Oscar Nominations Hold Few Surprises, Except...

...for my own surprise at how few of the nominees I've seen this year. Usually I've seen about 75% of the Best Picture nominees by the time they're announced, but this year I've only watched "No Country for Old Men." (See the entire list of nominations at Oscars.org)
      Because I love to spout off indignantly about the Oscars and because I feel that there should be at least some semblance of an informed opinion underlying my rants, I plan to see the other major nominees before the award show (if there is one!) and then write a few of my thoughts about them here.
      "No Country for Old Men" is a good film, and like much of the Coen brothers' work, if you like this sort of thing then this is exactly the sort of thing that you'll like. As in previous Coen films, the locations do a lot of the heavy thematic lifting (like the Pine Barrens of "Miller's Crossing" or the empty white waste of "Fargo"); in this case the desolate, storm-edged emptiness of West Texas echoes the growing mood of isolation and alienation felt by Tommy Lee Jones's aging sheriff. And once again, an amoral anti-hero drives the action by getting in over his head ("Miller's Crossing" and "Fargo" again, as well as "Blood Simple" and "The Man Who Wasn't There"); in this case Josh Brolin decides to keep the money he finds at a drug deal gone sour, invoking a relentless golem of retribution, played by Javier Bardem.
      If it sounds like I'm accusing the Coens of going too often to the same well, I'm not. Well, not really. If you're good at something, why not keep doing it? Even if you believe their films lack substance (which I don't), the Coens are unquestionably skilled technicians, and it's always a pleasure to watch them strut their stuff. After all, if I watch the Harlem Globetrotters, I know there's not really a basketball game at stake, but it's hard not to enjoy the obvious pleasure they take in showing off their outrageous basketball skills. If that makes the Coen brothers the Harlem Globetrotters of cinema...well, there are worse things to be. Like the Washington Generals of cinema.
      To those who would complain that "No Country" offers no moral, that, as Homer once said (the cartoon character, not the poet), "it's just a bunch of stuff that happened," I would point to Tommy Lee Jones. Like a laconic, southern-accented Greek chorus, he pops up repeatedly to tie the film together, and his final speech offers a moving portrait of a man for whom the world, grown alien in its violence and nihilism, no longer holds a recognizable place.
      Which brings us back to the Oscars. Of the three main performances in "No Country for Old Men," I would rank Tommy Lee Jones's as best, then Brolin's and, finally, Bardem's. Which makes Bardem's nomination a bit of a puzzler to me. It's not that he wasn't good as Chigurh, but the now-familiar character of the quasi-philosophical psycopathic killer doesn't offer much room for an actor to stretch in. But he was pretty damn scary; maybe that's enough.
      Check back soon for Oscar updates.