“O Brother, Where Art Thou?” – The second best Odyssey ever. My editor tasked us with reviewing the Coen Brothers’ films and, since I’d rather read Twilight novels than sit through almost their entire filmography, I volunteered to re-watch O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the one film of theirs worth watching more than once. Yeah,…

Martin Scorsese has never been one to flirt with respectability for too long, and with The Departed, hes back in the sewer with old friends and familiar faces.

1 Hour 50 Minutes, PG-13 for maiming and violence. Fair Value of True Grit: $15.00. Because you can’t watch Sergio Leone all the time, this tale of Prairie Justice is one of the better of modern westerns. In many ways it is the perfect balance of the comedic and the dark aspects of Coen Brother’s…

It takes a village. As we continue to face and confront the reality that racism is still deeply ingrained in American society and culture, we continue to uncover more and more evidence that maybe the Civil War never really ended. Yes, slavery was technically outlawed as a result of the Civil War, but that did…

What Makes Raising Arizona Work? FAIR VALUE of Raising Arizona: $8.00. Like contemporaries A Fish Called Wanda or Brain Donors, Raising Arizona is a relentless slapstick comedy that has high re-watchability. THE COEN BROTHERS BEGIN HONING THEIR CHOPS: In many ways, Raising Arizona is the wooliest, most slapdash of all of the Coen comedies. They…

In just a third of their output, the tapestry of locales and personas from vast walks of life in the Coen brothers’ cinematic universe reads more like an illustrated road atlas of the US than disparate stories. After just six films—Blood Simple, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men, Burn After Reading, and…

If there ever was a movie that I was hesitant to review, it has to be The Big Lebowski. Really? Is it that bad? No, quite to the contrary, it is that GOOD. The Coen Brothers, Ethan and Joel have for some time been among the GODS of directors and writers, and for good reason.…