5Q Movie Review: "The Town" (2010)--It IS "The Town"

Q: Wait a minute, you're saying "The Town" is in fact "The Town"?
A: Yep, unlike "2012," the motion picture known as "The Town" actually IS "The Town." You can understand, then, my sense of satisfaction when I sat down to watch "The Town" and accomplished that goal. And, hey, that the movie is really good only helped the cause!

In fact, you could say "the Town" is many other movies, or at least reminiscent of many other movies. I don't know that there is one element in the film that doesn't seem borrowed from or akin to something from another crime movie. But it's executed so well that I don't care.

Q: Is it time to take Ben Affleck seriously as a filmmaker?
A: "Gone Baby Gone" was enough to achieve that in my book, but now the guy's 2 for 2 as a director, and his output is such a potent combo of tense crime dramas that he earns a pass from me. I'll go see whatever he does next. He can stay in the gritty Boston crime drama genre, too. That may be PAH for the course for him, but it's not like we have enough good movies around that we have to ask the guy to "stretch" or some garbage like that.

Q: How are the Boston accents?
A: Prominent enough to make me try to echo them, thereby irritating Mrs. Shark as we watched the DVD; credible enough to make me stop doing it about 15 minutes in.

Q: Who's the bigger (and better) badass, Jeremy Renner or Pete Poslethwaite?
A: Despite giving up a number of years on the younger Renner, the great Double P, who appears nearly skeletal here and was struggling with the cancer that took his life last year, turns in a
convincing, menacing performance. Nothing against Renner, who is OK as a loose cannon type, but Postlethwaite's quiet, sinister presence gives the movie a big infusion of danger and leaves a memorable impression that is all the more remarkable considering his emaciated physical appearance.

Q: Hey, if "The Town" is so great, why did it fail to make the list of TEN whole movies nominated for a Best Picture Oscar?
A: Simple, really: The Academy voters are a bunch of poopybutts.

You know, we were just explaining to our little girl why it's not nice to use that word, one she learned from a little ruffian at her school, and I'm setting a bad example here, but she doesn't read this blog, and besides, sometimes there just isn't a more appropriate word than "poopybutt."