No Country for Old Men and the Cattle-Gun Myth

In what is a recurring—and fun—tradition, the Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday has updated her ranking of all 17 of the Coen brothers films to date. (A while back, for the 30^th anniversary of their first film, Blood Simple, I went back to rewatch and rank their films one by one.) Hornaday’s list is good, if idiosyncratic: She gives the magnificent Miller’s Crossing and Raising Arizona their due, for instance, and if she rates The Big Lebowski lower than most, well, so do I.

The trouble comes, as it has in the past, with No Country for Old Men, which Hornaday unconscionably rates as the Coens’ second-to-worst film. (Even she recognizes that The Ladykillers has no competition for worst.) Here is Hornaday’s description of the film (recycled from previous lists):

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This article was originally published on The Atlantic.