Now that I have your attention, I can talk about the acting, writing and directing of one Thomas J. McCarthy. Or Tom McCarthy. Or Tom J. McCarthy. The point is, aside from recognizing this guy as a character in mainstream American entertainment (everything from stints on Ally McBeal to Law & Order), little has been said about this guy as a writer. With three seemingly different films to his credit (Up, The Visitor, and The Station Agent), the blogosphere has not truly appreciated how each contributes to a narrative voice—a story of outsiders, of lost souls, of friendship in the oddest of places. His films were good, some even great—but when appreciated together, a larger context emerges and makes each of these films its own wonderful treatment of loneliness, of friendship, and in rebuilding when all seems lost. I spent part of my snow day (that’s snow day 1 of 2 and counting, friends!) revisiting these films, so I’ll spare you banter about his supporting roles on sitcoms, and I don’t think I’m grasping at straws when I say there is poetry in the strains that connect these disparate moments of Hollywood together.

I assume you’ve seen Up. By assume, I guess I’m just hoping you’re humanity, love of Ed Asner and Disney cartoons lead you to the theatre. Or maybe I’m just guessing you were part of the $725 Million the film made by the time it left the screen. I left Up crying, and there’s a pretty good chance you did too. I loved the opening sequence—the nerds who seem to devour loving glances from each other from youth to old age. And there was the improbable friendship of the now curmudgeonly old Carl and the hapless cub scout of Russell. We as an audience know what’s going to happen—the old man will soften and the travails will teach Russell—they will grow into one another’s fondness. Nothing about “Up” feels particularly saccharine; there’s death, illness, and corporate corruption right up front (and we’ll figure out later where Russell’s parents are in all this). As a result, we let down our defenses and trust that such a relationship—from disdain and grumbling to affection and care can happen in real time, all under two hours.

The Visitor was one of those movies that culled a perfect cultural storm of anti-immigration politics, the decline of the academy, and our Baby Boomer-led reflections on aging. Again, the curmudgeon: Richard Jenkins (though with his comic training, we know the icy exterior would have to melt) as widower and economics professor at Connecticut College, caught off guard by an immigrant African family residing in his New York City crash-pad. Professor Walter Vale’s shock and horror gives way to an unlikely friendship—immigrants Tarek and Zainab bring the crusty and contemplative Walter in to their friendship, replete with drum circles and spicy food. As Walter spends more time in New York, he begins lugging his bongo and Tarek shows him the city he had long ago ran away from. Their friendship is incredibly unlikely and wholly tested—pushing Walter off his defenses and his immigrant friends to find love and family in the man who once pushed them to the street. Again, I was misty-eyed. This is a movie of challenges and an investigation into what drives us. When we’ve lost it all, what do we care about? Tom McCarthy argues again and again, each other.

Within his trinity of what I’m dubbing “outsider romances” (I’m thinking of the term ‘romances’ not as Harlequin sap, but closer to the Shakespearean sort—that is, the tragicomedy, with a heavy dose of reunion and redemption), The Station Agent is the fringiest of the lot. Still, it secured BAFTA and Sundance awards for McCarthy’s screenplay, and a host of honors for Six Feet Under star Patricia Clarkson’s portrayal of Olivia, a forty-something wrestling with the death of her two sons and the dissolution of her marriage. McCarthy’s characters here are all in some way outsiders; all living around an abandoned train station in Newfoundland, New Jersey, but it is the curmudgeon, once again, whose narrative arc first brings us to the train station and in contact with this group of social misfits all trying to start over and make good. Here, the thorny outsider is Fin McBride—a train hobbyist and unmarried man with achondroplasic dwarfism. He’s inherited the train station from a friend and heads out seeking solace from the city, where his visible disability causes glares and stares among the urbanities. Like Walter Vale and Carl, Tom McCarthy doesn’t fully allow us to ‘like’ Fin at first; he’s brash, frosty, impersonal, socially awkward, and there’s a detectible anger to it all. This isn’t a Ricky Gervais style of unlikeable. It’s not goofy and it’s not looking for a laugh. It’s much more real. There is a raw humanity to catching people mid-suffering, to appreciate that their social graces fade as they’ve been sucker-punched. Ah, but Fin comes around. We grow to like him as he finds pleasure in the company of a ragtag pack of new friends.

What does this all mean? Thomas McCarthy gets people. His films get to the core of personality and relationships in a way that is pretty spectacular. True, I’m unlikely to fly away in a balloon-guided house, find squatters in my New York apartment, or inherit a dilapidated train station. That’s where the movies are the movies and offer us the chance to imagine and dream. But, wrestle with my place in it all? Juggle friendship and an intense inner monologue? Find peace among the company of others? I absolutely hope so. For that, Tom McCarthy possesses an awareness of the human condition that makes him all too important not to know by name.