeNiro personified in Mean Streets) get lit up, eat fast food, go to the strip club and then return to their rundown houses and crappy jobs while dreaming of their next score. Doug, who is in recovery and therefor the only one with an eye towards a future outside "the life," begins romantically pursuing Rebecca Hall's Claire, the bank manager they took hostage who never saw the masked Doug's face during the robbery.

Despite being a violent thug, we're meant to accept that Doug is deep down a good guy because his stalking of Claire is disguised as chivalry and he makes self effacing jokes to defuse the emotional trauma he unwittingly caused her during the robbery ("I like to have a good cry at the nail salon" is just one of and by no means the worst of several groaners worked into the screenplay by Affleck and co-writers Peter Craig and Aaron Stockard). He may throw a fuck into Lively's Krista character from time to time, but his love for Claire is exactly the sort of motivation he needs to move away from a place and its people that do nothing but bring him down.

Yet time and again we see Doug being dragged back for the proverbial one last job, in large part due to a long unpaid debt owed to Gem that's teased out long past the point anyone remembers or cares why these two knuckleheads are friends. Gem, like the other two guys on the crew, is dramatically short-shifted; a simpleton mook who wants nothing more than to prevent Doug from ever abandoning him. We have no idea what he does with his money or when it will ever be enough for a guy living in the same house he grew up in without any aspirations of leaving it or his low-rent neighborhood behind. In other words, this character serves no purpose beyond making sure the Affleck character has to keep participating in violent and reckless shoot-outs and car chases and the audiences gets what it paid its $15 for.

Gem isn't the only character Doug is indebted to though. The story takes a brief detour for Doug to visit his lifer father in prison played by Chris Cooper in a one-scene cameo. Doug's followed in his old man's footsteps and Cooper's character is not only meant to serve as a cautionary tale for Doug, but also to further humanize him by alluding to the tragic circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Doug's mother when he was only six.

As an aside, I should take this opportunity to mention that the accent work in The Town is atrocious, particularly in the scene between Affleck and Cooper. This is all the more surprising as both actors are either former or current longtime Massachusetts residents and are clearly putting on hammy, affected "Southie" accents. The film should serve as a reminder to actors that not everyone who lives in Boston sounds like Diamond Joe Quimby.

But the missing mom story isn't merely to lend gravity to the Doug character, but rather to establish that behind every petty stick up man is a lip smacking, truly *evil* mastermind (in the instance, one played by Pete Postlethwaite who gets to de-thorn rose stems while projecting quiet menace) we can project our collective hatred upon. Postlethwaite's Fergie is not only indirectly responsible for Doug's mom killing herself but he threatens to kill Claire unless Doug agrees to rob Fenway Park in broad daylight. In a set piece which manages to be effective in the moment while still something of a missed opportunity, Doug and his crew get into a machine gun shootout in the bowels of an empty Fenway with Boston police officers that allows Affleck to live out every teenage boy's dream of staring in their own version of Heat.

Tasked with bringing this crew down is the bored-looking John Hamm's Agent Frawley (on paper, the film has a dream cast yet every performances, with the exception of Lively's, comes across as sleepy or apathetic) who gets to deliver "bad ass" speeches about personally hooking Doug up to a lethal injection machine for a Federal murder charge (the federal government's only executed three people in the last forty years, but nevermind). But for all his glowering and tough talk, he's as inept as a keystone kop. Constantly one step behind the meticulous Doug, we get a glimpse of this character's sharpened instincts at a crucial point late in the film: with Claire under FBI surveillance, in the hopes she'll convince Doug to come by her apartment where the Feds are waiting, Frawley literally stands behind her in front of a *giant* bay window, never considering that Doug (or for that matter anyone with working eyes) might see him from a safe distance away.

The screenplay for The Town has a lot on its mind, as it tries to reconcile generations of criminal behavior and the effect it has on young men born into it as well as dramatizing the changing face of Charlestown. The film was adapted from the novel Book of Thieves by Chuck Hogan and there's a rumored four hour cut of the film which may see the light of day eventually; it's likely either of these outlets treats these issues with more insight than the lip service they receive here. Overlong at more than two hours, the film is indifferently plotted, spinning its wheels between its crackerjack bank robberies without ever getting beneath the surface of a group of guys who turned to crime because it's all they knew. Nor does film have anything compelling to say about the emotional toll being the significant other of a bank robber can take on a person. The script is clunky and unsubtle, shoehorning plot devices and psuedo-profound lines of dialogue which grind the story to a halt for no reason other than the implicit promise that they'll be relevant later on in the film. The film especially suffers in comparison to Peter Yates' great Boston bank robber film of the early 70's, The Friends of Eddie Coyle which depicted the life of a criminal as a lonely game of musical chairs, only when the music stops you either end up dead or in jail.

No, Affleck's real agenda here seems to be in making a Michael Mann-style crime epic for the under-40 set (the earlier version of the film featured a scene where Doug zoned out in front of a television where the aforementioned Heat played, an instance of gilding the lilly that was wisely cut). But The Town lacks the breadth, style and attention to detail found within Mann's best films. Affleck the filmmaker can't bring himself to sympathize with the Frawley character to make him a worthy opponent and the relationship between Claire and Doug remains disappointing on the surface, as though being a violent criminal who kidnapped you at gunpoint is a "meet cute" that can be smoothed over by an earnest apology and a diamond necklace. For all its overtures to authenticity (which extends to casting pock-faced locals and the production reportedly embedding itself in the world of real criminals and drug addicts), the film feels like a bunch of kids playing cops and robbers.

Which brings me back to me original point: believability. Between The Town and Gone Baby Gone, Affleck has seemingly anointed himself the preeminent dramatist of white, working class South Boston. Yet there's always been something disingenuous about the routine, particularly if you recognize Affleck as a well-off middle class kid from an affluent suburb, posturing because he supposedly speaks the language. Of the two films, I actually enjoyed Gone Baby Gone as, for whatever its flaws, it captured some of the sadness and quiet desperation of being unable to escape one's situation. But Affleck strikes me as an artist desperately in search of street cred and seemingly unwilling to leave behind the safety net he created when he co-wrote Good Will Hunting back in the mid 90's. Anyone who's ever heard Affleck speak or read an interview with him, particularly about politics or filmmaking, can attest that he's an incredibly intelligent, self deprecating guy a million miles away from the sensitive lunkhead he plays here. I'm interested to see whatever he directs next but more than anything I wish he'd stop performing this Southie minstrel show of his. It's time to take his talents to one of the other 49 states.

Greenberg

With its half-filled swimming pools, under-attended open mic nights and huddled masses of struggling actors, writers and musicians hovering around the city like day laborers outside of a Home Depot, Los Angeles has come to represent the place where dreams go to die as much as it does glamor and fame. It's where everyone begins their life as a wistful optimist but invariably ends up jaded or bunt-out. There's a lost souls quality to the people who live there, struggling and failing to live up to what they thought they'd be when they're surrounded by success and cruel reminders of the class and social divide. The characters in Greenberg, the new film from writer-director Noah Baumbach, have all, to varying degree, made their peace with the lives they've given up on and dreams they've abandoned in order to survive. It's a film about compromise and grudging acceptance.

The film stars Ben Stiller as Roger Greenberg--an asshole in the strictest, The Royal Tenenbaums, sense of the word--a single 40-year-old man housesitting in Hollywood while his successful and well adjusted brother spends six-weeks in Vietnam on vacation with his family on the sort of third third world jaunt that only the super-affluent consider a lark. At one point an up and coming musician, Roger now works, although seemingly not out of necessity, as a carpenter following a stint in a mental institution (this is the only part of the character which rings false; like Nicholson in As Good as it Gets, the film is trying to provide a medical explanation for a character who is, at his core, a self absorbed piece of shit).

Roger isn't an Angelino specifically. He grew up in LA then moved east and his time back on the west coast feels fleeting. Spiritually though, he fits right in. He's adrift, floating in between his old life and a next chapter he doggedly refuses to begin writing. It's as though Benjamin Braddock has aged twenty years but still can't be bothered to get out of the pool (in an ironic twist, Roger is a horrible swimmer). Returning to Southern California 15 years after blowing up his music career, his relationship with his ex (Jennifer Jason Leigh, also serving as one of the film's producers and story contributors) and his best friend Ivan (Rhys Ifans, a hollowed-out shell of a man, too lethargic to hold a grudge), Roger will tell anyone who will listen how happy he is "doing nothing," oblivious to how counter-intuitive that is to everyone around him. Having created a status quo where no one expects anything of him, Roger's entire life seems dedicated to professing his superiority to everyone else, despite scant evidence to back this assertion up.

Like a younger, furrier Larry David, Roger is a casual misanthrope and cruel observer of the human condition, calling out behavior and conversation that fail to adhere to his lofty standards, even when no one's asking for it. Receiving the brunt of Roger's unsolicited opinions is his brother's personal assistant Florence (Greta Gerwig), a gawky bundle of low self-esteem wrapped in vintage cardigans and worn-thin leggings. Florence inexplicably takes an interest in the open sewer of a man, despite being fifteen years his junior and most of his seduction attempts ending in unwarranted ridicule and passive aggressive criticism.

Florence views Roger as vulnerable and a wounded soul, but there's more to her attraction than pity. Herself an aspiring singer, reduced to running personal errands for someone else's family, Florence at 25, is compromised and confused, and perhaps a little damaged from her time spent alone in an indifferent city. Throwing herself at any man who shows her the slightest bit of attention and lacking the filter to keep inside all the overly sincere feelings she has, Florence recognizes in Roger a sense of confidence in who he is, even if who he is is a snarky, barking monster. In a place where everyone's trying to make it, is there value in someone who's comfortable with having already given up?

Greenberg slowly peels back Roger's unearned sense of entitlement, revealing it for all its laziness and selfishness; it's a cynical form of self-awareness cannibalizing itself until you can hardly remember what you're disaffected against. Roger feels about for reasons to douse his burgeoning relationship with Florence, ranging from lack of sexual attraction (equating her to someone who's pretty at the office but less so outside of it) to merely not wanting to put the effort into it. Yet there's a fumbling, messiness to their awkward trysts (the film contains, perhaps, the least erotic instance of cunnilingus I've ever seen), as though Roger can barely contain himself emotionally and physically when he's with her. As the film progresses, Roger's cruelty towards her seems less emblematic of his worldview than it is in response to allowing himself grow close to someone.

Greenberg follows Baumbach's The Squid & the Whale and Margot at the Wedding as his latest film about the awful things acidic, overly-educated types do to the people they love, and it's arguably darker than both of those films. Roger's anger feels genuinely born of disappointment and self-preservation but the film isn't interested in forcing redemption upon him. Instead Greenberg settles for an impasse between Roger's overworked id and the realization that he's alienated everyone around him. Like Baumbach's earlier films, the writing here is precise in the way language can draw blood. There's nothing cute or tittering about the film's verbal assaults and I'll confess to viewing large portions of the film hiding behind my outstretched fingers, as though I were watching a horror film. There's an integrity to the film, in allowing its lead character to be so unwaveringly unpleasant, but that in no way offsets the feeling of watching a slow motion car wreck.

Stiller has spent the better part of the past decade selling himself as a family friendly leading man, but anyone who's seen his brief stint on "Curb Your Enthusiasm" or hasn't forgotten that he directed the much loathed Jim Carrey misfire The Cable Guy, will instantly recognize a lacerating arrogance often barely held at bay. Similar to Adam Sandler in last year's unfortunately overlooked Funny People, this is brave, unsentimental work from a talented comedian rarely called upon to do more than act opposite cgi creatures and frequently mug for the camera. For those of us who have watched Stiller stand outside of material that appears beneath him for years now, it's something of a revelation to see him finally laid bare and fully engaged with his subject.

But the final word on Greenberg belongs to Gerwig, a mainstay of the "mumblecore" genre, here receiving the widest exposure of her career. The actress lacks the polish and photo-shopped veneer of a conventional starlet, instead lending the film an earnest gravity and earthy sexuality. Perhaps the greatest compliment I can pay the young actress is that there doesn't appear to be an actual performance taking place; Gerwig simply inhabits the role, forgoing all affectation or technique and flattening out the character's big emotional moments. It's an incredibly internalized piece of acting as we witness a woman entirely defined by her role as a submissive. A submissive to her career, a submissive to her surroundings, and ultimately one to her heart. Florence deserves better than Roger although seems unlikely to realize it. Roger recognizes that he doesn't deserve Florence; it's to his credit and the film's that he stops using this as an excuse.

The Runaways

I guess I'll be the one to ask the question: why The Runaways? Why an entire film dedicated to the short-lived exploits of a band that barely charted in this country thirty five years ago, has had arguable lasting appeal (readers under the age of 30, name a song by the band other than "Cherry Bomb," and no cheating) and minimal influence on our current music landscape when digging out an old episode of Behind the Music would more than suffice. Both Blondie and The Go-Go's were performing during the same period in history, wrote more memorable songs and, if VH1 is to be believed, generated far more R-rated drama and in-fighting, so what exactly is the appeal here of a group of pubescent, unsupervised girls getting high, playing loud music and occasionally have sex with each other and whatever roadie or fan that gets pulled into their gravitational pull of teenage debauchery? Geeze, I just don't see it.

The Runaways the film, like The Runaways the band, is a calculated grasp at the forbidden fruit of teenage female sexuality hiding behind a flimsy fig leaf of feminism. Dramatized here as literally plucked from a crowded club because she had the right look to front an all female band, Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) seemingly ascends to the level of rock goddess before it's established whether she can carry a tune. Such is the appeal of a 15-year-old who looks like Bardot meets Bowie with no hang-ups about writhing on stage in a corset and stockings. After first laying eyes on Currie, Michael Shannon's suitably creepy record producer Kim Fowley screams "jail fucking bait!" and it's not hard to imagine the producers of The Runaways thinking the same thing as they lined up a murderer's row of barely and not-at-all legal starlets to appear in the film.

Fanning, a spookily-self aware performer from an unfathomably young age, made headlines a few years back after appearing in Hounddog, a little-scene independent film where her character was raped on screen. But the real coming out party is The Runaways where the actress, only now old enough to drive as of this writing, gets to strut, growl, grind and have PG-13-safe make-out sessions. Currie, spit up and chewed out before she was old enough to legally buy cigarettes, seems less born of parents than of rock and roll cliches. Never shown as being moved by the music and often annoyed by the attention lavished on her by the media, Currie's just as driven to escape humdrum suburbia as she is to sob for the return of life at home with her supportive older sister and sick father. The character is aimless, lost in her own story, and Fanning is helpless to find purpose behind those wide and sad coked-out eyes.

The Runaways attempts to balance Currie's vacantness with bandmate and beating heart of the band Joan Jett (Kristin Stewart in an ink black mullet and bored expression) who resents the perception that the band is a gimmick act and wants to rock just as hard as the boys do. Visually, Stewart perfectly resembles a young Jett, returning to her pre-Twilight form as sexually androgynous and snarly lipped. Yet the actress remains, as ever, a passive and indifferent performer, suitably aping the guitar licks but little of the rebel spirit. The film is framed as a star-crossed romance between Currie and Jett, even ending with Jett's cover of "Crimson and Clover" as the duo make-up long distance after years of resentment, yet it seems unwilling to fully commit to their sapphist tryst as anything more substantial than teenage puppy love.

The disconnect between Joan's "I Love Rock and Roll" ideals and Cherie's cover girl ennui would make for an interesting take on the material. So, for that matter would be the way female musicians are marginalized by the male-driven media, placing their sexuality before their talent. The film toes the line of exploring the creepy cultural fixation on sexualizing young women before their time, a ticking clock of obsession that seems to expire the second a woman becomes of legal age, yet it curiously depicts most of the band's screaming fans as young women, flying in the face of Fowley's titillation battle plan for rock domination.

Instead writer-director Floria Sigismondi (a first-time filmmaker but a music video mainstay for decades) forgoes a point altogether, trotting out every music biopic chestnut, from drugged-out hazes, to band squabbling, to splashing unattributed headlines and magazine covers across the screen to assure us, the dubious viewers, that this sonically limited act did, at one point, matter. Most egregious of all, the film commits the same sin it's theoretically criticizing, focusing on Currie and Jett at the expense of the rest of the band, denying them characters, secondary personality traits or even perfunctory title cards at the end of the film to explain what happened to them after the band broke up.

Watching The Runaways, I was reminded of another, better musical biopic, 2007's Control about the late singer Ian Curtis of Joy Division. Control never presumes Curtis' or the band's influence or importance, nor reduces them to a series of on the nose sound bites and "oh, so that's how that song was written" moments. It had genuine pride and respect for the process of making music and the tormented artists who made it, and lets that speak for itself. It lacked the cynicism that permeates The Runaways which does as much to promote the talent of the band as a beer commercial featuring their songs would and treats its cast as underage pin-ups. As the film was co-produced by Jett and adapted from Currie's memoir, it has the odd side-effect of an artist proving their naysayers correct. Congratulations ladies: you can be as much of a soulless marketing tool as men!

The Best of 2009

2009, was in many respects, a year of disappointment, both personally and globally. Right around the time the post-election hangover kicked you realized that your job was probably no longer secure (assuming you were lucky enough to still have one), our country was still mired in two wars and the only one who seemed to be happy were the CEO's of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns who used your tax dollars to buy another gold toilet for their yachts. It's only appropriate then that film in 2009 reflected that anxiety; it was though even a trip to the movies served as a reminder of just how scary it was outside.

Nowhere was this more evident than in Jason Reitman's Up in the Air which featured George Clooney as a corporate axe-man, criss-crossing the country, firing people while offering a pithy pat on the back to those going home to families that depend upon them. Only along the way does he comes to realize his insular, lone wolf existence (dedicated to the asinine, yet strangely relatable, goal of attaining 10 million frequent-flyer miles) is merely a shell game put in place to prevent him from establishing any real emotional attachments. It's a testament to Reitman and Clooney (who's never been better) that not only is the film dazzling, old Hollywood-style entertainment filled with beautiful people being charming, but also one of the great existential crisis movie of our time. How, in a world where it's become easier than ever to stay connected, is it we've become more self-contained and shut-off from our fellow man?

Of course the economic crisis had a funny way of rearing its head in the most unexpected of places. Sam Raimi's low-tech, comedy-horror-extravaganza Drag Me to Hell not only satiated the long held demand for a fourth Evil Dead film but gave audiences the perverse pleasure of watching a pretty, young (but cravenly opportunistic) loan officer (Allison Lohman) spit up gobs of black bile, be tossed around by a decrepit old crone and have large chunks of her hair torn from her head after kicking an old gypsy woman out of her home. The film finds Raimi at his most impish, teasing out scares and playing the audience like a harp; you won't know whether to shriek or giggle but that's pretty much the point. Of course, no film was more terrifying than Chris Smith's Collapse a doomsday documentary that makes an Inconvenient Truth look like a bedtime story. Essentially a ninety minute long sit down interview with former police officer turned reporter, Michael Ruppert, the film explains the concept of "peak oil" and that an economy built upon it (like for example, our own) is doomed to topple much sooner than later. It's the sort of film where you find yourself praying that Ruppert is a crackpot simply because the alternative may cause you to lose sleep. Or buy a gun.

The war in Iraq may have lost space on the front page this year to the economy but it finally became the subject of a great film. Two of them actually. Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker has already been feted by most major critics groups so I'll simply add that the film remains one of the most intensely visceral films I've ever seen and features a star making performance from Jeremy Renner. Iraq is never explicitly mentioned in Armando Iannucci's In the Loop (an adaptation of the BBC series "The Thick of It") but that's about the only thing that isn't said in an explicit fashion. Showing the maneuvering and scrambling on both sides of the pond in the days leading up to a US invasion of Iraq, the film wields verbal dexterity and creative profanity like a saber, depicting both sides of the war debate as opportunistic fumblers and slimy schemers. The whole film plays like a 1930's screwball farce, only everyone's talking about cunts, scrotums and lubricated horse cocks.

The two best character studies of the year were both films about immature Jewish men confused by love (and no, I'm not talking about A Serious Man, although I was pretty fond of that film as well). James Gray's Two Lovers starred Joaquin Phoenix in the performance of the year as a thirty-something Brighton Beach man torn between the excitement and passion inspired in him by a beautiful fair-haired temptress (Gwenyth Paltrow, reminding people that, before she was a blogger and Chris Martin's wife, she was a hell of an actress) and the security of a plain-looking (by Hollywood standards anyway) Jewish woman from the neighborhood, achingly played by Vinessa Shaw. Bracingly perceptive in depicting arrested development and the behavior of fickle young men, Two Lovers had the misfortune of being known as the film Phoenix was promoting when he had a public meltdown/decided he wanted to pull a Borat-like media stunt. A box office misfire as a result, time should be much kinder to it. However, the most misunderstood film of the year is Judd Apatow's Funny People which seemed to alienate star Adam Sandler's fan base of frat boys and meatheads as well as most critics who failed to recognize what a revelation the film was from both its star and director. Calling to mind both James L. Brooks and Eric Rohmer (only with dick and fart jokes), the film is a turbulent and overlong yet wonderfully human story of a man who, when faced with death, goes through the motions of change but never actually does becomes a better person.

Speaking of death, how we carry on in the wake of losing a loved one (and what we do with what they leave behind) was a surprising reoccurring motif this year. The French film Summer Hours, from prolific by wildly inconsistent filmmaker Oliver Assayas, shows the way three siblings react to the sale of their family estate after the passing of their mother. Attuned to the way we project memories and sentimental value onto the keepsakes and possessions of our childhood, the film finds deep reservoirs of understated sadness as the liquidation of assets and relocation of heirlooms feels as tragic as the death of a parent. Less understated (at least in my experience) in its sadness is the animated film Up from Pixar and director Peter Doctor.
Ostensibly the story of an old man and a little boy who fly off to South America in a house hoisted by thousands of balloons, the film has the capacity to reduce me to a sobbing mess (several times throughout) every time it addresses the death of square-jawed curmudgeon Carl Fredricksen's wife, Ellie, initially dramatized in a much lauded musical interlude depicting their lives together, from courtship to her death. It's a curious jumping off point for a kid's film about high adventure and talking dogs but it's essential to keep the film emotionally (..erm...) grounded and a reminder that we often can't begin our new lives until we let go of our old ones. But lest all this death stuff get too heavy, we'll always have Bobcat Goldthwait (yes the guy with the dumb voice from the Police Academy movies). Goldthwait's World's Greatest Dad was marketed as the latest sickly sweet comedy from Robin Williams, but don't believe it. Working a pitch black comedic vein, World's Greatest Dad explored the way the dead are canonized by those left behind, often rewriting history and riding roughshod over who they really were to bolster the living's own sense of self worth. It's the rare comedy that would have us find humor in suicide notes and tragedy in masturbation mishaps.

Ten Best of '09:(*)
1. Up in the Air (Jason Reitman)
2. Two Lovers (James Gray)
3. The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow)
4. In the Loop (Armando Iannucci)
5. Funny People (Judd Apatow)
6. Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas)
7. Collapse (Chris Smith)
8. Up (Peter Doctor)
9. World's Greatest Dad (Bobcat Goldthwait)
10. Drag Me to Hell (Sam Raimi)

Honorable Mention:
The Brothers Bloom (Rian Johnson)
Revanche (Götz Spielmann)
A Serious Man (Joel & Ethan Coen)
Star Trek (J.J. Abrams)
Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson)
Sugar (Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck)
In the Electric Mist (Bertrand Tavernier)
Inglorious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (Werner Herzog)
District 9 (Neill Blomkamp)

(*) In the two weeks between writing this article and it's eventual posting, I finally saw the documentary The Cove from filmmaker Louie Psihoyos and my mind was suitably blown. If I were less lazy I'd rewrite this whole thing to incorporate the film into my top 10 but in addition to being a pain in the ass that's not in the spirit of reflecting my mindset at the end of 2009. Needless to say, in addition to the films written about at length here, you should definitely check out The Cove as well.