Point/Counterpoint

MG & I saw "No Country for Old Men" last night. I won't say I liked it, because I'll never willingly watch it again. But I respect the craft and skill on display immensely. And I remain, as ever, fascinated by the Coens and excited to see what they do next.

MG's takeaway was, ahem, a little less sanguine. By way of illustration, at one point, we agreed that the last time I was as agitated by a film as he was by NCFOM, was the night I came home from a Hitchcock double feature of "I Confess" and "The Wrong Man," in that order.

As I said then, if Alfred Hitchcock were still alive and had been standing in the foyer of the crit studies screening room when I emerged, a certain bald English dude would have got a knee to the junk. At minimum.

There's no salt in the wound like the salt of a movie you don't respect being rubbed in the wound of sitting through the movie in hopes it would somehow redeem itself before the credits.

I will say, and God help me if Prof. Drew Casper, holder of the Alfred and Alma Hitchcock Chair for Filmic Studies hears me say this, that having seen the dogs of Hitchcock's career, the Coen brothers are slowly, bit by bit, evolving into better filmmakers than Hitch was in his time.

Then again, I also believe Paul Simon's solo career was vastly better than that of Paul McCartney. So what do I know?