Ten minutes into Inside Llewyn Davis we are captivated by Joel and Ethan Coen’s technique: those controlled compositions, steady tonal rhythms, and wisdom regarding the script are divine (divine because the brothers are spiritualists). When they cut to the p.o.v. of an orange tab... Read More »
A funny thing happened on the way to me reviewing True Grit. As I sat down to rewatch it I had firmly in my mind my initial critical impression from seeing it in theaters several years ago. That opinion lined up with the general critical consensus: fun, but unambitious for a Co... Read More »
The Coen brothers have a real skill for surprise, zigging when everyone expects them to zag. Take their run of films from the mid to late 2000’s. After the underwhelming one-two punch of Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers, they rebounded by winning their first and only Bes... Read More »
Joel and Ethan Coen are masters at creating characters. Their genius lies in how they drive those characters by making them frolic randomly across the screen. The Big Lebowski was made during a really confusing time in history. The Cold War had long thawed out and the real impact... Read More »
Through the Coen Brothers’ vigilant style of punctuating the psychological with precise camera movements, Barton Fink (1991) generates a striking portrayal of inner turmoil. Feelings of anguish and distress are brought to life by the interaction between the characters, their pres... Read More »
A fedora blows into a wooded crossroads, surrounded by a bed of delicate flora and grass that sways in the wind like wisps of baby's hair in the afternoon sun. A sudden gust of wind carries the fedora into the air and down the road, beckoning us to watch the story of Miller's Cro... Read More »
The Coen Brothers’ second feature, Raising Arizona, is probably their most outwardly zany film. It seems everything is a little bit crazy, from Nicolas Cage’s constant dumbfounded looks to the demon bounty hunter to the out-of-control wandering camera. Though nothing they have ... Read More »
O Brother, Where Art Thou? is one of the Coen brothers’ funniest and nearly forgotten films. The reason it was forgotten so quickly is that the soundtrack became so popular that people forgot that it was associated with a film at all. The soundtrack won Album of the Year at the... Read More »
Film-noir characters always had the right moves no matter what the circumstances were. They lurked in shadows to conceal their faces in the stark inky blacks of black and white photography, fell into circumstances beyond their control but always managed to maintain the upper hand... Read More »
No Country for Old Men, at the risk of sounding predictable, is one of the Coen Brothers’s great achievements – dark, lurid, mysterious, but not without their usual strokes of humor. Only this time, Joel and Ethan Coen eschew satire and cut right to the bitter, unfiltered truth o... Read More »
The statue of Paul Bunyan located in Brainerd, Minnesota looms large throughout Fargo. It marks the entrance to the small town, and it casts a sort of eerie feel over many of the lingering shots of it. But more importantly, it marks out exactly the kind of story we’re watching. D... Read More »
