The Counselor = Cormac McCarthy + Ridley Scott + (Fassbender + Pitt + Cruz + Bardem et al)

Also, it doesn't become clear for a while that half the movie at least must be conversations between The Counselor and a character who only appears in a single scene.

really want that ruben blades coffee service

on motorized decapitations

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2013/11/cormac-mccarthy-truman-capote-herschell-gordon-lewis.html

lol there's three names I never expected to see together

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-blog/10447186/The-Counsellor-when-good-scripts-go-very-bad.html

what sux about the movie is mostly in the script

Wasn't that bad, did have some interesting bits, but seemed to overstretch the amount of subplots and be self-consciously amoral which is probably totally oxymoronic.

Saw it in a cinema with one other person in the audience which is a bit weird. Guess word of mouth is out about the film. I enjoyed some of it quite a bit.

imo the best things about it are the peculiar digressions and the particular flavor of mccarthy's dialogue and ideas

And that one sunflower Versace shirt Bardem wears.

I've been saying "I've seen it all; it's all shit" pretty regularly since I saw it. I love pithy nihilism tho.

I haven't finished watching it but ws penelope cruz + fassbender in that opening scene daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn

extended disc cut in Feb, 21 mins longer

no thx really

I think the early conversation with the Amsterdam jeweler about love and death and fate and god is much longer.

longest Bruno Ganz monologue since Hitler rant

unironically cant wait

psyched

http://www.uproxx.com/filmdrunk/2014/01/cormac-mccarthys-ex-arrested-brandishing-gun-pulled-vagina-dispute-aliens/

Yeah I'll be checking out the longer cut. Hopefully there's not more of *that* scene.

this was terrible imo. everyone in it is miscast, save maybe penelope cruz. the dialogue is the major problem, a brisk no thank you sir to the extended cut

More like michael miscastbender and javier boredom and brad shit in this one, thanks for nothing boremac mcsharty

so who has watched the expanded version, and...?

Eszterhas scripts are better.

Four-hour commentary track.

HBO Max has the extended version (20 minutes longer), though you have to search under extras to the page to find it. Much better than the original cut.

Reminds me structurally of Gomorrah as far as a collage of how many people have jobs to make a smuggling operation happen.

Yes, that was the most canny thing about the movie: the way that the scenes of abstract philosophical speech were interspersed with scenes of people going about the operation with minimal or functional dialogue, a really striking contrast.
One of my least favourite things in this is the trope of the powerful evil guy who says, "I know you don't want me to do this evil thing, but fate makes it inevitable". There's a lot of interesting stuff in this movie, but I'm not convinced its moral compass is any more evolved than Mötley Crüe's "Dr. Feelgood".

I love this movie. I own the director's cut Blu-Ray. I don't need an evolved moral compass from a movie whose entire message is "fuck around and find out."

I should rewatch this.

I watched the 138 minute cut. Somehow I had completely blanked on both the movie and McCarthy's connection -- total "wait, what?!" when his name appeared.

Cormack McCarthy filmed as a big, expensive capital-G Giallo sure sounds like a great idea, but every director eventually misses threading that needle of misunderstood masterpiece or camp classic. It's manic and feeds off of its own energy now and then, but I think I like the writing about this more than I do the actual film.

"Bardem looks like John Cassavetes in a fright wig." -- I miss Morbs.