The Coen Brothers

Okay, this New Years Day (and partially today), Dan and I did our normal ritual of a movie marathon. Two years ago it was the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy — extended editions. Last year when Dustin and Chris were here, we watched alternating horror movies and Disney movies, meaning that Cloverfield was followed by Beauty and the Beast or something similar.

This year, I let Dan choose, and he went with “available Coen Brothers movies in chronological order.” A few days beforehand, we had watched Barton Fink (which he had never seen before) because it was only streaming on Netflix until December 31st, so we had that covered. The marathon started with Raising Arizona, a movie we had both seen before. Miller’s Crossing is streaming on Netflix and it’s one of the rare Coen movies neither of us had seen, so we watched that. And then Fargo.

Today we skipped a few (uh…I played Dragon Age: Origins all day) and just watched No Country For Old Men. I’m ashamed to say we bought that DVD over a year ago and just got around to watching it because it was really great. So now that the only Coen movie we haven’t seen is Blood Simple, I’m gonna put them in some kind of arbitrary order for my pleasure.

Here’s my top eleven starting with the “worst” one (quotes because even a bad Coen movie is still awesome:

• 11. Raising Arizona (1987) – An interesting but early film, has all of the Coen charm but they’re still figuring it out.
• 10. The Ladykillers (2004) – The characters in this movie are fucking amazing but the plot barely holds my attention.
• 09. Intolerable Cruelty (2003) – I like this movie a lot but Catherine Zeta-Jones really irritates me and that doesn’t help.
• 08. The Big Lebowski (1998) – A hilarious classic with plenty of quotable lines. Also Philip Seymour Hoffman.
• 07. Barton Fink (1991) – It’s just strange enough to be surreal and I love that it’s about a writer with writer’s block written as a way to cope with writer’s block.
• 06. The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) – My memory might be clouded with time since I haven’t seen it in 5 or so years, but I loved this one.
• 05. Burn After Reading (2008) – Probably the most laugh out loud of the Coen movies.
• 04. No Country For Old Men (2007) – There’s a reason everyone always talks about this movie. Cormac McCarthy is also amazing.
• 03. Fargo (1996) – Everything about this movie is perfect. I don’t even know how to surpass it.
• 02. A Serious Man (2009) – But somehow they did. Tighter direction and editing make this untouchable to me.
• 01. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) – Even though I just said ASM was untouchable, it’s not a movie I could watch every day if I wanted to. One of the top ten movies of all time.

Now, if you haven’t seen any or all of these movies, I can tell you they are each worthwhile and amazing and you should check them out. Joel and Ethan Coen are definitely the best filmmaking duo out there.