board77

So yesterday afternoon my boyfriend and I went on a date to see No Country for Old Men. I was convinced that I wouldn't get to see any of the Oscar contenders but I did so woot for that!

I didn't know anything about the movie heading into the theater save that Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, and the Javier Bardem was in it with a really funny 70's haircut. It seemed to be Westernesque which isn't a draw for me but it turns out it's not a Western as much as it's a Texas film in which most people wear cowboy hats .

A note on the actors! Javier Bardem was AMAZING he was crazy but not in that twitchy mental institution kind of way. I also loved the scenes with Brolin and his on screen wife they were so real.

SUPER SPOILERS BELOW









This movie had me scratching my head a little bit by the end. The movie isn't hard to follow Llewlynn Moss is out hunting and comes across a drug deal gone wrong he snags a case of money. A ruthless killer Anton Chigurh wants the money so he starts hunting Moss. Tommy Lee Jones is a cop who is trying to track both men down. Long story short Moss is in way over his head and everyone but him knows it because once Chigurh finds you you're dead. Now everything is hunky dory for me until the motel scene in El Paso. Moss's MIL lets the cat out of the bag to some Mexicans about where they are headed and Moss ends up dead. Did Chigurh kill him or was is those Mexicans?! I didn't even realize it was Moss lying there dead because it didn't look like him. Point is after Chigurh makes good on his promise to kill Mosses wife he's in an accident and stalks off. Tommy Lee Jones retires and then the credits roll.

The directing and acting here phenomenal but what's the deal? Does Chigurh keep on keeping on? Did anyone ever find the case that Moss tossed over the fences at the US/Mexico boarder?! And if you were Woody Harleson and Chigurh had walked up behind you wouldn't you have instantly peed your pants?!

My boyfriend was irritated because we'd just seen Cloverfield and he wasn't happy with it's ending either . I however, was happy with both films endings .

I hated the ending too which made it hard to tell how I feel about the movie as a whole. But the guy playing Chigurh, that's one of the most amazing performances I've ever seen. Crime if he doesn't get the Oscar.

I agree I'd love to see Javier Bardem win

Quick story about that. The guy who designed Bardem's haircut runs a salon in Moncton, New Brunswick (about 90 minutes from me) and previously won an Oscar for his makeup job on Amadeus. He donated the award to the Acadian museum at UNB because he was the first Acadian to ever win an Oscar. I can't prove that last part because NB sucks at the internet and I just heard it from someone else.

Anyway, I liked NCFOM quite a bit, but... I knew I was supposed to. Sorry, I have such trouble talking about Oscar flicks. It's hard to just watch them without thinking about the rave reviews everyone else has given. I can't turn that switch off. Perhaps if I'd seen this one on its own without knowing anything about it, I'd have found it stunning to look at, if somewhat boring. Not in an unlikable way, just not necessarily memorable. As such though, I do give it a thumbs up and will happily watch it a second time soon as I finish writing this post. Out of the four Best Picture nominees I've now seen, I would put this one just behind Atonement, though I'll probably think about this one longer just because I get more into violent films than romantic ones.

I was expecting a trainwreck of an ending, so that might have worked in the movie's favor because it didn't end up being bad, per se, just disappointing. There is almost a half hour left in the film after its climax, which we don't even see, so I can understand what a let-down that is and honestly I wish they hadn't done it that way. Makes you wonder what the damn point was after all. Oh well, it could have left a much worse taste in my mouth, but it didn't, so I'm glad for that.

The only other thing I can think of at the moment is to say that I wish I'd seen this on the bigscreen. That scenery is really incredible. I love when a movie makes something potentially boring look beautiful, you see it in a different way.




*E*