America

MOVIE REVIEW [He-Said, She-Said] . There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men

Two that we should have mentioned a while ago, but never got around to it. Writing full reviews for these is something akin to adding twigs to a forest fire – completely unnecessary – so here are our brief two cents.

There Will Be Blood
HE SAID: An undeniably well-crafted film from Paul Thomas Anderson, but also one I’m not sure I’m interested in seeing again. Compared to other directors of his generation, Anderson’s direction is unparalleled. He conveys the maximum amount of information in the minimum amount of space, trusting the audience to connect the dots on their own. His compositions, on the other hand, seemed surprisingly mundane. That’s not to say they are bad or ugly, just pleasantly normal. Daniel Day Lewis’s performance is amazing, as always, and P.T.’s reliance on long takes let the audience sit back and watch him work his magic completely unfettered. The start of the film reminded us of Matthew Barney’s Cremaster films, possibly because of the lengthy silences punctuated by eerily out of place music. And it is there I believe my inputs to the discussion end. Great film, great performance, but nothing approaching my favorite P.T. Anderson film.

SHE SAID: P.T. Anderson does another incredible job at isolating the actors, revealing people through their flaws. This sometimes means bouncing between sophisticated backlit shots and blasé scenes (with blatant clues like the faith-filled “Sunday” family), but hopefully his goal is to focus on facial tics and cues. There Will Be Blood leaves you with an empty and heavy heart not only due to the subject matter and greed-stricken lead, P.T.A. doesn’t allow you to empathize, he stifles the waterworks and moves on… moves on rightly to oil, milkshakes and blood.

No Country for Old Men
HE SAID: This too was an exceptionally well put together film, but I’m not quite sure it’s worthy of the best picture nod. And, this too had a series of excellent performances (not necessarily Javier Bardem, but Tommy Lee Jones and Kelly MacDonald). There’s a healthy dose of the Coen Brother’s usual dark comedy, but the film loses a good deal of momentum a good twenty minutes before its end. As I’ve mentioned in our comments section, this drop is not without reason, but I still feel it could have been tightened up a bit. The “controversial” ending of the film was fairly straightforward, surprising only in its soft spoken delivery and lack of a twist. I think people who are confused by the meaning of the final sequence might just be thinking a bit too hard. All in all, this was far from my favorite Coen Brothers film, but still a quality entry.

SHE SAID: Hmm, this was another example of brilliant acting and direction and a bold, ugly storyline. No Country for Old Men certainly turned our heads, but sadly not for very long. I’ll just say that no good deeds go unpunished in No Country for Old Men.

About the Authors

Chris Nelson and Kris Kobayashi-Nelson are the proud co-founders of dreamlogic.net. The adventurous soulmates occasionally take a break from ghost hunting, spelunking, pranking, programming, munching, and 4-hour bike rides to view some killer flicks.