15. March 2008 by Ria.

The movie immediately starts off with a murder of a sheriff’s deputy by the crazed psychopath named Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). This is good, because the last thing you want is a movie that bores you to death for the first hour before all the good stuff happens. I’m telling you right now, that dude is crazy, did you see the look on his face when he was strangling that guy? And what about the poor deputy, do people really make all those jerky movements when they are being choked like that? No, I don’t want you to show me, I was just asking a question, thank you.

After Chigurh kills the deputy, he retrieves his bolt pistol, and is off to kill another guy for his car. Let’s talk about this pistol for a second. I’ve never seen anything like it, but its supposed to be some contraption that is used to stun animals (that we eat) before killing them. This stunner strikes a blow to the animal’s forehead, the enters the brain, then the animal loses consciousness. Now all of this is done to make sure that the animal doesn’t suffer in the slaughtering process. Chigurh is also making sure humans don’t suffer either, because when he uses that thing on somebody, trust me, they won’t be yelping in pain, because they’ll already be dead.

Next scene shows our hero, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) who in the midst of some serious antelope hunting, stumbles upon a massacre, a drug deal gone bad. Now after encountering the dead bodies, Moss runs up on tons and tons of drugs, but he leaves it and continues on his way. Yeah right, c’mon now, we all know that in real life, he would be stuffing his car, pockets, and underwear with that stuff. Or maybe he had ESP, something inside of him was saying, “Leave it Moss, there’s something even better than drugs several feet away, NO NOT A COUPLE OF HOOKERS STUPID! just keep walking north, and you’ll find salvation.”

So Llewelyn walks on, and finds a suitcase filled with money-lots of money-lots and lots and lots of money, so now we must change his name to Mr. Moneybags. Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the lone survivor found dying inside of one of the trucks. He begged Llewelyn to give him a drink of water, but was pretty much given the hand. Llewelyn, you ungrateful brat! But whatever, just go home to your wife and immediately start planning your second honeymoon.
  
Llewelyn takes my brilliant advice, and goes home, but feels guilty for leaving the poor man out there to die, and goes back to the scene, but the man is already dead. Bad timing guy, not just for saving the dead man, but his posse have just arrived, and now they’re after you. The plot of the movie is centered around Llewelyn being chased, first by the Mexican mafia, then by psycho Chigurh who has to flip a coin in order to decide if he is going to spare a life. Weirdo!

Well, now you have some idea of what the movie is like, I can go now, Bye! ………………………….What? Oh, you want to know how the title of the movie fits in? Well, let me introduce you to Sheriff Bell, a man too old and too slow to handle the increasing violence in his part of town. Let me give you some examples-First one, he and his deputy (the living one) stroll the scene of the drug massacre on horseback, trying to get clues on exactly what conspired there. WHAT! There is a maniac killer on the loose, and you should be flying down the highway in your patrol car at 70 miles an hour trying to catch this guy! You old goat!

Second example, there is a scene where Sheriff Bell is discussing the case with his deputy again at a restaurant-Well, the deputy is standing up updating Bell on the case, while he’s sitting down reading the paper, probably with a cup of coffee, and a side of toast in front of him too. ARE YOU KIDDING ME! Look you old bag of bones, get off your duff, and get out there and arrest this psycho! You should be knocking on doors, calling the FBI, America’s Most Wanted, and the Forensic Files show, so they can work with you on bringing Mr. Schizoid to justice!

Last example, Bell goes to his uncle’s house to whine and moan about his inability to accept the fact that the town he polices is increasingly violent. WAIT A MINUTE! Are you having casual discussion with relatives on company’s time when you should be out there catching criminals? No wonder your town is so violent, ’cause you’re not doing your damn job!

So Bell finally realizes that everything I said about him is true, and he retires. Then there is the scene where he’s home talking to his wife about a dream he had the prior night with his father in it. Okay, now I’m getting bored, where is the phone, I guess I can make a quick phone call now that he’s talking crap. But a couple minutes later, the credits roll. What? Wait a minute, hero Llewelyn and his wife are dead, the mom is dead, the Mexican mafia all dead, so why is crazy Chigurh still on the loose?

Is there a country for old men? Of course there is, but no one likes an old goat who slacks off, especially when other people’s lives are at stake, so Bell, I guess you’re just gonna have to SCRAM!

No Country for Old Men (Vintage International)

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8. January 2008 by Ria.

I’m gonna start things off by talking about the one thing that is much more important than acting——-LOOKS, so all you Kevin Costner fans, rally around me for a minute.  Kevin is not just fine, he is F_I_N_E. Oops, let me try that again. He is F-I-N-E. There, that’s much better. Aging has only made him look 10x’s better, but what happened to Hurt since the Accidental Tourist? Where is his hair? It must be all those women he was running around with.

Oh well, anyway, Kevin Costner pulls off a first rate performance as a Jeckyl and Hyde kind of a guy in the thriller Mr. Brooks.  He’s very cool, and has no problem keeping it as he goes around town hacking people up (after a two year cooling off period) while posing as a CEO of a box company. Well, maybe I shouldn’t make him sound like Jason Voorhees, because he’s not, he just has an addiction to killing, and he’s been getting away with it for a long time.

Mr. Brooks kills in correspondence to the sinister voice in his head which is represented by a man (William Hurt) in the flesh created for all us movie goers who need to know and see whats going on in the mind of a crazy guy trying to appear sane. Of course, what would any thriller be like without the overzealous detective who has spent a half a lifetime trying to catch the bad guy? In this case its Tracy Atwood played by Demi Moore (sigh, is she still around)? I mean, there’s nothing wrong with her, it just would have been nice to see a fresh face in that role.

Oh wait, I forgot, Detective Atwood is also going through a grueling divorce, to a much younger man, so yes, this part does fit Moore. After all, what Hollywood actress has more experience in robbing the cradle than Demi? No, there’s nothing wrong with it, men have been doing it for years, its just that now I realize that the part was meant for her.

Other scenarios in the movie that are kind of distracting are the other villain called “The Hangman” (Matt Schulze who breaks out of jail and eventually ends up going after Detective Atwood, the one who put him behind bars in the first place. Next, in comes a nosy photographer (Dane Cook) who has incriminating evidence against Brooks, and blackmails him into riding along on his next killing run. Oh, I can’t forget Brooks’s daughter (Danielle Panabaker) who comes home from college suddenly after her schoolmates are murdered.

Brooks suspects that she may have the homicide gene, but we really never find out, as this part of the story never gets developed. In the end Brooks end’s up getting away with everything and the dead “Hangman” ends up the scapegoat. I give this movie 2 stars for having an OK plot, plus and extra 1/2 star for Kevin Costner having the star role. If you don’t like the movie, you can just stare at him. Trust me, it works.

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6. January 2008 by Ria.

I know, a lot of jaws probably dropped because I rated this movie 2 stars. Okay, so I’m a little biased because Shia came to my town (Chicago) in November, and started some stuff. He acted poorly in his brief stint at Walgreens, and duplicated that performance in this movie.  First of all, this 2007 thriller is supposed to be influenced by the film Rear Window, but there’s no way in the world Disturbia can touch the 1954 classic.

Enough of that, let me get into Disturbia here, Kale (Shia LaBeouf), and father (Matt Craven) go fishing together, then boom! Car crash, father dies, next scene please. A year later, Kale is still an emotional mess from the father’s death, and ends up beating the hell out of his Spanish teacher who called him out in class for falling asleep. As a result, Kale ends up on a 3 month house arrest, and has to wear an ankle monitor which stops him from going anywhere beyond his back yard.

After mom (Carrie-Anne Moss) cancelled the X-Box, and I-tunes, he killed himself. No, just joking (even though elimination of these two luxuries would prompt some unstable people to do so). Actually, Kale is just left to sit in his house, scoping the surrounding neighbors. He leers at the one teenage girl, Ashley (Sarah Roemer), and this annoys me, because part of the plot is tied into his crush on Ashley. How am I supposed to take Kale seriously when he is going foo-foo over some girl?

When she visited him one night after he tried to spoil her backyard party, in an attempt to gain sympathy, he ends up running down the complete dossier on her after he’s been spying on her with binoculars! And she falls for it! Ashley kisses him because she is just so flattered, but why? Can’t she do better? How far does she think she going to go with a juvenille delinquent?

What happened to that guy she was hugging on at her party? He should have come in and dotted Kale in the eye to spice up that scene up a little bit. Ashley should have been able to figure Kale out immediately, and put him in his place to give the audience some real entertainment.

That section of the movie was dull, and bored me to tears. Eventually we get to the crazy psycho neighbor Turner (David Morse) whom Kale suspects is a wandering serial killer from Austin, Texas, because he fits the description, and comes home with a dented fender. This too is unbelievable (Yes, I know this is Hollywood, and everything goes, but c’mon!) As a former fan of all the forensic file shows, I can tell you that the typical serial killer is usually on the run, or deep in hiding, not living in a typical middle class neighborhood, ESPECIALLY IF THE MEDIA ALREADY HAVE A DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THEM!

Now see, this is what I have a hard time with. Kale is the so-called-bad-boy, and he should have done it, ’cause if I was his friend, and he asked me to do it, I would have just laughed in his face and left. I’m just saying, it would have made the story more interesting if Kale defied all authority, and did his own thing, kind of like a Matt Borne. All he would have to do is hide out somewhere, like in Ashley’s basement or something, just long enough to catch the bad guy, and he would be cleared, but noooooooo! Hollywood takes the dumb approach, and I don’t like it.

Anyway, back to the story. Ronnie goofs up, and leaves his cell phone in the car. He goes back to get it, finds a body bag, suddenly disappears, Kale gets scared, call the cops to report Turner, who is then cleared later on when everyone finds out that the body bag contained a deer. Kale’s mom goes over to talk to Turner, and in the meantime, Kale is still being nosy, but this time he actually finds the dead body of the woman Turner brought home a few days earlier, then all hell breaks loose.

Kale goes looking for mom, Ashley goes looking for the police (she should have stopped at the nearest Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks), an officer shows up at the Turner home and is killed, Kale falls into a pool of dead bodies, Julie comes back and stabs Turner in the leg, while Kale delivers the final blow with gardening shears.

In the final scene, Kale gets the ankle monitor removed, and he is officially off of house arrest. He also gets the girl, again. You see, I watched Transformers and Disturbia back to back, and I can’t believe with all of this raw genuis running around hollywood, no writer could pick a better ending for either one of both of these movies. I have a better ending for this movie. Kale reaches over to give Ashley a kiss, and she pushes him away and tells him now that he is off house arrest, to go get a job!

Disturbia (Widescreen Edition)

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