No Country for Old Men

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I've been meaning to make a post of my favorite movies of last year. I've been waiting to see There will be Blood to make a final judgement, but I can't really keep silent anymore.

There's a certain bombastic nature that gets ascribed to the screen. Movies are about plot, or if they aren't about plot they're about people, and finally if they aren't about plot or people they are used as metaphor to express something deeper. No Country for Old Men is all three. An engaging thriller, it features a hunter/prey style plot revolving around a sociopathic killer and a hotshot modern day cowboy. This is not a by the numbers genre piece. It is the best movie I've seen in recent memory. The subtle manipulation towards tension is perfectly expressed in the most intense scene I can ever remember seeing in cinema. There's no violence in this scene, just dialogue. You'll know it when you see it.

Javier Bardem does an amazing job portraying Anton Chigurh, the sociopath of the movie. He is entirely unlike anything you've seen in cinema before. Not cold, not really calculating, since both of those would require understanding of humanity, but more like a force of nature, fate if you will, and the only thing that can derail fate is chance. These thematic elements pop up throughout the movie without becoming too self-important to distract you from what you're watching. Most everything in the movie occurs twice though you'll be hard pressed to notice since the occurance of chance changes outcomes. This central theme of repetition is tied into the heart of what the movie is about.

Go see it.