I thought No Country was an excellent movie. The directing was very restrained, and Bardem's performance was understated and haunting. Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader was, like you, underimpressed by it. But I disagree.
Overall, I tend to agree with Rosenbaum - especially near the end of his assessment, though he doesn't quite come out and say it. It's one of the problems I had with There Will Be Blood, as well: the filmmakers at least seem to be taking on moral questions that they're not equipped to even understand. And what they end up with is, to me, morally questionable. As Anthony Lane put it in his The New Yorker review: Acts of monstrosity are coolly perpetrated throughout, but the resulting film strays beyond cool to the verge of the passionless; if Deakins's camera leans in close to gaze on damaged flesh (we focus on Chigurh's leg as he swabs and stitches a gunshot wound), that is not because the Coens harbor any tenderness or pity, still less an urge to lament the legacy of violence. They simply retain a juvenile weakness for gore, challenging us to match their sang-froid and saluting Chigurh himself for showing the way. I also enjoyed the assessment of Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post, whose review opens thus: I appreciate No Country
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See.. I thought Juno was ok as a movie but somewhat bland and very overrated, and had such a horrible soundtrack I would have shut it off halfway through were I not sitting there soundly mocking it with someone of much the same opinion. I was really disappointed, actually.
I was somewhat mislead by the hype, which may have contributed to my not being disappointed. From what I'd been hearing, I was expecting something like the relatively dreadful Little Miss Sunshine.
I would have to agree with you on the soundtrack, though - especially considering that the central character thinks 1977 was the greatest year for rock music (actually, it was 1976, but she's close) and whose favorite artists are Iggy and The Stooges, Patti Smith, and The Runaways.
Apart from that, though, I liked the writing a lot and thought the performances were uniformly terrific. I don't think it's going to change the course of cinema history (any more than No Country for Old Men will), but I thought it was a likable little comedy, competently put together, with a lot of nice touches. Plus, in a year of rampant macho bloodlust, I appreciated its more feminist sensibilities.
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Acts of monstrosity are coolly perpetrated throughout, but the resulting film strays beyond cool to the verge of the passionless; if Deakins's camera leans in close to gaze on damaged flesh (we focus on Chigurh's leg as he swabs and stitches a gunshot wound), that is not because the Coens harbor any tenderness or pity, still less an urge to lament the legacy of violence. They simply retain a juvenile weakness for gore, challenging us to match their sang-froid and saluting Chigurh himself for showing the way.
I also enjoyed the assessment of Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post, whose review opens thus:
I appreciate No Country ( ... )
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I would have to agree with you on the soundtrack, though - especially considering that the central character thinks 1977 was the greatest year for rock music (actually, it was 1976, but she's close) and whose favorite artists are Iggy and The Stooges, Patti Smith, and The Runaways.
Apart from that, though, I liked the writing a lot and thought the performances were uniformly terrific. I don't think it's going to change the course of cinema history (any more than No Country for Old Men will), but I thought it was a likable little comedy, competently put together, with a lot of nice touches. Plus, in a year of rampant macho bloodlust, I appreciated its more feminist sensibilities.
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