Homeric depths

‘Here’s looking at you, kid’. ‘Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks … More

Pretty appropriation

O Brother, Where Art Thou? is an altogether more straightforward seeming film than the Coen Brothers’ typical output. Goofy comedies … More

Technique is a weirdly invisible thing in film. Everything a director or an editor does is right there in front … More

Certain themes and techniques recur throughout Joel and Ethan Coen’s films. Convoluted crime stories with arbitrary conclusions in which none … More

We’ve been watching a lot of Coen Brothers films of late, which display so much love for the Golden Age … More

People like to ascribe meanings to Coen Brothers films. I mean, they must mean something, right? They’re so tricksy and … More

‘Oh no, the lizard! The lizard’ I was heard to shout when I first watched Bringing Up Baby—in fact I … More

The Big Lebowski is such a legendary movie that it’s almost embarrassing to admit this is the first time I’ve … More

I think of Shallow Grave as a film I know, but on reflection I think I saw it once, on … More

One might be forgiven for thinking that the Joel and Ethan Coen made Barton Fink in order to dispel suspicions … More

Unspecified possibilities are the stuff of optimism. At the end of Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting, when Renton strolls off into the … More

If the daft comedy Raising Arizona was a film made of style, with Miller’s Crossing the Coen Brothers showed that … More

Clever, metatextual movies don’t have to be intellectual or gnomic: sometimes they can just be hella entertaining. The most obvious … More

Joel and Ethan Coen’s second feature-film, Raising Arizona stands in stark contrast to their first, Blood Simple. It’s an extremely … More