Images, lines, gestures, moods from the year’s films
By Richard T. Jameson and Kathleen Murphy
• Cellophane wrapper lately crushed in a monster’s fingers uncrimps on the counter as Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) teaches a gas station owner (Gene Jones) to appreciate what a remarkable quarter has entered his life: No Country fir Old Men….
• What pubescent Briony (Saoirse Ronan) saw in Atonement: a beautiful emerald-green butterfly impaled on the library wall…
• The naked look that unmasks spy, actress, assassin in Lust, Caution: “Go, now.”…
• Julie Christie’s puzzled but gracious, “My, you are persistent,” as she greets the stranger—her husband of 40 years—who keeps visiting her in Away from Her…
• Urbanite Michael Clayton (George Clooney) come to an upstate hilltop in early morning, and facing three horses in mysterious communion…
‘Michael Clayton’• A loop of snaky tail rising out of a cavern pool in Beowulf…
• In The Savages, Wendy (Laura Linney) reaching out to touch a golden Lab’s foot while having sex with the dog’s owner…
• In a hardware store, the long, scary look exchanged by investigative reporter (Jake Gyllenhaal) and probable Zodiac killer (John Carroll Lynch): Zodiac…