No Country for Old Men is the most well-received and critically acclaimed adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy (my favorite author) novel. There have been six. The Road is, by far, my favorite McCarthy novel and a movie masterpiece. The others are the slightly underrated All the Pretty Horses, the disappointing box office flop The Counselor, the virtually unseen Child of God, and The Sunset Limited, a film I still need to see. No Country for Old Men is the only McCarthy-adapted film to receive an Oscar, earning eight nominations and four wins, including the first nomination and win in Best Achievement in Directing for Hollywood darlings Joel and Ethan Coen.
Category Archives: Woody Harrelson
The Thin Red Line (1998)
Love or hate him, Terrence Malick has a unique style. Personally, he’s not for me. The New World was a decent enough film, but it left me wanting more. I had such high hopes for The Tree of Life, only for it to result in one of my most frustrating and tedious theater-going experiences ever, that I was ready to write him off. However, there is often an anomaly. For me, it was his devastatingly beautiful portrayal of World War II in 1998’s The Thin Red Line. Rightfully or not, The Thin Red Line will forever be associated and compared with Saving Private Ryan, another World War II-based Best Picture nominee of 1998. And, if I’m being 100% honest, I did not know that Malick directed the Thin Red Line until after I finished watching it.
The Messenger (2009)
Somewhere inside Oren Moverman’s (Time Out of Mind, Rampart), The Messenger is a pretty good movie. It has the right tone. It has the right cast. It has the right setting. It has the right director. It just has the wrong plot. Well, I shouldn’t say it has the wrong plot, but I should say that the plot is a bit flawed. And it’s not even faulty so much as it is incongruent. It follows a timeline that we are uncertain of. Does this movie take place over a few weeks, a few months, a little bit more, or somewhere in between. It’s an integral part of the story to know the movie’s time frame because it helps us justify or not justify some of the actions of its characters. The longer the period that this movie takes place, the more likely it is for me to believe the story. The shorter it is, the less likely I am. The reason for this is the characters change too much. And I am not saying people can’t change over a short period, but it seems a stretch for all characters to change how they did in that brief period. But the time frame is never stated. It is implied to be three months, but it isn’t conclusive. For me, it doesn’t help the movie. It leaves me with the burning question of when to go from start to finish.
Transsiberian (2008)
At eight days, the Transsiberian Express from Beijing to Moscow is the longest train journey in the world. So why wouldn’t it be the perfect backdrop to one of the most suspenseful journeys in quite some time? Paul Anderson’s (Beirut, The Machinist) presents the Transsiberian in a way that makes you think of Alfred Hitchcock. It’s dark. It’s moody. It’s twisted. It’s purposeful. It’s rooted. It’s intense. It makes you feel like a fellow passenger on this train, watching everything unfold next to you rather than on a screen projected in front of you. Oh. And it’s cold. It’s like an Arctic cold. We feel that sense of dread in the deepest of winter in the coldest places. Yet, it never feels like we are even close to approaching freezing. So it certainly adds to the ambiance of our film.
The Glass Castle (2017)
2017 has been a year that started as strong as any year in recent memory when it comes to movies. From the January and February box office smashes of Split (which, personally, I wouldn’t say I liked as much as many others) and Get Out to the successful continuations or reboots of franchise movies such as Kong: Skull Island, Alien: Covenant, War of the Planet of the Apes, and Logan to the absolutely captivating Life and Wind River, we had about ten movies heading into September, whereas in a normal year, we might have half that many. Now, if I asked a common moviegoer to name five non-animated movies released before September, the five could not include any of the ones I have just listed. They may have said Wonder Woman, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Dunkirk, Spider-Man Homecoming, and Transformers: The Last Knight. Notice I did not list any of these films. Sure, Wonder Woman was fun and well-made, but it offered nothing that any other superhero origin movie in the last 10 years hadn’t already offered. Spider-Man Homecoming I didn’t even give a chance. Homecoming is the sixth Spider-Man release and third “origin” movie in the last 15 years. Eventually, you have to throw your hands up in the air and say, “Enough is enough. Stop taking my money.” The only one on this list of five that I had any real expectations for was Dunkirk and, while I didn’t dislike it, it failed to overwhelm me and certainly failed to live up to the lofty expectations I had set for it. There was also the little surprise of Baby Driver, which I have so much appreciation for because of its originality. Still, one that ultimately fell off the tracks the deeper it got into the movie. And as we head into Oscar season, I’m worried that 2017 will be a forgotten year. I hope to be surprised, but I feel that the movies nominated for Best Picture this year are going to disappoint. I hope to be wrong. I mention all of this because there have been some diamonds in the rough, and one of those is Destin Daniel Cretton’s (Short Term 12) The Glass Castle.
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