When I saw the trailers for No Country For Old Men, a film adaptation by the Coen brothers of the novel by Cormac McCarthy, I thought it'd be a film about a serial killer set in a present day spaghetti western. Javier Bardem portrays Anton Chigurh, a ruthless serial killer who did not beg, but certainly borrowed, stole, and mutilated everyone in his path. His method is to simply kill on the spot or flip a coin and coerce his victims to choose heads or tails, as if their fate led him that much closer to his treasure; a black bag holding a million dollars in drug money. Corruption is rampant, connecting border patrol and police, Mexican coyotes, and all the ones caught in between. Tommy Lee Jones plays Ed Tom Bell, a seasoned county police chief who is condemned to end his career, haunted by a sociopathic killer who will always be on his trail. Anton Chigurh seems to appear out of nowhere, as if he is a ghost or, as he would like to be considered; a grim reaper who decides when and how his victims die.
We've seen a lot of films at the Walker this month during the film festival honoring women in the director's chair. "Writer of O" is a documentary about Dominique Aury, the French author and publicist who wrote the "scandalous" erotic novel "Story of O". After forty years of secrecy, she revealed that she was the author. She was quoted to have said that after so many years, now an elderly lady of ninety years, the scandal had less of a sting.