another maniacal Armond White review, this time "Fahrenheit 9/11"

look how frances macdonald said 'yah' in that last scene - clearly these so-called coen brothers are nietzschean sociopaths!

xp: Donal Logue

he's a pretty resourceful and smart dude. who makes some pretty bad mistakes.

this is how he's intended -- there's the bit where his wife is all, like, oh he can take care of himself -- but in fact he pretty much fucks everything up from the start and keeps fucking up until he inevitably gets himself and assorted other people killed. which is the big moralizing twist: the hero never stands a chance. death awaits us all! thus has it ever been, etc. but you know, you can improve your odds at longevity a little by not being a dumbass.

pretty sure i don't recall anyone actually from minnesota getting upset by the lol what rubes character typing. i think that's because the coens actually did a decent job of presenting uniquely midwestern personalities. regardless, i don't need idiot movie critics going to bat for me and my neighbors and getting capt save a lutefisk

I don't think that's the moralizing twist or the point of the movie at all.

also, aren't they FROM minnesota originally??

anyway, now i think i might have to blow off doing laundry and go see twbb instead

For my money, Miller's Crossing is clearly their best film. But given that I am Richard Roeper compared to some of you guys, I understand if my opinion doesn't carry much weight around here. :)

Also, NCFOM was their best film since Lebowski, that much is certain. Whether it deserves to be slobbered over is a matter of personal taste.

Hating on TLJ performance in this movie baffles me. It's a great performance. Should he never act again because he's always going to look and sound like TLJ?

Crimewave >>> Miller's Crossing

thats what im saying, man! is fargo shittier or more cruel to its characters than double indemnity or chinatown or blade runner or or sunset blvd or mulholland drive or etc etc etc

o brother is funny and cute and well-loved unironically by every CMT-watching redneck non-cinephile i know back on SC

I've never seen Crimewave.

TLJ was great! It probably hurts him that he has no "range," but I love the dude, even in his bad movies.

another maniacal Coen Bros thread, this time in the Armond White thread

tipsy: so the movie is inhuman because you think the main character is so stupid he deserves to die? ya that's really on the movie there.

the characters in fargo came across like a lot of regular minnesotans i knew from my time there. i didn't think they were rubes, but i remember seeing it in nyc when it was released and many people were loling at the accents (which i don't necessarily think was the film's intent).

god i hated o brother.

If anything, this thread convinced me to see Shakes the Barley, and maybe to finally check out Zodiac (despite not being much of a Fincher fan).

"I've never seen Crimewave."

Haha I was kidding. It's good, but Miller's Crossing is better (if not their best.)

I hate Fincher generally, but I love love loved Zodiac.

its not great CINEMA!!@@#!@ or anything but for a tart little populist hit its def good enough - most dvd collections file it next to, like, the notebook & 13 going on 30

xp about o brother

i just thought it was annoying

i mean i cant speak on the midwestern stuff but as a southerner the only ppl getting all madd about the southern shit in that was yankees

its basically mama's family: the motion picture

as for Zodiac, it's about information glut, a very modern and un-cinematic problem. which makes it kind of a bold, maybe even important film.

problem's not with tlj, it's with the hokey character, who's essentially written as Crinkly Texas Lawman. the movie does get rid of some of his lamer contemplations (the weakest part of the book by far), and also fobs off some of them on the other Crinkly Texas Lawman toward the end, but still leaves him half-thought-out and indistinct. so tlj fills him in with all his usual crinkly-lawmanisms.

you are totally projecting. he doesn't do that at all.

yeah i love tlj but his role in that was like a tlk parody from the critic or something

tlk lol

so the movie is inhuman because you think the main character is so stupid he deserves to die?

the movie's lack of humanity didn't bother me, that's mostly a given with the coens.i was just noting that part of what sets fargo apart is that marge is a larger, warmer character than they usually manage, which i think is mostly frances mcdormand's doing.

my problem with no country is that i think it's a basically kind of dopey book, rendered entirely too literally.

(i actually think javier bardem is a bigger detriment than either brolin or tlj, but again i don't really think it's his fault.)

Haha okay seriously I am never trusting your opinion. Javier Bardem's performance is phenomenal.

Was there a thread this year for favorite movies of 2007? I don't see it on the front page and suck at using ILX search. I have a general sense of what some of you guys dug.

I have no idea what this warm thing is either. I think all the principles come off as very human as NCFOM.

The only two films in this discussion that have moved me are Barley and Raising Arizona.

re humor and Loach -- he's had humor in plenty of his other films, but there wasn't really much room for it in Barley's story, wouldn't ya say? (tho there's some inherently funny/grim Irish stuff, like the old lady whose house is torched by the Brits who declares she'll live in the chicken coop.)

no really i like javier bardem and was excited to see him in this and, eh. i already said this on the ncfom thread, but i thought he wasn't scary or funny enough. could have been more of both, or either, but as a relentless force of death he just seemed kinda ho-hum.

"but i thought he wasn't scary or funny enough"

See my comments above.

the scene in the convenience store was good, i liked that.

Raising Arizona is way more hateful towards its characters than Fargo or Hudsucker or O Brother or any of their other films really

"lolz lookit that silly redneck stealing diapers"

I don't think that's hateful, just funny. Aside from McDormand, Fargo isn't funny either.

tipsy, i agree with that last statement. jb did an excellent job with the script and direction he had, but cigurh seemed much more of a conceit than an actual character

I was one of those critics who called Fargo "smug" in my college paper at the time, but I've warmed to it enough, partly because I've read some insightful things over the years – doncha know – on ILE.

Whatever. I'll never love the Coens, and have a problem with their adapting a terrible novel so that they can – do what exactly? Improve it marginally? But the thing worked as an effective suspense film.

Barley doesn't belong in this discussion at all; it's probably my favorite film of the year.

Dopey? audiences didn't even understand the last 20 minutes of the film. Or the fact that Anton is not a literal character in the film. Not to mention all the redundant shots and dialog the coens left OUT of the film, giving you only exactly what you need to know. brolin made mostly intelligent decisions, it's just that from the moment he took the money death began stalking him.

I agree javier bardem could have been both scarier and funnier, but i understand why the kept him fairly blank.

Morbius, you did not find any, err, comedy of terror, when Marge Gunderson ran around her house with a bag over her head? Or when she fell down the stairs in a shower curtain?

i think there's less to understand in the last 20 minutes (and/or the last section of the book) than meets the eye. straining for significance. (this is also true of there will be blood, but that's some really entertaining straining.)

You guys are underplaying the capacity for cruelty in the Coens, even when they're trying to be gentle and "human." I vividly remember the theater audience laughing AT Gunderson rather than with.

I didn't realize she was laughing.

It was muffled by the death-shrieks

wood chippers are inherently funny

remy, how many times do you think I saw Fargo? Once in '96! I don't remember either scene.