No Country for Old Men

The Best Picture nominations for 2007 were mostly dark and depressing movies. The only comedy nominated was Juno which was about a teenage pregnancy still not a real happy theme. The other movies nominated had to do with ruthless oilmen, lying siblings, and a corporate legal thriller. Then ultimate winner was No Country for Old Men by the Coen Brothers about a stealing and murder.

No Country for Old Men is dark tale about a guy (Josh Brolin) who finds money and drugs from a drug deal gone badly. After stealing the money he is hunted by a paid gunman named Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) who uses and an air gun as his weapon of choice. The sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) is trying to piece everything together.

I hadn't seen the movie since I saw it in theatres and watching it again I forgot how good this movie really was. I love that the movie keeps you guessing and you're never really sure what will happen next. Javier Bardem won Best Supporting actor for his emotionless killer Chigurh, but it was Tommy Lee Jones' sheriff that I felt was the best acting in the movie. He really grounds the movie in some reality. While everything else is going horribly wrong he is trying to do his job and keep everyone safe. The Coen brothers are known for bizarre but great movies like Fargo and The Big Lebowski. But while this movie is good the ending is really strange. I felt the ending kind of took away from how great the rest of the movie was.

Even though I love The Coen Brothers I actually felt the movie that should have won Best Picture is the equally dark and odd movie There Will Be Blood. With great performances by Daniel Day-Lewis as oil man Daniel Plainview and Paul Dano as Eli Sunday a small time preacher. There is some amazing tension between the two as we see each one manipulate others one using faith and the other using money. There are no good guys in this movie as everyone has selfish motives. This is another movie that has a strange ending but I found it more satisfying than the ending for No Country for Old Men.
The biggest upset for me was that Into the Wild wasn't nominated for more awards. I loved the movie and totally expected it to get lots of nominations. In my opinion it should have been nominated for Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Director, Best Score, and Best Song for some of Eddie Vedder most haunting songs. Hal Holbrook did get nominated for Best Supporting Actor but there should have been way more nominations. The two biggest acting snubs in my opinion were for Tommy Lee Jones and Paul Dano being left off the Best Supporting Actor list. Both are amazing in their movies.

IMDB Top 250 rankings of 2007 movies
No Country for Old Men #130
Into the Wild #148
There Will be Blood #159
The Bourne Ultimatum #183
Ratatouille #195