Best Coen Brothers Movie - 2017

Arguably, their run of films since that poll > their run of films prior to that poll

It's either Fargo, No Country or A Serious Man.

Lebowski backlash in full effect I'd imagine

I'd have it, NCOFM, Fargo, Miller's Crossing and A Serious Man as my top 5. Gonna take awhile to figure out #1 though

My two favourites are Miller’s Crossing and A Serious Man. Only watched the former recently and fell in love with it but I think A Serious Man is the better film. For all the talk of its cruelty the portrayal of Larry’s questioning at its heart is just so affectionate and human that sometimes I think it might be their least cynical film.

Intolerable Cruelty is underrated and is their best comedy after Lebowski and Arizona.

NCFOM is the movie of the 00's but Miller's Crossing is alltime

my least favourite of these is fargo which even i find a bizarre challop but what can you do

ha, not quite otm imo but i see where you're coming from

i rescreened true grit again recently and i really like it a lot - seems like kind of a flipside or companion piece to no country to me

No Country for Old Men (2007)
Burn After Reading (2008)
A Serious Man (2009)
True Grit (2010)
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

terrific sequence

i still hate Barton Fink passionately

sticking w/ Raising Arizona as #1, A Serious Man leads in this century

yeah, when burn after reading is your low point in that run you know you're doing good work xp

(ppl who think BF is some kind of scorching Hollywood satire are advised to check out The Big Knife and The Day of the Locust)

i really need to watch burn after reading again, feels like it'd have a difference resonance in the wake of president brainstem and his gang of incompetents

I know this happens all the time, but if you asked me which of their films were the big hit, I'd have gone a way down the list before I'd have picked True Grit - and 50% more than the second biggest?

xp and the rise of conspiracy theories based around all-knowing all-competent government agencies.

I think only HC is the only film in the last decade that didn't at least make a small profit. They've done well.

need to rewatch A Serious Man because I hated it at the time but don't even really remember why. Hail Caesar sucked too but pretty much everything else is worthy of its rep. I voted Lebowski because fuck a backlash.

i dont see why, it's about the Permanent State xxxp

Budget 22 million, gross 66 million - even by Holywood standards, that must be a small profit?

for HC? Yeah, that's good if the promotional costs were already deducted.

Was about to say, might change in the years to come but I think for the budgets they generally work with their names alone are enough to carry a film.

i dont see why, it's about the Permanent State xxxp

well, the permanent state isn't also staffed by immortals afaict - like any other institution it is subject to change from without and within and recent high-profile washington fuckups have made me wonder whether the nuances of burn after reading will read differently 10 years after it was made, as movies often tend to do

a serious man or no country

I am deeply ashamed to admit that I still haven't seen a thing they've done since The Man Who Wasn't There. But I have seen The Naked Man, so that's another thing that I should've been ashamed to admit.

I had no idea so many people agreed with me about A Serious Man.

we appreciate the new freedoms

raising arizona vs no country for me

voting no country

To an extent my love of A Serous Man is corny in that I went to see it expecting something good, sure, particularly after the excellent trailer, but it was meeting a friend and hey what shall we do, yeah, there's a new Coen Brothers film on we could see it if you want to, and then - that! We both had the feeling afterwards like you'd stumbled onto something cultish that you'd get to tell people about, which I know is ridiculous, but it's one of the reasons why I love it.

if you work for the permanent state, Burn After Reading was fucking classic from the day the trailer came out

i'm in a permanent state... OF ENJOYING THE WORK OF THE COEN BROTHERS!

hello is this thing on

Millers Crossing always and forever.

Desperately curious about the difference it would make if it was "vote for your 5 favourite" vs "you can only pick one"

I mean always and forever, in all polls, but in particular this one.

Hard to choose, but for me it has to be Fargo. Not uncoincidentally, it was also the first Coen brothers film I ever saw. Lebowski may have been killed by overexposure and people making it a "thing" but it's still one of my favourites.

Ignoring the pre-Ladykillers titles and going with Llewyn this time (Goodman's only Coens role where he doesn't deliver a beatdown)

Went with MC in the previous poll btw

I liked Ladykillers

No Country for Old Men (2007)
Burn After Reading (2008)
A Serious Man (2009)
True Grit (2010)
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

terrific sequence

so v otm. i've still never seen O Brother, Ladykillers or Caesar. i don't feel like i'm missing a whole lot?

2007-2010 is such a good run, and at such a fast clip

Shocked to realize how little of their work I've actually seen - only eight films - given that I've at least enjoyed every one of those - though O Brother came the closest to me feeling like I was watching charming but not-well-thought-through schtick on autopilot. Since I've already been badgered a million times for my negligence in not having seen Raising Arizona and Miller's Crossing, I'm most interested in the post-2000 results here. Have seen True Grit, No Country, and Caesar but the rest all got mushed together in my brain and I have no idea which are supposed to be the good ones.

o brother is of course a masterpiece

yeah c'mon

ehhhh i dunno, there are some great scenes and bits and moments, but it really didn't hang together for me. the late introduction of clooney's motivation re: his wife and family felt like a misstep - either weave that into the plot, or plant your flag firmly on it being an episodic, picaresque ramble where nothing has to add up to a real conclusion. i also felt like the racial politics were clumsily-handled, or at the least that they seemed a little too at-ease deploying the KKK as alternately a legit source of terror and a bunch of comic buffoons.

yeah, it's really uneven, as is the whole '90s for me

the best sorta-straightup comedy they made post-Arizona is Intolerable Cruelty.

(i don't consider ASM to be that, quite)

No Country, with Fargo a close second.
The only Coen Brothers films I didn't care for altogether were The Hudsucker Proxy and The Man Who Wasn’t There. Never saw The Ladykillers.

pretty much hate all the Clooney movies at this point

Voted for O Brother. I think all their films I've seen are uneven, but O Brother has the usual amount of great scenes + that amazing digital cinematography that still seemed really fresh in 2000, but felt tired and dull in Llewyn Davis for instance.

only seen three of those

no country was...not good

first half of inside llewyn davis was good, but i liked it more for personal reasons. as a whole, compared to other movies, i don't think it would do well

true grit was really good (haven't seen the original though)

Well that's one vote for True Grit then.

I'm pretty sure I voted Miller's Crossing in the previous poll. The last six are a great run, but I'll stick with my original vote.

i'm not voting because i haven't seen enough of their movies

i usually watch a movie more than once if i really like it

weirdly enough i never got around to watching true grit a second time

alfred otm, that's an incredible run, so focused and furious and funny all the way through, same themes of duty and desire and pointlessness chipped away from so many different directions (i still haven't seen the folk music one)

something in Burn After Reading pops into my head most weeks, easy vote, although tt keeps telling me ILD is the best one (not seen)

and I don't even like every one of those movies. I used to wince when friends in the '90s insisted on their genius, but lately they've relaxed (or I've learned to enjoy hem): in the last decade these films have been accomplished distallation of their obsessions.

i think this is miller's xing tho. the best example of their best and curiously under-commented-upon quality, intense focus on language and the frustrations of communicating.

BAR is the best movie about america at war under bush

so v otm. i've still never seen O Brother, Ladykillers or Caesar. i don't feel like i'm missing a whole lot?

O Brother has fans (not me) but Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty are the only ones with no redeeming qualities. Hail Caesar is not their best, but it's fun and has a few showstoppers; tonally it's Intolerable Cruelty done right (ie. deliberately frothy and star-powered). Also the jokes are better.

Voted Miller's Crossing - I don't think it puts a foot wrong, whereas Serious Man looses some oomph in the last half hour (although not the last five minutes). Watched Fargo recently and it felt duller and crueller than I remember.

Burn After Reading has the amazing cock bicycle.

i though intolerable cruelty was great

Should rewatch, I've seen it defended on here a few times!

Saw it on a date, no laughs, felt awkward.

man never go on a movie date

Rex Rexroth: Have you sat before her before?
Miles Massey: No. No, the judge sits first. Then we sit.
Rex Rexroth: Well, have you sat after her before?
Wrigley: Sat after her before? You mean, have we argued before her before?
Miles Massey: The judge sits in judgment. The counsel argues before the judge.
Rex Rexroth: So, have you argued before her before?
Wrigley: Before her before, or before she sat before?
Rex Rexroth: Before her before. I said, before her before.
Wrigley: No, you said before she sat before.
Rex Rexroth: I did at first, but...
Miles Massey: Look, don't argue.
Rex Rexroth: I'm not. I'm...
Wrigley: No, you don't argue. We argue.
Miles Massey: Counsel argues.
Wrigley: You appear.
Miles Massey: The judge sits.
Wrigley: Then you sit.
Miles Massey: Or you stand in contempt.
Wrigley: And then we argue.
Miles Massey: The counsel argues.
Rex Rexroth: Which you've done before.
Miles Massey: Which we've done before.
Rex Rexroth: Ah.
Wrigley: But not before her.

they produced and marketed this as a straightahead romcom. you have to admire to the troll.

otm, their best Sturges by far.

yeah Fargo was worth the watch but always felt strangely overrated. looking back I don't believe i saw IC, either. that whole post-Lebowski, pre-No Country is blind spot for me

certainly willing to give O Brother a shot. i think at the time i might have just put off by everybody and their great aunt obsessing over it and the soundtrack.

Hail Caesar worth it just for the gloss and color, and the Fiennes/Ehrenreich scene imho. Plenty of it doesn't land, but as a Kentucky Fried Movie style assemblage of strung-together sketches, it's got a decent hit/miss ratio.

https://s30.postimg.org/61cjao7v5/aseriousman298.jpg

It's a shame Stuhlbarg's first lead role will be the best he ever gets

lol @ that still

srs man, so good

its the equal of fargo + lebowski imo, difficult to choose among those 3

I'm torn between A Serious Man, Lebowski, Miller's Crossing and Inside Llewyn Davis

Only one of those films has Sy Ableman in it.

I missed A SERIOUS MAN when it came out, but I've seen lots of ppl cite that as the best of their 21st century work, if not their best ever. Still need to see it. Voted BLOOD SIMPLE in its place. Sweet, simple, small movie with so many of their tics already on display.

serious man and lebowski

I think the coens hit their peaks when they get to tell shaggy dog stories

Saw it on a date, no laughs, felt awkward.

yeah, women tend not to like ruthless comedy

(oh boy, now i'm in fer it)

Almost impossible to choose, good 6 or 7 which I could vote for. I hope there's some love for Hudsucker Proxy if only for the jobs board scene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bfw1WfpYzJ4

no country is still my choice

wtf morbs?

I love Hudsucker Proxy but don't think it's their best

intolerable cruelty and o brother are both sturges efforts imo

o brother is classic simply as a lyrical effort, in the same way that tennyson doesnt need to mean anything greater than the sounds of the words fitting together the way they do

intolerable cruelty is tight, neat, spot on

immediately voted serious man

like everyone is saying their run from 2008 is just terrific. i don't like no country very much tho, despite brolin and jones both being v good. feels like a leaden fargo retread with a much less interesting approach to evil. i blame this on the reliably hokey mccarthy.

hail caesar is not so much underrated as underinterpreted -- it's not just a grab-bag. and i love the hollywood diptych it forms w barton fink. a miserable prewar leftist --> a fulfilled postwar authoritarian. at capital pictures of course. feel like the structuring absence in the middle of this trilogy is a movie about reagan with the first motion picture unit.

well yeah, I think the movie that literally takes its title from Sturges might be in some way indebted to him

Clooney is no Joel McCrea though

oh caesar totally has themes and stuff, i just think as a viewing experience it lives and dies on a string of incidents and situations that brolin encounters, and some of those are brilliant and others are just kinda there or feel like "aha, and here's (actor), ladies and gentlemen!" just imo.

xp ah here now

DLH was looking at me.

Rex Rexroth: Have you sat before her before?

for some reason the witness in this scene ("mais, bien sur!" "no maybes") is the baron kurtz from the third man. they even have him say "a man must live" to make it definite. it's v random.

Definitely harder than last time. What a body of work.

Would it be weird to vote for The Man Who Wasn't There?

yes, but I think it's underrated

DLH was looking at me.

― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, May 15, 2017 9:01 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so many opportunities right? so much meta without having to force it. the warehouse-sized scale model of japan. reagan driving around in full uniform, saluting stagehands, getting flipped off. the liberation of auschwitz.

You could make the case for many of these, but I think Fargo is as close to a perfect film as they'll ever make, for reasons Ebert outlined in his No Country review:

Many of the scenes in "No Country for Old Men" are so flawlessly constructed that you want them to simply continue, and yet they create an emotional suction drawing you to the next scene. Another movie that made me feel that way was "Fargo." To make one such film is a miracle. Here is another.

I really love The Man Who Wasn't There, despite thinking it goes off the rails somewhere near the end. I couldn't make an argument for it being their best.

that might be my least favorite? at least, it made no emotional mark on me at all. i saw it in the theater and never revisited.

it's terrible

insert Film That Wasn't There joek

I can't watch FARGO again. I disliked it then.

it's overrated imo. to me the best thing about it is Margie and her husband's blandly reassuring domesticity

the closing line w/the shot of what is essentially a blank canvas (ie flat, snow white landscape) says it all

had to check this wasnt simpson thread

Starting with NCFOM, which I like a less than the other films they've made in the last ten years, their filmmaking has become more accommodating to the quirks of people instead of resisting them or pinning them against a wall; there are bits in BAR and TG that remind me of the Demme of Melvin and Howard.

"The Big Lebowski" because this is a comforting movie in the worst of times

the big lebowski is so long. every time i've seen it and it gets to the dream sequence i think to myself "i can't believe theres another half hour/forty five minutes left")

I don't know if I'm quite there yet, but I can see True Grit eventually being my fave Coens film.

not that far but i think its a complete effort in a way a lot of their stuff isnt

I haven't seen enough of their 2000s work (sounds like I need to watch Serious Man, at the least), but Lebowski is still by far the one I'm most likely to watch again. Though seeing it at my local theater a few years ago with the audience quoting every line was too much to take. I get why people say it's overrated

I think the coens hit their peaks when they get to tell shaggy dog stories

agree with this. the unassuming lead getting confused as they stumble through trying to make sense of it all is a winning formula for them. didn't get much out of no country, might need to rewatch, but I often find TLJ offputtingly hokey

when i first saw Lebowsk, after my friends having hyped it to me for years, I was like, THAT's what you've been raving about and quoting for years??

same thing happened to me

Yah

when big lebowski came out it was widely regarded as a pretty minor effort iirc, especially in the wake of Fargo. i saw it years later and i guess it wasn't but but...there's a reason it has a lotta crossover w/Boondock Saints stans imo.

O Brother is delightful, the frothiness of their farcical confections with the sheer comfortable rewatchability of Lebowski

A Serious Man made no impact on me whatsoever - both it and The Man Who Wasn't There I have never felt any urge to rewatch. But ASM is also the only one since Fink that I didn't see in the cinema (bar Ladykillers, which I will never watch).

Bad Santa should really be on the list too - it feels far more a piece of their work than, say, Crimewave.

O Brother is really outstanding, probably a bit overshadowed on its release by its soundtrack and the sense at the time that the Coens had kinda peaked, but it's their best movie between miller's crossing and NCFOM imo.

no country gets my vote here btw.

It's kinda nice to have the luxury of so many strong contenders for their best. I voted for A Serious Man, but I'd put a bunch of their films up there as excellent ones: Miller's Crossing, Big Lebowski, O Brother, No Country, and True Grit belong right up there at the top. And the also-rans I rate below that aren't exactly chopped liver either.

I ranked A Serious Man because for me it was like a magic trick, pulling a great movie out of thin air, as unexpected as a live rabbit pulled from a hat. It was crushingly funny and slyly true to life at the same time. Even better, the characters were foolish without ever being imbecilic, allowing for a kind of tenderness and deep understanding of the characters that's rare in a Coens' comedy. Just great stuff from start to finish. But you should have some familiarity with American jews to really appreciate everything they put in it.

alright guys i'm sold gonna finally watch O Brother this week

Do we give a shit about the Odyssey adaptation aspect of O Brother? It adds a level of enjoyment for me.
Aimless OTM above, also iatee with the "shaggy dog" comment. I always feel the Coens most strongly when the quotidian is foregrounded in a story ostensibly about bigger things - Margie and Norm bantering while a series of murders is unleashed, or the continual sidetracking of their protagonists by the random real stuff of life (i.e. the entirety of Lebowski).

It would be interesting to know how the Coens rank their films from favorite to least favorite.

a serious man may well be one of my favorite films ever

do you drink wine? because this is... an incredible bottle. this is not mogen david. this is-- a wine, larry. a bordeaux. open it--let it breathe--ten minutes. letting it breathe. so important. i insist! no reason for discomfort. i'll be uncomfortable if you don't take it. these are signs and tokens, larry.

I think I'll plump for A Serious Man too, perfect right to the final frame. I remember watching it and thinking "oh shit how cool would it be if they just cut here" AND THEY DID. No spoilers for the yet-to-enjoy of course.

i can't think of many other films that feel both warm and humane and completely bleak and shattering in quite the same way that one is

both alive and dead

intense focus on language and the frustrations of communicating

i am the walrus??

a serious man may well be one of my favorite films ever

there's a reason it has a lotta crossover w/Boondock Saints stans imo

What do you mean by this mean exactly? There's no comparison between the two films in terms of the quality of the writing, directing and performances. I understand Lebowski isn't everyone's cup of tea (and you're right that it was regarded as a disappointment at the time) but saying stuff like this veers a little too close to "the wrong kind of people like it" for me

Also underwhelmed when i first saw Lebowski, definitely suffers from being considered a classic in popular culture. But it's a film that shines best when you're bored and you stumble across it on tv, which is how it finally hit me emotionally. Ross is otm about how comforting it is, it's a movie you soak in like a warm bath.

A Serious Man really didn't make a mark on me at all, I should probably rewatch it.

That said, maybe I'm an outlier. I liked Ladykillers, True Grit and Hail Caesar. Damn it, I loved Intolerable Cruelty. And the answer to the poll is probably Burn After Reading.

when big lebowski came out it was widely regarded as a pretty minor effort iirc, especially in the wake of Fargo. i saw it years later and i guess it wasn't but but...there's a reason it has a lotta crossover w/Boondock Saints stans imo.

this is perhaps the most egregiously wrongheaded challop ever posted on ilx

boondock saints is the gaudy irish theme pub of post-tarantino cinema

gaudy Irish theme pub in Magaluf

with fewer sympathetic characters

id love to disagree but yep yep yep

A Serious Man really didn't make a mark on me at all, I should probably rewatch it.

Do non-Jews like this movie too? It felt very culturally specific to my experience (suburban reform/lite-orthodox Jewishness) in a way that nothing else I've seen (or read) has, except maybe "White Teeth".

(Which is to say, I think it's one of the rare movies you probably get more out of, if you're Jewish. Although my parents - both Coen fans - hated it.)

I'm a non-jew and I agree with

a serious man may well be one of my favorite films ever

One of the v few movies my dad (an atheist) and I agree on

My slightly challopsy curent ranking would probably be, from fave to least fave (leaving out the ones I've not seen, or not rewatched in an eon, which rules out Raising Arizona):

A Serious Man (2009)
No Country for Old Men (2007)
Burn After Reading (2008)
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Miller’s Crossing (1990)
Barton Fink (1991)
Fargo (1996)
The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
Hail, Caesar! (2016)
Blood Simple (1984)
The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)
The Big Lebowski (1998)
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
Intolerable Cruelty (2003)

yes but read inascending or descending?

xpost

Fair enough! Some of the scenes are so specific - the barmitzvah, losing your place in the Talmud, all that stuff - I really got a kick out of seeing them onscreen for the first time.

serious man might be maxed out if youre jewish but as a lapsed irish catholic it still strikes powerfully imo

amen to that

(works on lapsed french-cdn catholics too)

Can definitely imagine getting even more out of it if I was jewish but people of all faiths can appreciate the greatness of Larry angrily shouting "Santana Abraxas".

I stand by my challops. BL is a better movie than BS by far, I mean the directing and acting alone obv, but what it has in common is it's a movie that strains way too hard all over the place and has little payoff and for a quotable movie the quotes are vv weak.

I wasn't really bored by it and I wasn't offended by it (two more pluses in its favor vs BS) but the above ranking placing it third from the bottom seems about right. It's the coens giving into their worst instincts. Imo.

t/s: a charming shaggy dog story about a stoner dragged into a crime plot he barely understands vs a crass, dumb-as-a-rock pantomime of american-oirishness filled with meaningness violence and covered in a nanometre-thick veneer of catholicism

for a quotable movie the quotes are vv weak

there is a v obvious quote in response to this nonsense

i'd like to offer this visual quote instead

http://media.giphy.com/media/CEaCdl21DOIDu/giphy.gif

I regret humouring the challops tbh. There is no comparison between the two movies other than "some people like both of them"

I ain't mad, you guys can like it all you want. This is just like my own thoughts on the matter and things of that nature.

you are of course welcome to your incorrect opinions

the forced zaniness of the Clooney trilogy is what really typifies the Coens giving into their worst instincts. Now those are movies that are trying too hard

quatro!

when big lebowski came out it was widely regarded as a pretty minor effort iirc, especially in the wake of Fargo

fwiw, there were critics at the time (not a vocal majority or anything) that thought Fargo was minor Coens. They were idiots, but they were there.

testament tho that i think youd get at least one good case itt for each movie on the list to make at least a top five spot

I think their humor is best when it's really dark, which I guess is why a serious man is my favorite of their comedies. I was encouraged to watch it by the rabbi who taught the interfaith marriage Judaism class I took before I married my wife. Said it was a great, great movie. Otm!

(I'm not Jewish either btw.)

(But I am a struggling professor and Grace Slick fan.)

One of Big Lebowski's charms is that it's a comedy about a stoner, but not a stoner comedy.

I stand by my challops. BL is a better movie than BS by far, I mean the directing and acting alone obv,

I read BS as Blood Simple here, and was wondering if I should send some kind of medic team around.

It's possible that being a lapsed catholic helped with A Serious Man, something about understanding the pools and ripples of power around these slightly silly men.

Lebowski ran away with that old poll. I suppose the cult has lowered its status in the meantime.

From the comments itt, they've aged into A Serious Man.

Which, good.

testament tho that i think youd get at least one good case itt for each movie on the list to make at least a top five spot

maybe not Ladykillers, but I can't help thinking I owe it at least one rewatch

somebody could, even for ladykillers

saw the prologue husband from ASM at MoMA for some '30s Universal shorts last night, he clued me in on some of the Yiddish jokes i missed.

the coens are probably my favorite filmmakers, so this is like choosing a favorite child. i'll vote for this one with my heart--the big lebowski

But you should have some familiarity with American jews to really appreciate everything they put in it.

― A is for (Aimless), Monday, May 15, 2017 10:15 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

minnesota jews tbrr. i saw it in the theater in st louis park. when the meshbesher letterhead came up the place was HOWLING.

Someone on twitter (i think Jeet Heer) mentioned that since the Coens' mom died in 2001, their movies have become much darker and more bitter, i think the example he used was BAR.

my memoirs

that's pretty much all i remember from burn after reading tbh

probably voted The Hudsucker Proxy last time, so might as well try something else now... Barton Fink.

they have been crap for a long time now though, ai ai ai.

Ludo, allow me to introduce you to this thread. I'm sure you'll want to add your insights there, too.

we really needed another Coens thread

sorta like Derek Jeter, lower-tier HOFers and incredibly overrated

I rate them as consistently entertaining, without resorting to the equivalent of twenty minute long car chases overlaid with urgently pounding music. I like that about them. It sets them apart. Most films that reject the simple-mindedness of car chase theatrics manage to be give rather tepid pleasures compared to the level of entertainment the Coens give audiences.

I'm not big on rewatching movies, so most of these I've only seen once, usually in the theater at their initial release. So I think I'll probably overrate the recent ones, because they're more fresh in my mind. Of the 15 I've seen, I think at least 10 are pretty good to great, which is a pretty good success rate for any director. The worst is pretty easily "The Ladykillers", a pointless remake. Amazing that they followed that up with "No Country", one of their best. "Fargo" was another return to form, after the misstep (though not without its charms) of "Hudsucker". I probably overrate "Barton Fink" because it was the first Coen Bros I saw, and I saw it in the theater with no expectations, and it was unlike anything I'd seen before. I really liked "A Serious Man" a lot too. Hard choice...

Didn't realize this was a new poll.

1. No Country for Old Men
2. Fargo
3. Miller's Crossing
4. Inside Llewyn Davis
5. Blood Simple

Didn't like: The Man Who Wasn't There, A Serious Man, True Grit, Hail, Caesar!

Haven't seen: The Hudsucker Proxy, Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers, Burn After Reading

I voted Fargo, but I just rewatched True Grit yesterday and am kicking myself for not repping for it. As perfect a literary adaptation that I can imagine--better, even, than No Country For Old Men, though this is mainly because TG is significantly a better novel than NCfOM. This review says it all far better than I ever could.

True Grit would be my second place vote.

I guess I should probably get around to watching "True Grit".

My only complaint about True Grit is (after watching it on two occasions) is that it kind of drags in the end and could benefit from a little tighter editing.

nb: I never read the book.

Do you mean the climactic action, or the post-climax stuff? Either way, I don't agree, but just curious!

1. The Big Lebowski
2. Barton Fink
3. Inside Llewyn Davis
4. O Brother Where Art Thou?
5. Raising Arizona

Yes: Hudsucker Proxy, True Grit, Fargo, No Country for Old Men, Serious Man, True Grit,
Sometimes:Rasing Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Big Lebowski, Man Who Wasn't There, Inside Lleweyn Davies
No: Blood Simple, Barton Fink, Intolerable Cruelty, Ladykillers, Burn After Reading, Hail, Caeser.

Trying to find pattern. Can't.

Do you mean the climactic action, or the post-climax stuff?

early act III, the build to the payoff.

have the coen brothers – apart from ladykillers - ever written or cast black/latin/asian actors in important roles? i am just looking through their (very white) filmography and feeling a little wary of them tackling 'scarface.' i mean it's better than tim burton but...

Hm, they did have Bill Cobb play a literal Magical Negro in "Hudsucker"

Chris Thomas King as pseudo-Robert Johnson in O Brother...

have the coen brothers – apart from ladykillers - ever written or cast black/latin/asian actors in important roles?

While this is not trivial remark, the same could be asked of the great majority of the most revered film directors of all time. Kurosawa did cast a lot of Asians, as did Satiajit Ray, but did either one bother to cast blacks or eurpoeans? Not so much.

...

Dude wtf

Oscar Issac off the top of my head

Where is Akira Kurosawa's Crooklyn, I ask you?!

wtf? OK, here's wtf I think

imo there is a fairly obvious qualitative difference between films that incorporate racist views or racist characters and films that simply do not have characters who are racially diverse. Sure, I'd like to see scriptwriters, and directors hiring black or Asian or native American actors, because they deserve to work and deserve to be seen on screen. But you have to judge a film primarily on what it succeeds in doing, more than what it lacks that you wish were there.

Since the Coens write their own scripts as well as direct their own films, maybe they just do not think they have a sufficient background or understanding of black, Asian or native American lives and perspectives to do them justice. It's probably preferable to writing some cardboard faux-black or faux Asian characters into your story just to be able to put back or Asian face in front of the camera, but reduce them to a caricature. That's a legitimate understanding of one's limitations and artists do have limitations they need to recognize.

Steve Park as Mike Yamagita in Fargo

If the Coens are only capable of rendering non-white characters as cardboard "faux" minorities or caricatures then they are indeed terrible filmmakers and we're right to find fault with them. There are many things in between all-white casts, tokenism, and caricature; collapsing them together to the point where the potential downsides of a hypothetical tokenism become a post-facto justification for all-white casts is perverse.  Aside from everything else that's wrong here.

Small but pivotal roles: the student and the father (also Steve Park) who try to bribe Larry in A Serious Man.

And Javier Bardem was in some movie they did...

aimless, given that the coens' films are largely set in the united states -- an extremely diverse country -- it is not unfair to criticize them for arguably failing to reflect this reality. by contrast no reasonable person would criticize kurosawa for casting japanese actors to play the majority of roles in films set in japan.

Otm. Was thinking of how to say just that.

Steve Park is amazing in both roles cited imo

Cedric the Entertainer in Intolerable Cruelty.

'Ladykillers' has their most diverse cast, but is widely seen as their poorest effort. Not sure if that's impacted on their subsequent casting decisions.

uh

classssssss

I was actually thinking this yesterday, after this thread inspired a rewatching of The Big Lebowski - a film set in LA almost entirely about white dudes - and John Tuturro's Jesus Quintana.

it is not unfair to criticize them

I never said it was unfair or a groundless criticism. My point is that it is a fairly minor failing when compared to the success of their works considered as a whole. For example, John Ford gets fairly criticized for his depictions of native americans, but this does not mean his other virtues are not sufficient to make him a revered director. The Coens, compared to Ford, can be fairly criticized not for outright racism which Ford has in generous amounts, than for a notable lack of racial diversity, the harm of which is both minor and highly tangential compared to overt racism. It seems like a reach.

Where do you stand on #OscarsSoWhite? It's not like this is a question isolated to the Coens, and if we extend what you intend as a charitable "perhaps they know their limitations" logic to all of Hollywood, it would be easy to rationalize a situation with almost no non-white faces on screen generally.

And Javier Bardem was in some movie they did...

― to fly across the city and find Aerosmith's car (C. Grisso/McCain), Thursday, May 18, 2017 9:44 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

javier bardem is a white european

"Not really racist, just almost never employ non-white people in important visible positions" def a standard we should apply to the hiring practices of all powerful employers tbf

Where do you stand on #OscarsSoWhite?

Me, above: "Sure, I'd like to see scriptwriters, and directors hiring black or Asian or native American actors, because they deserve to work and deserve to be seen on screen."

If you want more POC onscreen in films, I think you need to have lots more POC in every major facet of filmmaking, from scriptwriting to casting directors to executive directors. And I am all for it. But it is the usual problem of power and money. Those who have it tend to want to keep it and to exclude newcomers, only accepting those who tend to reinforce the status quo.

It is legit to criticize Hollywood vigorously for not telling more stories that include POC, and for not bringing more POC into every part of the process, but these are questions about the filmmaking industry and are separate questions from the filmmaking art. Once a film is made its value is governed by what it contains, and it does not have to reflect the society it is speaking to in order to have great value. Instead it must have worthwhile things to say and say them well. For example, a modern American can read Tolstoy or Jane Austen or Shakespeare and derive immense value from them, while none of their works directly mirror modern America.

By separating the questions into politics and art I am NOT saying the politics are not important, or even less important than the art. I am saying that when judging a work of art, its worth must be judged by on the scale of its humanity. This argument is the basic Huckleberry Finn conundrum revisited. Huck calls Jim a nigger and clearly Huck's politics are horrific, but does the work as a whole endorse those politics or endorse a different level of compassion for both Huck and Jim?

As usual you are stating the obvious as if it's news to anyone, everyone here who is bringing up the industry has separated the industry from the artistic value of the product, unless I skipped a post that said Fargo is a bad film because the coens rarely cast non-white ppl

In a thread devoted to discussing the "Best Coen Brothers Movie", when someone brings up the question of whether their movies present characters of color, it is a permissible inference that the person who brought it up thinks this has some bearing on deciding what is the best Coen Brothers movie. If it has bearing on which movie is best, it has bearing on whether a movie is good.

Maybe you don't think in those terms, but it is how my brain interprets it.

I am saying that when judging a work of art, its worth must be judged by on the scale of its humanity.

I think its a fair criticism that reflecting an unrealistically narrow slice of the ethnic reality of the settings in their films - over the course of a fairly large body of work - is reflective of "the scale of its humanity"

fwiw it's not a huge issue w me w regard to the Coens' films, but it is a valid criticism and a weirdly persistent blind spot of theirs.

you are stating the obvious as if it's news to anyone

this is the internet, not a university department. in the world of the internet this is FAR from obvious to everyone.

Coens are such misanthropes (usually) PoC might feel generally pleased to be off the radar

Aimless I genuinely don't want to cast aspersions on your brain but sometimes conversations will drift off-topic

for ex. there are zero Mexican characters (ie speaking roles, not corpses or extras etc.) in No Country For Old Men, a film set on the Mexican border about the cocaine trade. It's a good (maybe even great) film but that is strange.

xp

To echo shakey you will find me rhapsodising about David lynch elsewhere on this site, this is not a dealbreaker for me but why not acknowledge

I think its a fair criticism that reflecting an unrealistically narrow slice of the ethnic reality of the settings in their films - over the course of a fairly large body of work - is reflective of "the scale of its humanity"

so, Οὖτις, how would you apply this scale to Hitchcock? Kurusawa? Ray? Hawks? Jean Renoir? Jean-Luc Godard? It gets stickier as you dive deeper into it.

why not acknowledge

I have already acknowledged it and also argued some ways in which it should be acknowledged.

sure and then cautioned against an argument nobody was making

I would think it's pretty obvious how it applies - is the setting of their film realistically reflected on-screen, allowing for constraints necessary for the particular story/plot etc. For a film that focuses entirely on a small subset of characters (say, a small homogeneous family), it would make sense that the film would not depict any real racial diversity. Kurusawa's films are generally all set in Japan, which is super-homogeneous (unusually so). But if you're setting your movie in, say, a contemporary, multi-ethnic urban milieu it does look kinda weird if the only people onscreen are white. It's just jarring.

xp

btw which kurusawa (sic) film reflects an unrealistically narrow slice of the ethnic reality of Japan

xp

For example, a modern American can read Tolstoy or Jane Austen or Shakespeare and derive immense value from them, while none of their works directly mirror modern America.

I'm not sure this makes your point. Surely what's at issue is whether the work has to represent the reality of the society in which it's set, not that of the reader. It's just obvious that readers can derive value from works that come from very different times and places.

a film set on the Mexican border about the cocaine trade

heroin iirc.

Surely what's at issue is whether the work has to represent the reality of the society in which it's set, not that of the reader

^^^this

heroin iirc.

sorry, maybe I should've just said "drug trade"

scorsese keeps casting italians whats the problem

zero Italians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kundun

fuck u marty

fuck u

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq7EDnC629s

xps

Are then saying that No Country For Old Men is missing one or important characters, so that you can identify where or how they should have been introduced, what roles they should have played in the context of the film, or how they fit into the overall story to strengthen it? These may seem like silly or exasperating questions to ask of an audience member, but for the filmmakers these are absolutely critical questions they must answer before they make any changes to a film.

My point being that casually pointing out the lack of speaking parts for Mexicans and stating this is a flaw is a very low cost criticism for you or me to make because we don't have to propose a specific remedy that has a face, a costume, lines, and a place in the plot that doesn't pad the film pointlessly or stop the progression of the story, but moves it ahead and enriches it. We can stand aside and say they Coens ought to have solved these questions in order to add one or more speaking roles for Mexican characters, but that's like telling an author he ought to write better. It doesn't really help.

xp also silence!

If the "complaint" were about lack of mexican characters in a single coen film explicitly about Jewish-Americans this nonsensical comparison might hold water

Ah fuckit I have zero investment in this issue I just got annoyed by A's bad sloppy thinking

it's generally helpful for people to be made aware of their prejudices, privileges, and blind spots. Including creative people. And especially wealthy, relatively powerful creative people.

xp

No Country is an interesting case, since there's four variables: along with 'representation in media generally', 'representation in this film' and you know, reality, there's also representation in the book that they're adapting, which I er haven't read.

Feel like hand-wringing about the lack of ethnic characters in faithful literary adaptations shouldn't fall upon the faults of film directors but in the source material...

Unless you want to talk about Color-blind Casting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color-blind_casting

it's generally helpful for people to be made aware of their prejudices, privileges, and blind spots. Including creative people. And especially wealthy, relatively powerful creative people

I agree. I have just been made aware that I am annoying, nonsensical, sloppy and a bad thinker. This makes me want to reform myself. I intend to get started tomorrow.

by contrast no reasonable person would criticize kurosawa for casting japanese actors to play the majority of roles in films set in japan.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, May 18, 2017 10:15 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

kurosawa has received a lot of criticism for doing what some believe were propaganda films supporting fascism, pandering to the west, and notably from oshima, his entire style

oshima did do a film talking about japan's biggest minority group though, ethnic koreans in japan, and there is a pretty big discussion on stopping discrimination of ethnic koreans in mainstream japanese media

the narrative in japan takes a different turn to that in the us. one that i think makes more sense than the one in the us

yeah I haven't read the book either

xp

/it's generally helpful for people to be made aware of their prejudices, privileges, and blind spots. Including creative people. And especially wealthy, relatively powerful creative people/

I agree. I have just been made aware that I am annoying, nonsensical, sloppy and a bad thinker. This makes me want to reform myself. I intend to get started tomorrow.

nonsensical referred to the marty zinger

yeah a few weird outliers aside (Keitel as Judas etc.) Scorcese's got a p good track record re: casting imo

xp

marty w/last temptation iirc wanted to go intentionally old school hollywood anachronistic with the casting.

yeah I can see that, some of it does come off like deliberate stunt-casting. and being set so far in the past w ethnically ambiguous characters does provide some leeway - I would have been amused by the entire cast being black as much as I was by all the Italians, for instance. there's no real historical verity to adhere to.

http://i.imgur.com/EvpQNmj.gif

I don't find it especially productive to criticize individual filmmakers for their casting choices. It's a systemic problem.

No, nor should we criticize individual politicians for accepting bribes. It's a systemic problem.

hmm in what way no fuckit

nb: they're usually called "contributions". that makes 'em legal.

What was all that shit about Vietnam, Walter? https://t.co/CaG2nKXbfK

— Jacob Bacharach (@jakebackpack) May 21, 2017

Just rewatched No Country and it's such a great but such a troubling movie. I think it's probably one of only a few films I saw in my adult life that I could say "changed" me in some way.

in a power of the story/narrative way or because something was problematic

I think the Ed Tom Bell perspective struck a real chord with me at the time when I first saw it, the feeling of creeping evil in my once more sheltered sphere of existence and a desire to withdraw or look away.

I think it was kind of the progression of the Bush election, 9/11, the Iraq war, Katrina, Abu Ghraib (and various other war on terror horrors), and the beginnings of the financial crisis that gave me that feeling, coinciding into what I'd consider my transition into proper adulthood (got married in 2006, really started planning my career and getting ready to have a family in 2008).

hes a bit of a downer that fella but its true to say hed had a bad week tbf

In re the casting discussion, I just saw a bus ad for a new Bernie Madoff movie, and Madoff is played by DeNiro and his wife is played by Michelle Pfeiffer. My first reaction was "they couldn't find Jewish actors?" but then I was like "eh, I'll let this one go."

is deniro totally non jewish nb if there is a better way to phrase that then presume id have used it if i knew it

According to Wiki he's Italian/Irish/German.

i hear ya but what if he was chased out of limerick in the pogrom

Quite honestly, the lack of female leads in Coen films is much weirder to me. Mostly because Frances McDormand is so great in Fargo, and such a well-written role, and she has been married to Joel for more than thirty years. So why hasn't she been given more indisputable lead roles? They can write them, and they have the perfect actress. So weird.

I also like the list that Aimless did: Hitchcock? Kurusawa? Ray? Hawks? Jean Renoir? Jean-Luc Godard? Because yeah, those are all sorta overrated directors... I mean, they are among the best directors in the world, but they are still quite solipsistic and overrated.

lol @ idea of jean renoir being "solipsistic," jfc whatever

Oh stfu. That argument-free fake hysteria is so tiring.

Speaking of tiring...

The Coens stopped writing lead roles for women because they like to make their movies about ridiculous people.

I just watched Hail, Caesar! finally. It sure is something.

this argument about no country is pretty fucking dumb. if you read mccarthy's book, the entire point is the not present other. i.e. mexican cartel members. it's their ghostly violence that seeps across the border and causes moral dilemma (dude taking the cash; ed tom bell failing at being a bulwark against a change he can't help). mccarthy's not an idiot. his entire post-knoxville oeuvre has pointed decidedly at the specific, particular violence of the united states -- blood meridian is colonial without a doubt. you ever figure WHY anton chigur doesn't exist as an actual ethnicity? he's a swarthy, sociopathic unknown.

so the coen brothers very faithfully film this novel that is essentially about the exact kind of nightmares, real or imagined, that shatter an american/texan sense of complacency. and what: you cast it with characters that don't exist? or you humanize the existential threat? i mean, you could. but then there actully would be country for old men. afaict, that wasn't the point.

like does anyone whose actually read mccarthy think 1) he's all rah rah about white america's moral values; or 2) that miscasting his work would help anything or anyone?

you re-cast it so people are like, whew: goddamn, we THOUGHT we had to worry about the way that their violence is ours (remember josh brolin saying there ain't no goddamn lobos) but hey here's a mexican lead? all is fair.

ignore my last paragraph. i thought i deleted it

There isn't much to Hail, Caesar!, is there? It's not bad, but I felt like it was 30% of a movie. When credits rolled, I honestly thought "huh, that is too short." Cowboy fella was great, though. And Tilda Swinton served absolutely no purpose whatsoever.

Yeah, the remark upthread that it's just a bunch of vignettes of Mannix and the weird wide world of 1950s Hollywood studioland is accurate. And at the end, as in every Coen picture, the case with the money ends up lost.

it's kind of an inversion of "Barton Fink", where instead of the "artist" being the protagonist and the studio the nominal enemy, the studio is the protagonist and the talent are the problem.

The talent and encroaching Marxism.

Soviets:Heil Caesar::Nazis:Barton Fink

Trying to get me to watch Barton Fink again, are we?
Related: Have we ever had a worst Coen film poll?

It'd have to be "worst not counting the Ladykillers", by the sounds of things.

Oh, right. Second worst Coens film poll.

The Coens stopped writing lead roles for women because they like to make their movies about ridiculous people.

― El Tomboto, Sunday, May 21, 2017 7:22 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

heh

2nd worst would be tough but i might throw a vote to The Man Who Wasn't There.

Trying to get me to watch Barton Fink again, are we?

heh not really. I've sorta soured on BF over time maybe just cuz I've watched it too much and it is a little bloated for what it is. I do like the interpretation of Barton as representing oblivious/deluded pre-WWII Jewish lefties which obviously has some parallels to HC.

Man Who Wasn't There is easily the worst one I actually saw. Never bothered w Ladykillers.

xp

What is so bad and hated about Man Who Wasn't There? Curious, because I remember it fairly fondly.

Yeah I think it's a great little film - contained, composed and unexpectedly moving at the end.

my 15yo(?) memory of it is that it is remarkably content-free - no memorable characters, a plot that goes nowhere.

I remember a really brutal killing and some UFO nonsense but very little else.

it seemed a very cold movie to me, and i didn't really "buy it". obviously those are remarkably inarticulate and unhelpful ways to describe a film but it's the best i can do.

it's also one of the more depressing coen bros films - which is neither a good nor bad thing

Those are some fairly strident decade old half remembered complaints.

xposts

it's another one of their shaggy dog stories, except nothing and nobody in it is memorable or funny or sympathetic

for me the main problem with TMWWT was the central conceit of a self-effacing non-entity ending up as a sensational murderer who gets splashed all over front pages, while maintaining exactly the same low-key, harmless demeanor right up to his execution. It was too big a challenge to pull off and it falls flat at the end. But it has a lot of nice moments and as good a performance from Bill Bob as he's ever likely to give.

Billy Bob was fine in the role but has been better in One False Move, A Simple Plan, Bad Santa, Fargo, among others. i think it was risky to give him a role which makes his Sling Blade performance look overly emotive and i think it worked, but his natural abilities have been put to better use elsewhere.

A Simple Plan

^^^v otm

Love that movie. Simple Plan, Affliction, Nobody's Fool in the same bracket.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

didn't expect that

Holy shit.

makes sense. i missed A Serious Man when it came out and was shocked to see it on a ton of "best of the decade" lists, also something last year "best films of the 21st century so far." i've still gotta make time to sit down and watch it.

bummed about Lebowski. borderline unwatchable bc of cultural saturation and worn out jokes & wayyyyyy too long.

i like how every film had representation except The Man Who Wasn't There (haven't seen it, don't know why it's so loathed).

wait wait who tf voted for The Ladykillers??????????????

i could've voted for any of the one i've seen (except The Ladykillers i guess) but i picked Blood Simple bc i hadn't seen it until about a year ago, & on the big screen. it was so so great, and it was sweet to see some of their tonal tics already intact.

I haven't returned to this thread since Fred B called Jean Renoir "solipsistic."

sol·ip·sism
ˈsäləpˌsizəm/
noun
noun: solipsism

the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist.

I don't care if he finds the canonization of Renoir tiresome and boring; that's defensible. But calling the director of Grand Illusion, Boudu, The Rules of the Game, and The River solipsistic is like praising Jackson Pollock for his tempura drawings of the Christ child in Nazareth.

Voted Fargo on the suspicion that A Serious Man was going to take it.

Alfred incredibly otm re:renoir

No one dislikes Renoir. That's not possible.

You say this in a thread where someone has just picked The Ladykillers as their favourite Coen Brothers film, mind.

alfred otm, it was such a ridiculous thing to say it didn't seem worth arguing with

i do love "a serious man" a lot and am happy to see so many ppl agree on that one

It also wasn't worth arguing with because it never mattered, it wasn't important at all to my argument about the Coens.

Funnily enough you DID pick it out of context to shit on it, even though you now say it wasn't worth arguing with... You're right though, what you wrote was worthless back then, and it's still worthless now.

There are a lot of bad Coens rankings on the internet with A Serious Man pretty low so it's cool to see the love for it here.

Funnily enough you DID pick it out of context to shit on it, even though you now say it wasn't worth arguing with... You're right though, what you wrote was worthless back then, and it's still worthless now.

― Frederik B, Tuesday, June 6, 2017 7:48 AM (thirty-five minutes ago)

lol at this, you're the guy who decided to randomly troll us by calling a bunch of acclaimed filmmakers "sorta overrated" with no explanation and then typically flip out and start frothing at the mouth when somebody calls you on your shit. you really are the densest fucking person ever to post here.

I was quoting Aimless' list, which was part of a long debate that formed my explanation...

But yeah, I get annoyed when someone 'calls me on my shit', when that consists of just pulling something out of context and going 'LOL FUCK YOU YOU'RE SO STUPID THIS IS WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG' instead of going 'Wait, what's your explanation for this?' Call-out-culture is a plague, am I right?

Compare and contrast with the 2007 poll, big fall for Barton Fink and the Hudsucker Proxy.

1 (-) A Serious Man (2009) 33 (-)
2 (1) The Big Lebowski (1998) 19 (49)
3 (-) No Country for Old Men (2007) 18 (-)
4 (2) Fargo (1996) 17 (26)
5 (5) Miller’s Crossing (1990) 8 (12)
6 (-) Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) 6 (-)
7= (4) Raising Arizona (1987) 5 (12)
7= (-) Burn After Reading (2008) 5 (-)
8 (3) Barton Fink (1991) 4 (20)
9 (8) Blood Simple (1984) 3 (5)
10 (7) O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) 2 (10)
11= (-) True Grit (2010) 1 (-)
11= (10) The Ladykillers (2004) 1 (0)
11= (10) Intolerable Cruelty (2003) 1 (0)
11= (-) Hail, Caesar! (2016) 1 (-)
11= (6) The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) 1 (12)
12 (9) The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001) 0 (1)

I suspect that the Ladykillers would come dead last if it was a "pick five' vote, but people are people, "someone loves this unpopular thing" is a thing that happens.

Pretty sure somebody just trolled.

Half of the revised top 8 from late/best period.

smdh at the usual dreadful behaviour in the poll

I was thinking the swing in results might have had something to do with this poll getting far fewer voters, but I count 147 votes in last poll to 125 in this one, so not terribly fewer.

is Renoir next?

I think about 8 ppl who voted in this one have seen a Renoir film

how solipsistic of them

heh i get it

Any Renoir poll would have to eliminate Rules of the Game from contention.

Well...

Joel Coen showing his young actors how to smoke weed... I think? Or maybe just smoking with them?? Anyway read this thanks pic.twitter.com/myUBrtIHjD

— Mani "Ayy" Lazic (@ManiLazic) June 5, 2017

Any Renoir poll would have to eliminate Rules of the Game from contention.

― insidious assymetrical weapons (Eric H.), Tuesday, June 6, 2017

and Grand Illusion.

I think about 8 ppl who voted in this one have seen a Renoir film

I've seen multiple Renoir films, but like most here, it's just his Greatest Hits album. Most of his corpus is difficult to find because the economics don't support their reissue.

Most of his films are out on DVD or available for streaming.

^^^ Filmstruck has 18

Make that 19, they just added Toni (1935).

Streaming makes it easier to reissue, but I don't subscribe to Filmstruck and there are hundreds of millions like me.

I still want to believe that ASM's anachronistic references to "Abraxas" and "Cosmo's Factory" are deliberate; and that the three-year difference is alluded to elsewhere in the script

Declining to take out a subscription is not the same as "difficult to find".

tempura drawings

― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

can I just

Well put, Ward.

lol silby i missed that first go round

https://c1.staticflickr.com/6/5836/20710554222_490a473659_b.jpg

I love how totally socially awkward they sound in M Emmet Walsh's account of the making of Blood Simple

Joel had never really worked with actors, so he didn’t really know the acting vocabulary. He might say: “Why don’t you look over there?” And I’d say, “Why is my character looking over there?” And Joel would say, “Just humour me, will you?” They had it storyboarded to death. Joel would set the shot up and then Ethan would come over and look through the camera. Then they would go in a corner and talk. Work it out between themselves. It was kind of a private thing they had.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/nov/06/how-we-made-blood-simple-coen-brothers-barry-sonnenfeld

Just rewatched that on the big screen last week, loved every second of it. Not to be a "the early stuff..." guy but I would accept anyone claiming it as their best film, even if Fargo and No Country return to some of the same points with bigger budgets and more going on thematically. As a little work of suspense and comedy and character actors, it's Hitchcock-level imo.

It's certainly my favorite up until Fargo, at any rate.

And that article's a great little read! Thanks for sharing.

I want a film about the grip and his wife.

That sounds much seedier than I meant it to.

Miller's Crossing: BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORING

things that are boring but good

love Miller's Crossing, that's a hell of a cast. one of my favorite all-time joke cameos is when Albert Finney shows up in a second role (see if you can spot him.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq69cbi5no4

tough to pick a best performance, but I might go with Jon Polito. Such full commitment to that role.

hahaha a decisive win for A Serious Man is so wrong but so ilx

a decisive win for A Serious Man is so wrong but so ilx

33 ilxors liked A Serious Man best, myself among them. You like Fargo best, as did 16 other ilxors. Don't misunderstand. You can like it best, if you want to.

It's not like there's anything wrong with that.

Fargo and A Serious Man are neck and neck for me

Had to delete several more sarcastic responses there but yes I do understand how this works Aimless, fucking hell.

Reading your first post back, is there anything you can see that might annoy, y’know, everyone?

OK I don't want this to escalate if there's a risk of that happening so I apologise for any abrasiveness on my part.

can't believe people voted for their best film

^^^^^

how dare someone post a mildly-exaggerated-for-comic-effect reaction to the results of a button poll on ILX

Please, accept the challopery

I guess that the catchphrase "not that there's anything wrong with that" has undergone several half-lifes of decay and now has been rendered inert.

i started watching a serious man on cable teevee recently and i had no memory of it ever existing. figures its ilx's fave movie.

i'm one of those guys who played his vhs copy of miller's crossing about a million times. RUN.

(that is a reference to another ILE thread.)

see if you can spot him

lol never noticed this, well done

kinda feel like raising arizona and miller's crossing and blood simple and even o brother were kinda robbed when i see how many votes there were for lebowski and no country for old men. damn millennials...

I voted for A Serious Man even though I've never seen it. In fact I've never even heard of it. So ilx.

it's release was totally buried

yeah I remember it only played here for a week & I missed it

No idea why, especially coming so soon after NCFOM and BAR

when i saw it they played a trailer for it before it, like it wasn't out

it's a rly good trailer tbf

it's the only coen bros movie i ever went to see in theaters when it was released, and also my favourite - maybe not a coincidence

I got some free tickets from UCI because some teenage louts who got ejected were fucking about + being loud for the first hour of O Brother, Where Art Thou? Couldn't blame them tbh.

New Coen brother movie, Joel Coen does Shakespeare. Big shock is it appears Ethan isn't involved.

The Oscar winners are in talks to star in Joel Coen’s adaptation of “Macbeth.” Coen will direct from his own original script, and expects to shoot the movie before the end of the year. This marks his first film without frequent directing/writing/producing partner and brother Ethan.

https://variety.com/2019/film/news/denzel-washington-frances-mcdormand-macbeth-joel-coen-1203173916/

Ha, I just revived a different thread with this news.

strange poll result. I liked Serious Man but I don't even think I'd put it in my top 5.

What?! You didn't appreciate the parking lot?

this is a very weird poll result for me because the top 5 movies are probably my favourite 5 in order

same, I think

would vote for Llewyn Davis today

Llewyn Davis also not in my top 5. Man Who Wasn't There also way too low-ranked but I can see why it's no one's favorite.

Other than Serious Man the top 5 are probably in my top 5, maybe not in order.

llewyn davis and man who wasn't there are probably my two least favourite coen bros films (having never seen the ladykillers - or true grit, which i keep meaning to watch)

Axe Lebowski and that’s my top 3

The Ladykillers is quite bad.

having never seen the ladykillers

Here's a hint: Tom Hanks' performance in The Ladykillers is easily the worst of his illustrious career and his supporting cast all caught the bad acting virus just from being on camera with him. Well, except the actor who played his landlady. She was good.

on rewatch, Llewyn Davis has some great scenes but doesn't develop much of a cumulative feeling, esp not in comparison with ASM

Llewyn Davis pulls off an elliptical structure better than any other recent movie I can think of, I really liked it when it came out and it stuck with me, and when I watched it again last summer I was floored. perhaps partly being able to identify with musicians not only struggling commercially/careerwise but creatively. and the whole milieu. it's one of the only movies that really addresses mediocrity and its merits. Because he's not a bad songwriter or musician, but he's not great, and he never will be. there's something really powerful about that, because of course he's doomed to repeat his mistakes, but he will keep going. as dispiriting as the movie can be for any creative person, I think it finds liberation in the artistic process alone and freeing yourself of the notion of 'greatness' or massive, ego-intoxicating success.

i haven't seen it since the theater but ^^^ that's been m/l how it's seemed in memory

I think I would find it more agreeable if every single supporting character weren't portrayed as being in some way inferior to / more loathsome than Llewyn (with the exception of F Murray Abraham's admirably straightforward industry guy)

part of the joy of ASM is that the Rabbis actually give pretty good advice, the Stuhlbarg character just isn't in a great place to hear it; in ILD basically everyone he encounters is a windbag, hypocrite, or worse.

yeah that's true of ASM

when i saw it they played a trailer for it before it, like it wasn't out

― difficult listening hour, Friday, April 20, 2018 11:25 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's a rly good trailer tbf

― difficult listening hour, Friday, April 20, 2018 11:26 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a golden memory

this, in a goy's teeth

i gave up on them after the big lebowski which i found awful and not funny at all. should i check a serious man? somehow i doubt it.

I’m cool on Lebowski but there’s a great argument to be made for four or five of the films they’ve made since then being their absolute best one.

Although, A Serious Man is better than Lebowski, if you found TBL awful and not funny, then you have the Coen immunity gene and should never watch another of their movies.

He could watch No Country For Old Men or True Grit, which do not rely in any way on the viewer finding anything funny

i loved fargo so i doubt i have the immunity gene. barton fink was a litle weird but not bad at all. the hudsucker's proxy was so and so and miller's crossing was quite captivating. xp

ASM is a completely different beast, watch it

I'm still unclear on how I went from a pretty hardcore Coen stan for such a long time (read Gates of Eden, watched The Naked Man, etc.) to never having mustered myself to see a thing they did after The Man Who Wasn't There (unless you count Bridge of Spies, which I don't for the purposes of this moment of ponderance).

Yeah, I mean I don't think they're returning to the same well much if at all, they're always worth a watch IMO.

Damn, you guys have 6-8 incredible movies to watch

I know, I know. I think I lost interest when the next two films garnered poor reviews and led me to believe that they'd lost their touch. And then I was just super stubborn about wanting to read No Country for Old Men before seeing the movie (nb, still haven't read No Country for Old Men).

I’m not sure anything could induce me to read a Cormac McCarthy book, even one of my favorite movies being adapted from one

I have never and will never see the Ladykillers remake, but everything after it is good-to-wonderful

(and Bad Santa is the only written-not-directed one I’ve seen since Crimewave, but it’s also my second-most-rewatched Coen [gave up on Suburbicon twenty minutes in])

holy shit the Coens wrote Bad Santa???????

they did an uncredited rewrite

or this is how Zwigoff puts it

“The story I had heard was that the original writers, who wrote about 90 percent of what you see in any of the cuts, John Requa and Glenn Ficarra, met the Coen brothers and said, ‘We want to write a script that you guys direct.’ And they said, ‘We only direct our own writing but we've always had this crazy idea about this drunken Santa Claus and this little person elf that has to keep him in line,” Zwigoff told IndieWire.

“So John and Glenn wrote this script," Zwigoff continued. "And the Coen brothers read it and they told them, ‘We don't want to direct it. We think it's great but we don't want to do it.’ So they asked them if they could give them some notes. And when the Coens sat down to try and give them notes over a weekend, eventually they just thought it would be easier if they take a pass on it and rewrite it.”

they commissioned the Cats & Dogs writers to write a first draft from their plot for Gandolfini to star; Coens rewrote it & were gonna direct with Bill Murray starring but he did Lost In Translation instead so they hired Zwigoff & Billy Bob, and didn't bother to take a writing credit. Zwigoff did some tweaks.

The Coens cut all our Down syndrome jokes. They thought that was going too far.

xpost

ahhh ha ha ha:

Mr. Weinstein enlisted Todd Phillips (“Old School”) to shoot new footage, including a scene in which Mr. Thornton and Mr. Cox teach Mr. Kelly how to box — with all three getting hit in the crotch — as well as a sentimental sequence about an Advent calendar.

saw BLOOD SIMPLE for the first time last night (on the big screen, with a full house, as part of a double feature with BODY HEAT — god was that fun) and loved loved loved it. incredible casting — dan hedaya as a nixon-lookalike sleazy bar owner especially. the private investigator was probably my favorite character though, almost all his lines were uproariously funny, in particular the last line of the movie.

just watched Body Heat for the first time last week (on a TV) and I am extremely jealous of this double

Been so many years since I saw "Fargo," a movie I never liked as much as some/many, and man, I think that remains their cruelest, meanest movie.

The very first time I saw it, I recoiled a bit from the all the "yah"s and such (reminded me of Canadian stereotypes--which can be funny). That reaction is long gone. I don't think the movie's mean towards the one character who counts the most, McDormand's.

Not mean to Marge, no. But Macy is just a moron who ends up getting his innocent wife tortured and killed, his asshole but innocent father in law killed, himself in jail, his rude son ... who knows what happens to him. Meanwhile, Stormare is a psycho to no real end, Buscemi is just an unlikeable weasel. Marge's husband and most (all?) of the other people that show up are just lunks or caricatures or or morons, too. Just kind of ... one note and mean, carried by McDormand. I mean, it's really well made, of course, and for that reason alone not a bad movie. Just leaves me feeling kind of gross.

I can't argue with any of that--up to the word "weasel," at least--but those are the very things that make the film great for me. In other words, we're pretty far apart.

Hmm, yeah, maybe. Having recently rewatched "Burn After Reading," that movie is populated with morons, too, but the whole thing is played as a ridiculous, unrealistic farce (to good effect). "Fargo" much less so. When his wife is racing around in terror with the shower curtain draped over her head, then falls down the stairs, it's just so horrible. And then the movie doesn't even have the courtesy of letting her die, it keeps her alive and tormented (and shrouded/silent) for a few more scenes first before just killing her, anyway. Offscreen, no less, almost as a sickening afterthought, like they didn't know what else to do with her. I dunno. Kinda heavy, dark stuff, and not in the dark comedy sense (which a lot of the other horrifying stuff in the movie - woodchipper, etc. - comes closer to).

macy is not just a moron: he is also evil. (a fffffucking liar.) the hapless performance and mcdormand's late entry deliberately distract from the plain fact that he is the movie's villain, whose pair of aimlessly psycho henchmen would be left numbly watching tv with hookers were his vanity and weakness not there to offer them employment. in its depiction of how cruelty and violence actually enter the world i think the dark triad of dopes in this movie-- two opportunists and a self-pitier-- is leagues ahead of the metaphysical comic-book abstraction of something like javier bardem's part in no country (not that the latter is the coens' fault). and while it's true that most of the characters are some kind of dumb the movie believes in a very broad range of dumb; marge's husband in particular (the great john carroll lynch) is an artist and rock of love who helps marge jump the car in the morning, which is what she needs. to think the movie has the same contempt for him that it does for jerry (not that you said this josh! but u kno how those coastal elites are) is to tell on oneself.

all this means that yeah (prob to its credit) it is a more unpleasant watch than it acts like it's going to be. not my fave coens. but those last scenes-- marge and the problem of evil; the gundersons in bed-- are miraculous imo. doubt frank capra (or jimmy stewart) could have pulled off "whenever they raise the postage people need the little stamps."

anyway poll result still correct afaik:

do you drink wine? because this is... an incredible bottle. this is not mogen david. this is-- a wine, larry. a bordeaux. open it--let it breathe--ten minutes. letting it breathe. so important. i insist! no reason for discomfort. i'll be uncomfortable if you don't take it. these are signs and tokens, larry.

― difficult listening hour, Monday, May 15, 2017 5:26 PM bookmarkflaglink

i haven't seen a serious man since seeing it in theatres in 2009, long overdue to rescreen

IF SOMEONE COULD BOTTLE THIS AIR
THEY’D MAKE A MILLION DOLLARS!!!

what's going on?

look. the teeth, we don’t know. a sign from hashem? don’t know. helping others: couldn’t hurt.

Very unfair on Norm Gunderson to call him a lunk or a caricature or a moron. He and Marge represent an authentic goodness removed from Hollywood notions of heroism, just as Jerry's banal selfishness is a depiction of the kind of evil we're most likely to encounter in our daily lives, and that we're all a little prone to ourselves from time to time (though hopefully to a far lesser extent!). These characters alone make Fargo the brothers' most humane film, and the reason it remains one their most popular.

Norm is a lunk, but that's not a negative! He's a huge guy who moves like someone who's been conscious of / compensating for his size his whole life, and he's clearly not as socially apt or analytically bright as Marge. But the Coens don't sneer at him or caricature anything: the movie and Marge both treat his loving attention and support, his adjusting his life to make sure she can work whatever hours are necessary and stay fed, as positive. It sketches how admirable and capable she is, before we see her work and confirm it.

(He thinks she's much better than him, but she doesn't look down on him in any way. And he completely accepts that she loves him.)

Stepping away from all that (and everyone otm about norm/marg)

Its ok to be mean to characters in movies

Like, i think anyone offering even a basic review in a post on a message board should really do more than just saying "mean" and letting that be offered up as if it was any more revealing or informative than "i didnt like this"

Stories exist for a million reasons, what good storytellers do with their events and characters and narratives matters in the warp and weave and deciding that mean/objectionable irl stands as a criticism (not just itt but its come up more and more in ilx reviews the past few years) seems to me to be a wilfully misinformed/overly involved reading of what stories are and what stories are for

the Coens are #cancelled for only ever having Clooney play narcissistic idiots in their movies

DLH really gets at what I love about Fargo, especially the end: "those last scenes-- marge and the problem of evil; the gundersons in bed-- are miraculous." When she has Stormare in the back seat and says "And for what? A little bit of money?", that gets me every time. I recently rewatched Capote--also about bleak landscapes and a botched crime gone horribly wrong--and there's a very similar moment when Capote finally gets Perry to talk about the night of the murders. When Perry finishes, Capote tries to process it all, then asks "Added up, how much money did you get from the Clutters that night?" Like Marge, he comes right up against the incomprehensibility of it all when Perry tells him "Between 40 and 50 dollars."

I feel bad for ppl who can't vibe with coens style humanism

Jerry's banal selfishness is a depiction of the kind of evil we're most likely to encounter in our daily lives, and that we're all a little prone to ourselves from time to time

otm

DLH's post is good.

I do like the last few scenes of Fargo a lot and especially like Norm the Lunk, because he's such a sweet, supportive lunk. And no, I don't think the movie has *contempt* for *him* but it does still paint him as simple, imo; the stamp stuff is lovely but also a clever means of having it both ways, gently making fun of him without outright disrespecting him. But Jerry ... I'm torn between him strictly as a moron vs. an evil moron. He does of course make terrible, selfish decisions, but the movie sets him up to make those decisions *because* he's a moron; he truly thinks he can get away with it and that no one will get hurt, because he is stupid, just as he thinks he can get away with the the fake car serial numbers, or that his father in law will just give him money for his parking lot. My favorite moron moment might be when he's rehearsing his fraught, teary call to his father in law, but then when he reaches the secretary he immediately drops the pretense, reverts to normal and just politely asks to speak to him, because his "simple" nature is such that he can't go fully cold-blooded. Or when he changes his mind and just thinks he can politely ask Shep to contact his buddies and call it off. Pure cold blooded eeeevil is Stormare, who exists in this afaict to illustrate that particularly cartoonish extreme. Yeah, Jerry does espouse a certain banal, human "evil," but making him a car salesman might have been too obvious a choice to underscore that.

My fave detail might be when Buscemi gets beat up by Shep Proudfoot (another pretty brutal scene, just throwing the hooker off of him like a piece of meat) and also when Macy tries to escape out the window at the end, they both squeal like animals under duress. I also think the moment when Buscemi shoots Jerry's father in law is really effective, because it immediately reminds you that, yeah, even though Buscemi has sort of been played for laughs so far, he's also a truly bad person who heads leans *toward* trouble, as opposed to Jerry, who is haplessly trying to wiggle out of trouble (and responsibility).

Anyway, I don't dislike this movie, and from the performances to the cinematography it's really solid. Just not my fave, not least because I've always felt the tonal balance was off as it bobbles between tragedy and black comedy.

Simon H otm, i never bought the coens hate their characters thing. even if jerry is not 'sympathetic' (tho who even cares, darraghmac otm), we certainly get a sense of him as a human and the excruciating hell that his interior life must be (even though its self-inflicted). i think macy did himself no favors with his choices after this movie, playing increasingly caricatured versions of this dude in shit like The Cooler etc.

tbf the only characterization that i think is unkind is marge's partner, who is basically barney fife. when i think about it even stormare, who seems one dimensionally evil, is honestly closer to irl dangerous criminals that i have known than i.e. buscemi.

I suspect the the-Coens-hate-their-characters line comes from a Renoir-indebted school (and advanced by Kael, et. al.) of filmmaking whereby Everyone Has His Reasons: a laudable goal, perhaps, but one which exempts many filmmakers (Bresson, Kubrick the Darnelles, etc) and well, uh, the Macy character has his reasons as much as Marge Gunderson.

iirc it was Jonathan Rosenbaum's review of Fargo where I encountered this idea: https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/1996/03/fargo/

I haven't watched this in ages but that looks pretty otm to me, despite enjoying some of yall's defending posts

Back to "Burn After Reading," it's such a farce (despite the body count), but that is a good example of a movie where the dummies all have their reasons yet the movie is pretty blatantly revealing those reasons as punchlines at the expense of the characters in service of (gleeful) cartoon nihilism. "Fargo" isn't nihilistic, which is partly what makes its tone tougher for me to process. For example, I agree that Stormare seems more real-life dangerous criminal than someone like Buscemi, but it's disconcerting/disjointing to me to have cartoon villains and violence intermingling with more realistic depictions of villains and violence. Maybe that was their goal? But it sometimes kind of reminds me a bit of, I dunno, "True Romance," which is clearly an ott fantasy, and yet, as the same time, when Gandolfini is beating the shit out of Patricia Arquette in the bathroom, it doesn't *feel* like a fantasy. At least not one I enjoy.

Been a long while since I saw "No Country," curious how it would hold up for me today. Per dlh, its "metaphysical comic-book abstraction" might be what makes its depictions of villainy and evil easier to take.

condescending appreciation

yeah, no

An interesting comparison, I think, is Jerry and Josh Brolin's Llewelyn in No Country. They couldn't be more dissimilar in a number of ways: Llewelyn is sharp, confident to the point of arrogance, droll, even occasionally self-deprecating. But the one point on which they're identical is the film noir thing where someone finds himself in way over his head, Woody Harrelson's warning that "No no. No. You don't understand. You can't make a deal with him." (He tells Llewelyn "You don't understand" twice in the film. In the end, Harrelson's in way over his head himself.) It's the same with Jesse Plemons and Kirsten Dunst in the second season of the Fargo TV Show, when Patrick Wilson tells them they have no idea the kind of people they're now mixed up with. Or John Huston in Chinatown: "You may think you know what you're dealing with, but, believe me, you don't."

Which violent fantasies have you enjoyed recently Josh- and which of them occurred in even a semi-realistic context?

I mean if you need yr violence tom-and-jerried its a bit much to hang that on the coens tbh

i remember rosenbaum's pan of no country caused a minor stir online. among his offtm observations that i still recall were identifying woody harrelsons character as comic relief and some particularly strained work finding what he felt were allusions to abu ghraib

what if i told you that anti-humanism is usually humanism in disguise

Which violent fantasies have you enjoyed recently Josh- and which of them occurred in even a semi-realistic context?

Hmm, it's a good question. I recently rewatched "Unforgiven," does something like that count? "LA Confidential"?

I don't "need" my violence anything'd, but I do know there are certain depictions of sadism and cruelty that I find more disturbing than others, for various reasons. In the case of something like "Fargo" (only because I just watched it), Jerry's wife is barely introduced before she is more or less reduced to a hooded (literally faceless), whimpering, wounded lump - on the floor at the base of the stairs, in the back of the car, running around the fishing shack, tied to a chair by the oven in the shack, culminating in just a passing shot of her still hooded but on the floor and dead (her actual murder not depicted), blood dripping down the side of the oven, because, as Stormare mumbles, she was making too much noise. She basically exists just to get the wheels moving, but she's on screen in peril a good deal for someone relatively inconsequential and later literally discarded. That's pretty dark for a movie that moments later enlists a disembodied sweat-socked foot sticking out of a woodchipper as a goofy sight gag. I've not read too much if anything about this sort of juxtapositions of "realistic" violence and cartoon violence, but it's definitely queasy.

I didn't even remember Woody was in "No Country," which is another sign I need to rewatch it. But back to the "comic book abstraction" aspect, I can see the villain's goofy haircut and choice of weapon as a distancing effect, contextualizing his horrific acts of violence more firmly in the fantasy/cartoon realm, even as he is depicted (from memory) as the very embodiment of pure, cold-blooded, almost primordial evil.

At the same time, as I remember it there is a weight to the violence in "No Country," portentous or no. In "No Country," the weight of death presses down over everything. There's even at least some weight to the violence in even something like "Burn After Reading." When Pitt or Jenkins are shot and killed, the camera lingers, you are meant to feel bad for them. But in "Fargo," when Marge first comes across the gruesome crime scene, with the bodies of a cop and two other innocent people, one of whom was shot though the hand *and* face because she held her hand over her head to defend herself, it's played weightlessly, imo. "Gosh, what a mess. Hold on a sec, I might have to barf from my morning sickness ... oh, ok, it's passed now." Doesn't make that approach wrong, I'm just trying to pinpoint why it *feels* wrong to me. (Has this small town cop ever seen something so gruesome before? You'd think not, but at the same time, she's pretty blasé.)

"Gosh, what a mess. Hold on a sec, I might have to barf from my morning sickness ... oh, ok, it's passed now" is her way of masking her horror. It IS a reaction. You don't show your feelings.

Do you mean when she first happens upon Stormare at the wood chipper, or when she's taking him away in the cop car? Here's the whole scene: to me she seems pretty numb, just trying in her way to process what she's just witnessed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmoYpJIUWhY

i never read that morning sickness moment in that way alfred but thats an interesting idea, i'll have to keep an eye out for that next time

their apparent lack of shock at the crime scene never raised too much of an eyebrow with me just because ime many small town/rural cops are often not unfamiliar with the gruesome aftermath of gunplay and high-speed auto death

Also, no other movie quite captures the feel of endless winter stretching into March and April like Fargo does.

Josh you are able to set out with precise detail what the filmmakers put on screen to underline how the character was murdered

I think the coens play dark stuff for laughs, sometimes

I think they play dark stuff for laughs that underline the dark stuff, sometimes

Sometimes they have characters that its hard to see as "serious" characters and they then do things with very serious consequences indeed, to other serious or non serious characters

Im not in any way convinced that the coens would not be able to very clinically separate the act, the harm, the violence, the brutality from the character.

I think that fargo is tonally a very very tough balancing act, but if a viewer comes away convinced that the work done on the characters is an instruction from the filmmakers as to how they are to feel about the violence depicted id personally disagree with that viewer

These things are observed wryly in context but with a very straight eye indeed imo, as are the quotidian beauties of the characters lives, ive never felt im being given a laughter track to work with

short version the coens build worlds where comical people can do awful things, and the things are allowed to be awful.

Nothing inconsistent in that, looking around

Heh, I totally disagree with her morning sickness as being a way to process the violence. Though she does seem to enlist her pregnancy on occasion in a faux-naive Colombo sort of way.

ive never felt im being given a laughter track to work with

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt5GsfNcDzA

I tease. Anyway, as an adult that watches movies, I do understand what you're saying. But you at least acknowledge that "Fargo" is tonally "a very very tough balancing act," so I think that leaves plenty of room for people to teeter on either side of this particular totter.

Yep would fully acknowledge it, id note that of all their movies its probably the one leaves me most cold tbh, not for the reasons you had but not unrelated either- that ive never watched it and felt like i was getting the tone right myself throughout

Honest to god, almost posted about that scene this morning...Those two are probably Exhibit A in the condescension argument, but I was thinking about Steve Buscemi, and if anyone ever asked me to describe him--sorry, Steve, you're one of my favourite character actors--I don't know if I could do any better than "kind of funny looking."

(I'm guessing Buscemi himself had a sense of humour about the line.)

A woman I'd very recently met once told me she thought I looked like Buscemi, then immediately followed up with "don't worry, I think he's a great actor!"

even as he is depicted (from memory) as the very embodiment of pure, cold-blooded, almost primordial evil.

this is the abstraction part.

really (materialist cards on the table and apologies for previous imprecision) the evil is not inside any of these people-- it is inside the things that happen to jerry's wife, to which you have had such an understandably strong reaction. the three villains bring those things into being together, but it's jerry who is the (ironic) mastermind. since even in the ideal version of the kidnapping where everything goes as planned almost all of those things still happen, is jerry's failure to imagine them-- or having imagined them to privilege them over his own frustration and desire-- really "stupidity", or is his mind protecting him from having to consider the suffering of anyone but himself? (fucking lying to him?) you're right that norm is "simple", probably simpler than jerry-- if norm's stamps kept getting rejected and he felt like a big loser whose wife commands more respect and authority than he does, can you imagine him even beginning to do any of that to marge?

certainly blank casually violent empathy-voids like stormare exist but i appreciate that in fargo this figure is not a demonic supervillain from whence all violence and suffering flow but only the dirty-worker hireling of a normal person in the grip of normal selfishness. and that despite the apparent gulf between the stormare and macy chars, marge's unanswerable questions to the former could be directed just as well to the latter.

(a post from lion in winter way upthread situates bardem's NCfOM character as a manifestation or embodiment of the violence of colonialism+borders, which if correct would make empire itself the diffused jerry-figure: a self-pitying monster that despite being convinced it is perfectly reasonable will find itself lying to and instrumentalizing and destroying anyone, to protect itself from the spectre of humiliation and defeat. i think you would maybe have to bring that context into the movie with you-- rather than watch it all happen right in front of you like it does in fargo-- but i haven't seen it since the theater, so maybe not. in the absence of such a context i think this-- its "metaphysical comic-book abstraction" might be what makes its depictions of villainy and evil easier to take-- is otm.)

What a post

Tho i *do* think chigurh is an almost explicitly metaphorical evil figure in NCFOM, not far off the judge in blood meridian

Chigurh as character is phonier in the novel; what takes a couple minutes of exposition on film takes years on the page, and it ain't worth it. An abstraction he remains. On the other hand, film's literalizing, brutalizing properties makes his carrying that damn blow gun while sporting a Prince Valiant haircut...quite camp.

i def think he (and the judge) are deliberate metaphors too; was just reminded by the LiW post that they're hardly metaphors in a vacuum.

humanizing the vacuums

xpost to dlh

Yeah, great post. I guess I wish the characters were developed a tiny bit more to give better shape to all those really astute observations. My daughter asked me what kind of financial or otherwise trouble Jerry was in to get all this rolling, and I told her we don't know and it doesn't really matter. But then just saying that (and writing it now) shows how hand-wavy it is. Does it matter? No, not really. But it's heavily implied Jerry did something really stupid and irresponsible and is desperate to fix it, and it's also implied he's done it before, again and again, to different degrees of failure. It's one of many reasons his father in law treats him with such disrespect; he knows Jerry is a stupid loser and can't believe his daughter has wound up with him. Jerry's the ironic mastermind, sure, but the kidnapping plot is implied to be the latest last ditch stupid act to remedy his compounding past stupid mistakes. There's no indication he doesn't love his wife, or want the best for her and their family. I can totally imagine him justifying each of his stupid mistakes by saying he's doing it for his family, but also to restore any pride he might have ever had but has since been eroded by a lifetime of bad decisions. In fact, sometimes he scans like he *knows* he's an idiot, which only adds to his frustration, but the movie doesn't really delve too much into his psyche. (One of the many things I love about "A Simple Plan," which feels akin to a Coen Brothers movie, is Billy Bob Thornton's character, who is depicted as a simpleton, too, but also very aware of his limitations, to sad and tragic effect.)

For sure Norm (and Marge) are totally content with their lot in life, which is what prevents them from pursuing their own ill-suited ambitions. I think that's another facet of the film's portrayal of midwest stoicism. But we really don't know enough about Norm to know whether he would make decisions and bad as Jerry's, because there's simply an assumption that he wouldn't based on the sympathetic simplicity of his portrayal, which could be read as a gentle form of condescension itself. Norm would never do such a thing *because* he's so simple, so unambitious, satisfied sitting at home painting birds.

And yeah, Chigurh on screen does come off kind of camp, which is what I was getting at earlier when I mentioned that those goofy affectations work to kind of distance us from the violence. He's real, but he's not *real.*

we really don't know enough about Norm to know whether he would make decisions and bad as Jerry's, because there's simply an assumption that he wouldn't based on the sympathetic simplicity of his portrayal

this is prob true: his character is a kind of shortcut. i'm hippie enough to think jerry might benefit from a creative outlet tho lol.

In fact, sometimes he scans like he *knows* he's an idiot, which only adds to his frustration, but the movie doesn't really delve too much into his psyche

he def knows he's an idiot imho. his character kind of perfectly captures that tragic combination of hubris & self-loathing, the paradox of thinking he's smarter than everyone else (or at least capable of outsmarting everyone else) while also believing that everyone is right about him being a worthless piece of shit, which motivates him to want to outsmart them even more

aside from the fact that he is a doting husband, isnt into smalltalk, and has some free time during the afternoons we really dont know anything about is it ever firmly established what he does all day? he could be a professional wildlife artist!

goddammit - i mean "we really dont know anything about norm" there

I hadn't seen "No Country for Old Men" in years, but I thought it held up remarkably well. Bardem perhaps less dominant than I remembered him, Jones even better than I remembered him. Barely recognizable as a Coen bros. movie, though, which is itself kind of interesting. Long stretches of silence, long static camera shots (Deakins ace as ever). Maybe because I had re-watched "Blood Simple" relatively recently it bore some sort of distant echoes of that, but in a bizarre sort of way I kind of saw the relationship between Brolin and Barden to be akin to Cage and "Tex" Cobb in "Raising Arizona," except this time played for metaphysical horror vs. ... whatever is going on on "Arizona," exactly.

As far as I remember, the only time it hits you over the head with being a Coens movie is when Brolin wakes up in Tijuana (?) Being serenaded by some ridiculous mariachis.

There are tiny beats here and there, like when the motel clerk asks Brolin to pick the number and sizes of beds in his room (which had hints of "You want I should freeze or get down on the ground?") or the dog/river chase, which isn't comical, per se, but is kind of scary and surreal at the same time. Also, Brolin's name is Llewelyn, which of course they did not pick but which they did like enough to use again soon enough.

I don't have much to offer, but just want to say there are some great posts in this revive by dlh, dmac, and chap.

Tommy Lee Jones is one of the rare actors who is always better than you remember him.

the blank check podcast has a theory that tommy lee jones is always good because either he's in a movie he thinks is good and he puts effort into it, or he's in a movie he thinks is bad so he acts pissy and frustrated which is the kind of character he's playing anyways

only seen this one once but deploy "he's seen the same things i've seen and they've certainly made an impression on me" at least monthly

I started thinking about the two Llewelyns when this thread was revived, wondering if there was any connection between the two characters. I didn't get very far; maybe they just liked the name.

I unfailingly read Inside Llewyn Davis as Inside Llewelyn Davis until I saw the movie and got confused by the pronunciation of his name.

There are tiny beats here and there,

Also the lady at the end, which is sort of a victory lap "oh right this is a Coen Bros movie" moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMT0Ki0P4mc

(xpost) Ha! Good thing my laziness prevented me from thinking too deeply about that...

Long stretches of silence, long static camera shots (Deakins ace as ever). Maybe because I had re-watched "Blood Simple" relatively recently it bore some sort of distant echoes of that

my favorite bit in ncfom is when bardem visits brolin in the hotel, the slow methodical focus on process & action, hearing the phone ring down at the front desk, the squeak of the lightbulb being unscrewed, etc, which always reminds me of the finale of blood simple where mcdormand is listening to walsh but never sees him

"aint this a mess"

"If it ain't it'll do til the mess gets here"

the kind of line tlj was born for

So many lines I love to quote (had it third or fourth in the all-time poll going on right now). I think both ends of this exchange might be my favourite:

Carson: He's not like you. He's not even like me.
Llewelyn: He don't talk as much as you, I give him points for that.

Brolin is a revelation in it tbh

I've never read the book. How many of those lines are directly from McCarthy (who I just learned originally wrote it as a screenplay, fwiw). Also, official Wiki shot of McCarthy (from 1973) looks vaguely like Brolin!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7f/Cormac_McCarthy_%28Child_of_God_author_portrait_-_high-res%29.jpg/440px-Cormac_McCarthy_%28Child_of_God_author_portrait_-_high-res%29.jpg

https://bamfstyle.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/nc4lm3-main.jpg

It's a bad book.

I'm not a McCarthy stan, but reading the book in anticipation of the film depressed me: a step above airport fiction.

The film deepens the book.

Those two photos are great--much more than vaguely, I'd say.

Its a very good airport fiction effort and many of the lines are direct iirc

No Country is McCarthy on autopilot a bit (you might argue all McCarthy is autopilot after Suttree), which is why Chigurh feels a bit underwritten, or a bit of a cipher next to someone like the Judge.

I love No Country but each time I watch it, I think 'oh, this sags a bit' but I'm not sure what I'd cut out.

Wasn't there some theory that McCarthy never recovered from the death of his longtime editor?

I don't know what I would cut from No Country. It's already a pretty modest 2 hours, no doubt partly shorter because of some radical ideas (like disposing of Brolin off screen), partly longer because of the multiple TLJ monologues at the end. But definitely wouldn't cut *those*, just as I wouldn't put the death of Brolin in. The only things that are easy to cut are the little character beats (grandma, talking to the girl at the pool, letting Woody ramble, etc.), but there's no way I would cut those, either.

interesting that mccarthy originally meant the book to be a screenplay because it totally reads like a screenplay

The run from brolin coming across the scene through to getting away down the river in a hurry could prob be condensed if need be but tbh i dont see the need myself

“Ethan just didn’t want to make movies anymore.”

https://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/coen-brothers-podcast/

They've done enough movies by now, from the rough script idea up to final edit, that I can understand that sentiment.

Yeah, that's fine. Shut up, boys.

He should set things right and make a Garfield movie w/Bill Murray.

But about James Garfield.

In (the) other (not) Coen news, Etan Cohen reportedly co-wrote a comedy with Macon Blair called "Brothers." It's being directed by the guy that did "Palm Springs" and stars Peter Dinklage, Josh Brolin, Glenn Close and Brendan Fraser. If I were Ethan Coen I would get in on that somehow.

The first trailer for #DriveAwayDolls starring Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, Beanie Feldstein, Pedro Pascal and more. Oh, and directed by Ethan Coen 😎 pic.twitter.com/00ZxW14c7s

— Letterboxd (@letterboxd) June 23, 2023

new Ethan Coen movie Drive-Away Dolls. preview isn't super-inspiring but could still be fun.

Huh, I thought "Ethan just didn't want to make movies anymore."

Found this (didn't realize that Ethan directed a Jerry Lee Lewis doc last year):
https://apnews.com/article/ethan-coen-jerry-lee-lewis-2022-cannes-film-festival-eee40128d35627dfc855c755781d7af7

AP: Many thought you, Ethan, were no longer interested in moviemaking. What changed?

COEN: What changed is I started getting bored. I was with Trish in New York at the beginning of the lockdown. So, you know, it was all a little scary and claustrophobic. And T-Bone Burnett, our friend of many years, approached us — actually, more Trish than me — to ask if we wanted to make this movie basically on archival footage. We could do it at home.

...

AP: Ethan, what was it that had sapped your desire to make movies?

COEN: Oh, nothing happened, certainly nothing dramatic. You start out when you’re a kid and you want to make a movie. Everything’s enthusiasm and gung-ho, let’s go make a movie. And the first movie is just loads of fun. And then the second movie is loads of fun, almost as much fun as the first. And after 30 years, not that it’s no fun, but it’s more of a job than it had been. Joel kind of felt the same way but not to the extent that I did. It’s an inevitable by-product of aging. And the last two movies we made, me and Joel together, were really difficult in terms of production. I mean, really difficult. So if you don’t have to do it, you go at a certain point: Why am I doing this?

...

AP: Do you expect, Ethan, that you and Joel will continue to go your separate ways in moviemaking?

COEN: Oh, I don’t know. Going our own separate ways sounds like it suggests it might be final. But none of this stuff happened definitively. None of the decisions are definitive. We might make another movie. I don’t know what my next movie is going to be after this. The pandemic happened. I turned into a big baby and got bored and quit, and then the pandemic happened. Then other stuff happens and who knows?

I started that trailer, and a few seconds in thought, this (very loosely) reminds me of a slicker "Zola" ... and then the guy from "Zola" showed up! Cornering the market on mismatched/wayward girls driving down to Florida crime movies.

Two pretty obvious Pulp Fiction-inspired shots (although QT took them from other films himself).

Saw the 1975 Carlos Enrique Taboada movie Rapiña the other week, and genuinely think it might be the best Corn Brothers film.

https://media.istockphoto.com/id/1333868981/vector/cute-corn-cob-character-with-joyful-emotions.jpg?s=2048x2048&w=is&k=20&c=kIsRZn-RVMUikKoKJGQrp-Gd4SePrRinCr3SjVZ1AcA=

I’m not nostalgic for the bad old days of post-Tarantino 90s crime comedies at all so this doesn’t look good so far.

if you so much as look sideways at OUT OF SIGHT I will come for you

https://www.slashfilm.com/1331627/ethan-coen-reuniting-with-joel-for-coen-brothers-project/

Axe Lebowski

That would be like axing one of my children.

You know this ... from experience?

Conjecture. So far.

I do kinda wonder how many fathers love Big Lebowski more than at least one of their kids

My kids all love it as much as I do. It's a shared language among us.

Absolutely shocked A Serious Man wins this. Am I missing something with that film? Felt completely underwhelmed by it

I think it's a masterpiece, as far as their ambiguous metaphysical films go.

I've ebbed and flowed on "Lebowski" a lot over the years. The problem (which is not a problem) is that all of their movies are so well-made that it makes them hard to rank, imo. But as far as the sub-category of Coens in Dumb Shaggy Dog mode goes, I think I lean "Burn After Reading" over "Lebowski" these days.

Absolutely shocked A Serious Man wins this. Am I missing something with that film? Felt completely underwhelmed by it

Just look at that parking lot.

I think I lean "Burn After Reading" over "Lebowski" these days.

Burn After Reading is fine, but the casting is weaker than Lebowski, especially Malkovich and I find the sense of play in Lebowski more engaging.

I was distracted during Serious Man because I was sitting behind Roger Ebert. He seemed to dig it.

I think Burn after Reading might be the best movie of their ”past their prime” phase (ie. everything after Lebowski) and George Clooney’s basement dick machine their best scene.

I may have been too close to Lebowski for too many years to really have a discerning opinion on that comparison, but I’d say that while both are shaggy dog pinnacles, Lebowski is much more affectionate towards its characters in spite of their buffoonery, while Burn has pretty much nothing but mocking derision for its crew. That makes Burn sharper as a satire but the lesser film ime.

I can agree with that line of thought.

Re: prime, I'm not sure their past their prime line is that clear, especially since "O Brother" was the one after "Lebowski," and it was a big hit, Oscar noms, paradigm shifting soundtrack, etc. Where do we stand on "The Man Who Wasn't There"? That seems like another forgotten one. Though for sure the double whammy of "Intolerable Cruelty" and "Ladykillers" was a bad stretch. But then followed by "No Country," "Burn" and "Serious Man."

I remember liking The Man Who Wasn't There, although I've seen it only once.

I said as much toward the top of the thread, but give me "past their prime" Coens any day over "prime," if that's the cutoff point

The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) 1

When i were a lad this seemed to be really loved if only for a brief period, almost as much as the first few. But.. something changed.

Absolutely shocked A Serious Man wins this. Am I missing something with that film? Felt completely underwhelmed by it

Tell me you didn't grow up among suburban Midwestern Jews without telling me etc.

I rewatched Intolerable Cruelty recently and was surprised how much I enjoyed it. More than the last time I watched Burnley After Reading, for sure.

Watched Hudsucker for the first time today and really dug it. Some of the humour definitely didn't land but Robbins, Leigh and Newman were fantastic. I hope it does get some reappraisal

I think it's solid. It kind of splits the difference between their ambiguous metaphysical sides and their silly side.

Can't believe no one's mentioned Inside Llewyn Davis yet--I think it's their best "late" one

Hmm, for some reason I never finished that one! But yeah, people like it.

Kinda nuts that there's been only one Coen Brothers movie (with both) since this poll wrapped

That cat in ILD deserved an Oscar nomination.

Forget casting, forget stunts, Oscar needs a best furry performance category

For sure if there were more animals on stage (or in the audience), maybe more people would watch or care.

I think it's like

TBL
Fargo
No Country
Serious Man
ILD

A Serious Man
Fargo
Llewyn Davis
No Country
the rest

Lebowski
Burn
Arizona

Surprised yet pleased A Serious Man topped the poll. It could very well be their best film, and I didn't think that many people would've felt the same.

I kind of have mixed feelings about the Coens', even within the same film in some cases. Virtually all of their films, even the least of them, are commendable for their masterful craftsmanship, and they all have something hilarious about the. But a lot of their films can feel empty or off-puttingly snide and mean-spirited. On the other hand, in the right context, their viewpoint can be a perfect fit, which is why Ethan Coen's 2016 day-after-election editorial for the New York Times is my favorite thing he's ever written - never has humanity been more deserving of his misanthropy.

My three favorites:
A Serious Man
Fargo
Lebowski

Ten years ago I would've included No Country in there as well because it's so well-crafted and the cast is so good, but it just feels emptier the more I see it. (To be fair, I had similar feelings about Cormac McCarthy's work when I gave his books a try.) I wish I could include Inside Llewyn Davis because there are certain ideas that I really like and that I rarely see other films exploring (and that too few people seem to pick up on), but there's also just as much about it that I find off-putting or disappointing.

Surprised Barton Fink isn't on anyone's list, though I haven't rewatched it since it came out.

Cool sound and production designs, sharp John Goodman and Judy Davis performances (as usual), but it doesn't know what it wants to be: pastiche, satire, etc.

I loved Llewyn Davis in the theater, really want to see it again but my partner is not a fan of that one.

Hail, Caesar! has been delightful every time I've rewatched. It's a real 'put it on' movie.

Well, this whole thing is just who knows who.

xxpost agree, barton fink didn't work for me.

inside llewyn davis is probably my favorite coen bros now, which i would not have expected after my first viewing. something pulled me back to it (the cat) and it has become comfort viewing for me. it has some really graceful ambiguity going on. it captures the absurdity and heartache of making art and wanting to be appreciated/paid for it, the sense of there being an endless number of reasonably talented people that slip between the cracks of history, the question of whether art is worth pursuing when one comes to the awareness that you are one of those people

llewyn davis > barton fink > hail caesar > serious man > millers crossing

would be my top 5. i like most of their others too though

xp I had lived with cats (not mine) before I saw Llewyn Davis, but now that I'm raising one with my partner, I've found the cat scenes much more affecting on second viewing.

Everyone I know who was excited to see it before it came out HATED it. One common complaint was the music which I more or less agree with - with one, maybe two exceptions, too much of it is a poor, unconvincing recreation or just thoroughly mediocre. The more damning complaint was that they hated the title character, and this is where I depart from their take on the film. He IS a complete asshole. But that's part of the film's main point. Whether music "redeems" him is debatable, but it's really the way he relates to the world, the way he processes everything he feels that he's never going to openly discuss, and the only means he has to express those things to anyone, often sadly to complete strangers. What he sings is always key, especially when you consider why those particular songs.

God, I would fuck the shit outta Oscar Isaac

xpost lol

i watched it through the lens of that magical time when you're in your twenties and the living is hard and everything seems full of possiblity and potential until suddenly those pathways start to close off

xp lol

Oscar Isaac really is great. Davis, The Card Counter, Show Me a Hero, the remake of Scenes from a Marriage...I probably won't see Moon Knight but with Ethan Hawke in there I wish they'd have dueling diary-writing scenes as an homage to their work with Paul Schrader.

ILD is incredible but i don't love the john goodman chunk, his character is a lot more cartoony than the rest of the movie

barton fink is one of my favorites, turturro is incredible (almost a proto-llewyn davis?) and john goodman is amazing and the ending is so cathartic (I'LL SHOW YOU THE LIFE OF THE MIND) in a way that many of their movies avoid

but trying to rank or pick a favorite feels impossible

I'd file "Barton Fink" as one of their ambiguously metaphysical movies, though its final scene is sort of on the same general plane as the final scene of "Burn After Reading," just totally opposite in tone. A lot of their movies end with some rhetorical variation of "what did I just watch?", often metaphorically but sometimes literally. It never really feels cynical to me, though a case can be made that its would-be profundity can come off phony.

i have to rewatch Barton. rewatched Miller's Crossing. . . it's fine!

one that I don't think holds up is Raising Arizona. Once you get to the yodel diapers chase, it loses steam for me. But I have only seen it 2x so who knows

I love that one, it's sometimes my favorite.

I have a friend who is the exact guy portrayed in ILD (down to the cat).

As I think I've said in another Coen Bros thread, Barton Fink wrote itself into a corner that defied any kind of acceptable ending, so they just burned it to the ground and walked away. However, it did quite well in the first poll here:

Best Coen Brothers movie

xps Raising Arizona is a great YouTube clip movie. There are so many bits and pieces of it that play so well as brief fragments, I thought it was going to be THE greatest comedy ever before I ever sat down to watch the whole thing. (It's still mostly enjoyable.)

Holly Hunter is pure gold in it.

it's easiest for me to say the ones i don't love:

miller's crossing - lots of great stuff in it but just not my favorite coens mode
the ladykillers - duh, though i haven't seen it since it came out
intolerable cruelty - fine but feels pretty empty
true grit - this is just never going to live up to the book for me and tbh i don't love bridges' performance

i haven't seen the man who wasn't there since it came out and i have no memory of it at all

https://vjmorton.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/arizonakid.jpg

I'll never understand why Miller's Crossing isn't valued more highly. It has almost dropped off the map at this point.

Still in the TSPDT Top 1,000 (#794), so I guess not quite. (High of #585 a while back.)

a serious man is one of only two movies that I have actually walked out of. tbf the projector broke twice and the second time about an hour into the film I decided I didn't care what happened in the rest of the movie and left. still never seen the rest of it. millers crossing, barton fink, raising arizona are the ones I like.

I’ve tried Millers Crossing several times and it leaves me totally cold.

Jennifer Jason Leigh was awkward in Hudsucker. Something about her just didn’t fit Coen land.

if you are far enough out of the target audience for a serious man that you couldn't recognize any of the secret handshakes, then I can see how none of it would connect in even the slightest way. I was almost exactly the same age as the youngest protagonist (the kid getting bar mitzvahed) and from 1968 to 1972 in high school I hung with a lot of jewish kids, both reform and conservative synagogue, so this movie was my jam.

No mention whatsoever in this thread of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is weird

I think it kinda had its own thread. The Coens have spawned more than their share.

Found it. About 200 posts long. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs - Coen Brothers Netflix series turned portmanteau movie

I never saw that, either, for no good reason. That, Hail Caesar, ILD are my overlooked. I should watch them! I think I've seen all the others (minus the two misfired) multiple times.

if you are far enough out of the target audience for a serious man that you couldn't recognize any of the secret handshakes, then I can see how none of it would connect in even the slightest way.

would could connect - I'm pretty far from that and I still thought the movie was amazing.

I grew up around Minneapolis in the early 70s and my dad went to high school in the town where A Serious Man takes place (St. Louis Park), so it definitely worked for me in personal ways (same with Fargo and The Hold Steady).

A Serious Man is my favorite Coens joint but I’m not Jewish or from the Midwest or of that late-boomer generation.

Though I was raised religious and Gen-x is not far from that generation to be fair.

I think I mentioned this once or twice, but I used to know their cousin, who once told me that if you knew their family growing up, everything about all their movies makes so much sense.

Anyway, having seen Drive-Away Dolls, a fun fillip. (84 minutes! I was well inclined for that alone!) My sis and her crew of friends will absolutely love the shit out of it and I told her as much.

Barton Fink and Miller's Crossing are still their best work IMO. Maybe I'm old.

I only saw Barton Fink for the first time a few years ago, one of the last of their films I hadn't seen, and was blown away. Possibly even their best, which is crazy that it took me so many years to get to, but I guess with them you never know what will click

Loved Barton Fink. Which makes it odd to me that A Serious Man felt flat. And I'm Jewish, though not from the Midwest or lived in that era.

Miller's Crossing was also incredible but very different in tone and setting than much of their other films. It's not "iconic" like so many others so it gets lost in the weeds. Need to watch it again!

I grew up around Minneapolis in the early 70s and my dad went to high school in the town where A Serious Man takes place (St. Louis Park), so it definitely worked for me in personal ways (same with Fargo and The Hold Steady).

― paisley got boring (Eazy)

I grew up in SLP (though I am not Jewish, half of my friend group was), graduated from Park having studied cinema with the guy who also taught the Coens, and even the names of certain characters in ASM made me laugh hard because of town lore, etc. Plus I can find my friend Avrom being an extra in the temple scenes. My mom and her siblings also went to Park, which class was your dad in, Eazy?

ASM, Fargo both favourites of mine. Loved Barton Fink when it came out, but like others, it’s been a while since I watched it.

I saw Barton Fink way late in the game too, and it didn’t exactly click all that often but John Goodman’s fiery rampage did sear itself

Plus I can find my friend Avrom being an extra in the temple scenes. My mom and her siblings also went to Park, which class was your dad in, Eazy?

(belated reply!)

'55 or '56? He then joined the Peace Corps in the early 60s and lived abroad for almost a decade before returning with my pregnant mom...and then I was born in St. Louis Park (but grew up in Burnsville).

Also (to suzy) the Red Owl scene in A Serious Man was the one that most connected with my early-70s memories there, though I did go with my parents once to their marriage counselor who was in a strip mall at Excelsior and Hwy 100.

not going over to the worst actors thread with this bcz it will only rile ppl up and i am by now too famous a h8a in that one case but i really REALLY couldn't get with miller's crossing, it just felt like a long trudge through mistimed formal gags and overboiled pastiche, or maybe i just OD'd on peaky blinders

I love the Coens and I’ve tried to watch Miller’s Crossing three times and it refuses to be interesting or to stick in my brain at all. I sorta remember what a couple of the characters look like, other than that my brain is like teflon to this movie. It is their Inherent Vice. I will probably try again because so many people like it.

The Coen Brothers are a rare case where I wish there was a compilation or I guess a documentary that cuts together their best moments. (Mel Brooks is another.) Even their lesser films have a scene or two that's absolutely hilarious. I'm not sure if I'll ever watch Hail, Caesar! again, but "would that it were" and the meeting with the religious heads are two of the best scenes they've ever put together.

Miller's Crossing is like if '50s-era Antonioni made a '30s Warner Bros. Gangster movie.

xp i'd add the "no dames" scene as well

I'm not a Miller's Crossing stan either.

Gabriel Byrne is kryptonite

i think one problem i've had w/Miller's Crossing (i mostly love it btw) is while i think Byrne is very good in the role, his character is one i like watching more as the guy taking us along this journey than a guy i'm invested in at any point. overall though, i think it's absolutely the film where these bros fully emerged.

I'd be interested in seeing the latter era Coens tackle a period crime film along these lines, maybe adapt Queenpin by Megan Abbott or something like that.

its true to say that it's their inherent vice in that it is perfect and flawless

i too like inherent vice, a rare zone of accord for deems and me

in fact i might watch it tonight (instead of the hudsucker proxy)

The only Coen Brothers movies I haven't seen are "Hail, Caesar!" "Inside Llewyn Davis" and "Buster Scruggs," for no good reason. (Bad timing?) The only ones I have seen that I haven't seen a second time because I didn't particularly like them are "Ladykillers," "Intolerable Cruelty" and "True Grit." The only one I've seen only once *despite* liking (iirc) is "The Man Who Wasn't There." Every other one I have seen multiple times and would gladly see again, including "Miller's Crossing."

intolerable cruelty has imo a lot of rewatch fun

true grit is great!

the man who wasnt there is the one ive always struggled to get through

it's not as good as The Maltese Falcon or The Thin Man, but Miller's Crossing is the third-best Dashiell Hammett movie

A Serious Man is an awful movie, more or less unwatchable - is this some kind of joke poll? idgi you lot are genius and then you get something like this completely wrong

Not otm

Somebody hasn't been looking at the parking lot.

saw it at the cinema, quite hyped tbh, almost walked out, never revisited

maybe I will eventually, but it will take a lot of convincing

i do like the wildly differing canons ppl have for these guys

you need to watch it a little more sideways than that imo, its underwhelmingly overwhelming

The running gag in A Serious Man involving the Columbia House Record Club tracking down the main character and insisting upon payment for a Record of the Month (Santana - Abraxas) for which the requisite "do not send" form was never mailed is priceless. "How can I be in trouble - I haven't done anything!" "That's correct, sir - you're in trouble precisely because you haven't done anything."

Love Miller's Crossing--haven't seen it for a few years, but saw it many times before that.

"underwhelmingly overwhelming" is a great way to describe "A Serious Man."

mr. gopnik, just a minute, sir, please! we can't MAKE you listen to the record!

Haven't seen it since it played at my university film club, probably a year after release. Didn't really like it. Inherent Vice is great though, as is A Serious Man. True Grit a bit annoying.

Sorry xpost - it = Miller's Crossing

Wow, uncanny timing of this, I watched "Miller's Crossing" last night (hadn't seen it since the early '90s on VHS) - the 20th Century Fox blu-ray edition (fyi, apparently the Criterion "director approved" edition is *shorter* by around 2 mins, inexplicably cutting out a few choice bits! Boo.). Loved it then, love it now. This time around, I realized that anything involving Tom's hat is key to one theme (without spoilers: losing it in a poker game with Verna, the dream about the hat blowing away, and the last scene.) One of my college professors would add a movie trivia question or two to his exams for a few bonus points, and this was his favorite movie - and I was the only one in the class that got a Miller's Crossing question correct (It was a "finish the quote" question: "One thing I always try to teach my boys..." "Always put one in the brain.")

Intro to the "Blood Simple" DVD (which is also shorter):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-pHjFmXq1M

Intro to "Big Lebowski"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0V_hBqViBg

I have to check a transcript every time before I quote this:

Eddie: "Where's Leo?"

Flunkie: "If I tell you, how do I know you won't kill me?"

Eddie: "Because if you told me and I killed you and you were lying, I wouldn't get to kill you then."

Back in the early days of the internet (when streaming video was still a pipe dream), it was not unusual to find websites that had sound clips of movie dialogue. The two I remember most involved Full Metal Jacket (almost entirely the drill sergeant's lines) and Raising Arizona, and for years, I knew the latter almost entirely through sound bites rather than anything I actually saw. This was the big favorite among me and my schoolmates which we likely re-enacted way too many times.

I used to download lots of WAV files of movie dialogue. When I'd make someone a mix-CD of music from Scorsese films, I'd intersperse audio clips...doo-wop song, Rolling Stones, "Your mother sucks big fat elephant dicks--you got that?" doo-wop song, etc.

Awesome. Also, for a long time, me and a few of my schoolmates would call "Then He Kissed Me" 'the GoodFellas song' every time it came up on oldies radio. ("Every time I come here, every time, you two! Don't you work?")

That's one sequence where I know every bit of dialogue as Henry and Karen pass Copa employees; I'd show it every year to students, so was extra careful that there wasn't any stray or muffled profanity.