Widow's Bay: Season 1 (3/5 Stars)

Widow’s Bay, Season 1, starts off with a bang. Four especially good, indeed excellent, episodes of TV. So good in fact, that the rest of the season must only be explored as a cautionary tale. Whatever went wrong here, and we can guess and will guess as to the bureaucratic and structural reasons, should not be allowed to happen again to any other TV series.

Widow’s Bay takes place on an isolated New England isle, just like the setting of Jaws (1975) and Midnight Mass (2021). Indeed, while watching the first several episodes of this series, one is gripped with the anticipation that this series might make a perfect trifecta. It is helped in large part by the direction of Hiro Murai of Atlanta fame who helmed Episodes 1, 2, 3 and then 9 and 10. Hiro earns the comparison with the Coen Brothers with what he has achieved first in Atlanta, then the best parts of The Bear, and then here in Widow’s Bay. It shares the feeling with the best of the Coen Brothers’ movies that the world outside the frame holds more than what is in the frame. (Whereas inferior movies barely can hold what is currently in the frame. I spoke about this in depth in my review of Atlanta.)

We are presented with the mayor of a small island town (Matthew Rhys) who is desperately trying to boost the tourism trade and bring in fresh money from the mainland. Holding him back are the skeptical locals, including one downright hostile old coot (Stephen Root) who believes it would be irresponsible to bring any new people to the island as the place is and always has been cursed. Rounding out what will effectively be a three-person main cast is Kate O’Flynn as one of the Mayor’s administrative assistants. None of these actors are known for being comedians. (The biggest leap, Kate O’Flynn, is not known at all) But the surehandedness of the script, the keen direction of Mr. Murai, and the tone set by creator Kate Dippold, draw from them some excellent comedic performances. The first four episodes of Widow’s Bay are especially funny and increasingly scary.

They are also tight in space and time. Which perhaps unfairly promises the viewer that the rest of the episodes will be as perfectly constructed. Unfortunately, after what appears to be a storyline in which most, if not all, of the scenes matter, it then devolves into a series of stalling maneuvers until you get to the final episode where you realize with a sort of angst and dread that the story-lines might never resolve. A shame indeed that this very promising TV series might actually be transforming before our eyes into a commercialized TV series doomed to continue forever, elongated by its own popularity, until it gets so bad that no-one wants to watch it anymore.

For the life of me, I do not understand why we are in this predicament. This is a TV series on AppleTV+. It is a subscription service. There are no advertisers. Why is there pressure to have more material than is needed to tell the story? Why are there 10 episodes, when six would do just as well for the first season? The audience does not require nor need at least 10 episodes in any given season of a TV series. This is a strange holdover from broadcast TV series, which gave us the format as a necessity for advertisers. If the audience is footing the bill, there should be no pressure to give them more than what the story requires (wouldn’t it be cheaper to stop sooner rather than later). We draw the line at 3-hour movies. Why is anyone insisting on a 10-hour television series?

Much has been said about when a television series “jumps the shark”. This relates to an episode of Happy Days from the 70s (no, I’ve never seen it) when a character visits the beach, goes water-skiing, and just so happens to escape a shark attack. This was a TV show about a bunch of teenagers in high school or something. But after so many seasons, the writers were desperately looking for ways to up-the-game in order to keep the audience engaged.

If Widow’s Bay hasn’t had that exact moment yet, it is getting there. The thing is, the better a dramatic piece of story telling is, the earlier the “jump the shark” moment occurs. You simply cannot have dramatic revelations in every single episode before you start wondering why the characters don’t change.

And that is the second thing. For a comedic television series to have any legs, the characters can’t change. Seinfeld is a great example of this in practice. There was a rule that the characters “wouldn’t hug, wouldn’t learn”, because if they did either, then it wouldn’t make sense for them to continue to be funny in the same way. A series like Widow’s Bay which starts out both funny and dramatic needs to have a clear game plan, because the longer it goes on, the less funny and less dramatic it will be. Those elements will cannibalize each other. To put it another way, comedy comes from characters being ignorant and drama comes from realization. That arc only goes one way. Once the characters definitely know the island is cursed, no further comedy can be mined from a situation in which they do not know it yet.

(If a dramatic TV series eventually “jumps the shark”, a similar occurrence can happen to a comedic TV series when it eventually devolves into parody. That is, the unique storyline of the TV series plays itself out and then the writers start commenting on already existing pop culture because they are at a loss for original plots. Widow’s Bay may or may not have “jumped the shark”. It has definitely devolved into parody. This undoubtedly occurred in Episode 8, Your Baggage, in which Kate O’Flynn did her best Jamie Lee Curtis running and screaming down abandoned suburban streets being chased by a masked killer a la Halloween.)

And once the revelations occur, in particular the revelations in the father-son dynamic between Matthew Rhys and his teenage son, to work effectively, they demand resolution of the story. You can’t have a never-ending drama. After a while it loses its effectiveness and, worse yet, harms the memory of the earlier episodes. For as strong as Widow’s Bay started, by the ending of the last episode, it has itself a major problem that I doubt can be solved.

(By the way, I stopped watching Severance half way through the Second Season because they didn’t solve this same kind of problem. This issue may just be an AppleTV thing).

Here is my proposal for a remedy. The haunting of Widow’s Bay becomes publicly known, but instead of driving away tourists, they create a marketplace for the kind of tourist that seeks out haunted places. The main characters try their best to make people stay away and/or leave, but the harder they try, the more weird shit occurs and the more the island becomes famous and draws in more crowds.

In this way, the plight of Widow’s Bay can become a metaphor for the nightmare of success that many TV series find themselves in. Everyone wants to end the show, but they can’t.

Everything Must Go (3/5 Stars)

Nick Halsey has just been fired from his job of 16 years as vice-president of sales. It wasn’t a problem with his work. It was a problem with his drinking. There may have been an incident with a woman at a conference in Denver. It’s hard for him to explain his behavior because he can’t remember what happened. It seems though, from the way he walks and talks (one part resignation, one part vague guilt mixed in with a measure of self-loathing/pity) that he certainly believes he could have done something bad. On the way home from work he stops by the mini-mart and stocks up on PBR. He intends to drink it as quick as is comfortably possible. The house he comes home to is empty. All the locks on the doors have been changed. All of Nick’s furniture and stuff has been moved to the front lawn. On the door is a letter from his wife explaining that this is the last of these letters. Nick finds his easy chair, plops down on it, and continues drinking. His suburban neighborhood has bylaws that state a yard sale can be held for, at the most, five days. So given the front of selling his stuff, Nick has about that amount of time to hang out on his front lawn, drink some more, and decide whether he has hit rock bottom or if there is still plenty of self-destruction left to go.

“Everything Must Go” is directed by Dan Rush and based on a short story by Raymond Carver. I haven’t read any of Carver’s stuff but after seeing this movie and Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts” (itself a very good movie that compiles several of Raymond Carver’s stories), he makes my impossibly long list of books that would be so great to read some day if only it didn’t take so damn long to read books. The movie itself is very much like an elongated short story. It is contained entirely within five days, it takes place almost entirely on Nick’s front lawn, and attention is spent more on small details than big action. The ambition and budget is limited. For what it is, as they say, it is what it is, and as they also say, it does a fine job of doing what it does. There is nothing wrong with “Everything Must Go.” It’s just a small movie. If you are in the mood for that sort of thing, add a star or two to the rating up top.

Nick is played by comedian Will Ferrell in a role that is hard to believe anyone else could pull off as well. The sight of a man living on his front lawn with all his stuff is absurd and the location of this movie, being a suburb in sunny Arizona, lends the movie lots of light, which bounces off all the furniture in bright colored hues. All the lawns around him are bright green. Nick even owns a Tiki Bar and a George Foreman grill. This lends the movie a cheery tone even if its subject is so dreary. Nick isn’t getting drunk in a dark bar like Nic Cage in “Leaving Las Vegas.” He’s out in the open and fresh air. A comedian like Ferrell looks like he belongs in such a situation. And since all of this creates such an expectation of comedy, it is that much more effective as a drama when Ferrell doesn’t try to go for any jokes whatsoever. Sure there may be some witty asides to smile with (especially the talks with a bored kid played by Christopher Jordan Wallace whom Nick hires as a salesperson), but overall this movie takes alcoholism seriously. And watching a funny man that is too drunk to be funny is not funny. It’s especially sad. Even more so when one considers that the irresponsible man-boy characters that Will Ferrell usually portrays would perhaps at one point meet the same fate if they lived in the real world. It has been noted with surprise from many critics that Will Ferrell is a good actor in this movie. I agree but do not take it as a surprise. I can only assume that those critics don’t consider comedy acting as “Acting!” Watch “Old School” again and see Will Ferrell strike some of the same notes he does here. Besides being hilarious in that movie, he also realistically loses both his wife and home to drinking.

I’m sure there are a myriad of reasons why some people drink too much. Nick Hasley here seems to be doing it almost as a self-imposed punishment. A major theme of the movie involves Nick’s quest to find a reason as to why he deserves to be a happy functioning sober person. In this search, he employs the kid, a neighbor who just moved in next-door, played by Rebecca Hall, and his AA sponsor played by Michael Pena. He even goes so far as to contact a woman, played by Laura Dern, he hardly knew in high school and hasn’t spoken to in 20 years. She wrote in his yearbook that she considered him to be a diamond in the rough and suspected him to be nice even though he was a jock. So Nick, because I guess he was curious as to why someone who hardly knew him would think something like that, looks her up and shows up on her doorstep. He says he was just in the neighborhood, but come on, this is the suburbs. Nobody goes anywhere on accident there.   

And here I’m going to now pause and take my geeky liberty to talk about city planning and real estate development. If anyone living in the suburbs decides to watch this movie, please take a special interest in the scene between Will Ferrell and Laura Dern. It is the perfect example of why every house needs a porch. A grown man that just shows up on your doorstep after 20 years is inherently a weird thing. Under no circumstances should that man be let inside the house. This is something Laura Dern conveys quite explicitly in her body language. However, it is perfectly fine to talk to him on the front porch. After all, there is a possibility that he isn’t insane and you still have the ability of being able to walk inside the house and lock the door. Thus, having a porch gives one the ability to talk to strangers without sacrificing privacy or safety. It is elemental to making friends in a neighborhood. This nice conversation could not have realistically happened had Dern not had a porch. Now contrast this with the fact that Nick’s house doesn’t have a porch. In fact, even though this neighborhood is in Arizona, a place with such great weather that porches would be the most obvious things ever, none of the surrounding houses have porches. That is distressingly normal in suburbs that have been built in the last quarter century. What effect this has on the neighborhood is keenly observed in this movie. Take note that the only neighbors Nick has regular conversations with during his five day yard sale is the woman who has recently moved in across the street and the kid on the bike. In my opinion, this is completely realistic. Really, the only time one can strike up a random conversation with a suburban neighbor is the week they move in. After that it is awkward and usually an invasion of privacy. After all, you need a reason to invite yourself into somebody’s living room. Without a porch, taking the initiative to talk to people in the suburbs is more likely to be rude than friendly. The kid by the way doesn’t live in the neighborhood. His mother works there as a home nurse. She can’t afford daycare so she brings him along. He spends his days biking the desolate streets. He talks to Nick mainly out of sheer boredom. That too, I can personally attest, is completely realistic. 

Rango (4/5 Stars)

Alright all you cinema lovers you’ve got a Netflix assignment before watching “Rango.” Knowledge of the following should enhance your viewing enjoyment ten-fold: Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now,” Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood’s “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” at least the first chapter of Hunter S. Thompson “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” the chapter “Red Queen” from Marc Reisner’s “Cadillac Desert,” and most importantly Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown.” It also wouldn’t hurt if you’ve familiarized yourself with the walking style of John Wayne, the Indian from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," the Eye of Mordor from “The Lord of the Rings,” the wheelchair movement of the Big Lebowski, cursory knowledge of desert flora and fauna, Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” and any and all Looney Tunes parodies or something to do with a “New Sheriff in Town.” You don’t need to have seen any of these to enjoy “Rango,” but then again you won't be in on some of the jokes. Unlike most movies that dumb themselves down to the lowest common denominator in order to appease the ignorant, “Rango” has absolutely no shame for looking peculiar, channeling classic movies, and counting on the audience to appreciate the quirky references not to be turned off by them. Overall, “Rango” is a good movie that was made by people who love great movies for people who love great movies.

“Rango,” is about a pet chameleon wannabe thespian that spends his days in his glass case acting out Shakespeare with inanimate props. Then a crisis occurs, the speeding convertible transporting his case hits an armadillo, and he is thrown out of the back where he subsequently almost hits a red shark and lands in a desert wasteland in the middle of nowhere. Actually circumstantial evidence suggests he is somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert on the road to Las Vegas. We don’t know the chameleon’s given name although again circumstantial evidence suggests he’s one of those “Goddamn Animals!” Anyway in search of water, he comes upon a town aptly named Dirt. The place looks like a Spaghetti Western inhabited by Ralph Steadman drawings. The characters are various desert animals dressed in western attire, all of them looking like there hasn't been enough water for showers in years. The amount of detail that went into the visual aspect of Rango suggests somebody put a lot of love into this thing. Gore Verbinski, who previously directed the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, is at the helm here. It may be a few movies too soon to say this, but I think one day he may be regarded as an equal among such other great artistic directors like Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, and Guillermo Del Toro. Animation in general has reached such a level of sophistication that I wonder if movies like this will ever be recognized by the Academy for Art Direction or Costume Design. I mean most of the design in last year’s “Alice and Wonderland” was entirely CGI. Why wouldn’t “Rango” be considered?

 Johnny Depp continues his career long quixotic quest to not look attractive by voicing the odd-looking chameleon with different size eyes and a potbelly. Upon coming to the town, he decides to put his acting skills to the test. Instead of simply admitting he’s lost, he calls himself “Rango” and tells a far out story about how he killed seven members of the same family with one bullet. He must have seen “True Grit.” I liked that movie too. This chameleon has good taste. Unfortunately for him, the town is in an enormous water crisis and actually needs a really good sheriff, what with the last one getting killed and all. So you can see where this is going.

The dialogue in “Rango,” is verbose and witty. The level of vocabulary in “Rango” is on the level of “Pirates of the Caribbean.” It should be. John Logan (Aviator, Gladiator) wrote the screenplay but Gore and James Ward Byrkit both straight from “Pirates” also get story credit. The Pirate accents have been switched for Western accents, but everything is still gruffly poetic delivered in a slurred multisyllabic rough and ready converse. Isla Fisher voices a lizard named Beans, giving us the least romantic name for a love interest ever. Abigail Breslin provides the voice of Priscilla, who I think might be some sort of Jewish possum. Bill Nighy is Rattlesnake Jake with suspiciously familiar eyes. Ned Beatty continues his dominance in evil cartoon voices (see Toy Story 3) with the Mayor. This time he's channeling John Huston in “Chinatown.” The Spirit of the West also shows up to counsel Rango in the form of Clint Eastwood in his Man-with-no-name garb driving a golf cart with a bunch of Oscars in the carriage. It’s a scene on par with Ed Wood getting advice from Orson Welles in “Ed Wood.” Unfortunately Eastwood didn’t voice himself. It was Timothy Olyphant. That’s too bad. It would have been so cool if he did.

The story of “Rango” is a movie cliché and one well-versed in movie knowledge will perhaps guess all the plot points before they happen. That didn’t bother me at all really because the movie itself is counting on me knowing everything anyway and instead spends its enormous energy in making all the old memories fresh and new. This movie is a great example of what the difference is between rip-off and homage. A Rip-off is a cynical attempt to capitalize on a popular trend. Homage is a nostalgic callback to something remembered fondly. Actually in practice they are exactly the same thing. What makes a movie one or the other is how deserving it is to be in the same class as that it is imitating. If a movie is lazy and dumb, then it is almost an insult to the classic to see itself in the inferior product. However, when the movie is creative and smart, as is Rango, a callback can be a compliment between artists who are on an equal level. “Rango” does not rely on its references. Take out every homage and it still would be funny and look great. That’s why it is full of homages and not rip-offs. Depp and Verbinski aren’t riding any coattails here.

Cedar Rapids (4/5 Stars)

What happens in Cedar Rapids, stays in Cedar Rapids.

There’s a tendency to think of insurance sales as a nondescript profession and insurance salesmen as stereotypical nondescript people. There’s also a tendency to think of Iowa as a nondescript state. Besides political primaries and corn what else is there? Cedar Rapids happens to be the second biggest city in Iowa. Des Moines, the capital, is top dog. (Although according to inside information I have from a Cedar Rapids native, it is definitely the better city as Des Moines is full of pretentious d-bags.) Enter Tim Lippe, played by Ed Helms, an insurance salesman who has never left his even smaller Iowan town of Brown Valley but is attending for the first time the big insurance sales convention in Cedar Rapids. His excitement is palpable. The hotel the convention is being held in has a pool inside of it. Wow! The best thing about this movie is that it takes all these people that we tend to have a preconceived notion of plain vanilla boringness with and crafts funny, likable, but nevertheless believable characters. I’ve always known in some vague speculation that there are insurance salesmen in Iowa. Well here they are cracking jokes, drinking in excess, and having sex. You know just like real ordinary people. Who knew?

What this movie is, above all, is a Coming-of-Age story. Forget that Tim Lippe is middle-aged; he has spent his entire life in the small town of Brown Valley and is experiencing the big city for the first time. He’s never been on a plane and takes it very seriously that he is in the emergency exit row. When the city’s sole prostitute, Bree (Alia Shawkat), approaches him outside the hotel, asks him for a cigarette, and lets him know that she is down for a party, he thanks her for her friendliness, explains he doesn’t smoke, and offers her a butterscotch candy instead. When he meets his roommate, Ronald (played by Isaiah Whitlock Jr.) he is legitimately surprised that he would be black. He also happens to be completely oblivious that most of the other conventioneers view the experience as a chance to take a vacation and let loose for a change. Tim Lippe on the other hand has a mission. He is on direct orders from his boss to give a presentation that will win the coveted Two Diamonds award. This award stands for ethics, good work, and godliness. In order to accomplish this, his boss gives him one more direction helpful direction: Stay away from Dean Ziegler. A glitch in the hotel room accommodations however allows Tim and Ronald to upgrade to a Junior Suite on the condition that they get another roommate. That third roommate is Dean Ziegler.

The “Deansy” (an affectionate nickname self-given), played by John C. Reilly, is a welcome invasion of constant one-liners and crass buffoonish behavior. You know this person from somewhere. He’s the type of immature loudmouth who makes up for his impolite garish persona with an extremely egalitarian view of friendship. Namely, he’s the type of person who will be friends with anyone who will take shots with him. These types of people, though immature and reckless, happen to lend life a certain sparkle. Who else will convince you to take a swim in the indoor pool (which closed at 11pm) at 3 am in the morning? This complete lack of self-consciousness is on full display in one great comedic scene when The Deansy decides to have a serious heart to heart with Tim and it never occurs to him to think of putting on a shirt first. As he is describing how to dance with the tiger (a loose metaphor for the insurance business) his ample gut his is in full view swaying as it were quite noticeably during his remarkably physical explanation. Here is a man eminently comfortable with himself. John C. Reilly should be commended for his self-less virtuoso performance. Rounding out the gang is Joan, played by Anne Heche, a married woman who is intent on letting what happens in Cedar Rapids stay in Cedar Rapids and Ronald, played by Isaiah Whitlock Jr. who is quite conservative but does have his guilty pleasures. For instance he collects antiques and does a pretty good impression of “Omar” from his favorite TV show HBO’s “The Wire.” Guess which one you get to see him do when the shit gets real.

Movies that employ a good amount of believable, funny, and likable characters tend to attract an accomplished list of supporting actors. This movie is no different. Here we have Sigourney Weaver (Alien, Aliens, Alien 3), Kurtwood Smith (Red from That 70s Show), Alia Shawkat (Maybe from Arrested Development), Rob Corddry (Daily Show, Hot Tub Time Machine), and Stephen Root (No Country for Old Men, Dodgeball) filling in the background of the scenes. All of them have their moments. Nobody in this movie is a huge star but that’s almost required given the subject material. A-list stars don’t really look like insurance salesmen. This you can verify for yourself during the many funny scenes of bare-ass nudity in the picture. Even Anne Heche has some curves where Hollywood Producers usually don’t allow them to be (still good looking). The director Miguel Arteta doesn’t even seem to have any qualms about shooting Ed Helms in a way that captures his double chinniness. That too is kind of a rare thing in movies.   

One strength and weakness of this movie is that it never gets too wacky or surreal. Nothing happens during the weekend of craziness that couldn’t actually happen at a convention. In this way the Comedy never rises to that level of ecstasy, which occurs only when watching the truly ridiculous or shocking things happen. So even though the laughs are consistent, this really isn’t a top-tier comedy. However, because Comedy never overtakes Reality, the characters and story are granted a certain amount of gravity. The screenplay, written by Phil Johnston, is not a satire. The writer actually seems to know a good deal about insurance and Iowa and declines to directly make fun of either. One scene deals with Joan subversively signing up Tim to do karaoke. He decides to sing an insurance sales parody of ‘O Holy Night.’ It’s full of inside jokes and technical language that I’m sure only insurance salesman would fully understand and enjoy. But you should get the jist of it and it should still be quite enjoyable. (Ed Helms: not a bad singer by the way). Tim Lippe may be naïve but the movie is on his side and his Coming-of-Age is infused with a sort of simple dignity. I was reminded about all the best characteristics of “The Office,” and especially that one scene where Michael Scott comments on Pam’s painting at her first art show and simply states, “That is our building…and we sell paper.” Tim Lippe is from the small town of Brown Valley. He sells insurance.

The Soloist (3/5 Stars) April 30, 2009

The Soloist may be a tad too realistic for comfort. It tells the true story of Los Angelos Times reporter Steve Lopez, played by Robert Downey Jr., and his unconventional friendship with a homeless street musician named Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, played by Jamie Foxx. 
Story goes, Steve Lopez, caught in a mid-life funk and following a bike accident that left his face scarred was out wandering around the LA times building when he heard the sound of a violin. Searching out the sound he found a homeless man playing a violin with only two strings underneath a statue of Beethoven. The man is hard to have a conversation with, as he talks toward the wind in hurried sentences. Still after gleaning that this man had once attended Julliard, Lopez decides that this just might be a story. 
It could have ended there, but a grandmother with arthritis sends Lopez a cello and tells him to give it to Ayers. So Lopez does so, but he won’t simply give it to Ayers. He looks up a homeless shelter and tells Ayers that they are going to hold it for him, and if he wants to use it he has to go play it there. Lopez doesn’t know why, but Ayers doesn’t want to go anywhere near this place (called LAMP in the movie). And so Lopez, and we vicariously through him, are soon introduced to a very ugly world, the several streets in Los Angelos that we all drive by and never actually see. Where all of the failures and decay of human society coalesce and hang around each other like such festering rot, growing like a cancer in the heart of the city. It is a humbling experience to witness such a place for the first time. I lived near Los Angelos for most of my life and never knew it existed. It is embarrassing that we as a society allow such places to exist. Director Joe Wright structures this movie around this place as if it is the third main character in the movie. And how he does this, combined with Robert Downey Jr.’s eerily unromantic performance, is what makes a story that would ordinarily be uplifting in other hands, uneven and only mildly enjoyable. Director Joe Wright isn’t sugarcoating homelessness or mental illness. Like Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man” Nathaniel Ayers is not ever going to get better. And Steve Lopez understandably doesn’t want complete responsibility over an unstable homeless man, no matter how talented. He’s no hero and this movie contains no miracles. 
The only thing that could have made this a great movie was great choice in music. Unfortunately that didn’t happen. I’m no huge connoisseur in classical music, but I know a heck of a lot more than most people, and the only song I recognized was Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. That also happened to be the best song in the bunch. The rest of the pieces sound very much like ordinary classical music where the theme goes in circles and never gets anywhere. I know there are better songs out there. They could have at least played some Mozart. I also will say this; classical music does not go well with concrete. It doesn’t particularly work when a cello plays and we are treated to a view of a massive parking lot. I believe the point of Ayers playing was to get away from the city. It doesn’t work to actually show the ugliness that is LA when he’s playing his music.
Of course, whether this movie is enjoyable or not doesn’t deter its inherent nobility. This is one of those movies that you should like strictly on principle. It’s about growing up and taking responsibility. Which is all very good, but not usually what people are looking for when they go and see a movie.

Leatherheads 04/08/08

For about a half hour into this film, the movie was in serious trouble. It looked good, the acting was good, it had cool music. There was nothing technically wrong except for the fact that it wasn't funny. They had some potential humorous characters but a lack of any real jokes. The movie's humor was surviving on a shallow reservoir of Clooney's weird facial expressions. There was alot of talk about screwball football with no rules, but very little of any trick plays or cheating was actually shown. This movie, as a comedy, is incredibly lightweight. It seemed to be written by astute British snobs who like to drink tea while discussing monacles. There's one paticular scene that demonstrates this I think. Clooney is discussing a new teammate who apparently is in high school. Except he looks thirty years old and is approximately 300 pounds heavy. Clooney is asking him questions and gets weird answers. He goes back to think, almost says something, than stops and doesn't say anything. What was he going to say? In a better script, probably something funny. But in this one the writers apparently couldn't think of anything. 
What saves this movie is Renee Zellweger, who is currently number 2 on my favorite actress list. (It has been a war between her and Cate Blanchett for awhile. Renee has slipped simply because Cate is on a fantastic roll of late) Zellweger and Clooney are incredible in their scenes together. The sharp snappy dialogue really pops off the screen. Their romance isn't really interesting, I would rather watch the passive-aggressive fighting. Forming the third wheel is John Krasinki, from the Office, in his first big movie role. He's very good too although his character never receives a fair shake from the script I feel. 
This production is soaking in talent through and through, but its one of those productions that have huge talent working on substandard material. As my broadcast professor would say, "Their polishing a turd." This movies speaks to the truth that the script is the most important thing in a movie production. It needed a rewrite or two and then some new energy infused into or something. This is a mild recommendation.

No Country for Old Men 12/05/07

I very much want to see this movie again. and I say this because three quarters of the movie was fantastic, and the last quarter was confusing, bewildering, and criminally anti-climatic. The ending was so bad, that I started to question myself: Was it possible that I completely missed the entire point of the movie. It's possible. The Coen brothers are some of my favorite directors, and they have never made a completely worthless movie. Perhaps there was a deeper meaning to this picture, that I missed.
This type of omission has happened before. I remember when I saw 'The Departed' for the first time. I completely misunderstood the woman psychiatrists' role. I kept on expecting her to do different things at different times and was confounded at every turn. When I saw it a second time, her charachter worked perfectly. I wonder if that's what happened here. Next time I hope to pay more attention to what Tommy Lee Jones is saying and hope to not get so caught up in the cat and mouse chase between Llewllen Moss (Josh Brolin) and Chigurh (Javier Bardem). I'll add more to this review if and when I see it a second time.

P.S (added later)
I saw this movie a second time, and it is brilliant. I give my highest recommendation to it, and suggest that people see it twice if they are going to see it at all. The second time everything made sense. My expectations weren't getting in the way of understanding it like they did the first time around.