it takes an ocean not to break

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada: Surreal, atmospheric, gruesome, classical. Tommy Lee Jones is dignified, as usual, and the whole film has the raw, dirty, dust-strewn quality of a Peckinpah western. Jones (also directing) reaches a little far in his thematic aspirations, giving the movie an occasionally unfocused quality, but in its best moments, it’s moving, funny, horrifying, and very nearly amazing. A sort of modern morality tale. Very worth seeing, provided you’ve got an eye for the borderlands and a stomach for the macabre.