A theater named Scotiabank Theatre should only play movies about finances and investments, like Wall Street, Greed, Dog Day Afternoon and It’s A Wonderful Life. It troubles me that it’s the only theatre in BC that’s playing the Coen brothers’ new film “No Country for Old Men.” Which I watched yesterday. I don’t like seeing movies on opening weekend. No Country opened on Friday so I thought a matinee on Sunday would be fine. Well the theatre was packed tight. Even arriving a half hour before showtime there weren’t enough seats together for all of my friends who accepted my invitation to join me. And in one respect Scotiabank Theatre is the antithesis of my fave theatre, The Rio. Not only does Scotiabank show ads before the movie, they show ads constantly between movies. At no time is the screen blank and quiet. Thanks for paying your $12, now watch these commercials for cars and milk. The best part was the audacity of the woman behind me who told me to sit down (I was standing up to flag down Kevin, Stephane & Stewie as they came in) so she could watch these ads. Stupid, stupid woman. I was gratified to be able to sass her about it.
Anyway – on to the movie non-review for No Country for Old Men (no spoilers here, folks).
Rottentomatoes.com puts it at 95%. IMDB at 9.0/10. That’s about right. Like the best Coen Brothers films (Miller’s Crossing, The Big Lebowski), No Country is so rich and dense that you need to watch it several times to fully appreciate all the levels. There were moments that I got so caught up in, that the scenes following were lost to me. The dialogue and acting and pacing are things of beauty. If you go see it in the theater I advise you to pay closer and closer attention as the film progresses. The only criticism I have would likely only be valid if I had a medical background – despite the various grisly wounds in the film nobody ever goes into shock. I guess some folk are manly enough to never succumb. Others may say the movie is too long. They are, of course, wrong. It was too short.
No Country for Old Men harkens back to the Coen’s first outing, Blood Simple, and in many ways Fargo. I need to see it again. Problem is I don’t see myself going back to the Scotiabank Theatre any time soon. Blech. I’ll be getting it on DVD though, and watching it with subtitles on (a habit I’ve gotten into) for that extra layer of depth and clarity.
I mentioned this a while Toren, but a little reminder… read the book! Hell, read all of McCarthy’s books.
I was WAITING for this review so I could know how I felt about this movie! I went straight over to the VanEast, which is slowly degrading with time (hard to sit down as a group without one person with a dud seat or handrest), and saw American Gangster which also has the ‘hero’ of No Country in it. For the first half hour all I could think of was how phony and run-of-the-mill this movie was in comparison with what I saw at the much more comfortable but less charming Scotia theatre. It started to pick up after a while but even as we walked out of the theatre all I could talk about was No Country. It was ART!
Subtitles while watching a DVD, YES! I thought I was the only one!
And not just because my toddler likes to scream while I watch Boogie Nights.
(He doesn’t like Mark Wahlberg…)
Plus he thinks Paul Thomas Anderson is overrated…
What ticks me off though is: I have a widescreen TV and most DVDs put the subtitles BELOW the image area of the film. Therefore the subtitles are in the ‘missing’ black bar area cut off/not shown by my set. So I have to change the aspect ratio to read them and thusly reduce the image size on the movie. Is it that hard to superimpose the subtitles OVER the image area???
People starving in Africa would agree with me!!!!
Madison avenue geniuses!?