Ed here: I've watched The Big Lebowksi probably ten times, Raising Arizona seven or eight, Fargo probably six or seven and Barton Fink four or five. And most of the others at least two or three times. Here's a piece from Slate that rates the Coen Bros. movies.
Ranking the Coen Brothers' Movies
The Ladykillers always comes in last.
By David Haglund
Updated Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2011, at 10:05 AM ET
Ranking the films of Joel and Ethan Coen is something of an online pastime. Christopher Orr of the Atlantic submitted his order last December, the same month Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post offered her more eccentric take (check out Nos. 11-14), and just after Andrew Osborne did the same for Nerve. Salon outsourced the question of "best Coens movie" to several writers and film folk a year before that, while AMC let visitors to their website decide the question. Rotten Tomatoes has compiled a list of the 10 best-reviewed Coen movies.
Averaging all of the rankings, you get a list that looks something like this:
1. Fargo
2. Raising Arizona
3. Miller's Crossing
4. No Country for Old Men
5. The Big Lebowski
6. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
7. True Grit
8. Barton Fink
9. Blood Simple
10. Burn After Reading
11. A Serious Man
12. The Hudsucker Proxy
13. The Man Who Wasn't There
14. Intolerable Cruelty
15. The Ladykillers
for the rest go herte: http://www.slate.com/id/2300656/
I'm one of the few people who likes (kind of) the Coens' remake of THE LADYKILLERS. If that's the worst movie they make, it says something. My favorites of their films are the hardboiled pastiches: LEBOWSKI, MILLER'S CROSSING, and THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE, which I find a powerful piece of work.
ReplyDeleteI pretty much agree with that ranking.
ReplyDeleteNope, I'd place the low budget Blood Simple much closer to the top.
ReplyDeleteDan's right. BLOOD SIMPLE much better by me than NO COUNTRY. O BROTHER would be pretty near the bottom, though the SLATEists might be right about THE LADYKILLERS, which I haven't sat through.
ReplyDelete