The Coen Brothers dropped a new film recently Hail, Caesar!. I haven’t seen it yet but probably will at some point in the not too distant future. I see pretty much every Coen brothers movie. They are one -- or two, I suppose -- of the only filmmakers, whose films I make it a must to see. In fact, it's pretty much just them and Quentin Tarantino. There are other filmmakers I like, but the Coens and Tarantino are the only ones I really make it a point to watch. Incidentally, Tarantino came out with a new film himself relatively recently The Hateful Eight (which I also haven't seen, but want to) but in this post I’m going to talk about the Coen brothers because I am inspired by this article.
I think the author mostly gets it right, not completely right, but I would say more right than the voters in the readers' poll. (If you vote at the end of the story you can see the readers' picks.) Here's the “real” ranking, i.e., my ranking. I haven't seen Blood Simple, Miller's Crossing, The Ladykillers, or Hail, Caesar!, so I can't rank those, but 13 out of 17 is enough to make the definitive list, right? I think so.
The list:
13 Intolerable Cruelty
12 O Brother, Where Art Thou?
11 The Hudsucker Proxy
10 Barton Fink
9 Inside Llewyn Davis
8 True Grit
7 Burn After Reading
6 Raising Arizona
5 No Country for Old Men
4 Fargo
3 A Serious Man
2 The Man Who Wasn't There
1 Big Lebowski
And here’s some commentary broken down into category form.
Three Most Overrated Movies
1. O Brother Where Art Thou?
This is easily their most overrated movie. I wouldn’t even say it’s a good movie, but the readers have it in the top five. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I recall it just being a hodgepodge of weird scenes. There was no there there – no movie there. That it is supposed to be based on The Odyssey does absolutely nothing for me. There best thing about it by far is the soundtrack.
2. Raising Arizona
Solid movie, but I watched it relatively recently and didn’t think it was nearly as funny as I remembered. Part of this might be the pacing and style of comedies of that era -- the timing often seems slow when you watch them now. Really great movies last the test of time, and this one doesn't quite hold up. I put it in the overrated category because the author of the article ranked it no. 1, and it doesn’t even crack my top five. It does, however, have one of my all-time favorite Coen brothers' lines in it. A police officer is questioning the crusty old tycoon Nathan Arizona about what his missing child was wearing the night he disappeared.
Great movie – just not Oscar-winning great (in my opinion; The Academy obviously feels differently). That’s why I'm proclaiming this one overrated. Fantastic individual performances (especially Javier Bardem), fantastic individual scenes (especially those containing Javier Bardem), but as a coherent, complete movie it came up just a tad short – the sum of the individual parts were better than the whole. The buildup was fantastic, but there was no payoff, and I really wanted some sort of payoff. I think they couldn’t write a good ending, so they did the artsy thing and just abruptly ended it. To me, it felt much more like a copout than anything else.
Three Most Underrated Movies
1. A Serious Man
I love this movie. In fact, I think I might love this movie more than any other Coen brothers fan loves this movie, being that it barely makes the voters' list at all. I have it as the Coens' third best all-time, ahead of Fargo by a sliver, because it’s more my style of movie. I like movies about really interesting characters where nothing “exciting” happens, as opposed to thrillers. The biggest knock on this movie, however, is that it does the thing I was just complaining about: it ends out of nowhere. This wasn’t nearly as unsatisfying for me as it was in No Country for Old Men though.
2. Burn After Reading
This one was much stupided than most other Coen brothers movies – by which I mean it was goofy and silly, not unintelligent. But it was pretty fun (lighthearted, in a very dark way) and pretty funny. So I put it in my top-10, higher than the author or the readers.
3. The Man Who Wasn’t There
No. 2 on my list. Billy Bob at his finest, with Frances McDormand also giving a boffo performance. This has one of my favorite Coen brothers scenes in it of all-time. The one where the woman comes to the barber’s door to talk to him about space aliens... You have to see it to get it.
Boringest Movie
Inside Llewyn Davis
Here’s how this went for me – drag, drag, drag, drag, kinda funny part, drag, drag, drag, drag, way too long song, drag, drag, drag, another way too long song, drag, drag, drag, another kind funny part, drag, drag, drag. Lather, rinse, repeat. Yet, weirdly, I didn’t think it was a bad movie. I don’t think it was great, and I never want to watch it again, but it wasn’t bad.
Excitingest Movie
Fargo
Actually, it's probably No Country for Old Men -- I think I was much more rapt during that one -- but I already talked about it, so I'll give some love to Fargo instead. Great, great movie, and the TV show is pretty solid too.
The Worst
Intolerable Cruelty
Honestly, I don't even remember much about this movie, but one of things I do remember is that I really didn’t like it. I think it was one of those every-other-scene-is-a-plot-twist type of movies -- the conman is actually getting conned by his mark, but she’s getting conned by her friend, who’s getting conned by the conman's accountant, but the quiet old woman nobody suspects is conning them all, but the original conman knows this so he’s conning her, so on and so forth. I really dislike those movies. If everything is a plot twist then there are no plot twists, because the audience isn't expecting anything anymore, so there is nothing to twist. Much like the abrupt non-ending ending, it feels like a copout.
The Best
The Big Lebowski
And frankly it's not even really close. The Coen brothers mainly write comedy and Lebowski is by far their funniest movie. In fact, in my opinion, it's the funniest movie ever. (Or rather, I should say, it's the funniest comedy ever. I think Pulp Fiction actually made me laugh more the first time I saw it, but Pulp Fiction isn't a comedy in the same way The Big Lebowski is.) There are so many Lebowski scenes I could end on, but let's go with this one. It's probably my favorite.
Until next time...
I think the author mostly gets it right, not completely right, but I would say more right than the voters in the readers' poll. (If you vote at the end of the story you can see the readers' picks.) Here's the “real” ranking, i.e., my ranking. I haven't seen Blood Simple, Miller's Crossing, The Ladykillers, or Hail, Caesar!, so I can't rank those, but 13 out of 17 is enough to make the definitive list, right? I think so.
The list:
13 Intolerable Cruelty
12 O Brother, Where Art Thou?
11 The Hudsucker Proxy
10 Barton Fink
9 Inside Llewyn Davis
8 True Grit
7 Burn After Reading
6 Raising Arizona
5 No Country for Old Men
4 Fargo
3 A Serious Man
2 The Man Who Wasn't There
1 Big Lebowski
Three Most Overrated Movies
1. O Brother Where Art Thou?
This is easily their most overrated movie. I wouldn’t even say it’s a good movie, but the readers have it in the top five. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I recall it just being a hodgepodge of weird scenes. There was no there there – no movie there. That it is supposed to be based on The Odyssey does absolutely nothing for me. There best thing about it by far is the soundtrack.
2. Raising Arizona
Solid movie, but I watched it relatively recently and didn’t think it was nearly as funny as I remembered. Part of this might be the pacing and style of comedies of that era -- the timing often seems slow when you watch them now. Really great movies last the test of time, and this one doesn't quite hold up. I put it in the overrated category because the author of the article ranked it no. 1, and it doesn’t even crack my top five. It does, however, have one of my all-time favorite Coen brothers' lines in it. A police officer is questioning the crusty old tycoon Nathan Arizona about what his missing child was wearing the night he disappeared.
Police Officer: What did the pajamas look like?3. No Country for Old Men
Nathan Arizona: I don't know. They were jammies! They had Yodas and shit on 'em!
Great movie – just not Oscar-winning great (in my opinion; The Academy obviously feels differently). That’s why I'm proclaiming this one overrated. Fantastic individual performances (especially Javier Bardem), fantastic individual scenes (especially those containing Javier Bardem), but as a coherent, complete movie it came up just a tad short – the sum of the individual parts were better than the whole. The buildup was fantastic, but there was no payoff, and I really wanted some sort of payoff. I think they couldn’t write a good ending, so they did the artsy thing and just abruptly ended it. To me, it felt much more like a copout than anything else.
Three Most Underrated Movies
1. A Serious Man
I love this movie. In fact, I think I might love this movie more than any other Coen brothers fan loves this movie, being that it barely makes the voters' list at all. I have it as the Coens' third best all-time, ahead of Fargo by a sliver, because it’s more my style of movie. I like movies about really interesting characters where nothing “exciting” happens, as opposed to thrillers. The biggest knock on this movie, however, is that it does the thing I was just complaining about: it ends out of nowhere. This wasn’t nearly as unsatisfying for me as it was in No Country for Old Men though.
2. Burn After Reading
This one was much stupided than most other Coen brothers movies – by which I mean it was goofy and silly, not unintelligent. But it was pretty fun (lighthearted, in a very dark way) and pretty funny. So I put it in my top-10, higher than the author or the readers.
3. The Man Who Wasn’t There
No. 2 on my list. Billy Bob at his finest, with Frances McDormand also giving a boffo performance. This has one of my favorite Coen brothers scenes in it of all-time. The one where the woman comes to the barber’s door to talk to him about space aliens... You have to see it to get it.
Boringest Movie
Inside Llewyn Davis
Here’s how this went for me – drag, drag, drag, drag, kinda funny part, drag, drag, drag, drag, way too long song, drag, drag, drag, another way too long song, drag, drag, drag, another kind funny part, drag, drag, drag. Lather, rinse, repeat. Yet, weirdly, I didn’t think it was a bad movie. I don’t think it was great, and I never want to watch it again, but it wasn’t bad.
Excitingest Movie
Fargo
Actually, it's probably No Country for Old Men -- I think I was much more rapt during that one -- but I already talked about it, so I'll give some love to Fargo instead. Great, great movie, and the TV show is pretty solid too.
The Worst
Intolerable Cruelty
Honestly, I don't even remember much about this movie, but one of things I do remember is that I really didn’t like it. I think it was one of those every-other-scene-is-a-plot-twist type of movies -- the conman is actually getting conned by his mark, but she’s getting conned by her friend, who’s getting conned by the conman's accountant, but the quiet old woman nobody suspects is conning them all, but the original conman knows this so he’s conning her, so on and so forth. I really dislike those movies. If everything is a plot twist then there are no plot twists, because the audience isn't expecting anything anymore, so there is nothing to twist. Much like the abrupt non-ending ending, it feels like a copout.
The Best
The Big Lebowski
And frankly it's not even really close. The Coen brothers mainly write comedy and Lebowski is by far their funniest movie. In fact, in my opinion, it's the funniest movie ever. (Or rather, I should say, it's the funniest comedy ever. I think Pulp Fiction actually made me laugh more the first time I saw it, but Pulp Fiction isn't a comedy in the same way The Big Lebowski is.) There are so many Lebowski scenes I could end on, but let's go with this one. It's probably my favorite.
Until next time...
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