No, I’m not ranking the brothers (I always preferred Joel over Ethan, just because), I’m ranking their movies. The Coens are one of very few directors whose work I’ve seen in the entirety. They were the first directors I ever really took notice of and, whilst they’ve made a few sub-par movies, I’ll happily watch anything they do. Here’s my ranking of all 16 of their films to date:
#16 / Intolerable Cruelty (2003)
The first time the Coen brothers tried re-using the lead from a previous movie as the lead once again did not work out well. Clooney’s vain buffooning is great in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, when he has John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson to be even more stupid around him, but up against Catherine Zeta Jones’ sultry femme fatale it just doesn’t work. Despite a great supporting cast – Richard Jenkins, Geoffrey Rush, Paul Adelstein, Billy Bob Thornton (you’ll notice I’m not mentioning Cedric the So-Called-Entertainer) – this was not the classic screwball comedy it so badly wanted to be.
#15 / The Ladykillers (2004)
It was pretty much a coin toss as to whether this or Intolerable Cruelty would be in last place, but I saw this The Ladykillers more recently, and can recall a few more elements I approved of. Such as the bonus feature that sees Marlon Wayans being continually slapped by Irma P. Hall, which I could happily watch all day long. Also, any moment involving the portrait hanging on the wall. It’s not a patch on the classic Ealing original, starring the likes of Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers, mainly because I’m pretty sure no characters in that suffered from bouts of gastroenteritis. There’s some greatness in here, but it’s surrounded by too much mundanity, and Tom Hanks was not born to play villains.
#14 / The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)
Ok, so I’m not a fan of the Coens’ run from 2001 – 2004, but everything else on this list gets a recommendation from me. With The Man Who Wasn’t There, I think my problem is that I just don’t get it. I’ve watched it at least three times, and always walked away feeling confused and a little off, and then a week later I can’t recall anything that happened in the film. I know the performances are all good – I do enjoy what the Coens do with Jon Polito and Tony Shalhoub whenever they use them – but as a film I think this was a failed experiment. It looks gorgeous – and Roger Deakins received his fifth Oscar nomination for the cinematography here (how has he not won one yet? HOW?) – but that’s about it.
#13 / Burn After Reading (2008)
OK, recommendations from here on out. These are all films that everyone should at least watch once. Yes, including this one. I know Burn After Reading isn’t universally loved, by I’ve got a soft spot for it. Once again this sees the Coens dealing in stupid people sinking themselves into situations far over their heads – Brad Pitt especially does a wonderful job here as a gym-obsessed nincompoop – and as with Intolerable Cruelty the plot gets itself a little too complicated for its own good, but there are enough moments here for me to cling to and desperately tell people that it is actually worth seeing. The fate of Pitt’s character, for example, and the invention that George Clooney’s Harry Pfarrer (I love the names the Coens come up with) has in his basement. And every moment J. K. Simmons appears on screen.
#12 / Blood Simple (1984)
The first Coen movie is by no means bad, it just lacks a certain polish they would develop later on. It comes with the grit and grease of a low budget, which admittedly adds to the sweaty, pulpy vibe as an adulterous couple and a cuckolded husband are drawn into a murder plot by a lizard-like detective, M. Emmet Walsh’s Loren Visser. The main draw here is Walsh, whose Visser is a wonderfully slimy, disgusting character, half snake, half pig, all bastard, but don’t forget Samm-Art Williams as Meurice, the coolest bartender committed to film.
#11 / Raising Arizona (1987)
I know a lot of people who will probably be surprised that Raising Arizona isn’t placed higher on this list. Well, the truth is that I’m not a huge fan of it. I like it, don’t get me wrong, just not as much as some others do. Nicolas Cage is fun as a Woody Woodpecker-like real life embodiment of a cartoon character, Holly Hunter is brilliant as his baby-crazy wife, John Goodman and William Forsythe are enjoyably stupid as two prison escapees attempting to corrupt their newly settled down friend, Randall Tex Cobb is decent as a seemingly unstoppable biker who even shoots at rabbits, and Sam McMurray is perfect as Cage’s dickhead boss, but for me it just doesn’t quite fit together well enough to make it inside the Top 10.
#10 / A Serious Man (2009)
If you’re new to the Coen brothers, this is not your entry point. No sir, you just keep moving along. A Serious Man is not a film that is easily enjoyed, and in fact the first time I watched it I scratched my head and went “What?” because often it doesn’t make a whole heap of sense with regards to why we’re seeing what we are. For starters it kicks off with a scene entirely in Yiddish – this is a very Jewish film – and doesn’t necessarily get any less opaque from there. And yet I really quite like it. Michael Stuhlbarg is wonderful in the lead role, and it’s this performance that got his name out into the world, leading to such roles as his stellar work on Boardwalk Empire, which can be nothing but a good thing. I can’t really explain why I like this film, and I can understand why many people don’t, as it’s not one I’m desperate to re-watch on a regular basis, so I’ll just have to leave it at that.
#09 / True Grit (2010)
Jeff Bridges should work with the Coens more often. He of course appears again later on in this list, but his work in the True Grit remake is terrific too, and very nearly set Oscar history for having two actors winning the Best Actor award for playing the same character in different films, after John Wayne picked up his statue for playing Rooster Cogburn back in 1970. This is a solid adaptation that doesn’t put a foot wrong, with Bridges eating up the screen as the drunken lawman. Hailee Steinfeld shines in her first major role, but Matt Damon shouldn’t be forgotten for his willingness to step into a supporting role , and as a thoroughly punchable being at that.
#08 / Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
The most recent Coen effort is one I’ve only seen once, but haven’t been able to stop thinking about since. Upon watching it I wasn’t all that taken with its rambling, aimless narrative about a highly unlikeable folk singer falling from one catastrophe to the next and attempting to bring the rest of the world down around him, but since then it has improved somewhat in my memory. Perhaps it’s from my repeated soundtrack listenings (“UH OH!”) or maybe this is just the kind of film that needs to settle into your brain and root around for a while. That’s definitely what Inside Llewyn Davis has done, hence why I’ve since bought a copy, and will hopefully be re-watching it soon.
#07 / O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
I posted a review of this only yesterday, so please forgive me for not going into detail, but suffice to say this was a welcome surprise as to how much I enjoyed it. Especially Tim Blake Nelson.
#06 / Barton Fink (1991)
Barton Fink is an odd film that gets by on character and aesthetic. I don’t much care for the plot – a newly minted writer is tasked with penning a by-the-numbers wrestling movie, and finds himself overcome by writer’s block, meanwhile his neighbour in the hotel in which he is staying appears to be a good-natured salesmen, but may in fact be Satan – but I love everything else. The scenes of Fink (John Turturro) meeting with the movie’s producer (Michael Lerner) and his assistant (Jon Polito) are endless fun, and Lerner was justifiably nominated for a Supporting Actor Oscar for his troubles. And the production design of the Hotel Earle is spot on, with the wallpaper sweating and seeping paste off the walls, and of course who can forget Chet the bellboy (Steve Buscemi). If it had tied itself up a little more at the end I think it would maybe earn a spot in the Top 5. So close.
#05 / Miller’s Crossing (1990)
One of two highly underrated films in my Top 5, Miller’s Crossing was recently featured on an FTS Mini podcast episode, and wasn’t taken to all that kindly by some of my colleagues, so I’m here to defend it. The only problem I have with the film is that sometimes the plot gets a little too twisty for its own good, so it gets a tad difficult to follow. Ignoring that, the performances and characters are amazing – I love everything about Jon Polito as Johnny Caspar, especially when he gets angry at his son – and the scene with Alfred Molina evading an assassination attempt on his life could be an award-winning short film in its own right.
#04 / The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
This could be the highest placed film that I get any kind of backlash on, but I don’t care. I really like The Hudsucker Proxy, the story of Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins), a dimwitted small town wannabe inventor attempting to make it big in the big city, and I think the root of that is because, at some level, it’s about product design, which is something I do for a living. That, at least, is what got me hooked on the movie, and now having seen it many times I’ve found enough to love about it aside from that too. Be it the fast-talking Buzz the elevator operator, the board room full of fat old blow-hards (not counting the mezzanine) or just how long Jennifer Jason Leigh can carry on talking at a ridiculous pace without taking a breath, this is a criminally underrated film, with an ending that comes out of nowhere, but somehow still makes sense and doesn’t feel out of place. You know, for kids.
#03 / No Country For Old Men (2007)
As yet the only Coen film to pick up the Best Picture statue (although Fargo, A Serious Man and True Grit have all been nominated), No Country For Old Men is damn near flawless. A lot of credit should be given to Cormac McCarthy’s novel, from which pretty much all the dialogue is taken verbatim, but the Coen’s directed the heck out of it, and perfectly cast every role, all the way down to the shopkeeper traumatised by Anton Chigurh. Speaking of Chigurh, he may be my favourite villain of all time. He’s menace on legs, even without that cattle gun. Josh Brolin has never really done a great deal for me, so I think if they had swapped him out with someone else I might have liked it better, but even with him in it’s pretty damn fantastic.
#02 / The Big Lebowski (1998)
OK, last two, and this was a difficult one, but despite having seen The Big Lebowski far more times, it still only reached by number 2. It’s easily the most quotable film on this list, and in fact I regularly use snippets of dialogue in my everyday life, going straight over the heads of everyone around me. Everyone, if you hear me say “There’s a beverage!” it’s a quote from this film. Sam Elliott is all kinds of awesome in his little bookends, Johns Goodman and Turturro have never been better, Jeff Bridges is fantastic and I actively appreciate how little the plot has to do with anything, which is so unlike me that I can offer you no explanation as to why. This is the cultest of cult movies, one that you either love or just plain can’t comprehend the appreciation, and that’s just fine. And, as always, the soundtrack is awesome.
#01 / Fargo (1996)
As with O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Fargo is a film I’ve reviewed on FTS before (no-one questioned that I fitted two Coen brothers films into my USA Road Trip so far). It’s not just my favourite Coen movie, it’s easily in my Top 10, if not Top 5 movies of all time, but The Big Lebowski isn’t all that far behind. I recently heard the accusation that it wouldn’t be e=anywhere close to funny if you removed the accents, and I don’t see the point in that statement. The dialogue, acting and characters are all often hilarious, but not solely due to the accents. They help, sure you-betcha, but they aren’t the be-all-and-end-all. This film features one of the greatest and most realistic relationships on screen, between Marge and Norm Son-of-a-Gunderson (Frances McDormand and John Carroll Lynch), some inept goons – for which I always have a soft spot – in the forms of Peter Stormare and Steve Buscemi, plus one of the most pathetic leading characters in history, William H. Macy’s Jerry Lundegaard. It’s also one of the shortest films on the list, yet still packs in a convoluted, ever-twisting plot, and takes a couple of side dalliances, and fleshes out some of the lesser supporting characters to a very memorable level. In short, it’s a perfect film. With funny accents.
Did I get the order wrong? Do you adore The Man Who Wasn’t There? Or are you disgusted with my love for The Hudsucker Proxy? Maybe you’ve got a problem with me leaving out their segment from Paris Je T’aime? (It’s a short, so I deemed it incomparable, but I’d have put it at about #11. It’s fun, check it out on YouTube.) Let me know in the comments.
