NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
February 24, 25, and 26 2009, DVD, home living room, from library
Yes, it took three nights to watch this - not because of any gruesomeness, but because I was so busy that week that I barely had 45 minutes of attention each night, and I wanted to savor every single moment if I could. What a fucking brilliant, wonderful movie this is. Man, I am madly in love with the Coen Brothers again and want to have their babies, like the way I felt after the first time I saw BLOOD SIMPLE, or MILLER'S CROSSING, or - dare I say - THE BIG LEBOWSKI. This nails it; I love their movies. Some of them are more astonishing than others (because I'm not a huge huge fan of THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE, but I can see where the lessons learned about the usage of shadow from that film made this one so incredible) but I really do kinda love them all. All the ones I've seen, that is; I'm missing like seven or eight at this point. Not OK.
This movie has heavy menace, creeping dread, a great respect for blood (again, such as in MILLER'S CROSSING), fantastic source material, and the Oscar-winning skills of Javier Bardem. Anton Chigurh has joined the ranks of my favorite villains, although he holds a special place because I'm actually really fucking scared of him. Bardem's voice, his posture, his economy of gesture - all of it combines to provide a whole new approach to the sociopathic serial killer. Chigurh is very quiet, very patient, affectless, unmoved and unmoving. He is a force of nature. Yeah, OK, he deserved that Oscar. I luff him.
Josh Brolin is excellent, too, as Llewellyn Moss, the sucker who stumbles into the shitstorm that has nothing to do with him, and gets involved where he's got no business; I can't think of another actor who could counterweight Bardem without getting completely swamped. Tommy Lee Jones gets off easy; he and Bardem are never on screen at the same time, and he gets to have fun bouncing off a very earnest Garrett Dillahunt (who has lost huge amounts of weight since he made this) instead. This movie is stuffed full of "that guy"s - from Kelly MacDonald as Moss's wife (her West Texas accent is incredibly good) to Beth Grant (who will forever be remembered as the woman who cared a little too much about Sparkle Motion) as Mrs. Moss's mother, who has the cancer; to Stephen "I'm in everything ever" Root; to Tess Harper; to (WTF? and excellent) Woody Harrelson. And you know what? Bardem makes all of them his bitches. I'm serious. No one even comes close.
If there isn't already a black metal group called Chigurh, I am very disappointed with the human race.
February 24, 25, and 26 2009, DVD, home living room, from library
Yes, it took three nights to watch this - not because of any gruesomeness, but because I was so busy that week that I barely had 45 minutes of attention each night, and I wanted to savor every single moment if I could. What a fucking brilliant, wonderful movie this is. Man, I am madly in love with the Coen Brothers again and want to have their babies, like the way I felt after the first time I saw BLOOD SIMPLE, or MILLER'S CROSSING, or - dare I say - THE BIG LEBOWSKI. This nails it; I love their movies. Some of them are more astonishing than others (because I'm not a huge huge fan of THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE, but I can see where the lessons learned about the usage of shadow from that film made this one so incredible) but I really do kinda love them all. All the ones I've seen, that is; I'm missing like seven or eight at this point. Not OK.
This movie has heavy menace, creeping dread, a great respect for blood (again, such as in MILLER'S CROSSING), fantastic source material, and the Oscar-winning skills of Javier Bardem. Anton Chigurh has joined the ranks of my favorite villains, although he holds a special place because I'm actually really fucking scared of him. Bardem's voice, his posture, his economy of gesture - all of it combines to provide a whole new approach to the sociopathic serial killer. Chigurh is very quiet, very patient, affectless, unmoved and unmoving. He is a force of nature. Yeah, OK, he deserved that Oscar. I luff him.
Josh Brolin is excellent, too, as Llewellyn Moss, the sucker who stumbles into the shitstorm that has nothing to do with him, and gets involved where he's got no business; I can't think of another actor who could counterweight Bardem without getting completely swamped. Tommy Lee Jones gets off easy; he and Bardem are never on screen at the same time, and he gets to have fun bouncing off a very earnest Garrett Dillahunt (who has lost huge amounts of weight since he made this) instead. This movie is stuffed full of "that guy"s - from Kelly MacDonald as Moss's wife (her West Texas accent is incredibly good) to Beth Grant (who will forever be remembered as the woman who cared a little too much about Sparkle Motion) as Mrs. Moss's mother, who has the cancer; to Stephen "I'm in everything ever" Root; to Tess Harper; to (WTF? and excellent) Woody Harrelson. And you know what? Bardem makes all of them his bitches. I'm serious. No one even comes close.
If there isn't already a black metal group called Chigurh, I am very disappointed with the human race.