Best Coen Brothers Movie - 2017

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.

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.