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Are You Giving Me The High Hat? The Coen Brothers Rated
I've done this before on the blog with Alfred Hitchcock and Woody Allen and a couple of other film-makers who are or were (in the case of Allen) important to me. I've been a fan of the Coen Brothers since high school when I caught Blood Simple at the Queens Film Theatre in Belfast, and I've seen every one since; here therefore is my attempt at a rating of their filmography in the standard A,B,C,D,E,F format. A is a classic. B is very good. C is good. D and E are sometimes watchable. F is basically unwatchable. And remember this is just, like, my opinion, man...
1984 Blood Simple B
1987 Raising Arizona A
1990 Miller's Crossing A
1991 Barton Fink A
1994 The Hudsucker Proxy E
1996 Fargo A
1998 The Big Lebowski A
2000 O Brother, Where Art Thou? E
2001 The Man Who Wasn't There F
2003 Intolerable Cruelty F
2004 The Ladykillers F
2007 No Country for Old Men B
2008 Burn After Reading D
2009 A Serious Man C
2010 True Grit B
Is there a pattern here? Yeah I think so. If you were to draw a Venn diagram with John Turturro, Steve Buscemi and John Goodman as the sets then the intersection of these sets usually represents the higher rated films.
55 comments:
I didnt realise they had done so many. No Country for Old Men is one of those films your supposed to like, but I dont. Tommy lee Jones sitting around that table with his monologue- i cant take it. Love Fargo, for Marge and the funny accents and The Big Lebowski.
Please admit that Steve Buscemi is just a wrong'un ?
Frankie
I liked No Country, except for some of the really silly stuff and of course the trick they pulled depriving us of Kelly McDonald's Scottish accent. The monologues, incidentally, are far crazier, more tedious and more reactionary in the book.
Yep, avoid the Coen films with the A-List stars, Clooney, Pitt, Hanks....
Funny you should post this today. The Beloved Spouse and I stumbled onto THE HUDSUCKER PROXY last night on cable, neither of us having seen it before. The Coans tried to doa lot there; very little of it worked. Shame, a lot of talent got wasted on that one.
I'm a lot more generous about some of their films than you. I liked O BROTHER and BURN AFTER READING, maybe because I enjoyed them both as pretty straightforward comedies. (I know about BROTHER and THE ODYSSEY; I just didn;t make much of it.) I also liked THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE, though not as much the seocnd time is aw it, except for the show-stealing performance by Tony Shalhoub.
I'll always remember NO COUNTRY for what I think is the single most suspenseful scene I've seen in a movie: in the gas station, where Javier bardem makes the manager call the coin toss. Brilliant.
Oh God, the only one I've watched (or started to watch) is 'O Brother'. Terrible film.
I'd rate NO COUNTRY higher, but otherwise, ex-fucking-actly.
You're a tough (that is, non-American) grader if you rate a C as "good."
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
I think you overrated The Ladykiller, though.
Matt's point is worth pursuing. Wy the positive correlation between big stars and crappy films when it comes to the Coens?
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Matt
Definitely and Clooney's been in three of them.
Dana
Yes they should use Tony Shaloub more, now that Monk is over perhaps they will. Did you see Barton Fink? He's got a scene stealing role in that too.
I remember hating The Man Who Wasnt There in the cinema with a deep intensity, but I think O Brother had its moments, as did Burn After Reading (I liked that sex machine Clooney built)
Yeah No Country was a pretty good film.
Mike
Do yourself a favour and watch Fargo today. You'll like it, I promise.
Ferenc
I was in two minds about No Country. I did like it very much and many of the problems I had with the film (killing the lead off screen, Tommy Lee Jones's ponderous monologues, the Superman quality of Javier Bardem) were problems with the book so you could argue that the Coens were only being faithful to the source material and thus rate it higher.
Peter
The Ladykillers is terrible. And when you consider how nimble and fun the original is its amazing how bad a job they did.
You still havent agreed that Steve Buscemi is a wrong'un? Im going to stick William H Macy in that category too. Two rare oddities i say. Perfect for Coen movies though.
Adrian, I liked Fargo, too, though a commenter on my blog who lives in Minnesota says no one in North Dakota talks the way the actors talk in the movie.
Tom Hanks’ performance in the remade Ladykillers is all leering, hamming, and one of the most weirdly unwatchable performances I have ever, er, watched. Maybe the Coens, showoffs that they are, are especially leery of telling an A-list star to tone it down.
Yep, the Coens do have a way of making oddities like Macy and Buscemi fit in -- sometimes.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
We're in opposition over this list.
I love The Hudsucker Proxy and O! Brother... and don't particularly care for Fargo or Lebowski (Goodman's worst performance in any Coen movie).
I agree with Barton Fink. They've written a sequel called Old Fink but are waiting until Turturro is old enough to film it. This being the Coen Brothers, it may be completely untrue. They say their next script and maybe directing project will be a horror movie but again, can you believe anything they say until you see the finished product
Frankie
Well in Fargo he is described as sort of funny lookin.
He's obviously very talented. I've seen all his directorial work on TV and film and its excellent.
Peter
And I hear it wasnt a true story either.
Bad accents do bug me in films though: I could never get past the horrible Boston accents in The Departed nor every single Irish accent by every single non Irish actor in ever single Irish film... except for Miranda Richardson in The Crying Game.
Rob
I'd maybe give Oh Brother a higher grade because of the soundtrack but nothing's going to make me watch Hudsucker Proxy again to see if I remember that correctly. I pretty much hate Tim Robbins in everything, including that universally adored and lauded cheesefest known as The Shawshank Redemption.
I'm going to side with Rob in not caring for Fargo as much as the consensus seemed to demand, though I might like it better now. It was overhyped when it came out. I liked the great character acting in it, just not the story. O, Brother had it's moments, but they were usually not moments involving George Clooney. Burn After Reading was self-indulgent, although I did actually like Pitt's comic schtick.
The Hudsucker Proxy, well, sucked. I wasn't as crazy about the Big Lebowski as I feel my cool creds would have me be.
I did love Raising Arizona. I think there is a hubris factor going on in the Coen's career, though they save themselves sometimes by choosing non-hubristic actors. Hope they at least keep their deft touch with that.
Yeah, well, we know why you don't like Tim Robbins.
Well, you and I do, Peter, but some folks here might get the wrong end of the stick...
Peter, Seana,
I did like The Player where he was the ultra creepy bad guy.
I also like the plot: shallow exec crushes writer trying to catch soome kind of a break, then kills him, then steals his woman. That seemed like the writers' cri de coeur - its a pity they buried that message in a plague of pointless celebrity cameos.
I liked him in that too, but not so much since.
Seana
I'm not sure I quite agree with your police work there regarding Fargo. Your problem seems to be with the hype not the movie. Maybe you'd like it better now, maybe you wont, but as Chuck D told us many years ago now,
I don't rhyme for the sake of of riddlin'
Some claim that I'm a smuggler
Some say I never heard of 'ya
A rap burgler, false media
We don't need it do we?
It's fake that's what it be to 'ya, dig me?
Don't believe the hype...
Dont believe the hype...
Don't, don't, don't believe the hype...
Nice. I wish I could hear it.
Actually, it probably wasn't only the hype. I didn't like the woodcutter (let's keep that vague on the remote chance that some folks haven't seen it.). I think this was right around the time when Pulp Fiction came out, and I just disliked the whole mix of comedy and extreme violence. I don't mind violence in a story, but I don't like it being mixed with humor. I find it confusing.
Seana
My problem with Fargo is the "comic" Asian American scene. Almost as bad as the one in Breakfast at Tiffany's.
I still give it an A though.
I just noticed that True Grit is opening in the UK today (later even than in Australia!) thats what Mike should go see. A real crowd pleaser that.
I haven't seen it--I'm resistant to remakes. I did get the copy of Masters of Atlantis that I had ordered, though. I've only read a couple of pages, but it looks promising.
Seana
If its as good as The Dog of the South then boy are you in for a treat.
True Grit, I should stress is not a remake of the original film, its another film made from the same source material, i.e. Charles Portis's novel. If you avoided all remakes you'd have to avoid His Girl Friday for example which would be a very bad thing.
Thanks, that's a good distinction. I don't know if I'll get to it on the big screen, but I'll think about it.
Seana
Movies are expensive but I felt I'd got my money's worth with the trading scene in the store and the river crossing scene which both occur in the first half hour.
Shawshank Redemption is, if you'll excuse my language, fucking hideous. Almost as fucking hideous as that bucket of cold tramp sick Forest Gump.
Thanks, I feel better now.
I gave a poor review to Shawshank in my uni newspaper and got loads of stick but not as much as when I, perhaps foolishly, described my hatred for Forest Gump as being "so deep, only a Nazi could fathom it"
I feel like an old fogie saying this, but movies have suddenly seemed to take a leap in price in town, which makes calculation enter into my decisions. I thought the old saw was that theatres made all their money on concessions.
I blame 3-D.
It's good to know that you get your money's worth in the first half hour, because then I can still enjoy that liberating feeling of walking out that you mentioned awhile ago. Having my cake and eating it too, I'd say. e
But Tom Hanks is a grandfather, Rob.
"Bucket of cold tramp" is a great expression. Did you coin it, or is it a colloquialism?
I mostly agree with your ratings, but look at the list - all the A's are in the first half and all the F's are in the 2nd half. Are the film makers more prone to missteps, are your expectations higher now, or maybe some are the recent flicks too fresh to appreciate fully? The E's and F's are deserved but No Country and True Grit are easy A's, and no way The Big Lebowski gets an A right after you first see it. That's a side effect of its cult status.
And if you never saw remakes, you'd never see John Huston's Maltese Falcon or Christopher Reeve in Rear Window.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Christopher Reeve. Ah, yes.
I didn't say I never saw remakes, I said I had a resistance. Especially at the box office window.
I've naturally never seen Christopher Reeve's Rear Window, but I do think it may be the worst idea ever for a remake.
I will never see it unless...Well, if I can raise sufficient pledges from trustworthy individuals, I'll watch it for a hundred dollars.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Peter
I caught the joke.
Rob
Yes we are the only two people in the world apparently who hate Shawshank. Jesus it was horrible. I havent seen F.G. although I did eat at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company restaurant in Ft Lauderdale and it was one of the worst meals of my life.
I mean, if he wanted to do a vanity project like that, he could have remade The Lineup.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Dennis
True Grit might grow into an A for me. Its a real piece of Americana. It maybe a little thin to be a true epic but it might morph A wards, but No Country wont. I thought parts of it were really silly, I found the death off screen irritating, I failed to see the point of Tommy Lee Jones's character at all. And no Irishman would ever use a quote from Sailing to Byzantium because its so kitschy.
Seana
Tell you what, watch for half an hour and if you dont like it sneak in to something else. Thats what I did with that Steve Zissou Wes Anderson movie.
Dennis
Although you do make a good point about under praising and over praising. Roger Ebert underpraised the Coens early and has been overpraising them ever since.
Peter
Steady on old chap. Reeve was maybe not the greatest actor but he had a certain elegance and a nice sense of comic timing.
Fargo, Miller's Crossing, Lebowski, Blood Simple and No Country are all A's for me. I also enjoyed O Brother. I found most of the others lacking and a couple downright snoozers.
For the life of me, I don't get the appeal of Shawshank. I could not get past the premise of his being innocent but behind bars. I'm not a lawyer, but I spent a good part of the beginning coming up with ways to get him off. Had they made the beginning a little more believable, maybe I would have liked it more.
It annoys me that films come out so late in the UK. Even films made in the UK open earlier in the US and Australia. Also films made in Britain dont get shown in the big cinemas. They just go for the child friendly disney stuff. The films made here just get buried.
You'll never believe me, but it's true nonetheless: No Jerry Lewis joke was intended. I merely offered to watch a movie for money.
Reeve was all right. It was the idea of remaking :Rear Window" that got my wind up.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Lew
We should form a secret club of Shawshank Haters or something. Empire Magazine's readers recently said it was the greatest movie of all time!
Frankie
Well the Kings Speech is on fire across the US. Biggest British movie in decades. (Except for Harry Potter of course)
Peter
I agree its a horrible idea. Horrible.
The think I like about Reeve best is his deft comic touch in the Superman films.
I did see Reeve's Rear Window. I think the only real reason it was a bad idea is that it was a Hitchcock masterpiece and really couldn't hope to be anything much as a made for TV movie. But it was brave of Reeve to try it, and if it had been a lesser source, it would have been a great vehicle for him to do it in a tell it like it is kind of way. He wasn't bad, it just had too great a predecessor.
The Superman movies had some nice, light directorial touches, too.
Seana, thanks a lot for revealing you'd seen the Rear Window remake. Now no one will pay me a hundred bucks to see it.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
It would be hard for the true Hitchcock fan to endure, I think. So I'm glad to have been the scout on this one.
Well, sort of.
Seana, I may be overprotective of "Rear Window," but I say one has to have a better reason for remaking a classic than that the star feels like doing it, never mind that the wholke thing smacked of a feel-good vanity project.
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