A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

I CAN'T THINK OF ONE REASON BIG ENOUGH FOR HIM TO LIE ABOUT THAT'S SMALL ENOUGH TO MATTER: Judging by prior threads, it's likely we need a comment thread to discuss Gone Baby Gone, which really establishes that Ben Affleck is a filmmaker to watch in the next few years. What struck me most is that just as how Dillon, Texas is in essence a character in Friday Night Lights and (I understand) Baltimore is a character in The Wire, Boston (and in particular the hardscrabble side of it) is a character in this film. Sure, the film's not flawless--we lose some emotional "oomph" by not having Angie and Patrick's backstory (though, as someone who read the series in substantially reverse order, it can work that way), and Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan are both maybe a little too pretty and unweathered for their parts, but still, you have to admire a film that (like the book) has its characters make a dramatic moral choice and leaves to the audience the question of whether that moral choice was the right one.