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 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.

rescreened O Brother Where Art Thou? the other night bc my kid really likes Raising Arizona and considers No Country For Old Men his favorite movie. O Bro really holds up more than I thought it would, and Clooney is actually pretty incredible in that role, maybe contextually more so considering he just didn't really show chops as a versatile, confident actor until a couple years prior to this.

O Bro! also has Holly Hunter, which is always a plus.

it’s not s-tier coens for me but it’s a lot of fun and clooney is indeed incredible in it. he works really well with the coens, even in intolerable cruelty

I don't understand why people are so down on Intolerable Cruelty.

it's watchable but it's gotta be one of their three worst movies (which doesn't mean it's bad). I haven't watched it in a long time but in my memory catherine zeta-jones was not great in it and it felt slight overall

The script of Intolerable Cruelty feels like it wants to be a Hepburn/Tracy movie, but Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones just don't have the right chemistry for that. Their interactions are too brittle and not good-natured enough. Tbf, reproducing that Hepburn/Tracy chemistry is a very tall order.

If I didn’t know the Coens were involved, Intolerable would be a better than average romantic comedy. Says I, not a connoisseur of the genre.

Ladykillers is definitely a Coen movie but it’s off. Turnt, even.

O Brother is up there with Goodfellas for rewatchability.

Intolerable coming after the run of Fargo/Lebowski/O Brother didn't help.

Oh I guess The Man Who Wasn't There came in between!

Not considered a classic (though I like it), but still feels more weighty and Coenesque than IC

It took a long time for me to realize how much I got emotionally from Cohen Bros film, because the cinematic fluency and flipness kept me at a distance, but I've seen them all and would grade just about everything an A in retrospect. Serious Man, Man Who Wasn't and Ladykillers are the ones I haven't seen.

My S-tier is Burn After Reading, Inside Llewyn Davis and No County - so tonally different but each captures an aspect of American culture I've had to cope with - federal/government work, musicians, macho self-sufficiency. I guess the commonality is how they deconstruct swagger, even as their own technique is virtuosic.

seen *almost* all!

I keep trying with A Serious Man but it just doesn't click. But then I also really like Intolerable Cruelty so I'm clearly an outlier.

A Serious Man is one of their masterpieces, imo.

i think intolerable cruelty is very unfairly treated by being categorised as un-coen bros as if they didnt mean for it to be what it is. its no different tonally than burn after reading but is imo played better by the cast

a serious man is perhaps their best movie, tho not my personal favourite of theirs. one of the five best movies of the decade imo. a gut punch.