The Coen Brothers' 11 Best Movies
In honor of their 30-year career, and their new movie, "Hail, Caesar!," here are 11 essential movies from the Coen Bros.
'Blood Simple' (1984)
The Coens' debut film is certainly bloody but far from simple. It's a darkly funny, twisty Texas noir, with a plot involving adultery, multiple betrayals, and at least one body that won't stay dead.
'Raising Arizona' (1987)
In this thoroughly off-the-wall comedy, the Coens gave Holly Hunter her first big break as the baby-craving Ed, opposite Nicolas Cage as her tyke-napping husband. Future Coens regular John Goodman joins the zany film as a scheming escaped convict who threatens Ed and H.I.'s new nuclear family. Absurd, inventive, and in places, unexpectedly poignant.
'Miller's Crossing' (1990)
This old-school, Dashiell Hammett-influenced gangster movie includes a grand-old-lion performance by Albert Finney and a sultry, startling turn as a femme fatale by then-newcomer Marcia Gay Harden. With this handsome, haunting drama, the Coens proved they were capable of something loftier than absurd black comedy and genre parody.
'Barton Fink' (1991)
John Turturro plays a 1930s Hollywood screenwriter whose writer's block is the first step on a descent into madness. The Coens may be biting the Hollywood hand that feeds them, but they're also spoofing the myth of the tortured artist. If the Coens have ever struggled with inner demons in their creative process, you'd never guess it from the breezy self-confidence of their approach. The painterly imagery comes courtesy of cinematographer Roger Deakins, whose decades-long collaboration with the Coens began here.
'Fargo' (1996)
Everything clicked for the Coen Bros. in this snowy, farcical crime drama about a kidnapping gone horribly awry. The brothers won their first Oscar for their original screenplay, and Frances McDormand won Best Actress for her iconic performance as Marge Gunderson, the least neurotic, most well-adjusted cop in movie history. Oh, by the way, that based-on-a-true-story disclaimer? That's a lie.
'The Big Lebowski' (1998)
The most beloved cult film of the last 20 years, Jeff Bridges' stoner hero, The Dude, has become his signature role. He is ably supported here by wacky artist Julianne Moore, rage-aholic bowler John Goodman, and many others. Even Tara Reid is good in this movie.
'O Brother, Where Art Thou?' (2000)
With this tall-tale of a 1930s chain-gang jailbreak (very loosely inspired by Homer's "Odyssey"), George Clooney joins the Coens' repertory company as a pomade-groomed con who takes his equally dim-witted fellow escapees on a treasure hunt that leads to unlikely musical stardom.
'No Country for Old Men' (2007)
Everyone remembers Javier Bardem's chilling Oscar-winning performance as unstoppable hitman Anton Chigurh, but the soul of this Texas noir is Tommy Lee Jones, as the veteran sheriff who encounters evil so demonic he doesn't know how to cope with it. Some have criticized the ending as anti-climactic and unresolved, but it perfectly fits the film's themes, even while overturning genre conventions. The Coens won Oscars for Best Adapted Screenplay (based on Cormac McCarthy's novel), Best Director, and Best Picture.
'A Serious Man' (2009)
Once again, the Coens wrestle with the problem of evil, in a movie perhaps even bleaker (but also funnier) than "No Country." Here, they create a Job-like parable about a scholar (Michael Stuhlbarg) who struggles with his Jewish faith amid a series of personal and professional catastrophes. Set in the suburban Minnesota Jewish community of the 1960s that was the site of the Coens' boyhood, the movie seems to suggest that, yes, your God is real, and yes, He has a plan for you -- but you're not going to like it.
'True Grit' (2010)
The remake of the 1969 John Wayne western is the brothers' most conventional film; not coincidentally, it's also their biggest hit. It's majestic, elegiac, and stately, but it's also not without Coen-esque touches of absurd humor and gruesome violence.
'Inside Llewyn Davis' (2013)
Two years before "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," Oscar Isaac and Adam Driver shared the screen here as two-thirds of a novelty-song folk trio, along with Justin Timberlake. That's probably the least bizarre thing about this movie, in which Isaac plays the title character, a struggling performer in the Greenwich Village folk scene of the early 1960s. The Coens revisit some favorite themes here: persistent failure, fate, and America's glorious musical heritage. The talented but abrasive Davis may be his own biggest impediment to fame, but watching Isaac, you can see a star being born.
