Movies directed by Joel Coen

A wonderful thing about Shakespeare’s canon is that those plays can form the vehicles by which any director’s unique vision can emerge. Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, and Kenneth Branagh all recognized this. With The Tragedy of Macbeth, Joel ...

Miller’s Crossing, the Coen Brothers’ third film (following Blood Simple and Raising Arizona) introduced the kind of comedically-tinged approach they would employ for some of their darkest and most compelling films, including the criticall...

Those wacky Coens are at it again. And those serious Coens. And those loquacious Coens. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a paean to pre-revisionist Westerns, allows the Oscar-winning brothers to try out nearly every weapon in their considerable ...

A perusal of the Coen Brothers' filmography reveals a penchant for the offbeat and absurd. They almost never do anything conventional, which makes Inside Llewyn Davis surprising. A Valentine to late-'50s and early-'60s folk music (pre-Dylan), the m...

True Grit, one of the best films of 2010, is a reminder of why remakes are not always bad. The Coen Brothers' interpretation of the 1968 Charles Portis novel is superior in almost every way (except one) to the 1969 Henry Hathaway edition. And, whil...

Masters of audacity, the Coen Brothers continue to amaze with their versatility and, unlike many who have achieved success, they have shown no inclination to slip into a comfortable groove. When one scans their joint resumes, it becomes apparent t...

The Ladykillers is an interesting concoction - a faithful update of the original Ealing comedy cooked in vat of Coen Brothers' seasoning. Even though this is based on the 1955 British film of the same name, those unfamiliar with The Ladykillers' p...

For whatever reason, the Coen Brothers' comedies (such as Raising Arizona, The Hudsucker Proxy, and The Big Lebowski) have always garnered less critical attention than the filmmakers' more serious fare (such as Blood Simple, Barton Fink, and Fargo)...

Fargo takes the usual "caper gone wrong" storyline and applies a new twist. Based on a supposed series of "true events" from 1987 (a tongue-in-cheek claim made by a screen caption), the film examines what can happen when the police and criminals a...

"Out of hope, out of rope, out of time." - William Cobbs in the opening narration of The Hudsucker Proxy Tim Robbins has a knack for finding his way into superior satires. After taking the lead role in Robert Altman's The Player and starring...