Favourite depressing movies

If you're looking for a depressing father-son movie, this week's new releases have got a couple of treats for you.

The long-awaited movie version of The Road has finally reached New Zealand cinemas.

Fans of Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel probably couldn't envisage the apocalyptic tale as a movie, yet here it is, starring the ever impressive Viggo Mortensen as the man trying to keep his son alive in a world where desperate people have turned to cannibalism.

While I don't imagine there will be flocks of people queuing around the block saying "Thank god! I was way too happy. I was really looking for a movie to gloom me down," it's been awarded five stars in tomorrow's Weekend Press film review section (oops! Did I give something away?).

Also worth seeing for that pick-me-down is The Boys Are Back, starring Clive Owen as an Australia-based English sports journo whose wife dies, leaving him bereft and eccentrically looking after a grieving-in-his-own-way six-year-old son. To further complicate matters, his older son - whom he abandoned to be with his Aussie wife - comes over from England to stay with them.

It's a tearjerker, for sure, but in a manly - or boy-sy - way.

If you're looking for something, well, not necessarily lighter, but with 100 per cent more explosions, Green Zone, starring Matt Damon, has also just opened. It's his latest collaboration with Bourne director Paul Greengrass and it's a doozy. Sort of Bourne in Iraq, with extra political stuff.

This breathless, action-packed message movie is not up to Greengrass and Damon's usual high grade, but having said that, the standard of Green Zone is still well above your average no-brainer action film for its ability to mix intelligent storytelling and politics with big explosions and gun battles. Never boring, Green Zone brings a dusty, murky, cynical authenticity to the complex modern war zone that other Iraq-war films have lacked. (Will be interesting to compare and contrast it to Oscar-winner The Hurt Locker after it opens here, April 1.)

For something far more frivolous and silly, the other big release this week is the uber-tanned Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler as a warring couple in The Bounty Hunter - he's the bounty hunter and she's his target. Painful.

Given that the best films opening this week are both rather depressingly death-oriented, today's question is: What's your favourite depressing movie? And why?

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