Beginning at the start, or starting at the beginning, we’ll kick things off with a heated debate around No Country for Old Men. Some of us liked it, some of us didn’t. That’s sure to get intense! Let’s watch:

Bob (me) starts out the PPR movie thread with a real barn burner

just finished No Country for Old Men

a pretty decent thriller wrapped around an increasingly absurd center of pretension. by the end of the movie I had gone from “yeah this movie is pretty awesome and intense” to “oh god I hope this fucking movie ends soon or my eyes are going to develop repetitive stress disorder from rolling around so much”

Justin then comes to the rescue and injects some much-needed conflict into the thread, which by this point is growing stale and comfortable

no offense, but you and eric are the only two i have ever heard complain about pretension in no country for old men

as a matter of fact, most of the negative reviews of the movie complain about it being too trivial with no real meaning

Bob rallies back

yes tommy lee jones tell us about your dad. I know you don’t tie into the plot in any meaningful way but please, continue discussing the dream about your father last night to tie up this story. I feel very fulfilled knowing that the last 2+ hours were an elaborate and meandering metaphor for the sense of alienation decrepit fucks like you feel as you attempt to “run email” on your “computer drive”

Justin responds in kind!

saying tommy lee jones’ character didn’t tie into the plot is kinda silly since the entire movie is about why his character retired from being a police officer. also, i thought that the dream metaphors were a good, jarring way to end the movie since there really wasn’t any other way to end the involvement of TLJ’s character. if the movie ended on Chigurh limping away, it would’ve looked too much like a cliffhanger sequel set-up (even though McCarthy never wrote a sequel)

Catching everyone by surprise, Eric now wades into the fray. He’s clean and mean

ok now that ive had a shower~

the frame story with TLJ was pretty weak and felt tacked on to the plot (like multiple things i will go into). iirc, the movie doesn’t start with him, he’s not the main character, its not like he’s relating the story to us or has that much inolvement in the action with chigurghmurgnmen and the protagonist. there’s also drawn out scenes like the one with the gas station clerk (why do we care about this character again). one could argue its meant to reaffirm the chance motif you mentioned i didnt see before, and that’d be ok if it wasnt a rather cliche bad guy routine. another character thats tacked on is the other assassin who doesn’t really add anything to the plot since he ends up getting killed in like 2 minutes.

Bob (me) takes Eric’s comments and run with them

yeah it basically seems that they were trying to tell TLJ’s story through a much more interesting story, with him as one of the tertiary characters. I don’t really buy the “it was all about him because it was all about why he retired” because regardless of what the filmmakers say it was about, it was about the one guy running away from the crazy guy. the kid who gave Chigurh his shirt may have spent that money on a motorcycle and become Evil Kinevil, that doesn’t make his part in this story any more relevant.

also the fact that they killed the main character with so little fanfare, either before or after, was where the movie really started sliding into ‘lame’ territory i m o. I have never seen a movie where killing the main character ends up being a good idea, unless it’s at (or near) the very end. it elicits a powerful emotional response from the audience, sure, but you better have something real good to finish it up with or people are going to start realizing that you just spent an hour and a half building up this character (although the amount of characterization in NCFOM is, to be generous, quite light) to be someone we liked and respect as a resourceful, cool guy, and now he’s dead and there’s really nothing to show for it. “oh heh he wasn’t the real main character even though we’ve shown him for 90% of the movie HERE’S the real main character *points to typical stock sheriff* have fun” is lazy film making

Eric has a little something to say about that though

i didnt mind him being abruptly killed at all, it’s not often seen in movies. what bothered me is that i didnt give a shit about him dying.

Bob (me) has a response to that. An extreme response

I didn’t mind him being abruptly killed, but that so little attention was given to it. the whole movie was (seemingly) building up to a showdown with him and the crazy guy and then they were just like AWW WELL HE’S DEAD NOW LET’S MOVE ALONG and I was stuck wondering why the hell I’m still watching this movie if the primary source of tension no longer exists

And so we reach the end of our first Behind the Screams look at Puppyrush movie review process. I hope you’ve enjoyed this (unusually lengthy) entry! Look forward to more, less interesting entries.