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Inspired by the Spielberg thread, this is a catch-all thread for the Coen Bros. and your rankings of their movies. Here's my list, with numbers in parentheses ranking each movie out of 100:

 

1. A Serious Man (96)

2. The Big Lebowski (94)

3. Inside Llewyn Davis (92)

4. Barton Fink (90)

5. Hail, Caesar! (88)

6. Burn After Reading (87)

7. Fargo (85)

8. Blood Simple (84)

9. Miller's Crossing (84)

10. The Man Who Wasn't There (83)

11. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (82)

12. The Hudsucker Proxy (79)

13. No Country for Old Men (79)

14. Raising Arizona (77)

15. True Grit (76)

16. The Ladykillers (76)

17. Intolerable Cruelty (75)

 

As you can tell, I like every single one of their movies - 75 is a pretty good score - but there are a couple I don't think I liked as much as other people, namely No Country for Old Men and Fargo, which people generally seem to like more than I did. Or do they? Let's find out!

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The Coen Brothers are interesting to rank because they've made so many different kinds of movies of such a consistently high quality that I really wouldn't be too shocked at any one order of someone's list. Like, I think you put Hail Caesar way too high, but it's still the kind of movie I can just imagine really working on someone.

 

When compiling this list, I found that starting from the top was basically impossible, so I had to work out the worst ones first, which is the opposite of how I approached the Spielberg list.

 

1. Barton Fink

2. No Country For Old Men

3. Burn After Reading

4. Fargo

5. Blood Simple

6. The Big Lebowski

7. Miller's Crossing

8. O Brother, Where Art Thou?

9. A Serious Man

10. True Grit

11. Inside Llewyn Davis

12. The Hudsucker Proxy

13. The Man Who Wasn't There

14. Raising Arizona

15. Hail, Caesar!

16. Intolerable Cruelty

17. The Ladykillers

 

Only the top 5 I have a real passion for, but some of these I haven't seen in about a decade so who knows.

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1. Inside Llewyn Davis

2. The Big Lebowski

3. A Serious Man

4. Miller's Crossing

5. Fargo

6. O Brother, Where Art Thou?

7. Barton Fink

8. True Grit

9. No Country for Old Men

10. Burn After Reading

11. Raising Arizona

12. Blood Simple

13. Hail, Caesar!

14. The Hudsucker Proxy

15. The Man Who Wasn't There

16. The Ladykillers

17. Intolerable Cruelty

 

Writing that out was much easier than expected, which doesn't exactly mean that it was easy.

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Going to make my on but I need to watch a few of these, and also re-watch those that slipped from my mind. I literally don't remember a single thing about Ladykillers, I think I enjoyed No Country but after reading it I would like to evaluate it again, and Barton Fink has always been divisive for me. I think maybe it was too front-loaded for me by other people's expectations, but I remember just sliding off it and thinking that it felt amateur-ish and poorly paced. That was ages ago though, and I think I'll re-watch it today. 

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Miller's crossing

No country

Fargo

Llewyn davis

 

Burn after reading

Serious man

True grit

Barton fink

 

 

Big lebowski

Raising arizona

Man who wasn't there

O brother

Hudsucker

 

 

Intolerable Cruelty

Hail Caesar

Ladykillers

 

Ive grouped them.  Not seen blood simple for yonks so left it.

 

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Not going to do a list, but if I did O Brother would be first and Ladykillers would be last. Big Lebowski would be lower than most other peoples' lists here and Raising Arizona would be much higher. 

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Like most people I imagine, my list is pretty arbitrary and probably subject to considerable change based on unknowable factors. But here's one attempt:

 

Fargo

A Serious Man

The Big Lebowski

Inside Llewyn Davis

Blood Simple

Miller's Crossing

Barton Fink

No Country For Old Men

True Grit

The Man Who Wasn't There

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Raising Arizona

Hail, Caesar!

The Hudsucker Proxy

Burn After Reading

Intolerable Cruelty

 

The bold ones at top are "my favorite Coen brothers movies," in roughly that order, and are movies I'd watch basically any time under any circumstance. The next five are grouped together as "my next favorite Coen brothers movies," fairly unranked. The italicized ones are also unranked, and are movies I really like but would probably have to be in the right mood to watch. Finally, there's Intolerable Cruelty, which I found very unmemorable.

 

I haven't seen The Ladykillers.

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I haven't seen all of the Coen brothers films but here's where I am so far:

 

I like these:

 

Miller's Crossing

A Serious Man

Fargo

The Big Lebowski

Barton Fink

No Country For Old Men
O Brother, Where Art Thou?

The Man Who Wasn't There

The Hudsucker Proxy

 

I did not like these:


Blood Simple

Raising Arizona

Burn After Reading

Intolerable Cruelty

 

Haven't seen:

Hail, Caesar!

Inside Llewyn Davis

True Grit

The Ladykillers

 

I think I'm a bit different to other people in this thread in that I did not like those four in the middle group at all. I disliked most of the characters and their relationships. Those are also the more overt "comedy" films, and I saw them in the last few years and they feel very dated and kind of tacky and cheap.

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10 minutes ago, Atlantic said:

I haven't seen all of the Coen brothers films but here's where I am so far:

 

I did not like these:


Blood Simple

Raising Arizona

Burn After Reading

Intolerable Cruelty

 

 

I think I'm a bit different to other people in this thread in that I did not like those four in the middle group at all. I disliked most of the characters and their relationships. Those are also the more overt "comedy" films, and I saw them in the last few years and they feel very dated and kind of tacky and cheap.

 

Do you really think of Blood Simple as a comedy film?

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1 minute ago, Patrick R said:

 

Do you really think of Blood Simple as a comedy film?

 

Oh lol no. I rearranged the list after I wrote that.

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I've only seen about 1/3 of their body of work, and pretty well thoroughly enjoyed everyone I've seen. Can I ask though, what makes a Coen Bros. film a Coen Bros. film?

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18 minutes ago, Spenny said:

I've only seen about 1/3 of their body of work, and pretty well thoroughly enjoyed everyone I've seen. Can I ask though, what makes a Coen Bros. film a Coen Bros. film?

Written + directed by the Coen Bros.

 

 

Black humor, absurdism, downer endings, Jewishness, (Frances McDormandSteve BuscemiJohn GoodmanJon PolitoJohn Turturro or George Clooney), Roger Deakins,. Mix these components together in various degrees and you get a Coen Bros. film.

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I can't believe anyone likes A Serious Man. It's so bad. For someone who would call himself a fan, I actually think the Coens actually have a good handful of bad unwatchable movies.

 

But I haven't seen recent output so I'll go over from best to worst on what I have seen/own. I'll throw in undirected movies with scripts by either just because I can't follow the rules:

 

Raising Arizona

Miller's Crossing

No Country for Old Men

Fargo

The Hudsucker Proxy

The Big Lebowski

Bad Santa (If this at all counts!)

True Grit

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

The Ladykillers

The Man Who Wasn't There

Barton Fink

Paris, je t'aime short

Unbroken

Gambit

Burn After Reading

Inside Llewyn Davis

Intolerable Cruelty

Blood Simple

Crimewave

A Serious Man

 

I actually didn't realize I liked Miller's Crossing that much until ranking these. Raising Arizona is what got me into the Coen Brothers movies in the first place so maybe it's just the nostalgia pushing it up.

 

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The thought of ranking 17 titles makes me nauseous. I have a deep appreciation for their adaptation of No Country--though Raising Arizona is one of those rare films for me that if I see it on a TV I'm immediately pulled in by it's folksy tractor beam. 

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Raising Arizona is an awesome looking movie and I respect that there's nothing like it, but I just am not on it's wavelength at all, and if you don't find it funny there are stretches of it that are interminable.

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I tried to draw up my own list of Coen movies before coming to the conclusion that I just can't do it, even without numbers. I like all of them too much. (In fact, I was surprised to find that I have seen all of their movies, except for for The Man Who Wasn't There.)

 

All the same, if you put a gun to my head, at the top would probably be Barton Fink. I feel a little ashamed to admit that - it seems so much like the most obviously outlandish, film school buff, dorm room poster choice. But I can't get away from it.

 

Miller's Crossing and Inside Llewyn Davis would vie for second place, perhaps. Beyond that I can't see.  

 

I'm fascinated by the fact that movies like Hail! Caesar and Burn After Reading seem to mean very different things to different people. Both of those received a very mixed critical reception; I both, though they seem so far removed from the likes of Fargo and True Grit and No Country that I just find it impossible to compare them. Burn After Reading in particular always seemed to me like a highly prescient look at Bush-era stupidity; it now feels sharper and colder than ever, now that we're all so concerned with the security...of our shit.

 

I would probably put O Brother, Where Art Thou? as the only significant work at the bottom of my list-which-is-not-a-list. It's not a bad movie, not by a long stretch; it does a lot of interesting things, but it's still my least favourite. I just don't think it's for me. (I also really don't like the cinematography, which makes it the only Coen bros movie for which I could possibly have this complaint.)

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6 minutes ago, marginalgloss said:

I'm fascinated by the fact that movies like Hail! Caesar and Burn After Reading seem to mean very different things to different people. Both of those received a very mixed critical reception; I both, though they seem so far removed from the likes of Fargo and True Grit and No Country that I just find it impossible to compare them. Burn After Reading in particular always seemed to me like a highly prescient look at Bush-era stupidity; it now feels sharper and colder than ever, now that we're all so concerned with the security...of our shit.

 

Yeah, Burn After Reading is definitely in my top 5 favorite comedies of the century thus far. I remember seeing it in the theater, being the only one cackling like a jackass throughout the entire thing. Must have been what it was like to "get" Lebowski early, though Burn After Reading lacks the warmth and lifestyle fantasy to ever become a cult favorite the way that movie is.

 

And that ending is so fucking incredible. Feels like the exact opposite of A Serious Man's, in a way.

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Barton Fink
Fargo
Miller's Crossing
A Serious Man
The Big Lebowski

Raising Arizona
No Country for Old Men
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Hail, Caesar!
Blood Simple
Inside Llewyn Davis
The Hudsucker Proxy
Burn After Reading
The Man Who Wasn't There
The Ladykillers
Intolerable Cruelty
True Grit

 

The only ones I didn't totally love are the last 4. I probably need to re-see True Grit and Man Who Wasn't There to reassess them, mind!

 

I should also say that A Serious Man often takes the #1 spot for about 6 weeks after I watch it

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