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Good to know. I'll comment when I see it. Isn't Ed Harris more prominent than you indicate? i have read that the local flavor is very authentic. Isn't this from another Dennis Lahane novel, not as good as Mystic River? The NYer critic says so. Evidently Ben Afflick does not disgrace himself, and deals with a world he knows pretty well.
We should have a Gone Baby Gone thread really.
Like I say in my opening paragraph, the local flavor is indeed authentic. The character played by Ed Harris is somewhat prominent, slightly more so than his partner and much more than their boss (Morgan Freeman). Affleck does not "disgrace himself" but I'm not a fan of the film. I started the post intending to write a single paragraph and I ended up with something approaching a proper review. If Tab hadn't mentioned it, I might not have seen it and would not have written about it. Gone Baby Gone has some preposterous twists and approaches a compelling story from the least interesting (to me) angle. It has redeeming features, I'm willing to admit that much. As well as my impression that critics and audiences, generally speaking, like it more than I do.
As far as mystery-thrillers go, the Sidney Lumet film is clearly superior, and the Coen bros. film is apparently pretty good (you've seen it). I feel apprehensive about another movie with a prominent psychopathic killer though. I'll watch it soon. Gone Baby Gone is being phased out of theaters fairly quickly. You might want to watch it as soon as you return, if you're interested.
I didn't respond to your comment that Into the Wild "looks like one of the year's best US films". Right now, it would definitely make my Top 10 (English-language films).
i get your point--you are not in love with Gone Baby Gone. I recognize the merits of Lumet's new one, and can imagine they might be superior, though i have a serious reservation about the time structure of the Before the Devil scenario. I just don't like it. i know the acting is strong and the material is alive. Lumet is still a fine craftsman and his cast have given their best.
Looks like you are approaching No Country for Old Men with a prejudice. It is way more than "pretty good" and in fact is another of the year's best American films. It is a terrific film even if it has an element of soullesness that is not ever missing from the Coens. This is one of their best, and at their best they're pretty terrific American filmmakers. You ought not to think of it is 'another film with a psychopathic killer." It is not that. It is fundamentally a novel by one of our finest fiction writers, Cormac McCarthy, and it is a very faithful reproduction of that book, complete with the inimitable dialogue.
Glad we agree on Into the Wild, which I suspecrted we do.
on metacritic, Into the Wild has a lower score than American Gangster. What do we make of that?
Not a big Coens fan, and bored with characters who are killers; the most grossly over-represented group in contemporary cinema relative to their proportion of the population.
yes but one has to judge things on their own merits nonetheless as much as one can and this is great stuff and the killer is not just another from some mold but part of a Cormac McCarthy novel. I keep pointing that out and you keep ignoring its significance.
As for being a Coens fan, that would be hard in view of the crap they've dished out over the past decade, but on the other hand they've clearly produced wonderful stuff too, and this is of that vein.
Well, the fact that my expectations are limited creates the possibility I'll be surprised by the film. I expect to like it as much as Miller's Crossing, to be specific. The Coens must have overcome their tendency to caricature and feel superior to their characters and, I hope, kept their cynicism and nihilism in check (otherwise why all this hype). These characteristics have limited the worth of their films (in general) since their debut. But most of their films, even some recent ones like The Man Who Wasn't There are well worth seeing. I have no opinion of the writer of the source novel. I tend to read older titles, not contemporary fiction. Currently, I'm reading Sartre.
McCarthy goes back to the Seventies. Saying you don't read "contemporay fiction" is no excuse for overlooking one of the major American writers of the last four decades.
The cynicism and nihilism of the Coes is absorbed into the fatalism and pessimism of McCarthy's vision.
I would rate this higher than Miller's Crossing, which i found tedious. The Man Who Wasn't there may have been "wqorth seeing" but it is also worth forgetting. No one would want to watch Intolerable Cruelty or The Ladykillers again on a bet. But the Coens still have an impressive filmography, even though I personally only really, really like Blood Simple and Barton Fink, and now this one.