anyone else have trouble warming to "No Country for Old Men" — Page 2

^Agreed.

I think that the Coen's are masters of the craft. I was involved and entertained the whole way through.

Well...I know this isn't the thread, but why the hell not.

I was left cold by NO COUNTRY, but I did think it was fine filmmaking.

I actively HATED There Will Be Blood.

Actively.

Hated.

Anybody else?

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I haven't yet Robbie, but I'm fixin' to.

(Hey, I've been fixin' to use "fixin' to" in a thread for some time now!)

******SPOILERS*******

I wasn't so much "cold" to No Country as I was let down, mildly confused and ultimately turned off.

It was a good movie, with great cinematography, and a great "wow/sensational" performance by Javier Bardem. But...

Really piss-poor ending with Tommy Lee Jones playing backup singer to his own dining room window, with a puzzling open vista of an empty yard just ACHING for Bardem to pop up in it and scare the crap out of us.

And that whole "he's still out there" idea? Where'd they borrow that one from... Friday the 13th? Halloween?

I'll borrow the rest of my own rant copied-and-pasted from another thread:

Why do so MANY films of the past couple of years have serious trouble with their endings? A cut to black, once the major plot is done, is NOT an ending. It's a clumsy cut-off. Quit being afraid to end your stories gracefully (which isn't easy at all, BTW), with actual codas and afterthought and assessment... but an ambiguous "artsy," abrupt ending is pretty easy to do, and SO often a cop-out. I'm tired of them, truly. I don't need to "think" about your ethereal ending. You chose to be vague because you didn't know what else to do. It's a cheap trick. Stop it.

"Leave 'em confused with an ambiguous blackout and they'll talk about your movie when they leave the theatre."

Nice parlor trick. Been used quite a bit lately.

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I wasn't as bothered by the ending as some...even though I agree that it just seemed to stop. And I go back to ZODIAK for a similar kind of ending. *Spoilers ahead* The killer was never caught. But that great moment of Gyllenhal looking at him and knowing it was him (at least in his mind) offered a great sense of closure. Not for the actual case, but for the movie.

One of the reasons the ending of No Country didn't bother me was because I simply wasn't invested in any of the characters, nor how they dealt with their situations.

When you find out that *Spoiler Again* Kelly Macdonald has bit it, it left me utterly non-plussed. And when Kelly Macdonald, an actress whose every physical and vocal feature seem perfectly put together to elicit the most amount of empathy, if not sympathy, meets here maker and I feel nothing, I know that this movie has not allowed me in fully.

But that There Will Be Blood movie? It made me want to drown a puppy. A fatally miscast Paul Dano, a bag of tricks peformance by Day Lewis (whom I always find pulling from the bag of tricks; I just don't fully get him) and characters you couldn't care less about in situations that you are told should be interesting but are not...it was the Emporer's New Clothes for me.

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"almost Rebecca Pigeon awful"

That would be a new favorite phrase. Thank you for that!

I generally like Macdonald. As I do Brolin, Jones, etc. I think, in the end, I agree with you about the picture's worldview. And I did appreciate and respect the hell out of it. I just think, for me, the concept of evil portrayed was more intellectual than gut. Which may very well be their intention. Or perhaps that's just the way the film hit me.

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I loved No Country For Old Men from start to finish. I was completely engaged. And before I saw the film, I was afraid I wouldn't like it. I was horribly disappointed with The Man Who Wasn't There and Ladykillers, so I was doubly surprised at this interesting film that contained some of the Coen brothers' signature marks, yet still remained different from their previous collaborations.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film was the pov. With the absence of Bardem's motives as well as the absence of a score to provide mood and foreshadowing, we were left almost as clueless as the characters hunting him down, which to me, added to the tension and suspense of each scene. I found the situation and the story engrossing without having to explain everything or neatly arrive at a conclusive resolution. Personally, I think those things would have made the film and characters less interesting to me.

**SPOILER**

I arrived at my own conclusion of who Bardem's character was and what he represents, which I believe was the human embodiment of a concept, which is what gave him that "Michael Myers" quality people speak of. The Coen brothers inject a supernatural element into many of their films and I felt Bardem's character was a subtler approach to this familiar device. After a lengthy conversation about the film immediately after viewing it, I am eager to see it again from a different perspective. I thought it was absolutely brilliant.

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Updated On: 1/14/08 at 01:10 PM

Film left me cold. Didn't care about any one of them. Loved Bardem. Pitch perfect performance.

Horrible ending.

New posting, after what might have been a double:

And NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is a pleasant couple of hours' diversion compared to the astonishing THERE WILL BE BLOOD, which I saw last night and was absolutely floored by.

It looks like NO COUNTRY will this year's MILLION DOLLAR BABY, winning all the awards that should go to other better films.

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Is "No Country" a hit?

It's been out 10 weeks (not a huge release, but not exactly limited either) and has made $46 million.

EDIT: If the Academy wants to back a hit this year, they'll vote for "Juno." It's made over $70 million in 6 weeks.

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Updated On: 1/15/08 at 11:31 AM

I agree with Robbie about our invitation to invest in the the young woman's plight and fate, only to find the final outcome ugly and empty. I cannot deny the film's near genius, and emotional power in places (I think the first coin toss sequence is bravura in every way, and the actor who plays the station/store own inspires deep empathy, almost effortlessly). But we're still left with a grim take-away, and I find myself just depressed by all that true artistry in service of such bleakness.

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SPOILER!

See, I never felt sorry for her at all--First, I don't think she's a very good actress and I also found her character to be so naive and dim...I wasn't GLAD when she got it, but didn't feel any sympathy either.

And the first coin toss scene is amazing!