 | No Country For Old Men  |
| The Darjeeling Limited | |
| Sicko | |
| Spider-Man 3 | |
| Manufacturing Dissent | |
| The Number 23 | |
| Letters From Iwo Jima | |
| Factory Girl | |
| Black Snake Moan | |
| PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDERER |
No Country For Old Men Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem Directed by Joel & Ethan Coen Reviewed by Adam D. Miller  Joel & Ethan Coen are a pair of the finest filmmakers of their generation, but after two relatively disappointing turns in Intolerable Cruelty (2003) and The Ladykillers (2004), fans and critics were left to wonder if they could ever restore the legacy that began with modern classics like Raising Arizona and Fargo, and continued with The Big Lebowski and O Brother, Where Art Thou.It’s not that either of the Coens past two films were particularly bad; they just lacked many of the things we’d come to count on from the Coens, such as clever dialogue, twisted humor, stunning visuals and colorful characters. No Country For Old Men is as much a return to form as anyone could have hoped for, but it’s also a much different type of film for the Coens. The dialogue is top notch, the humor is awkward and uncomfortable and the visuals, as usual, are great, but this is easily the darkest and most thrilling film of the brothers’ career. After claiming a suitcase full of money as his own, clearly from a drug deal gone bad, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) decides to go back to the scene to further investigate. It was a tragic mistake, as Moss soon has a psycho killer, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), on his trail. Chigurh, easily one of the most terrifying villains on screen in years, has little concern for the people who stand in his way and has his own plans for the cash. Beyond Chigurh’s bizarre weapon of choice (a gun-like device hooked up to an oxygen tank), part of what makes the character so frightening is Javier Bardem’s Oscar-worthy, stone-cold, performance. While Moss is trying his best to elude Chigurh and keep his wife safely (so he thinks) tucked away at her mother’s house, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), on the eve of his retirement from law enforcement, and his deputy, Wendell, struggle to find clues about the unusual trail left behind by Chigurh’s string of senseless killings. Bell is full of regret through the entire film, frustrated by this character who eludes him and musing on the days in which drugs weren’t the source of so much violence and sheriffs didn’t have to carry guns. Loosely adapted from the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, No Country For Old Men is darker than Miller’s Crossing, bloodier than Blood Simple and, though set in Texas, is most definitely not another light-hearted romp through the south like the one that served as the basis of O Brother, Where Art Thou. The film is equal parts action, drama, thriller and western, without sliding too comfortably into any of these genres. There’s plenty to laugh at too, despite the amount of murders and horrifying situations that unfold over the course of the film. It’s a wonderful and welcome addition to the Coen ouvre, and hopefully it will set the bar for their future films, the next of which, Burn After Reading, is already in production. |  |
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