Wow. Okay, I have an up-front confession to make about my movie-viewing habits:
I watch a lot of crap.
I do. I freely admit that if there is an explosion on the cover of a DVD, I'm more inclined to to pick it up. I've seen pretty much all of Steven Segal's movies (they aren't all crap--I watch them for the ass-whuppings, not the dialog, anyway.) But tell me that a movie is genuinely "good"? I'll stay away.(Even more so than from "chick flicks"--you tell me it's "heart-warming" and whatnot and features a lot of openings for girlpower-bonding and clothes-changing montages and mother-daughter-arguments and so on, I can't go there.) I like good, but kind of "iffy" directors like Stone and Tarantino, who make good movies that people talk about, but have f'd-up stuff in them.
I didn't always used to be that way. I think, in 1993, I actually saw a lot of those Oscar-nominated movies, like The Piano in the theater. Even some of the Ivory-Merchant production period stuff. I also saw a lot of Harvey Kietel full-frontal nudity (I think three times?). But I was in college then. Now I have a job and a husband and stuff. Since that point, I creep out to theaters for summer blockbusters and must-see things. I don't go to movies to think; I want to have my socks knocked off. So Terminator 3 and Star Wars: Whatever get seen right away. Movies like As Good As It Gets I catch on network. Seriously. Network tv. Not even HBO.
But then came Netflicks. Genius idea since I am too loserly and time-pressed to wander around Blockbuster looking for DVD covers with explosions on them. Now I get to even see "good" movies, only, like, two years after they were issued. Like No Country for Old Men.
In the midst of people saying it was a good movie, could anyone have tipped me off that it had the explosions and f'd-up stuff, too? That would have made me even go to the theater. I had thought it was some western genre stuff. Some "dude"-equivalent of a chick flick--because that's what I get out of movies people get all serious about. I tend to think "good for me" movies must taste like boiled veggies without salt. But that movie was not just good, it was sick. Anton Chigurh is one of the vilest characters ever--there was not one good thing about him. He wore brown shoes with black pants. His hairstyle was completely awful. He drove with his hands at 11 o'clock and 1 o'clock, which I cannot stand. Did I mention brown shoes with black pants and white socks? Really awful. And being a full-blown, and even annoying psychopath (the scene with the gas station/store dude--just, I work customer service myself, and I hate waiting on psychopaths). And the scenes where he's tending to his own gun-shot wound are so out-machoing Rambo.
And I even kind of appreciated the lack of the certain, cathartic, "and then the bad guy was gone and the good guys lived happily ever after" ending (since I caught it two years out, I don't think I'm spoiling it too much). Evil is with us, it's always been with us, and good guys grow old and have to give it up some time. Tommy Lee Jones was as always excellent, Josh Brolin was a guy you couldn't help but root for, and Javier Bardem--
Need to see something else with that guy in it. His role was a very naked and brutal depiction of a person whose sole existence seemed to be destruction. He embodied this role with self-possession, an aura of menace, the suspense of a thoroughly qualmless killing machine. His villian is a character that will haunt the imagination.
So, anyway, I learned a valuable lesson: not all movies that are labeled "good for you" suck. Sometimes they do have explosions and sick stuff in them.
And no, I haven't see "Watchmen" yet. Yes I will see it sooner than later.
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