Since I enjoyed "No Country for Old Men" so much, I rented and enjoyed a couple of films related to that one in the last couple of weeks.

"All the Pretty Horses" is a 2000 movie directed by Billy Bob Thornton and based on Carmac McCarthy's National Book Award winning novel by the same name. It stars Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz. While it isn't as good as the Coen Brothers adaptation -- the story isn't as exciting or multi-dimensional -- "All the Pretty Horses" is a good movie that pulls you in a lot of different emotional ways, creating an experience I enjoyed.

I liked Damon in this movie. But this film was a major flop when it came out and was panned by critics. It seems Hollywood packaged it to be a love story with Damon and Cruz's characters at the center. But that's not what this movie is about. On the surface, it's about pride and guts and survival in the west.

Deeper, it's about the precious and precocious nature of life -- just like "No Country for Old Men." It's worth seeing and shares some other small but memorable things with the Coen Brothers film.

The other movie was "Fargo," also directed by the Coen Brothers. This 1996 film has even more in common with "No County for Old Men."

In it, the creepy Euro-trash wood-chopper killer plays the role of Mr. Death. Frances McDormand's sheriff is the country-philosopher counterpart to Tommy Lee Jones's is "No Country for Old Men."

And there's the same case of money -- it looks like the same exact one -- that's at the center of so much trouble.

Both movies are about life and death and greed. The difference here is Josh Brolin's character in "No Country for Old Men." We have him to root for -- until he suddenly dies. In "Fargo," the sheriff is together. But the rest of these people are nuts. And the north in dead winter is the gorgeously framed counterpart to the west.

This is another movie to revisit if you haven't seen it for a while.

Another avenue to take is to dig into Carmac McCarthy's books. One of his latest, "The Road" won the Pulitzer Prize. But discussion of his books can be saved for another post...