Vents MagaZine Music and Entertainment Magazine
Related Articles
The Coen Brothers are acclaimed filmmakers. Their most-popular movies, their defining movies, their Mount Rushmore movies, however you want to slice it, are well-established. Fargo, No Country for Old Men, and The Big Lebowski are the givens, though of course at the time The Big Lebowski was something of a flop. Now, it’s as beloved a cult film as there is. The fourth spot is trickier. Their next-most-popular movie is probably Raising Arizona, but their highest-grossing movie is True Grit. True Grit also got Oscar nominations, and also we think Raising Arizona is overrated. As such, we will go with True Grit to round out their top four.
Joel and Ethan have only, as a team, misstepped once (Ethan has exclusively misstepped in his films he’s made without Joel). That would be The Ladykillers, the one poorly-made movie in their filmography. Their final film (to date) as a duo is also spotty. However, it’s an anthology film, so that makes sense. There is some quality in Ballad of Buster Skruggs, though.
In terms of overrated movies, obviously we’d go back to Raising Arizona, but that’s probably the only one. What about overlooked Coen Brothers movies, though? We won’t include Blood Simple, their low-budget first film. It’s a good movie, but of course a low-budget film flew under the radar and hasn’t become one of their most-acclaimed movies.
A couple of their most-recent movies, actually, are the ones we’d argue are overlooked and underrated. They are also both entertainment-related movies. Those would be 2013’s Inside Llewyn Davis and 2016’s Hail, Caesar!. They are decidedly different films, though, in scope and vision.
Inside Llewyn Davis is a look at a musician on the fringes, a guy who can’t stop getting in his own way. Hail, Caesar! is set in Hollywood and is about a studio fixer who keeps other people from getting in their own way. They are both period pieces, but the former is a character study and the latter is an ensemble piece. Both have humor in them, but Hail, Caesar! is an outright comedy.
If you like folk music, or movies about ornery, obstinate creatives, or movies starring Oscar Isaac, check out Inside Llewyn Davis. If you like riffs on Old Hollywood and want some laughs, watch Hail, Caesar!. Either way, we’re enjoying ourselves more than watching Raising Arizona (or The Ladykillers).
