ARTH disc ***ZEEK THE GEEK ONLY***

ROB:

The Western movie that I watched is the Coen Brothers’ 2007 film “No Country For Old Men.” It’s a tale about changing times and values, even in a place like Texas where one would think nothing would ever change; at one point an old cowpoke moans that he never thought he’d see the day that “kids with green hair” occupied their Texas town.

The most appealing cinematic feature in this film is Javier Bardem’s performance as Anton Chigurh, a quiet, emotionless, and yet decidedly psychopathic villain who will murder for anything. In one memorable scene he declines the opportunity to murder a perfectly innocent man based on nothing more than a coin toss.  Chigurh is an interesting Western villain in that unlike, say, Billy The Kid, there is nothing romantic about him. Additionally, he proves in several scienes to be somewhat of a Genius of Evil. He is often the subject of camera close-ups which is fitting given his sociopathic nature. In Chigurh’s mind, no other human matters whatsoever so the camera focuses only on him during many of his scenes.

Wearing the white hat in this tale is Josh Brolin’s  Llewelyn Moss character who happens upon the remains of a bloody drug deal gone bad. This allows him to spirit away with a couple million dollars that initially was to go to Chigurh. He is the very antithesis of Chigurh as his guilt over previously abandoning the wounded drug dealers is what got him in the villain’s sights in the first place.

One of the key devices the Coens use is panning shots which we have come to expect from Westerns. But in this film there is a lot of emphasis on emptiness;  not only the emptiness of the Texas landscape but even during scenes shot in town there is plenty of it. While Moss and Chigurh engage in a wild shootout in town there is a noticeable lack of response from anyone except for one unlucky cowboy in a pickup who gets in the way.

Music, or rather the lack of it, is an effective device in this film. In a very tense hotel room scene where the armed Chigurh is alone with a doomed bounty hunter played by Woody Harrelson, there is a noticeable lack of music while money and Chigurh’s lack of sanity is discussed. The tension gets dialed up, though, through sound: a telephone rings, much to the delight of Chigurh as he knows that the caller will have information that he needs.

Finally, No Country employs a theme that we don’t often see in westerns: the bad guy wins. Chigurh, having murdered everyone he set out to eliminate, is able to move on while Tommy Lee Jones’ retiring sheriff can only lament that the new generation of evil in Texas has simply passed him by and overcome his abilities.

ANTHONY

The movie I chose for this weeks discussion is Cowboys & Aliens. This movie is common with our week 4 content in that it is a story set in late 1800's New Mexico. A lone cowboy enters a town run by a ruthless businessman who uses force to run said town. As usual with these stories, the stranger is not welcome. He eventually becomes the catalyst for change and becomes the hero of the story that saves the town and people. The difference in this movie is that the common enemy of the story are aliens from another world. These aliens fly in from above snatching people and enslaving them. Quite a few experiments are run as well. The other reason they are here is to collect gold. The lone cowboy was abducted previously but was able to escape. He has little memory of this event but as the story progresses he slowly recalls his ordeal. 

As one would expect, this story is filled with special effects. The aliens as well as their machines are all CGI. When the aliens first reveal themselves it's at night so all that is seen is mysterious lights as people are snatched off the street and disappear into the night. During the day the alien ships appear as do the aliens themselves. All of these are special effects. One of the scenes that stood out to me is when the cowboy is having a flashback while visiting his old cabin. He recalls how stolen gold he brought home was melted into slag and sucked up through the roof of the cabin by an unseen force. Another scene is where the humans are riding into battle against the alien space ships. This is a great shot of the actors and horses riding across an expanse of land along with the CGI of the spaceships in the foreground. One other shot I enjoyed was the shot of the cowboy riding along the edge of a deep crevice as he attempts to rescue a woman that had been snatched up. While it's obvious this scene is CGI, I couldn't help but imagine it in earlier westerns where the cowboy is riding his horse alongside a moving train as he attempts to board it.