I enjoyed both "No Country for Old Men" and "There Will be Blood", but found myself thinking about and discussing the latter movie much more often in the weeks after my wife and I saw it.

Here are a few reasons why I think "There Will Be Blood" is superior:

1. The Themes. "No Country..." is essentially a chase film with a meditation on evil thrown in at the end. Just by virtue of the medium, the book does a much better job underscoring the sheer degree of defeat the Sheriff Bell feels by the end of the narrative. In contrast, "There Will Be Blood" is bulging with interesting themes, about what drives capitalist greed, about connections between fathers and sons, and about the similarities between religion and commerce.

2. The Feeling of Place. Although "No Country..." was technical set in the early 1980s, it could have been set anywhere at anytime. Perhaps this is meant to make it feel epic and universal, but instead it makes it seem placeless. In contrast, "There Will Be Blood" in all its pulsing, pounding rythmic craziness simply screams fin de siecle America. Its a story about the major transition from brutal capitalism to organized society and the cost (both in terms of human life and to our collective morality) that this transition extracted.

3. The Stunning Visuals. The most iconic image from "No Country" is is Javier Bardem's haircut. On the one hand, I guess one could argue that the movie is purposively bland and claustrophobic. But compare that with "There Will Be Blood", which is full of stunning images. The opening scene. The flaming gusher. The watery exorcism. And of course, the final crazy unpredictable, totally engaging bowling alley beat down.

4. The Leads. While Josh Brolin was amazing in bringing the tight lipped Llewelyn to the screen, it essentially a one note performance. In contrast, I thought Daniel Day Lewis was amazing in showing the transformation of Plainview from a humble prospector, to moderately successful oilman, to crazy tycoon. Of course, his performance in the final scene was flamboyant and over the top, but that was the entire point. And there were so many other scenes that I found myself marveling at the subtlety of his performance - the speech about bringing civilization and wealth to New Boston, his humiliation of Eli Sunday, his misanthropic ruminations to his brother.

5. The Score. "No Country" took place in a silent world. In contrast, Johnny Greenwood's avant garde score to "There Will Be Blood" was fantastic, a perfect window into the churning, unhinged mind of Daniel Plainview.

At the end of the day, "No Country" was a solid movie that never took significant risks. "There Will Be Blood" was audacious and unexpected. It dared to be something challenging and unexpected. I think this is whyit stuck with me in a way that few movies do.

Agreed, I also felt that the coda in "Blood" was earned, but the one in "Country" was not. The final 15 minutes of "Blood" provided an actual denoument, a look at the destination of Plainview's trajectory, and a stunning final confrontation. The movie led up to this, and though the final frame was a bit jarring, the coda itself was not. On the other hand, in "Country", the Coens seemed to be using the coda merely to first subvert viewer expectations and then provide a forum for Tommy Lee Jones to ruminate through a couple scenes. The ruminations are supposed to provide exposition for the film's ostensible subject matter, the senslessness and capriciousness of violence, but film is a visual medium; having characters talk about the meaning of the film undermines the medium. This is particularly ironic, since the Coens are great visual filmmakers. It's worth noting that in "Fargo", with its similar themes, there is no narrative exposition, no personification of evil, and no despair.

Also agreed.

I’ve never been more baffled by the critical reception of a film. We see critics labeling it a failed allegory, which strikes me as a specious leap from the merest fact that, yes, one character is an oil tycoon and another a priest—both touching great American themes, sure, but their presence in this or any movie hardly demands a treatise, and it strikes me as rather small-minded to expect one. If as viewers we don’t find what we expect and don’t then stop to ask whether what we’ve found instead has been by design rather than a failure of design, we’re only cheating ourselves. There Will Be Blood is a character study, and to those who think the characters were wooden or cardboard or mere caricatures, I would suggest that a degree of opacity is truer to life than definition. What’s important is how alive a character appears in the midst of his living, not how “complete” he appears in the final analysis. Any character that fails to thwart such analysis has been an exercise in reductiveness, but for moviegoers who don’t like to take films home with them, to leave with questions instead of answers, reductiveness is synonymous with depth. Does Daniel seem “over-the-top” in the second half of the film? When in its course do we leave behind that desperate, primitive figure huddled against the elements in the film’s opening? Ms. Stevens, in a former Movie Club, complained about the film’s narrative continuity, which I would argue is not only flawless, but perfectly paced with its continuity of character. The leap from 1911 to 1927 is essential. With the pipeline complete and Daniel's fortune assured, cue the mansion and The End. Daniel is a man who, when offered the buyout for his holdings, asks: "what would I do?"; whom we see as a fledgling oilman toiling with his workers in the air-poisoned mire and braving the same dangers we watch end the lives of others; and who, true to his word in his speech to the settlers of the land on which he would drill, was not content to collect on his production in wealth and leisure from afar, but insisted on overseeing his operation in person while living humbly and simply out of a shack. Daniel’s wealth hasn’t bought him any delicacy of manner or blunted what drives him. How anyone can think that this man, who’s already shown his capacity for murder and the harboring of powerful resentments, waking drunk and still enraged by his “son’s” betrayal, should act any differently towards Ely in that glorious bowling alley finale just hasn’t been paying attention.

To me Blood was a brilliant failure. Great acting, great cinematography, but after the first 30 minutes the characters went nowhere. After the first half hour, there was nothing more interesting in watching these character's interact than would be in watching an internal combustion engine gradually weld itself useless for lack of lubricant.

The criticisms of capitalistic values and self-interested evangelical self-promotion might justify the movie as propaganda, but they don't make the movie art. The acting, undoubtedly was artful, but invested in a lost cause.

Except as a hopeful call for capitalist to exterminate fundamentalists with bowling pins, the movie was pretty empty---even if beautifully done.