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No Country for Old Men
Evil Multifarious
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
The new Coen brothers movie, No Country for Old Men, is getting some heavy critical praise, standing at 95% on RottenTomatoes.com at the time of this post.
I saw it on Friday. It is exquisite.
I am not going to give you a plot synopsis, nor am I going to even suggest the event that sets things in motion. I went into the movie not even knowing it was based on a McCarthy novel of the same same, and having no idea of the storyline whatsoever, and it was an incredible experience. I recommend you do the same. Those who have read the book will find that it is almost a note-perfect adaptation, pulling dialogue straight from the pages, but also adding a distinct Coen flair.
Best movie of 2007 in my mind, no question. Anton Chigurh, not as the personification of evil, but as the inevitability and irrationality of destruction and death, as the crushing fist of an absurd universe, is perhaps the most memorably terrifying character to cast a shadow on a screen in years.
Anyone else seen it?
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So hard.
The girlfriend wants to see The Mist or whatever the latest Stephen King adaptation is. It's criminal that I'm going to miss this because of that.
Also, my to-read stack stretches from floor to ceiling.
I wish I knew someone who actually had good taste in movies.
Not as good as this one, but hilarious parody of an already parodic genre is :^: nonetheless
At times it seemed like it took itself seriously. Anyhow, I think 3:10 to Yuma would have been better.
Pack your bags.
There was not a single point in that movie where it took itself seriously. That was the beauty of it. It was a wonderfully, wholly self-aware action movie, which took things just past the level of absurdity for comedic effect.
That said, you're probably right, 3:10 to Yuma would have been better (although I haven't seen it). Parody for the sake of parody, although hilarious, cannot contest fine filmmaking on its own merits.
Make your friends see this movie. It is by turns grimly guffaw-inducing and unsettlingly penetrating, which is really the perfect combination.
this is the most horriffic thing I've ever heard
But it's not feel-good, Rane.
Ladykillers was fucking great
although it's among a very small number of Tom Hanks movies where Tom Hanks is tolerable
mostly because he isn't acting like Tom Hanks the whole time
Maybe I don't "get it."
but yeah, i'm looking forward to this, because i am both a sucker for anything vaguely Western-esque and a hater of Russell Crowe.
What, Broken Flowers? Don't beat yourself up over that one, Murray was totally coasting. His angsty old guy shtick was great in Rushmore, pretty cool in Lost in Translation, okay in Royal Tenenbaums, and totally played out afterwards.
Was that scene Tommy imagining and fearing that the killer is waiting inside, or was Anton in a different room, or what?
Also, the ending was a little abrupt in that it took me by surprise, and I don't know that I entirely "get it," but I don't think that makes it bad in any way.
I loved the bleakness of the film, the huge wide-open Texas sky, and how that hard world made for hard characters.
My interpretation of the movie as a whole:
I loved Oh Brother Were are thou but I didn't understand The Man Who Wasn't There at all.
I like your interpretation.
But,
The sheriff is principled and smart, and brave (like when he does go into the room where Lou Ellen died). And although I agree that he doesn't duel him and win, I think that's more a fatalistic and even wise cast to Tommy Lee Jones's character, considering how elementally evil Anton is, than a comment on how he is weak. Arguably, we are all weak in the face of something like that -- certainly no characters in the movie prevail, including Lou Ellen and the tough retired 'Nam colonel.
That is exactly what I was going to say.
Very well put. I've heard a lot of people saying it's a weak McCarthy book, but with themes like the text above I can't imagine why. I loved it about as much as everything else I've read by him.
Read the book a while back and I'm quite desperate to see this soon.
While the Crowe hate baffles me, you should check out The Proposition if you haven't. It's a 2005 Australian western, and coincidentally it's directed by John Hillcoat who's going to now adapt The Road, another McCarthy novel. It stars Guy Pearce, who also coincidentally might star in The Road.
Look at Carson Wells. Here is a man who knows a lot about Chigurh (relatively), a hard man, a killer. He can't look him in the eye and say "just kill me, then," and end with dignity... and yet Carla Jean, who is wholly innocent and knows almost nothing about the situation, can and does. The weight of understanding what has happened, and understanding that it didn't happen for any particular reason, bears down on us and reduces us.
Also, I think people who go into this movie expecting a generic-but-well-done Hollywood action movie are going to always come out unimpressed or bored. There were several people at my theater complaining about how "boring" the movie is. Thing is, though the Coens are getting the majority of the press--and their direction was fantastic--the writing was primarily Cormac McCarthy, and Mr. McCarthy...
Of course, that doesn't mean the movie is without excitement; it's just not going to give the same kind of feeling that people have come to expect.
To clarify, is there some kind of message or statement being made? I think I am going to go see this movie this weekend.
Oh yes, absolutely. It's not a cheerful one, but there is a "statement." McCarthy always has a meaning behind his novels.
Excellent! Pretty much everything that you just said is what I assumed.
In the end however it's made clear that he would have wanted to meet his end in that hotel in a heroic battle against evil, but he was too scared and now he's useless and will just wither away and die.
I think his feeling of failure is why he goes and talks to Ellis, who tells him how one of the "old-time greats" failed.
So I have some guesses on the significance of the title. And your spoilers so far have helped clear up most of the meaning, but could someone lay out the exact meaning of the title (