The gas station scene still creeps me out no matter how many times I watch it. Great movie!!!

3/20/2008 10:46:39 PM

^ Ha! I just rewatched that scene.

3/20/2008 10:52:53 PM

I'm confused. Was the entire movie a dream by TLJs character or what?

3/20/2008 11:08:58 PM

lol wat

3/20/2008 11:12:16 PM

What was the point of the last scene where TLJ is sitting at the table talking about his dreams or whatever?

3/20/2008 11:13:01 PM

yeah that threw a lot of people off and there's still debate over what exactly was meant by those dreams (see first couple pages of this thread) but it definitely didn't mean that the whole movie was a dream

3/20/2008 11:35:02 PM

it was a metaphor for the futility and briefness of our existence

3/20/2008 11:44:59 PM

^ In line with that I kept catching characters mentioning dead people in the present tense and then correcting themselves. They made that whole part pretty obvious.

3/20/2008 11:54:17 PM

Mind ridin' BITCH?

3/20/2008 11:57:32 PM

What business is it of yours how I mind riding?

3/21/2008 5:47:14 PM

I finally saw it yesterday.

Fucking loved it.

watched it again.

The only real question I have is this:

Did Chigurh kill Carla Jean or not? I'm leaning towards yes, mainly by the way he checked his boots after he left the house. Also, that was his intent in going to Carla Jean's house, and he's not one to be swayed by argument.

3/23/2008 6:57:16 AM

Yes

He definitely killed Carla Jean. He killed her in the book as well.

3/23/2008 10:04:45 AM

i just saw it for the first time yesterday

very good movie

the ending kinda pissed me off though

3/23/2008 10:17:34 AM

Old and/or stupid people tend to have that complaint.

3/23/2008 11:17:09 AM

I just watched it again, it was awesome. I already want to watch it a third time

3/23/2008 2:03:22 PM

^^The ending doesn't piss me off at all, I am just having some trouble understanding it.

3/23/2008 5:14:47 PM

Quote :

"Old and/or stupid people tend to have that complaint."

hahaha isn't that the truth! my retired uncle said the same thing about the ending

3/23/2008 5:34:33 PM

Pootie Tang would whip Anton's ass

3/23/2008 6:18:18 PM

When movies are focus grouped, old people generally prefer happy endings, young people prefer violent vengence. I think it's because older people have the knowledge that happy endings don't happen in real life. Only a teenager that grew up watching too many movies would think happy endings are overrated.

3/23/2008 7:43:55 PM

I just finished watching this, I thought it was pretty good.

I did like how the portrayed Anton and the other hit man as being much more intelligent than the average joe, unlike most other movies where the criminals are much dumber than the hero of the story.

3/23/2008 7:50:16 PM

Just finished watching this. Wanted to like it, liked the first 3/4 of the movie, thought Bardem's acting job was awful, and that a tampon could act it's way out of a wrapper better than he did.

The ending was crap in my mind. I read all you guys said, and understand it, but I really got this Matrix Revolutions feel from the whole thing. I don't think that it was a perfect movie, by any stretch of the imagination. I would have been happy with just about any sort of ending, given the fact that the characters were built up well to a certain point, but things just fell apart.

I thought it was fucking weak. I didn't need TLJ to have a final confrontation, but I needed more than the shit they gave us.

3/23/2008 10:54:05 PM

Quote :

"thought Bardem's acting job was awful, and that a tampon could act it's way out of a wrapper better than he did"

...you're insane

3/23/2008 10:58:28 PM

FUCK CREATIVITY AND THE SOURCE MATERIAL I WANT A HOLLYWOOD SILLY BLOCKBUSTER ENDING.

[Edited on March 23, 2008 at 11:50 PM. Reason : FADFD]

3/23/2008 11:50:16 PM

^^

3/23/2008 11:54:39 PM

my mistake...i forgot that my opinion was meant to be the gospel for everyone else. i was under the distinct impression that i was allowed to feel however the fuck i wanted after paying my money to see a film.

my bad.

i also didn't realize that me not liking the movie was a result of my sophomoric mind wanting it to be more like die hard, with pithy comments and the bad guy getting killed in some rip roaring, crowd cheering way. it's a good thing i have other people to tell me what to think of a movie and how i should really feel. without their thoughts, my heads would just be full of packing peanuts and what shade of lipstick britney wears on her vag lips.

3/24/2008 12:40:05 AM

^ sure you're allowed to be wrong. It's odd that you're proud of that though.

3/24/2008 12:59:03 AM

I do think you are wrong about Bardem. I thought he did a perfect job of being a stone cold killer.

He always presented himself as a very in-control person, and thats a complete 180 from the majority of the psychopaths we have seen before.

Ive seen people liken him to hannibal lecter without the cannibalism (maybe in this thread, i cant remember).

3/24/2008 5:37:13 AM

^^^ its one thing to disagree with people and not like a a movie. but to say his acting job was terrible voids any opinion you might have on the movie imo.

ie most people agreed that DDL performance in 'there will be blood' was great even if they didnt like the movie.

3/24/2008 6:59:27 AM

Quote :

" FUCK CREATIVITY AND THE SOURCE MATERIAL I WANT A[n] HOLLYWOOD SILLY BLOCKBUSTER ENDING."

I haven't read the book, so if there wasn't more closure there, then I'm glad hollywood didn't just insert one. But if there's more to it, I'd like to see it. Either way I'm pissed off. Whether it's reading the first 450 pages of a 500 page book, or watching the first 1.5 hours of a 2 hour movie, i don't want to get all invested in characters and developing storylines just to have the author get all the way to the climax and say "oh, by the way, the hero dies just the way you'd expect him to. You can figure out the details on your own."

Granted, that's how it would happen in real life. It's not meant to be cinematic. It's meant to be real. Just I guess it's too cliche to give any sort of gratification. Maybe they feel like they only want a more intelligent audience to enjoy/understand it.. so they won't spell everything out for you, and that's fine i guess. But it is anticlimactic. You can't argue that.

3/24/2008 9:54:56 AM

As has been said multiple times, the ending is identical to that of the book.

3/24/2008 9:56:57 AM

Good ending for a book.

I didn't really like the movie very much.

3/24/2008 10:06:04 AM

That's not anticlimax, it's denouement. The climax is Bell's trip to the hotel where he makes the decision not to confront Chigurh. It sounds like you just didn't see the story behind the violent action.

3/24/2008 10:13:29 AM

I am guilty of not reading the first 4 pages of the thread. I just saw the movie last night and got caught up in everyone's argument with fuhctious and thought i'd throw my 2 cents in.

I get that the whole point of the movie was Bell's coping with a changing country and his decision to either quit or try and keep up, and they followed that storyline all the way out to the end. But, there was another story that got the majority of the screen time that didn't get its due IMO.

Did I get too caught up in Moss's story and want to see that play out more than watching Bell's inner struggles? Maybe. But they built it up enough to where I don't think its out of the question to expect something. It didn't have to have danger music and explosions, but the Sopranos already did the fade to black thing. Anything more would have been nice.

3/24/2008 10:46:53 AM

Quote :

"I get that the whole point of the movie was Bell's coping with a changing country and his decision to either quit or try and keep up,"

Apparently you didn't get the whole point of the movie.

3/24/2008 10:50:58 AM

Quote :

"ie most people agreed that DDL performance in 'there will be blood' was great even if they didnt like the movie."

I am one of those people. I HATED that movie, but DDLs performance was amazing.

3/24/2008 11:02:13 AM

^i saw TWBB with a couple of those people as well.


bardem's acting was great. great movie. ending was a little abnormal, but i liked it.

3/24/2008 11:27:20 AM

I will qualify my comment on Bardem's acting. I don't consider it amazing or difficult for an actor to act without any emotion whatsoever. And in my mind, that's what he did. I don't think you can compare it to Hannibal Lector, given that HL was up and down at different points and seemed to have emotions relating to certain events.

An actor playing every scenario deadpan is uninspiring, and I don't feel Oscar worthy (I would not have mentioned it otherwise.)

On a tangential note, my favorite acting performance bar none this year, which wasn't recognized, was Will Smith in "I Am Legend". I thought he truly captured the feelings and attitudes that someone would have in that situation, and given that he had no people to play off of for almost the whole movie, I was even more impressed.

3/24/2008 11:49:18 AM

Anybody can act well when they are alone, or in the presence of a dog. We do it all our lives, nothing special there.

3/24/2008 12:11:48 PM

http://youtube.com/watch?v=q-MHg1HKSKI

maybe you'll like this better

3/24/2008 12:48:31 PM

^^^ jesus titty fucking christ... did you really just say that Will FUCKING Smith was your favorite acting performance of last year? GTF OUT SIR, JUST GTF OUT

3/24/2008 1:35:53 PM

^7

Just read the entire thread and still don't get how you can say i didn't get the point of the movie.

Right from the start TLJ talks about how there is more and more messed up shit going on in the world and how some of it doesn't even make sense any more. Then it all ends up with him sighing on a motel bed deciding that this is "No Country for Old Men" and retiring.


Moving on, I'm in the camp that believes Bell was in the same room with Chigurh at the end, and I feel like he knew he was in there. But it seems to me that he was still giving up and letting him get away even by choosing to enter the room. It's like he knew he was behind the door, and deliberately chose not to look. I mean, who walks into a dark room, that's possibly occupied by a mass murderer, and doesn't immediately scan the room for danger? The lawman in him had to go in, but he knew in his head that he didn't stand a chance. So he walks in, goes straight to the back without looking around, and lets Chigurh escape. Then he sits down, sighs and decides its time to hang it up.

3/24/2008 1:53:27 PM

Fuck off, cunt. That particular acting performance was fantastic. If you want to seem all cool by making the assumption that because he is in big budget films and his acting roles are usually limited to an action hero mentality, fine, but he was great in that role. I get really fed up with this cool guy mentality people have with music and movies where only certain opinions are acceptable to have. Again, fuck you.

Smith showed a great range of emotions and really captured a lot of the futility of the situations he was faced with, from beginning to end. Several of his most critical scenes came when he was acting opposite no one, with only the driving forces in his character's mind as a foil. I hope that you have at least seen the movie before you are trashing it. I saw NCFOM before I gave my opinion.

That is a lot more impressive to me than Javier Bardem's calm, cool, and detached personality.

3/24/2008 1:56:12 PM

Well considering he won an Oscar for his role, and everyone in this thread disagrees with you, I would say your opinion is somewhat flawed, but you are still allowed to think as you wish.

3/24/2008 2:33:18 PM

Such a wonderful screenplay.

3/24/2008 2:48:06 PM

Will Smith is a good actor...whether you are trying to be cool by saying he sucks or not...he's still a good actor. You can blame him for taking roles that don't exactly scream "amazing acting needed"...but he's always performed well in his roles and in movies that required good acting, he's delivered.

Will Smith was awesome in Pursuit of Happyness, Ali, and Six Degrees of Separation.

[Edited on March 24, 2008 at 2:58 PM. Reason : And although I Am Legend wasn't particularly great, Smith was great in it.]

3/24/2008 2:57:02 PM

^ I'm not saying will smith isn't a good actor, but he was far from giving a "best" performance last year

3/24/2008 3:57:40 PM

FuhCtious, you're entitled to whatever opinion you like. However, as soon as you tried to qualify your opinion, you revealed yourself to be a moron who should definitely just stick to Die Hard-esque films.

You are trying to fit this movie into the mold that most movies belong to. Nothing is force-fed to you -- you have to look for it.

3/24/2008 4:18:59 PM

Quote :

"Moving on, I'm in the camp that believes Bell was in the same room with Chigurh at the end, and I feel like he knew he was in there. But it seems to me that he was still giving up and letting him get away even by choosing to enter the room. It's like he knew he was behind the door, and deliberately chose not to look. I mean, who walks into a dark room, that's possibly occupied by a mass murderer, and doesn't immediately scan the room for danger? The lawman in him had to go in, but he knew in his head that he didn't stand a chance. So he walks in, goes straight to the back without looking around, and lets Chigurh escape. Then he sits down, sighs and decides its time to hang it up."

But when the door swings open, Chigurh is not behind it. A more detailed explanation:

http://www.ericdsnider.com/blog/2008/01/07/no-country-for-old-men-bell-and-chigurh-and-the-motel-room/

3/24/2008 5:26:54 PM

Quote :

"It helps to emphasize that Llewellyn isn't the focus of the story. Ed Tom is."

The problem with that, and really my main problem with the movie is that while Ed Tom is the focus of the story, Ed Tom isn't involved in the main storyline. In fact, until the very end, he goes out of his way to keep himself uninvolved with it.

For what it's worth, I don't believe Chigurh was in the room when Tommy Lee Jones entered it. There's no way he goes into the wrong door, since he walks over the stain of blood left by Llewellyn's body and see's the unscrewed vent.

When he opens the door though, he doesn't halfass it, he pushes it until it hits the wall. Given Chigurh's size, there's no way he could've still been behind the door and considering his leg was injured there's no way he could've gone from behind the door to somewhere else hidden in the room by the time TLJ fully pushes in the door. So either Chigurh is in a different room or this eventual confrontation is all in TLJ's head. It goes even more to the helplessness of TLJ -- now that he's finally willing to step up and confront Chigurh, he can't.

Like Scrumples, I also found it disappointing that when Llewellyn was killed, it was done off-camera by more random thugs. It's unfulfilling to the viewer (or at least it was to me) since we've spent the entire movie following him around, watching him claw to survive every lousy situation, only to just find him dead at the hands of no one of importance. While I thought it was an above average movie, I thought that did it a great disservice. Here's a character you've built up wonderfully, made the viewer sympathize with, and then you just kill him off.

3/24/2008 5:44:16 PM

Wow I have good taste in movies. Probably one of my more successful threads. Continue with the discussion.

3/24/2008 6:35:01 PM