Christine, No Country for Old Men, Dante's Peak, and Lust, Caution

There is something comforting in the morally balanced (in terms of debits and credits) universe of Stephen King -- like in a film adaptation of his work such as Christine. Sure, it's an adolescent sense of righting wrongs, but it's all about karma and comeuppance. It's also not unique. Take another example, chosen almost at random: Dante's Peak. When the boss-geologist, who didn't think there was a reason to worry, dies in the volcanic maelstrom, one is left with a kind of "he deserved to die more than most of the victims".

So it is with great interest that we see the return of films where the glass is always less than half full. Whether it's the "bad guy" getting away, in Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men -- or whether it's the betrayal of a tight circle of friends, to save a man who would turn around and kill his savior, in Ang Lee's Lust, Caution -- there is something creeping back into motion pictures that last left it's mark during the heyday of American cinema of the early 1970s.