Woody Harrelson

No Country For Old Men

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No Country For Old Men. Miramax Films 2007.

Before watching the movie:

As I announced last week at the end of the post, there’s only one more full month before I conclude this blog. I had this exit planned for months and in that time I’ve been trying to cover a lot of movies that I had always meant to get to, maybe for the entire fifteen year run. This month is for the most highly acclaimed films that I’ve come close to reviewing many times, only to decide they were too heavy to get into.

I never really absorbed much about the plot of this movie. I know Javier Bardem’s character is a monstrously cold blooded, unstoppable killer whose weapon of choice is a pneumatic cattle bolt, and I get a sense of a “dark Western” atmosphere. I suppose the title is something about how this isn’t a hospitable place for the sensibilities of the aging.

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2012

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2012. Columbia Pictures 2009.

Before watching the movie:

I pointedly stayed away from this movie. I didn’t want anything to do with the 2012 doomsaying because it was a load of bunk and hucksters were coming out of the walls to scare and fleece people, so I certainly didn’t want to touch the big blockbuster movie profiting off of that hype. Anything cosmological being cited was clearly nonsense or overblown, and the much-touted Mayan calendar was almost certainly a case of “plotting out thousands of years in the future is good enough for now”. But I think twelve years (15 years since release) is enough time to put some emotional distance in place.

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Wag the Dog

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Wag the Dog. Baltimore Pictures 1997.

Before watching the movie:

I haven’t been able to laugh at the presidency in years. At least, not as the product of something other than a mixture of horror, anger, and embarrassment. Washington/the Federal Government lately hasn’t been a source of cynical guffaws. But things have changed and there’s room to be relieved and somewhat relaxed again. For the foreseeable future, we’re returning to, at worst, garden variety corruption and only casual imperialism.

This movie came to me in a presidential-themed movie collection that I found when looking for a disk-based replacement to an old VHS copy of Dave, a favorite I’m looking forward to returning to soon, and could get a Movies of My Yesterdays if “soon” is not all that soon.

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The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio

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The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio. Revolution Erie Productions, 2005.
The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio. Revolution Erie Productions, 2005.

Before watching the movie: When I ask someone new for a movie recommendation, there’s a high likelihood they’ll suggest something I’ve already seen. There’s a very slim chance they’ll recommend something I’ve never even heard of. Not every movie I’ve ever reviewed is obviously to my taste, but the ones that aren’t are pretty much the cinematic canon. And now there’s this. Possibly the first small drama I’ve seen outside of a film festival. I might have passed it by without the strong recommendation of a new friend. The closest reference point I have is something like What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? for reasons that become less clear as I explore what they might be (for one thing, I remembered that one as a period story and it’s actually contemporary). This seems to essentially be a story about a housewife supporting her children by writing for prizes. So it’s more like October Sky (intellectual skills lifting people out of bad situations), only probably not at all. Continue reading →