Movies for Guys » Tommy Lee Jones

No Country for Old Men

Alex — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 08:41:29 +0000

I hate being pissed off at a movie. I really do. I’d much rather it just simply suck so that I can just dislike it or, at worst, have contempt for it. But in this case the Coen brothers have really managed to piss me off. If I ever wrote a book entitled “How to F&*$ up a Perfectly Great Movie,” all I’d need to do would be to study the Coen’s latest film, No Country for Old Men.

Step 1: Cast some f&*$@#$ AWESOME actors in your movie! Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem prove they have the acting chops to hang with anyone at any time on any script. The performances they all give are fantastic with Bardem’s bordering on staggeringly good (and I love his weapon of choice). Even the second tier supporting characters are great with Woody Harrelson, Barry Corbin, and Stephen Root all turning in very solid efforts.

Step 2: Make sure the script is as well written as any other that came before it. Stuff it full of intense cat-and-mouse sequences that drive up your adrenalin levels by tortuously playing out in their own sweet time. Create dialogue for the characters that both crackles with subdued energy and smolders with relentless deliberation.

Step 3: Using mad skilz as a director, combine the actors and their talents with the aforementioned dialogue and have a camera rolling. Create an engulfing sense of the proverbial ‘irresistable force’ chasing after the ‘immovable object’.

Step 4: Once the audience is completely enthralled, start beating them over the head with not-so-subtle metaphors and allegorical dialogue about life, getting old, and the inevitability of fate.

Step 5: Execute major character changes and action sequences “off-screen” so that the audience is left wondering what the heck they just missed…and why. Make it obvious that the reason for this was so that you can see the events from the point of view of an interesting but otherwise inconsequential character in the story.

Step 6: You’re almost there! You’ve got the audience quite confused and mildly annoyed so now is the time to just abruptly END THE MOVIE! Yes, just end it. Don’t resolve anything. Just make sure to throw in a few more metaphors and allegorical bits at the very end before you cut the camera off.

Step 7 (optional): Go sit in a theater so you can witness the abject astonishment on the faces of the moviegoers as the lights come up. Lean back and enjoy how it rapidly turns to righteous anger as everyone begins to realize how they’ve been shortchanged.

I had these same emotions as the credits rolled (as did pretty much everyone in the theater) and, as I sit here hours later, I’m *still* royally pissed off. This was a full 5-star movie up through the 2nd act. They had near perfection in their freakin’ hands and decided to f&*$ it up with a completely BS ending. I just don’t understand all the praise being heaped upon this movie by my fellow movie reviewers. Either I’m just missing something at a very basic level with this movie…or everyone else has an unnatural love of symbolism and metaphor. Either way, I have to ask to to avoid this one unless you plan on leaving the theater for the last part of the movie.

Men in Black Limited Edition

Billy Bob — Sat, 11 Dec 2004 04:00:00 +0000

DVD Quick Take

This is a DVD that belongs in everyone’s collection. There are several versions of Men In Black available on DVD, but we really like the “Limited Edition” 2 disc set. Any true fan of the movie will enjoy this as it has one of the best collections of extras we’ve seen including lots of great interactive stuff. You can literally spend hours with these DVDs even after the movie is over.

As for the movie itself, surely you’ve seen it. But if not, this is one of Will Smith’s best efforts. He is recruited by the dead-pan Tommy Lee Jones to be one of the Men In Black. This is a secret organization that secretly monitors and polices alien activity on earth. And you’d be surprised just how many aliens there are here!

The DVD faithfully reproduces the big screen experience of this movie. The picture is near perfect, and the soundtrack will really wake up your home theater if you have invested in Dolby Digital.

This 2 disc set gets our highest recommendation. It belongs in everyone’s collection.

Space Cowboys

John — Sat, 11 Dec 2004 04:00:00 +0000

Being that I am a Clint Eastwood fan I pretty much expected that I would like this movie. What I didn’t expect is that Clint had pulled off another near perfect film, one that’s easily worthy of our 5 star rating.

Clint plays Frank Corvin, a retired Air Force pilot and engineer who happens to be the only man alive qualified to repair a malfunctioning Russian satellite which is falling towards Earth. Frank has a condition before he’ll accept the assignment though, and that is to reunite his original team to undertake the mission… and these aren’t exactly spring chickens.

The age of the crew sets up some pretty funny moments in the first half of the movie, funny enough to laugh out loud several times in fact. There’s a warmth among these characters that make them all instantly likable and gets you involved with the story right from the very beginning. The actors obviously had a really good time making this film, and it shows in the final product. The casting really couldn’t have been any better in my opinion.

I’m not gonna talk about the plot any longer as you just need to see it. Yes, the plot is pretty transparent and you won’t have any trouble guessing the ending well before it happens. But so what? It’s very well done, and you really won’t mind the highly formulatic storyline. We’re giving it 5 stars for a reason, now get your butt to the theater and see why for yourself.

Double Jeopardy

John — Sat, 11 Dec 2004 04:00:00 +0000

My expectations going into this movie were that it would be a ho-hum action movie, but at the very least I’d get to see a decent performance by Tommy Lee Jones. What I saw was much more than that, this is actually a pretty darn good movie.

Ashley Judd plays Elizabeth Parsons, the wife of a seemingly nice guy who as revealed in the previews, isn’t so nice after all. He fakes his death and in the process frames her as the murderer. She gets convicted, goes to jail and later finds out that he’s still alive. The resulting change in attitude is actually rather amusing… she turns from a demure, depressed convict into a “workout queen” a la Linda Hamilton in T2.

Skip ahead a few years and Elizabeth is released to a half-way house under the care of Travis Lehman (Tommy Lee Jones.) Travis is a hard nosed parole officer with a scarred past involving a DUI, which costs him his previous career and marriage.

Of course Elizabeth’s one purpose in life at this point is to track down her husband and get her son back. To do this she has to break parole (along with a few other laws) and its at this point that the chase begins. It feels like we’re watching a little bit of U.S. Marshalls, but Ashley is much better looking than Wesley Snipes of course.

I don’t feel I’ve actually given anything away in this review, in fact, I didn’t give away quite as much as the preview does. The movie is pure formula, but it’s a formula that works well and the performances by Ashley and Tommy Lee were both very well done. The film would work just as well on home video as it would on the big screen, thus the 3 star rating instead of a 4.

Men in Black II

Billy Bob — Fri, 10 Dec 2004 04:00:00 +0000

Men in Black II is a complete retread of the original, but in this case that’s not a bad thing. A sequel can go in a lot of directions. They can take the same characters and tell a new story, or they can continue the previous story. The ones we dread are when the studio basically remakes the same movie again with a slightly different premise in a blatent attempt to just cash in on the name of the original movie. On the surface, that is what Men in Black II does, but it worked because they pulled off just enough surprises and good laughs to thoroughly entertain us.

If you’ve seen the first movie, the plot of the second is going to sound very familiar. We find that “J”, Will Smith, has become a great agent. Meanwhile “K”, Tommy Lee Jones, is still retired. However, a nasty alien shows up and Earth is once again in danger. The catch is that only “K” has the information needed to defeat the threat. So “K” is brought out of retirement, “reneuralized”, and we’re back to business as usual with the Men in Black out to save the planet.

From the first movie, we already know the premise that many people on Earth are actually aliens, but the movie still pulls off a few surprises. Many of our favorite aliens have returned for the sequel along with J, K and Zed. But we also get our share of new aliens and the creature effects are still amazing. Perhaps most importantly though, we get some new toys in the form of bigger guns and especially J’s new ride. And we still want a deneuralizer, our relationships with women would last a lot longer!

This would be a very easy movie to criticize. It is not original at all. It is purely an attempt to do big summer box office as a big franchise sequel. But if the original Men In Black left you wanting more, we think you’ll like it. The effects are huge and brilliant, and the laughs and surprises were enough to keep us quite entertained. We laughed out loud quite a few times including a couple of real side-splitters. Also, as usual with big budget SciFi, you’ll wanna see this one on the big screen. So go see it!

The Hunted

John — Fri, 10 Dec 2004 04:00:00 +0000

Professional killing soldier goes a bit nuts, hides out in the woods and is tracked down by the guy who trained him. Sound a little bit too familiar? That’s what I was thinking for the first 20 minutes or so of The Hunted. I just kept waiting for Benicio to put a bandana around his forehead and start drooling.

Fortunately the movie takes a turn rather quickly and lets you know that you won’t be seeing First Blood rehashed for the next hour. Then again, you may start to think you’re seeing The Fugitive all over again in a few parts.

Benicio Del Toro is a military assassin who has lost track of reality just a wee bit and is now keeping himself amused by hunting deer hunters who he doesn’t think are giving a deer a fair chance. Tommy Lee Jones is the guy who trained him, who as a slight twist isn’t actually in the military and has never killed anyone. OK, stop, don’t think anymore or you’ll figure out the ending of this one…

The movie doesn’t take place exclusively in the woods, instead the footchase moves to a city which is much more interesting to watch. However, watching a “tracker” hunt for clues on a city street crowded with people starts to feel a little bit over the top. I just kept waiting for Tommy to put his nose in the air and start sniffing.

The movie started off with 2 stars due to the similarity to previous films, then worked up to 4 stars based on fights and gore. Near the end though there was one particular scene involving a couple of knives that dropped it back down to 3. I just couldn’t deal with that level of stupidity and give out four stars. You’ll know what I’m talking about when you see the movie, which I do actually recommend.

Rules of Engagement

John — Fri, 10 Dec 2004 04:00:00 +0000

Rules of Engagement is a pretty darn good combination of a war movie and a courtroom drama. It’s not perfect, but it’s close enough.

Samuel L Jackson plays Colonel Terry Childers, a marine with a splendid combat record and an apparently excellent leader of men. When ordered into Yemen to possibly evacuate the American Ambassador, the entire mission is summarized as a “baby-sitting” job. Things don’t quite work out that way.

The situation isn’t nearly as peaceful as was reported and when push comes to shove, the Marines start firing. The action scenes are excellent with a real sense of carnage oozing from the screen. My only complaint is that it was hard to understand the dialogue in some parts, but then I suspect it would be hard to hear with bullets flying all around you and people screaming.

The result of this mission is that Colonel Childers is charged with murder among other things and is to stand for trial. Enter Tommy Lee Jones as Colonel Hayes Hodges, former comrade to Childers and a soon to be retiring Marine attorney. It’s his task to find out what really happened in Yemen and do his best to keep his friend out of jail.

While there are a few holes in the script and we don’t get to see everything happen that we would have liked too, the movie was still quite enjoyable and I have no problem recommending it. Obviously, since I gave it 4 stars.