Word: coen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Coen brothers have lost their balance. After hitting their structural peak with the haunting and humanistic Fargo and their creative peak with the gutbustingly sublime The Big Lebowski, they took a sharp downward turn in their next film, last year’s O Brother, Where Art Thou? Lapsing into The Hudsucker Proxy mode, the duo labored on O Brother under the impression that thematic depth and high production values could redeem a film which would otherwise be dismissed as light, predictable entertainment...
It’s a mark, however, of the defects within The Man Who Wasn’t There that it is the first Coen film without a single perfect scene. Blood Simple has at least four; Fargo, more than a dozen. But those films took their energy more from the ideals of their characters than the Coens’ love of subtext. It’s telling that The Man Who Wasn’t There’s best scene, in which Riedenschneider constructs an initial defense, is chiefly powered by Riedenschneider’s instincts...
...Joel Coen...
...splendid actor, does it perfectly as Ed Crane, a taciturn small-town barber, circa 1949. Everyone cheats on him--his wife, his business partner, his teen lover, his hotshot lawyer. By the movie's end, he is facing his final comeuppance, deadpan sangfroid still miraculously intact. The ever astonishing Coen brothers say their film was inspired by the spirit of James M. Cain's novels about ill-fated dopes. But the Coens transcend Cain. If this were not such great American-vernacular moviemaking--hilarious yet hypnotic--one would be tempted to see something Greek in the tragedy that Ed never...
Like another bountiful fall offering, David Lynch's Mulholland Dr., the Coen film serves up a lovely, lurid brew of greed, murder and twisted identities. It's a smart essay on the overwhelming human need to love someone who's bad news. Thornton's fabulously dour performance--a prime display of postmortem acting--reminds us that fall is the time when things...