Over the past 30-plus years, Joel and Ethan Coen have become one of the most prominent
filmmaking duos in the history of cinema.
While it's all but impossible to find a genuine black mark among their work, Coen Bros. movies
are not all created equal.
While the Coen brothers' remake of the 1955 Brit-crime flick is often gorgeous to look
at, nothing else really works in The Ladykillers.
The comedy falls flat.
The moral quandaries are simplistic at best and pandering at worst.
Tom Hanks' turn as a would-be Southern gentleman is particularly distracting.
"Now I wanna know what's going on."
"Oh indeed, indeed, the thirst for knowledge is a very commendable thing."
There's not much else to say about The Ladykillers except that it's a rare, genuine misfire for
the talented duo.
For those who don't recall this occasionally hilarious crime picture, Intolerable Cruelty
stars George Clooney as a divorce lawyer and Catherine Zeta-Jones as a gold-digger about
to dupe a billionaire oil baron.
Sadly, despite palpable chemistry between Clooney and Zeta-Jones, the film misses the
mark.
Still, Intolerable Cruelty does feature one of George Clooney's all-time greatest line
readings
"You fascinate me."
Ultimately,the film is bogged down by labored plotting, thinly-drawn side characters, and
a third act that twists one too many times for the film to rank among the Coens' best.
Set on the backlots of a film studio in the 1950s, Hail, Caesar! saw the Coens making
a Hollywood fable about the studio system of old.
Told through the eyes of a "studio fixer," the movie dabbles in just about every film
genre you can imagine from crime to farce and back again.
Unfortunately, there's just a bit too much going on for any one storyline to resonate.
That ultimately leaves Hail, Caesar! one of the brothers' weaker works, although that
still makes it better than most movies that get released.
"Would that…
Would that it twere…"
"Would that it twere so simple."
"Would that it twere…
Would that it TWERE so simple."
Burn After Reading features a screenplay that somehow ranks among both the darkest and funniest
the Coens have ever written, not to mention stellar performances from George Clooney,
Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, and a marvelously over-the-top Brad Pitt.
"The guy?"
"The guy!
The secret guy!"
"So is he high up?"
"Uh, I dunno if he's high up.
Probably."
To be honest, if Burn After Reading had been released anywhere else in the Coens' filmography,
it would likely rank higher on this list.
Unfortunately, the film was released a year after No Country for Old Men, and while Burn
is occasionally brilliant, it still comes across a bit shallow in the shadow of such
lofty fare.
With its hard-to-love characters, its dialogue that verges on annoying, its absurdist plot,
and a twist of the fantastical that never quite feels natural, The Hudsucker Proxy is
undoubtedly one of the most maligned and forgotten films in the brothers' filmography.
That's a shame, because a closer look reveals well-drawn characters, a giddily ridiculous
plot, and clever, fast-paced dialogue.
"Hiya chief, just the person I wanted to apologize to."
"That's seven minutes."
"Yeah, I was all wet about your idea, man.
Well, thanks for being so generous."
In short, The Hudsucker Proxy might be the most misunderstood and underrated film the
Coens have made to date.
It took some serious confidence to tackle a remake of True Grit, a film held in high
esteem by film fans and novices alike.
The Coens wisely didn't try to reinvent the wheel, allowing the Western narrative to unfold
in pretty much the same fashion as the original.
Of course, they also dressed the story up with their own narrative and stylistic flourishes,
and pulled brilliant performances from Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and then-newcomer Hailee
Steinfeld.
Altogether, they just didn't make a great remake of a classic film, they made one of
the best remakes of all time.
If The Hudsucker Proxy is the most misunderstood film in the Coens' body of work, it's only
because The Man Who Wasn't There is a film all but beyond rational comprehension.
Billy Bob Thornton plays a dispirited, sub-verbose barber who thinks his ship has come in when
a stranger offers a chance to invest in a new fad called "dry cleaning."
"Me, I don't talk much.
I just cut the hair."
From that unusual setup, the brothers spin one of the weirdest stories they've ever concocted,
and deliver a wholly original neo-noir thriller fit for the modern age.
It's an utterly unique film, even for the idiosyncratic filmmakers.
If their staggering body of work has taught us anything, it's that the Coen Brothers have
no shortage of original stories to tell.
For proof, look no further than The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a sprawling, Western anthology
film composed of six disparate tales of the west.
Some are funny, others dramatic, and a couple are downright heartbreaking.
In true Coen fashion, those elements are often at play within the same story, making The
Ballad of Buster Scruggs a giddy and galvanizing cinematic experience, even if it isn't quite
coherent enough to rank among their very best.
"We all love about ourselves.
So long as the people in the stories are us but not us.
Not us in the end especially."
Set in a bustling, prohibition-era metropolis, Miller's Crossing follows the chief advisor
of a mob kingpin as they try to navigate the shifting tides of a particularly nasty turf
war.
Of those tides, we'll say that they never lead quite where you'd expect, that the stakes
are high, and that saying any more would spoil the fun of watching the film.
What we can say is that of the Coens produced writing credits, Miller's Crossing undeniably
stands as some of their finest work.
It's a harrowing mistaken identity crime thriller about an average dude trying to replace his
rug.
It's a campy comedy classic about a fish out of water who gets in way over his head in
the seedy underground of the San Fernando Valley.
It's a character study about an aging stoner whose ambition in life is to smoke, drink
White Russians, and occasionally hit the bowling alley for league play.
It's also one of the greatest cult films ever made and one of the most quotable scripts
ever produced.
Look, there's really not much we can say about The Big Lebowski that hasn't been said already.
You either abide The Big Lebowski as the masterfully envisioned madcap stoner epic masterpiece
that it is or, well, you're just wrong.
"Yeah, well, y'know, that's just like… your opinion, man."
Like crime and criminals, religion has often found its way into the Coens' films.
In their caustic farce A Serious Man, the brothers deliver a complicated religious parable
about a Jewish physics professor searching for meaning as his life falls apart around
him.
Watching a man's entire life crumble hardly sounds like the formula for great comedy.
But even in the film's heaviest moments, the Coens add just enough levity to keep it from
becoming a blunt trauma sort of drama.
If you grew up in the Jewish faith, the film, with its winking in-jokes and scores of Judaic
details, will hit extremely close to home.
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Is a depression-era tale about penniless escaped convicts perilously traversing the American
South in search of a fabled treasure.
The Coens claim Homer's epic poem The Odyssey as the film's source material, though they
also claim to have never read the poem itself.
That's okay, because the batty, beautiful, alterna-musical they crafted is a timeless,
hilarious southern fried epic in its own right.
It finally brought the Coens' off-kilter sensibilities to the mainstream, and its bluegrassy soundtrack
became a legit cultural phenomenon.
A tragic tale of a kidnapping scheme gone unimaginably wrong against the icy backdrops
of North Dakota and Minnesota, Fargo features everything you could possibly want from a
Coen brothers film.
Don't argue with us.
"I, I'm not eh, I'm not arguing here!
I'm cooperating.
And there's…
We're doing all we can."
While Fargo is one of the Coens' more serious cinematic ventures, it still features their
signature dark humor, vibrant language, colorful characters, and of course, brutal outbursts
of violence.
It all comes together to make Fargo one of the most uniquely Coenesque movies ever made.
Set against the barren, dusty vistas of a desolate desert town, Raising Arizona tells
the story of a couple who, in the face of fertility troubles, decide to kidnap a baby.
Raising Arizona only gets crazier as that improbable narrative unfolds… which maybe
raises a few questions.
Is Raising Arizona a comedy of errors about lovable kidnappers?
Yes.
Is it a Reagan-era parable about trickle-down economics and prison reform gone haywire?
Seems like it.
Is Raising Arizona a radically idealistic farce that heralded the arrival of a bold
new cinematic vision?
One hundred percent.
It's crazy in all the best ways, and if you don't believe that, you simply cannot call
yourself a Coen Bros. fan.
As the story goes, while the brothers were writing Miller's Crossing, they hit a creative
wall so fierce they put the project on hold.
In hopes of kickstarting their creative juices, they conceptualized a new film centered around
a character created specifically for John Turturro.
From the creative void of writer's block, Barton Fink, a wildly original, scathingly
satirical, pseudo-mystical masterpiece was born.
A masterpiece about, of all things, a writer facing a devastating creative block, not to
mention a full-fledged metaphysical crisis of identity that may or may not directly involve
the devil.
Simply put, Barton Fink is a haunting look at the life of the creative mind the likes
of which moviegoers had never seen before and possibly even since.
Llewyn Davis is manipulative and self-centered, but he's also an intensely likable guy who
usually tries to do the right thing.
That messy mixture is what makes Inside Llewyn Davis such a fascinating experiment in character.
"I have the money, don't worry."
"With you I worry."
"Well you shouldn't."
"Yes I should.
God knows you never do."
It helps that the character is played with equal parts charm, swagger, and crippling
insecurity by Oscar Isaac in a star-making turn.
Watching Isaac portray such an identifiable, beautifully flawed character is enough to
make Inside Llewyn Davis worth a look.
That the music, the settings, and the supporting characters are crafted with equal skill and
care, and that's what makes Inside Llewyn Davis one of the Coens' most memorable works
to date.
While it's hard to believe that the Coens made their feature debut over 30 years ago,
it's harder still to believe just how much they got right with that debut film.
Make no mistake, Blood Simple is still every bit the biting, brutal, exactingly scripted,
and exquisitely photographed noir-soaked thriller it was upon its release.
Its menacing, white-knuckle finale will leave your palms sweaty as it unfolds before your
eyes.
Blood Simple is one of the most staggeringly assured debut films ever produced, and it
remains one of the Coen Brothers' best.
Period.
Written by legendary scribe Cormac McCarthy and possessed of stark Western themes and
bracing wit, No Country for Old Men seemed tailor made for The Coens' peculiar sensibilities.
Sensibilities aside, the Coens took the bones of McCarthy's novel and ran with them, delivering
a high-minded art film dressed up as one of the greatest crime/chase thrillers cinema
has ever seen.
Along the way, they pulled startlingly sparse performances from Tommy Lee Jones and Josh
Brolin, and an iconically villainous turn from Javier Bardem.
In short, No Country stands as the crowning achievement of Joel and Ethan Coen's career
in film.
"Is something wrong?"
"With what?"
"With anything?"
"Is that what you're asking me?
Is there something wrong with anything?"
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