I’m not going to waste any time at all getting to the point on this one. This was without a doubt the best movie I have seen this year. This is the kind of movie that doesn’t end when the credits roll. I took it home with me and I couldn’t shake it for a long while. The story is straightforward enough. Llewelyn Moss is out hunting in the Texas desert and stumbles across the remains of a shootout: several dead bodies, dead trucks, a truck bed full of heroin, and two million dollars. Everyone is dead, so he takes the money. You could say that “still waters run deep” for each of the main male characters of this film. Moss is played by Josh Brolin as a man of few words, determined to keep what he decides is rightfully his. Javier Bardem is Anton Chigurh, the ruthless killer sent to recover the money, who enjoys deciding the fate of victims on the flip of a coin. Then we have Tommy Lee Jones as the town sheriff, Ed Tom Bell, investigating the trail of deaths left by Chigurh and trying to find Moss in the meantime. I love what the Coens do with the film. Immediately you get the parallels between Moss and Chigurh, the elements of good and evil taken and presented out of focus. Bell is just the guy trying to keep up, testing himself to see if he has still got it. He certainly isn’t given anyone to whom he can pass it along. I was on the edge of my seat for the whole film, until they put the brakes on in ways you will never see coming. And the fact that Kelly McDonald, playing Moss’s wife Carla Jean, turns out to be one of the most interesting characters was a complete surprise. Of all the lines spoken in the film, I think Carla Jean’s, in her last scene, were the most compelling. I’m not equipped to explain this movie right now. I have to see it again. You have to see it immediately. And in the meantime, something to consider: what is the most you have ever lost in a coin toss?

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So, the long awaited directorial debut by Ben Affleck (who was waiting?  Some people were. Yes, it’s true) finally arrived.  Based upon a novel of the same name by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River) the film arrives suitably gritty, twisty, and right at home in Boston.  The film centers on Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) as partners in business as well as everything else.  While watching news coverage of a young girl’s kidnapping, their private investigation skills (and status as a neighborhood boy) are requested in talking with the locals to try and get information that the police can’t get. And off we go into a tour of the neighborhood (and these bit parts are obviously played by actual people from the area, Affleck’s nod to his hometown) where everyone seems to know something and of course, nothing is what it seems.  This is where we meet Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman), head of the task force to stop violence against children, and Detective Remy Brassant (Ed Harris, the watchdog assigned to follow Patrick around. I enjoyed the movie, but it felt a little choppy.  The first half is a frantic search for a little girl that suddenly becomes about something completely different.  Trying to see how it all ties up in the end is a little difficult.  I don’t know whether to attribute this to Affleck’s novice directorial skills or to a story that was so large it couldn’t be contained smoothly within two hours.  Other than the strange flow of the story, the twists were interesting if not entirely realistic. I believe I’ve waited almost long enough to write this for it to be available on DVD by now, so stop and pick it up or catch in theaters while you can.

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Did you all know that I love Steve Carell?  I do.  So, I was very excited to go see this movie that just made him look as cute as a button in the previews.  The set up is this: He is Dan Burns, a widowed advice columnist with three daughters who is beginning to encounter the same problems with which his readers approach him. An annual family tradition, Dan packs his girls into the family station wagon and drives them up to his parent’s house to close it up for the summer.  There he is reunited with his parents (Dad played by John Mahoney from Say Anything!) and his siblings.  The first morning his mother sends him on an errand and while in town he meets Marie (Juliette Binoche).  He helps her pick out books and spends what seems to be several hours sharing a muffin breakfast and talking.  Before they part she lets him know that she is seeing someone but they exchange phone numbers (you know, to be friends). Of course, arriving home, he discovers that Marie is Mitch’s (his brother, played by Dane Cook, very funny in this) new girlfriend.  Very much hair pulling and nail biting ensues as Dan becomes convinced that she is the only one for him and can’t figure out how to betray his brother and be happy at the same time.  As a friend of mine would say, this film is too cute cute.  I felt that there was very little focus on what he does for a living, considering the title of the film comes directly from the title of his column, but the scenes of family activities were so nostalgic and heart warming.  You can understand how he can’t come to terms with risking his family for love.  And did I mention that I love Steve Carell?

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