Chris' Talk

Why Did I Get Married?

great movie !!! funny and good...i luv it !!!

Talk to Me

damn good movie...funny as helll... i luv it !!!!

She's Gotta Have It

way cool..this is a great film with awesome directing and a hellava plot...its funny and before its time ... I luv it !!!

No Country for Old Men

"No Country For Old Men" was one of those movies that I was dying to see from the second that I saw the trailer back in early summer. Then I read the early reviews coming out of Cannes and I was totally psyched after that, and I couldn't wait for November to come around. The movie came out last weekend, November 9th, but I managed to see it this weekend due to its still limited, but significant expansion in theaters it had this week. The movie does not disappoint, but it did catch me off guard a little, and it ended up being something a little different than I expected.

Walking out of the film I could not help but discuss it with the person that I saw it with. It's ending is entirely unconventional and fairly uncommercial to be honest, but it certainly did spark conversation and thought. Did I like it? Not necessarily, but I'll get to that more later on. For now, I'd like to say, this was probably one of the best directed film's I have seen in a long time. The Coen Brothers absolutely mastered the art of suspense in this film and the action sequences are unbelievably unsettling because of how realistic they are. I don't know if I've ever seen this many character's killed off in a crime drama in such disturbing, realistic, unsettling manners as the character's in this film. It's a very violent film, and because it contains so much violence, it was incredibly important that the violent scenes throughout were handled with care and with proper attention. The action scenes in this film absolutely received the care and attention they deserved, no question about that. I was on the edge of my seat throughout most of the first 3/4's or so of the film and had they Brothers handled the end of the film a little differently, perhaps it could've been a pretty decent sized hit at the box office. The way it currently is, I don't think it can make more than 15 or so million just because of its inaccessibility with many regular viewers. That still has more to do with the writing than the direction so I'll get to that later once again. Otherwise this film's direction was pitch perfect.

The acting was no less impressive and was probably the most perfect thing about the movie. The best performance was no doubt from Javier Bardem who played "Anton Chigurh", in other words, the psychopathic bad guy. He is scary as hell throughout the film and his performance never ever goes out of character's, although the script does take him out of character at least once, but I'll once again, get to that later. I wouldn't be surprised seeing him not only with a nomination for "Best Supporting Actor" but with the Oscar in his hand come oscar night. He has to be seen to be believed. So far his performance and Tom Wilkinson's performance in "Michael Clayton" have to be the two stand out supporting performance's to come along this year. Josh Brolin is the main good guy through the majority of the film. He does a very good job, but his character is not nearly as interesting as Bardem's character is. Still, he deserves credit for his performance as well, but I don't expect that he'll get any oscar recognition. Then there's Tommy Lee Jones who did a very good job for the parts of the film he was in, and he definitely says some of the more interesting things in the movie. He's the only character that really talks a lot. The other two main character's are fairly manly and they tend to keep their mouth's shut, avoiding any really thought provoking character development on their character's while Jones's character tends to have a wandering mind, and he says some of the more profound things in the film. Woody Harrelson has a fairly small role, but he does a good job in the film as well. There was one casting decision that caught me off guard in a good way. Stephen Root who played "Milton" in "Office Space" and the dorky old "Gordon" in "DodgeBall" had a small part in this film that was entirely serious, and his voice was a regular old raspy southern one. It was interesting to see him in a non-comedic role, speaking his lines in a normal manly way.

Now for the script... The script is my only real issue with this film. Some parts of the script are fantastic. First off all that tension that the Coen's created with their great direction started in their screenplay that they adapted from the novel of the same name. There are some very interesting encounter's and conversation's from character to character through a lot of the film and much of the film is actually quite funny in typical Coen brothers fashion, which I honestly did not expect considering the fact that it looked to be an all out action-thriller from it's trailer. That was a nice touch as well. However here are some things I had a problem with.

(MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!) The whole movie has people tracking things down. Now the whole first half of the film the main character is being tracked with a tracking device so that made sense, but then he tosses it out, and still, Harrelson's character finds him and says he did it in three hours. The main character was checked into a hospital in Mexico and Harrelson's character had no way of knowing this, and somehow he magically found the guy? Alright, fine. Then the script decides to avoid explaining how, and when the main character starts talking about how he can get away from Bardem's character Harrelson just says "You don't understand"... Alright, what doesn't he understand? Is there some weird connections that you're organization has to track people down? What? Well it basically just makes it look like these guys have super powers and they can find people with their laser vision or something. That was kind of annoying. Then there's the fact that the whole last quarter of the film the main character is dead. He is killed off screen by some regular old guys that the boss sent out to get the money that he had. Now what bugs me about that is the fact that the main character (Brolin's character) has been outsmarting and dodging those guys through the entire movie, and then a few of them run up and they all just shoot him to death nice and easy. When you see his body, he's not like off somewhere, like he ran and tried to get away. He's on the floor at the front of his motel room. He's also been dodging one of the smartest, most threatening bad guys to be in a film in year's and he was able to dodge getting killed by him... The slow ending following this death was bothersome and it honestly started to feel extremely slow and boring before the credits went up. The thing that really makes the movie unredeeming is the fact that Bardem's super bad character lives on after all this build up towards what looked to be his imminent death.... There is actually a scene where Bardem and Jones look as though they are about to face off, but Bardem runs out the window. This is totally out of character because througout every other scene in the film Bardem shoots firsts and does things like talking or running away later.

I gave the movie a few hours of thought before I came and wrote this review and after all this thought I decided that Bardem lives because he is the worst man can ever be, and that Jones lives because hes is the best man can ever be. Bardem kills without any real cause, and Jones can't even handle the sight of dead bodies anymore, he's tired of all of the bad thing's he's seen in his life, and he uses knowledge as his number one weapon, constantly spurting out facts through out the film's entirety. Both have to live on so that they can balance each other out. Good and evil...

Overall this movie was an expertly directed, extremely well acted film that had some flaws with it's script, but honestly, it had to much great things happening with it for any of that to matter. I really loved this movie, and I think I'll probably go see it again next week so that maybe I can understand it a little better than I did this first time around...

9.5/10

Two Moon Junction

this is soooooo HOT !!!!!...sexy very very sexy...i luv it !!!