Movie Movie

No Country for Old Men is an excellent Western Noir, and quite faithful to Cormac McCarthy's grim vision. I was thinking about it in terms of the classic Western tropes and realized that it's basically Shane, except for the fact that Shane never shows up. Then I realized that Javier Bardem's stone cold killer is Shane, walking into the sunset with a broken arm, a force that even the universe cannot kill. Kudos to the Coen Brothers--this makes up for their utterly misguided remake of The Ladykillers.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is a crackerjack example of the crime-gone-wrong genre, but the real reason to see it is for its painful delineation of a family that lost its way long ago. Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance is stunning, but then his character is the crux of the whole tragedy: a man who, as he puts it to his drug dealer at the Trump Tower (!), "doesn't add up," and who doesn't understand why this is so. Kudos to Sidney Lumet, who can knock this sort of ball out of the park at 83.

The Darjeeling Limited is another fine example of Wes Anderson's sensibility, and even with its flaws (it becomes fairly pedestrian after the bravua funeral/flashback sequence) is pretty enjoyable. If for no other reason, Anderson should continue to make films for the soundtracks they inspire.

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