werner herzog's THE BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS (2009)

the one thing i feel like i can say about Herzog's Bad Lieutenant (besides that Nic Cage's hunched, manic performance is my very favorite in a career full of fifty awful performances and a handful of truly Great ones) is that it's the best full-concept gag since Antichrist; under the guise of a cop movie, Herzog presents us with a cartoon character study that goofily challenges our ingrained relationship to a cornered hero (or even a more run-of-the-mill antihero) with the odds stacked impossibly against him. in most cases these situations intend for us to wonder just how the protagonist is going to get out of this mess, and to pull for him every step of the way, while here we only wonder which particular hue of flames Bd. Lt. McDonach will end up going down in, and how many people he will end up taking with him. (hell, we are actively rooting for it to happen, because he deserves every one of a spectrum of horrible fates.) but Herzog sees nothing so boring as tragedy in this story -- it is not only a comedy, but one of the year's funniest -- and thumbs his nose at our spoiled expectations, ending the film with a conspicuously whiz-bang reverse house of cards as fearlessly, determinedly and downright gleefully amoral as anything i've seen in a long while. goddamn, what fun.

francis ford coppola's THE GODFATHER (1972)

quentin tarantino's PULP FICTION (1994)

ben affleck's GONE BABY GONE (2007)

it turns out Ben Affleck isn't a complete cosmic waste of space, just that he was on the wrong side of the camera! Gone Baby Gone is a slick, capable and occasionally impressive debut from everyone's eleventh-favorite romantic lead, drawing a lot of strength from a great cast (it is, for instance, damn clear who got whatever acting genes there are to be had in the Affleck lineage) but even more from an uncommonly well-drawn portrait of the smaller corners of a big city. even if it didn't share Amy Ryan, Michael K. Williams and Dennis Lehane with The Wire, there would still be easy parallels to draw between the two: GBG's Dorchester streets are as finely textured as those of The Wire's Baltimore, featuring faces and types you don't often see in movies but quite plainly belong where they pop up, which is all the more conducive to the startling depth of the character constellations. in the end it's a pity that Lehane's lopsided narrative doesn't squeeze more comfortably into a feature film, but Affleck's still to be commended for a job finally well done.

alfred hitchcock's STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951)