Something to watch tonight: Thursday 19 June

No Country for Old Men (Coen Brothers, 2007)

After yesterday’s recom­mend­a­tion of Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, I got this com­ment from read­er ML of Otago:

One of my favour­ite Peckinpah films, and hugely influ­en­tial on a whole strand of mod­ern crime and/or Western film­mak­ing (think of the Coens’ “No Country for Old Men”, or Tommy Lee Jones’s “The Three Burials”) and one of Roger Ebert’s favour­ite films, too….https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-bring-me-the-head-of-alfredo-garcia-1974

Then, by com­plete coin­cid­ence, No Country for Old Men landed on Netflix in Aotearoa New Zealand – a rare film for them because it is more than ten years old.

I wrote about No Country for the Capital Times when it was released here back in February 2008:

No Country for Old Men is essen­tial cinema in two senses of the word. First and fore­most you must see it, prob­ably more than once. But it is also cinema reduced to its essence. Everything con­trib­utes: Cormac McCarthy’s respect­fully adap­ted ori­gin­al nov­el; beau­ti­fully com­posed images superbly pho­to­graphed by Roger Deakins (the only cre­at­ive on the pro­ject not named Coen); edit­ing that could be a film school in a box. The stand­ard music­al soundtrack is replaced by the music of the every­day: foot­steps, cof­fee pots, car engines, gun fire.

A hunter (Josh Brolin) stumbles across a wil­der­ness drug deal gone wrong: many corpses, a flat­bed full of drugs and briefcase full of money. He takes the money hop­ing to start a new life away from the West Texas trail­er park he inhab­its with Trainspotting’s Kelly MacDonald. But instead of a win­ning lot­tery tick­et he has unleashed the epi­tome of cinema badass-ery: Javier Bardem as an angel of ven­geance determ­ined to retrieve the cash by any means necessary.

All the per­form­ances are won­der­ful but the heart of the film is Tommy Lee Jones’ Sheriff Ed Bell. Always (aggrav­at­ingly) a couple of steps behind he is a good man ill-at-ease with the sheer, inex­plic­able, evil he is con­fron­ted with. A masterpiece.

I also made it my film of the year for 2008.

Also in that February 2008 column: Auckland-shot but Alaska-set vam­pire thrill­er 30 Days of Night; George Clooney in Michael Clayton from Andor’s Tony Gilroy (which I described as “good not great” sug­gest­ing I need to pay anoth­er vis­it with some urgency); Leonardo DiCaprio’s envir­on­ment­al doc­u­ment­ary The 11^th Hour, which begs the ques­tion – where is the clock got to now, 17 years later?; and Don Cheadle star­ring as real-life radio star and Washington D.C. act­iv­ist “Petey” Green in Talk to Me.

Tomorrow is a pub­lic hol­i­day in Aotearoa so there’ll be no recom­mend­a­tion from me. Have a great long week­end, everyone.

Where to watch No Country for Old Men

Aotearoa: Streaming on Netflix

Australia: Streaming on Stan or Paramount+

Canada: Streaming on Netflix, Paramount+, Starz or Lionsgate+

Ireland & UK: Streaming on Prime Video or Paramount+

India: Streaming on Prime Video

USA: Streaming on Paramount+ or Kanopy