Movie Review Only the Brave

Only the Brave (2017) 

Directed by Joseph Kosinski 

Written by Ken Nolan, Eric Warren Singer

Starring Josh Brolin, Miles Teller, Jeff Bridges, James Badge Dale, Taylor Kitsch, Jennifer Connelly 

Release Date October 8th, 2017 

Only The Brave is based on a harrowing true story. In 2013 the Granite Mountain Hotshots wildfire fighting team was sent to Yarnell Hill in Arizona to battle a wildfire. When the weather turned and the wind kicked up the flames in a new direction, 19 members of the Hot Shots team was caught behind the fire line. All 19 were killed despite their use of flame retardant covers which proved ineffective for this raging blaze.

Director Joseph Kosinski, a fine director of such solid efforts as Tron Legacy and Oblivion, brings the story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots to life beautifully and painfully in Only the Brave. Taking the tale from the perspective of a new member of the squad, and ultimately the only man on the crew to survive the Yarnell Hill Fire, he was away from his team working as a scout, the film boils down the experience to a very human and relatable level that packs an emotional wallop.

Though it departs from the true story a tad, Only the Brave follows Brandon McDonough, a jobless, seemingly hopeless addict, who cleans up and looks for work as a firefighter. He arrives at the headquarters of the Hotshots in his hometown of Prescott, Arizona, with little experience, aside from EMT training course and looks to be a laughingstock to the members of the Hotshots crew. However, Supervisor and Hotshots boss, Eric Marsh (Josh Brolin) recognizes something in McDonough and hires him on the spot.

In reality, McDonough was a three-year hotshot's vet when the Yarnell Hill fire occurred, but the film character is meant as an amalgamation, as well as an audience surrogate. McDonough, who takes on the nickname Donut because his new friends don’t like his name, is made a rookie so the film can use him to explain terminology and give us more insights into what a Hotshot does. It’s a good choice, if one that defies the true story.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review: W

W. (2008) 

Directed by Oliver Stone 

Written by Stanley Weiser

Starring Josh Brolin, James Cromwell, Elizabeth Banks, Ellen Burstyn, Scott Glenn, Thandie Newton

Release Date October 17th, 2008

Published October 18th, 2008

The best satire that Oliver Stone could bring to his latest controversial effort, W., was to quote his subject accurately. President George W. Bush is as well known for his verbal gaffes as he is for his Bush doctine of pre-emptive war. Quoting the President accurately Stone gets unintentional humor from a situation that isn't really funny in context.

The first ever film biography of a sitting President, W. stars Josh Brolin as both the young brash alcoholic George Bush and the faithful man who fought to get out of his father's shadow and become first Governor of Texas and then President of the United States.

It's a performance of great humor, warmth and humanity that, though it will not change perceptions of the President, it will give even his most ardent critics a look at a man they might not have expected. Directed by Oliver Stone, W. cuts back and forth in time from a young George Bush at Harvard to a confident chief executive who makes gut decisions he believes in without second guessing himself.

If you are someone who believed that Dick Cheney pulled the strings behind the scenes you will be surprised how the President kept the man he refers to simply as Vice in line. Richard Dreyfuss captures the Vice President with a perfect Cheney sneer and without any hint of the mustache twirling villain that so many perceive him to be.

Jeffrey Wright has the most dramatic turn in the film. Playing General Colin Powell, Wright is the voice of reason on the war in Iraq. A good soldier who does his President's work at the UN but privately argued vigorously over the propriety of a pre-emptive war including a dramatic rendering of his "You break it, you bought" analogy to the Iraq war.

Thandie Newton earns some of the films biggest laughs as Condoleeza Rice without ever actually saying anything funny. Her exceptional impression of Rice's voice is both an impressive piece of mimickry and a very funny unintentional send up. Scott Glenn, Bruce McGill and Toby Jones round out the main cast with spot on takes on Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet and Karl Rove respectively.

For those who presume W. is an attack on the President you likely can't be swayed. All I can tell you is what I believe and I believe that W. is relatively fair to the President even at its most satiric and biting. The best satire of President Bush is to quote him accurately and many of his most famous quotes are in the movie and get the biggest laughs. "Misunderestimate", "Strategery", "Fool me once shame on you Fool me twice.. you shouldn't fool people".

The best example of of Oliver Stone's fair appraisal of George W. Bush comes in the demonstration of the President's faith which is dealt with head on, without commentary. Stacey Keach is tremendous in the role of President Bush's spiritual advisor Earl Hudd.

The President turned his life around after being born again and it created in him the drive and determination to rise from a troubled youth to commander in chief. Oliver Stone observes the change without mocking, without commentary but with the same clear eyed take on faith that the President himself likely carries.

The most controversial aspect and the one with the most artistic licence is Stone's psychoanalytic approach to George W's relationship with his father, the man he calls Poppy. Stone portrays much of George W. Bush's life being driven by being in and trying to escape from George H.W Bush's shadow.

Whether the President has daddy issues is debatable but James Cromwell and Josh Brolin strike extraordinary chemistry in their father and son exchanges. The relationship is realistic if not historically accurate. It's also undeniably compelling and dramatic.

W. will not change anyone's position on President Bush, whose legacy is likely sealed with most of us. What it does is take the history of the Bush administration from insider accounts and public records and condense them into a believable ordering of history and in that is valuable,

That it is also quite humorous without trying is a byproduct of that history. President Bush's foibles are as much apart of the man as his faith and his father and Oliver Stone brings it all together with great artistry and craftsmanship.

Movie Review Jonah Hex

Jonah Hex (2010)

Directed by Jimmy Hayward

Written by Neveldine and Taylor

Starring Josh Brolin, Megan Fox, John Malkovich

Release Date June 18th, 2010

Published June 18th, 2010

There is a cult that surrounds the “Jonah Hex” comic books. The character is a melding of Gothic horror and western conventions and arrived around the time that Clint Eastwood had made westerns cool again, back in the early 1970's. “Jonah Hex” has been preparing for its pop culture close up for almost that whole time.

Now, more than 30 years after its debut, with Josh Brolin in the role of Jonah, and a first time live action filmmaker Jimmy Hayward (his first feature was the animated “Horton Hears a Who”), behind the camera, the underground comics legend comes to the big screen and many are going to wish it had waited a little longer.

Josh Brolin is “Jonah Hex,” an old west bounty hunter with the ability to talk to the dead and an unending urge for vengeance against the man who killed his family. That man is Jonah's former commanding officer in the Confederate Army, General Turnbull (John Malkovich). Jonah killed Turnbull's son, Jeffrey Dean Morgan in an uncredited cameo, while trying to prevent his unit from burning down a hospital.

Soon after, Jonah had deserted the army only to be tracked down by Turnbull and made to watch as his family was burned alive. Turnbull doesn't stop there, he wants Jonah to never forget the man who did this to his family and burns his initials into Jonah's face with a branding iron. To say this was upsetting to Jonah would be a minor understatement. 

Left for dead, Jonah was rescued by an Indian tribe, because of course he was. Movies always have to go give this kind of hero a mystical rub from the noble Native American tribe. Through some kind of mystical ceremony Jonah attains his unique power to speak to the dead. The dead have the convenient ability to find people they knew when they were alive wherever they are in the world and thus the ghosts tell Jonah where to find them. What luck, right?

Megan Fox plays Jonah's favorite sex worker, Lilah, likely the only one who can stand his ugly mug. She has little function in the main plot other than being Megan Fox and wearing skimpy period sex worker clothes. There is a forced romance between Lilah and Jonah but since writers Neveldine and Taylor, the idiots behind the awful “Crank” movies, could not write a convincing romance, we are merely told that Jonah and Lilah have more than a sex worker and john relationship.

The ‘relationship’ allows the writing team to include Lilah in the film's final act shootout where she demonstrates one of many convenient talents that she and Jonah both have that are only revealed to us when the characters really need them. Characters also arrive conveniently in just the place they need to, like when Jonah is shot in the chest and passes out from the pain just a few yards from those noble, mystical Native Americans who saved his life before and are ready to save him again.

“Jonah Hex” is a clumsy, poorly crafted comic book story hampered by an idiot script that lurches between a modern story and more cutaways than an episode of “Family Guy.” The film is humorless, sexist, and even at a mere 82 minutes in length, drags from one scene to the next as if the gloom that surrounds the character of Jonah Hex were anchored on the whole movie.

To be fair, one thing in “Jonah Hex” does kind of works and it is star Josh Brolin. Despite being hampered by ridiculous burn make-up, Brolin delivers Jonah as the badass he is meant to be. Combining a little Clint Eastwood with a little John Wayne and shooting it through a Gothic, horror comic book lens, Brolin swaggers and croaks out his lines with grizzly relish. Brolin brings a cool to the movie that was lacking in both scripting and direction.

Director Jimmy Heyward and the writing team of Neveldine and Taylor undermine Josh Brolin’s performance by cutting every corner, abusing flashbacks to tell Jonah’s backstory, and provide convenient information needed to lurch the plot forward. When not abusing flashbacks they abuse handy dialogue like that from the Blacksmith who crafts Jonah’s pseudo period weaponry.

The Blacksmith who, prepare to laugh, happens to be black and named Smith (Ha!) helpfully passes along the reason why Jonah fought for the Confederacy - he was a contrarian, not a racist slave owner. Jonah was a contrarian who couldn’t stand the government telling him what to do. As Smith says, Jonah couldn’t be a racist because they are such good friends. Ugh.

Comic book fans take heart, this version of “Jonah Hex” will fail miserably and when it does DC Comics will wait a few years, find a hot rising star and start whispering about a Jonah reboot. “Jonah Hex” is too terrific a character for the company to give up on, even when this movie version of Jonah crashes and burns.

Movie Review: You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010) 

Directed by Woody Allen

Written by Woody Allen 

Starring Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins, Josh Brolin, Lucy Punch

Release date September 22nd, 2010

Published September 22nd, 2010

Woody Allen has long been a cynic and often a downer, especially in recent years. However, that cynicism as in the underappreciated comedy “Anything Else” or last year's weaker but not bad “Whatever Works” was at least leavened with biting humor. For his latest effort "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger" Allen has given in to an arrogant cynicism that desperately could use some better jokes.

Gemma Jones is ostensibly the star of "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger," if only for the fact that she plays the character who is most subject of Allen's contempt, as Helena a woman whose husband of 45 years, Alfie (Anthony Hopkins), has left her. Having become a severe burden to her daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) and her husband Roy (Josh Brolin), they have fobbed Helena off on a fortune teller named Cristal (Pauline Collins) who has become a friend and guru.

Sally meanwhile, has a budding flirtation with her boss played by Antonio Banderas and Roy, struggling as a novelist who can't finish his second book, begins an affair with a neighbor played by Frieda Pinto. And then there is poor, pathetic Alfie who after leaving Helena has taken up with a prostitute named Charmaine (Lucy Punch) who is spending him into the poorhouse and cheating on him even as he professes love for her and wears out his Viagra prescriptions to keep up with her.

In the universe of Woody Allen, Sally, Roy and Alfie are burdened with the knowledge of their longings and sorrows while Helena takes idiot comfort in plans for her afterlife, living again as she has lived in the past, possibly as Cleopatra or some sort of English royalty; what point would there be to a dull past life?

In this universe there is no comfort for the intellectual while the dullard finds peace in her foolishness and is the only character to emerge unscathed. Now, as a fellow non-believer who finds such things as past lives, after-life, fortune tellers and mediums to be mere hokum, I can identify with Mr. Allen's loathing of such things. However, Mr. Allen becomes boorish when he protests the fools without humor as he does in "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger."

As Mr. Allen wields his bitterness by mocking Helena he seems to lose track or simply pay no mind to the travails of Sally and Roy. Naomi Watts and Josh Brolin play at having had romantic chemistry, a good trait for a couple portraying marital decay, but as the marriage ends and once it is over we are merely taught a lesson in chance that has little humor or interest.

Roy brings about his own moral undoing but it has little to do with his cheating on his wife or falling in love with Ms. Pinto. As for Sally, she has no real moral undoing; she's merely unlucky in love. Neither plot is delivered with much humor or insight; it's likely the mundane nature of Sally's plight is the point of her story but I think if we want mundane we can find plenty of it in our own lives.

Alfie's plot is the only one to generate much of any comic steam and all of that comes from the wonderful performance of Lucy Punch as Charmaine. Ms. Punch is a walking punch line of snapping gum and streetwalker cliché. Her overwrought idiot line reads are almost all jokes and Ms. Punch delivers them with effortless humor. Mr. Hopkins is good as the dazed old timer pretending he's still young and yet realizing that all he really wants is a comfortable chair but his realizations are nothing new.

If you enjoy Woody Allen's brand of cynicism, minus his usual wit then "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger" is the movie for you. While I am as much a cynic when it comes to religion, the afterlife, mediums, fortune tellers and the like, I try not to bore people with my rationality. Mr. Allen bores away in "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger" and like meeting the know-it-all at a party you cannot run away to the other side of the room fast enough.

Movie Review Sicario 2 Day of the Soldado

Sicario 2 Day of the Soldado (2019) 

Directed by Stefano Sollima 

Written by Taylor Sheridan 

Starring Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, Isabela Moner, Jeffrey Donovan 

Release Date June 19th, 2018 

Published June 18th, 2018

Sicario was a movie where one character tied herself in multiplying more knots in order to do what she thought was right in the pursuit of justice. Sicario may be the Spanish word for hitman but the movie of that title was not about the hitman but rather about an FBI agent who is young enough to still be idealistic about her job until she is confronted by the futility of her work and how even doing the right thing can be a misguided notion when the line between right and wrong is so desperately murky.

It’s unfortunate that Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado doesn’t have an Emily Blunt like character for us to identify with. Without Blunt’s everyman innocence, the story of Sicario 2 is left to a pair of characters who are charismatic but not very believable as arbiters of the moral ground. Sicario 2 asks us to believe that the characters of CIA Fixer, Matt (Josh Brolin) and hitman, Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro) are somehow guided to do the right thing when their cold-hearted depravity was the point of the characters when they were conceived.

The story of Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado begins with a pair of terror attacks at the border between the U.S and Mexico. In a shocking sequence we watch three terrorists walk into a super-market and each detonate bombs strapped to their chests. This is the act that convinces the Secretary of State (Matthew Modine) to go after the people who are believed to be helping terrorists into the country, the drug cartels.

For this dirty work he turns to CIA Fixer Matt and tasks him with a black op. The idea is that Matt and his team will kidnap the daughter of a drug kingpin and drop her off in the territory of a rival kingpin. The goal is to get the cartels into a war with each other and in so doing, keep the cartels from providing cover for terrorists to cross the border into Texas. The idea is solid in planning but the execution is bad. Mexican police are supposed to provide a safe lead into Mexico but instead, they go into business for themselves and nearly kill Matt and his team.

This leaves Matt’s friend and professional killer Alejandro to care for the kidnapped girl while Matt high tails it back to Texas to deal with the fallout of Americans killing Mexicans in Mexico. What you have here is a plot with a lot potential, plenty of rich ground to cover in crafting these characters and evolving them from the first film. Unfortunately, the makers of Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado can’t seem to make up their mind about what film they are making.

Turning Matt and Alejandro against each other is a clever idea, their alliance may feel close but there is underlying tension to be exploited. The story is timely and potentially bold but the makers of Sicario: Day of the Soldado can’t seem to decide what movie they are making. Is this a gritty, hard-bitten drama about hard men doing the hard things or is this a critique of the secretive and dangerous methods of an American law enforcement acting from a place of fear and weakness.

As I said earlier, this is a rich playing field for characters like these. Unfortunately, director Stefano Sillima is unable to capitalize on the work of his terrific cast. Sillima’s direction is lazy and deeply conventional. Where the original Sicario was an artful study of characters struggling with their morality in an amoral world, Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado is a macho, posturing, pointless action movie.

Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado trades the best part of the original, the character based acting and observational plot in favor of the more familiar gun fights and chases of the action genre. What they fail to consider are the expectations of people who’ve seen the first Sicario. I loved Sicario for its thicket of moral grey area and how Blunt’s character would navigate that thicket. I enjoyed her struggle and understood her frustration.

Without Blunt or a similar character in this sequel what is left is rather weak sauce. There are far less complicated notes being played. The motivations of the characters are lacking as is the clever visual technique of Academy Award winner Roger Deakins who made the grit and grime of Mexico come to life as if Mexico itself were a dangerous character. All of the best stuff of Sicario is missing from Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado and what a shame that is.

Movie Review Sicario

Sicario (2015) 

Directed by Denis Villenueve 

Written by Taylor Sheridan 

Starring Benicio Del Toro, Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin 

Release Date September 18th, 2015 

Published September 17th, 2015 

Sicario stars Emily Blunt as Kate, a tough young FBI Agent who is recruited for a joint government task force on drug enforcement. Immediately she smells something fishy, especially after she meets Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro), a specialist in cartel politics who is supposedly working for the Department of Justice. Alejandro answers only to Kate’s new boss, an equally shady character named Matt (Josh Brolin).

Both Alejandro and Matt are suspiciously good with a weapon for a pair of Department of Justice lawyers and that’s not the only thing about this new assignment that is nagging at Kate. Among other things, Kate’s first day on the job finds her crossing the Texas-Mexico border to capture a high level drug asset. The fact that she’s flanked by an elite military force for this mission gives the strong impression that whoever has arranged this, is working outside the bounds of diplomacy and the rule of law.

As the story evolves, Kate is torn between the desire for results in the unending battle between the government and the fractured but still functioning cartels which have only grown more violent and territorial since the fall of the Medellin cartel which had kept an uneasy peace among the cartels while keeping the flow of drugs into America as high as it has ever been. The choice for Kate is simple, the idealistic and seemingly futile pursuit of results inside the bounds of the law or giving up a piece of her very soul for the chance to slow the flow of drugs into the country.

How much moral flexibility does Kate have? Can Kate kill unconvicted people if it means capturing or killing those who’ve earned it? These questions form the drama and suspense of Sicario and director Denis Villenueve gives these questions weight and patiently unfolds them as the movie goes on. Villenueve, one of the finest filmmakers working today, an Academy Award nominee for his work on Arrival, has a mastery of pacing and building toward powerful moments.

With the help of two time Academy Award nominee, Editor Joe Walker, Villenueve slowly allows tension to build via clever character moments and splashes of sudden violence. The editing is seamlessly brilliant and essential to how Sicario slowly builds to a pair of remarkably tense closing scenes including a sweaty and intense dinner conversation with a drug kingpin and one final moment between main characters that is downright devastating.

I could go on and talk about the brilliant production design by Patrice Vermette, another two time Academy Award nominee or about the breathtaking cinematography of Roger Deakins, an Academy Award winner for his work on Villenueve’s Blade Runner in 2017 and the only member of the cast and crew of the first Sicario movie to be nominated for an Academy Award. Believe me when I tell you, every sequence of Sicario is impeccable.

Great performances, tremendous direction, beautifully spare cinematography and production design and a great story combine to make me very excited for the new movie Sicario Soldad. It should be fascinating to watch Alehandro and Matf do what they do without Kate around to force them to weigh their consciences. Just how low will these rogue elements of our spy underground go to stanch the drug pipeline between the U.S and Mexico.

Movie Review Inherent Vice

Inherent Vice (2014) 

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Written by Paul Thomas Anderson

Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Katherine Waterston, Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, Benicio Del Toro, Martin Short, Jena Malone

Release Date December 12th, 2014

Published December 10th, 2014 

Professor Matthew Strecher defines magic realism as "what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to believe." In the case of the movie "Inherent Vice '' Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) is that thing that is too strange to believe. Doc is a doped up Los Angeles Private Detective who stumbles on a massive government conspiracy involving drugs, the feds, the Justice Department, the mob, black power and white supremacists and all of it tied to his ex-ol lady Shasta Fay (Katherine Waterston). 

Putting together the pieces at the center of the conspiracy in "Inherent Vice" is like listening to a stoner tell you his theory about the Kennedy Assassination, it sounds completely plausible but the story teller is a tad unreliable. The conspiracy in "Inherent Vice" breaks down like this: the government works with drug dealers who introduce dope into the hippie communities of Los Angeles, get them hooked and then use government subsidies to build facilities to help clean up dopers who want to get clean, all the while brainwashing the soon to be former hippies to send them back to society as upstanding citizens. 

The term vertical integration gets dropped more than once in "Inherent Vice" and it refers to a rather devilishly ingenious bit of business. Think of a sugar company that also sells toothpaste, or what if the tobacco companies began opening cancer treatment centers. Here, drug dealers run rehab clinics that are a government front for converting hippies from drug addicts back to upstanding citizens. It sounds rather outlandish but as posited by director Paul Thomas Anderson, based on the novel by Thomas Pynchon, it plays out in a way that's quite believable as something that may have in fact taken place in 1970. 

The last person anyone would believe could uncover such a massive conspiracy is Doc Sportello. He is the perfect catalyst for this story because he simply doesn't seem like he could function on a daily basis, as high as he is, and yet he's quite competent and even insightful in uncovering what he seems to uncover. And yet he's not the most reliable witness as he literally has a magical voice in his head, Sortilege (Joanna Newsom)-her name is literally Latin for 'Magic'- who acts as our narrator and the curator of Doc's memories which slowly, hazily begin to form this conspiracy into a believable, even logical form. 

If you met Doc and he attempted to tell you this story about the government, drug dealers, the mob. white supremacists and black power, you would never for a moment believe him and that's kind of the point. The plot, the conspiracy, it's all very believable but Doc isn't. Doc invades this conspiracy, invents it before our eyes simply by witnessing it and yet we can't really believe much of any of it because Doc is the one telling the story. That's a remarkably devilish narrative trick and one Paul Thomas Anderson pulls off with great style and panache. 

The setting for the conspiracy is very real but that Doc Sportello, of all people, would be the one to uncover it is simply too impossible to believe. No matter how many times Doc turns out to be right about something we're still talking about a guy who's been stoned for years and has a magic voice in his head. How wonderful it is for this conspiracy to pulse with such life and then have a character like Doc, our hero, be the one who compromises its very truthfulness. In another movie this would be played as tragedy as an innocent character becomes disillusioned by events out of his control. 

Doc is far too gone to be disillusioned, the moment he finds a piece of the conspiracy that he can chalk up as a win and walk away, he takes it. That minor victory comes in the form of Coy Harlingen (Owen Wilson), a former doper who was being used by the government to turn up hippies to be reformed in dope clinics run by drug dealers. Rescuing Coy is the one thing Doc manages to accomplish in the film and for him that will be enough of a happy ending. Doc, you see, is as aware as everyone else that he's neither reliable nor believable enough to tell this story and have anyone believe it. 

Did you know that 'Inherent Vice' is an insurance industry term that refers to a hidden defect in a physical object that causes it to deteriorate because of the fundamental instability of its components? That's a pretty great description of who Doc is to us, the audience for his story. Doc, because of his years of drug use, is fundamentally an unstable and thus unreliable narrator of events. Sure, the story is sound, even logical, but because it's Doc telling the story we can't help but be skeptical. 

That's part of the genius of the movie, we love Doc and we're wildly entertained by his journey but we don't take any of it very seriously because it's Doc. Paul Thomas Anderson thus gets to lampoon early 70's corruption without the hassle of an actual target for rage or disillusionment. We get all of the fun of being a cynic while also being stoned out of our heads enough not to get down about it. 

Movie Review No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men (2007) 

Directed by The Coen Brothers

Written by The Coen Brothers, Cormac McCarthy

Starring Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson

Release Date November 9th, 2007

Published November 8th, 2007

The Big Lebowski is my favorite movie of all time. I have seen it dozens of times, traded lines with friends and strangers and marveled at the number of nuances I find in it everytime I watch it. Lebowski was the product of the fertile minds of the Coen Brothers who used the frame of classic noir detective stories to twist dialogue and convention into the highest form of comedy.

The Coen's new film, No Country For Old Men, could not be more different than The Big Lebowski. Faithfully adapting the dark, violent work of Cormac McCarthy, the Coen's depart with almost all of their past and work to bring McCarthy's vision to the screen. Everything down to the music, usually provided by Coen's guy Carter Burwell is jettisoned in order to bring McCarthy's earthy, Texas prose to the screen.

It sounds risky but it works. No Country For Old Men is arguably the best film of 2007.

A drug deal gone bad leads an average man, Llewellyn Wells (Josh Brolin)  to a stunning discovery, a dead man carrying a satchel holding over 2 and a half million dollars. While dollar signs flash in Lewellyn's mind, the man who's money has gone missing has already dispatched a man to recover it. That man is Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) , a psychotic, unrelenting killer who will not stop until the job is finished, no matter how many people he has to kill.

Observing things from a few steps behind is county sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones). The drug deal happened in his jurisdiction and Wells being one of his citizens makes this a case he is required to follow. As the bodies pile up and Chigurh comes closer to Wells, Bell becomes more and more disturbed by the decline of basic humanity in his corner of the world.

Directed and adapted by the Coen Brothers, from the novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy, No Country For Old Men is a meditative, hypnotic film experience. So sucked in by this unfolding drama and these extraordinary characters, this is the kind of film that haunts you on your way out of the theater. Try describing the feelings afterward and a tingle in your spine will no doubt accompany your recollection.

No Country For Old Men is a very unique adventure for the Coen Brothers. Known for dialogue that twists and turns and bobs and weaves like non-sequitur poetry, the Coen's surrender much of their own writing to adapting, almost word for word, the straight forward, manly dialogue of Cormac McCarthy. Readers of No Country For Old Men will recognize whole passages of dialogue from the book in the movie.

The Coen changes to McCarthy's work are minimal. They have removed Ed Tom's narration, dropping some of the old sheriff's rambling observations about the rotting of humanity into the dialogue of the film. They've added a few scenes to flesh out areas of Ed Tom's narration but otherwise whole scenes are translated directly from McCarthy's text.

The Coen Brothers' work has always been open to philosophical observation. No Country For Old Men may be their most open to interpretation work yet. McCarthy's book is open to much speculation about its meaning  but it breaks down to a rather elementary discussion of McCarthy's feelings on the breakdown of society.

The Coen's are more philosophical. Yes, that discussion about where the world is heading is there but there is something more in the visual subtext of No Country For Old Men that is open to a wide amount of explanation. Take an especially close look at Anton Chigurh. Where McCarthy never bothered giving a physical description of Chigurh, the Coen's were quite specific with what they wanted.

Casting Javier Bardem, a Spaniard with a swarthy almost Mediterranean look, they left open too much speculation just who Chigurh might work for. Then there is the hair, a ludicrous late 70's throwback that I feel looks somewhat reminiscent of the top of the grim reapers robe. Wielding a shotgun instead of a sickle, Chigurh kills indiscriminately yet pauses on more than one occasion to offer his query a game of chance a la Bergman's interpretation of the reaper in The Seventh Seal.

No chess game but a more disturbing and fateful coin flip, the Coen's version of the character of Death is an equally terrifying character. As played by Javier Bardem, Chigurh is an unceasingly calm and terrifying figure. The performance is so brilliantly haunting that Chigurh comes home with you after the film in ways only classic horror film villains have in the past.

No Country For Old Men is, arguably, the best film of 2007. One of the finest works in the long, illustrious career of the Coen Brothers and easily their most unique. It's strange to see the Coen's interpret someone else's work. What's more extraordinary is how well they adapt someone else's work. The Coen's transfer Cormac McCarthy directly to the screen in ways that few writers could ever imagine.

Slavishly faithful to McCarthy's words, the Coen's must have writers like Stephen King falling all over themselves to get interpreted. It's a rare and exceptional thing for filmmakers to show a writer so much respect. That is just one of many extraordinary things about No Country For Old Men.

Movie Review Milk

Milk (2008) 

Directed by Gus Van Sant

Written by Dustin Lance Black 

Starring Sean Penn, James Franco, Josh Brolin, Victor Garber, Diego Luna

Release Date November 26th, 2008 

Published November 25th, 2008 

The life of Harvey Milk is an inspiration. The first openly gay elected official in the country was a bold, brave and brilliant man. He was a fighter and a politician and a flawed soul. A movie about his life needs to capture these aspects of Harvey Milk and the Gus Van Sant movie Milk comes up just short. It's not that Milk is poorly made or even that it fails to honor the man. It's just that such an atypical hero deserves something far more than a very typical biopic.

Sean Penn takes on the role of Harvey Milk picking up his life story in the early 1970's when a fully closeted Harvey cruised a young gay man in a New York subway. That young man was Scott Smith (James Franco) and he drew Harvey out of the closet and into the life he had always longed for. The two moved to San Francisco and opened a camera shop in the Castro District. That area of San Francisco is now a famously gay enclave but when Harvey and Scott arrived that wasn't the case. Milk slowly but surely ingratiated himself in the community, he drew people to him and eventually as the community changed with him, he became its leader.

His rise from community organizer to politician was filled with potholes and roadblocks but eventually Harvey was elected to the City Board of Supervisors where an alliance with Mayor George Moscone (Victor Garber) would make history and repeated run-ins with fellow supervisor Dan White (Brolin) would lead to tragedy. To tell the story of Harvey Milk's life Gus Van Sant has Harvey narrate his own story in flashback. As he sits at a table alone in his apartment Sean Penn as Harvey recalls the incidents of his life into a tape recorder. The device frames the film but it's one of many signs of just how typical the movie is.

The flashbacks unfold in predictable fashion recalling all of the well known moments of Harvey's life that shine a positive light on him. Leaving out a few of the less flattering moments, generally celebrating the things that Harvey Milk accomplished in the all too short time he was in public service. There is nothing terribly devastatingly wrong with Milk. It just shouldn't be so typical. This is the same biographical formula applied to every life from Ray Charles to Johnny Cash to any famous person you can think of whose life has been brought to film in the last decade.

The movie suffers from what I like to call Van Sant-itis. This is a malady that affects movies directed by but not written by Gus Van Sant. Movies like Finding Forrester, Good Will Hunting and To Die For are all enjoyable movies but each lacks the director's full engagement. Watch Elephant, Gerry, Last Days or Paranoid Park and you can see a fiercely committed director dedicated to bringing his vision to the screen. There is an almost visceral difference in the directors engagement with his filmmaking in these films, especially when compared to the often soft focused laziness of his non-writing credited films.

Milk is as close as Van Sant has come to committing to another writer's vision, he seems to really care about Dustin Lance Black's work, but as the film goes along you sense the drift in Van Sant's attention. As the movie goes on, after brief early love scenes, the film drifts into conventional biopic mode and rolls to its tragic finish on a wave of typicality. The only truly outstanding thing about Milk is Sean Penn. He embodies Harvey Milk mind, body and soul and his commitment almost overcomes the strict adherence to biographical formula. Penn's performance is as brave and bold as the man he plays but he is hemmed in by the numbers biopic recipe.

Milk is a disappointment only because I was expecting something more from it. The film suffers from building expectations. It suffers from our expectation of something better than your average Hollywood biopic.