Joel Coen – MovieLog

Raising Arizona (1987)

Sat, 22 Oct 2022 12:54:59 +0000

Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

7.3

]]>

Serious Man, A (2009)

Sat, 22 Oct 2022 12:46:15 +0000

Bloomington, Minnesota, 1967: Jewish physics lecturer Larry Gopnik is a serious and a very put-upon man. His daughter is stealing from him to save up for a nose job, his pot-head son, who gets stoned at his own bar-mitzvah, only wants him round to fix the TV aerial and his useless brother Arthur is an unwelcome house guest. But both Arthur and Larry get turfed out into a motel when Larry’s wife Judy, who wants a divorce, moves her lover, Sy, into the house and even after Sy’s death in a car crash they are still there. With lawyers’ bills mounting for his divorce, Arthur’s criminal court appearances and a land feud with a neighbour Larry is tempted to take the bribe offered by a student to give him an illegal exam pass mark. And the rabbis he visits for advice only dole out platitudes. Still God moves in mysterious – and not always pleasant – ways, as Larry and his family will find out.

Serious Man, A

Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

USA, UK, France

IMDb

]]>

Burn After Reading (2008)

Sat, 22 Oct 2022 12:46:14 +0000

Osbourne Cox, a Balkan expert, is fired at the CIA, so he begins a memoir. His wife wants a divorce and expects her lover, Harry, a philandering State Department marshal, to leave his wife. A diskette falls out of a gym bag at a Georgetown fitness center. Two employees there try to turn it into cash: Linda, who wants money for elective surgery, and Chad, an amiable goof. Information on the disc leads them to Osbourne who rejects their sales pitch; then they visit the Russian embassy. To sweeten the pot, they decide they need more of Osbourne’s secrets. Meanwhile, Linda’s boss likes her, and Harry’s wife leaves for a book tour. All roads lead to Osbourne’s house.

Burn After Reading

Intelligence is only their job.

Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

USA, UK, France

IMDb

]]>

Millers Crossing (1990)

Sat, 22 Oct 2022 12:46:14 +0000

A highly styled ‘genre’ film which can perhaps be seen as a pastiche of all gangster movies. Tom Reagan is the laconic anti-hero of this amoral tale which is also, paradoxically, a look at morals within the criminal underworld of the 1930s. Two rival gangs vie for control of a city where the police are pawns, and the periodic busts of illicit drinking establishments are no more than a way for one gang to get back at the other. Black humour and shocking violence compete for screen time as we question whether or not Tom, right-hand man of the Irish mob leader, really has a heart.

Millers Crossing

Up is down, black is white, and nothing is what it seems.

Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

USA

7.9

IMDb

]]>

O Brother, Where Art Thou (2000)

Sat, 22 Oct 2022 12:46:12 +0000

Loosely based on Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ the movie deals with the picaresque adventures of Everett Ulysses McGill and his companions Delmar and Pete in 1930s Mississipi. Sprung from a chain gang and trying to reach Everetts home to recover the buried loot of a bank heist they are confronted by a series of strange characters. Among them sirens, a cyclops, bank robber George ‘Babyface’ Nelson (very annoyed by that nickname), a campaigning Governor, his opponent, a KKK lynch mob, and a blind prophet, who warns the trio that the treasure you seek shall not be the treasure you find.

O Brother, Where Art Thou

Sometimes, you have to lose your way to get back home

Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

UK, France, USA

7.8

IMDb

]]>

Barton Fink (1991)

Sat, 22 Oct 2022 11:23:21 +0000

In 1941, New York intellectual playwright Barton Fink comes to Hollywood to write a Wallace Beery wrestling picture. Staying in the eerie Hotel Earle, Barton develops severe writer’s block. His neighbor, jovial insurance salesman Charlie Meadows, tries to help, but Barton continues to struggle as a bizarre sequence of events distracts him even further from his task.

Barton Fink

There’s only one thing stranger than what’s going on inside his head. What’s going on outside.

Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

USA, UK

7.7

IMDb

]]>

True Grit (2010)

Sat, 22 Oct 2022 11:23:07 +0000

Following the murder of her father by hired hand Tom Chaney, 14-year-old farm girl Mattie Ross sets out to capture the killer.

True Grit

Punishment comes one way or another

Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

USA

7.8

IMDb

]]>

Big Lebowski, The (1998)

Sat, 22 Oct 2022 11:22:55 +0000

When The Dude Lebowski is mistaken for a millionaire Lebowski, two thugs urinate on his rug to coerce him into paying a debt he knows nothing about. While attempting to gain recompense for the ruined rug from his wealthy counterpart, he accepts a one-time job with high pay-off. He enlists the help of his bowling buddy, Walter, a gun-toting Jewish-convert with anger issues. Deception leads to more trouble, and it soon seems that everyone from porn empire tycoons to nihilists want something from The Dude.

Big Lebowski, The

They figured he was a lazy time wasting slacker. They were right.

Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

USA, UK

8.2

IMDb

]]>

Fargo (1996)

Sat, 22 Oct 2022 10:41:17 +0000

Jerry works in his father-in-law’s car dealership and has gotten himself in financial problems. He tries various schemes to come up with money needed for a reason that is never really explained. It has to be assumed that his huge embezzlement of money from the dealership is about to be discovered by father-in-law. When all else falls through, plans he set in motion earlier for two men to kidnap his wife for ransom to be paid by her wealthy father (who doesn’t seem to have the time of day for son-in-law). From the moment of the kidnapping, things go wrong and what was supposed to be a non-violent affair turns bloody with more blood added by the minute. Jerry is upset at the bloodshed, which turns loose a pregnant sheriff from Brainerd, MN who is tenacious in attempting to solve the three murders in her jurisdiction.

Fargo

A homespun murder story.

Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

USA, UK

8.3

IMDb

]]>

Blood Simple (1984)

Thu, 20 Oct 2022 08:34:25 +0000

A rich but jealous man hires a private investigator to kill his cheating wife and her new man. But, when blood is involved, nothing is simple.

Blood Simple

Joel Coen

USA

IMDb

]]>