Coen Brothers

News, Reviews & Features
  • Am I Coen crazy: Raising Arizona (1987)

    Movie Feature | Matt Looker | 28th August 2018

    My casual, long-term project of watching all the Coen Brothers’ films in order has stepped up a gear after just one film thanks to finding out that The Big Lebowski is being re-released at the end of September for its 20th anniversary. And if I can’t time my retrospective to coincide with everyone else’s in that week then really I miss my only opportunity to make any of this appear relevant.

  • Am I Coen crazy: Blood Simple. (1984)

    Movie Feature | Matt Looker | 17th August 2018

    Welcome to a new semi-irregular feature in which I try to understand my general ambivalence towards the Coen brothers in the face of their overwhelming success and popularity. Do I lack the critical faculty to truly appreciate their work? Do I just not ‘get’ them? Am I an idiot? Most likely, yes, but let’s all go on a filmographical journey to confirm!

  • The Transformers/Coen Bros Venn diagram

    Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 4th July 2014

    It's one of the weirdest phenomenons in modern movie history: how is it that so many Coen regulars wind up in Transformers movies? See the culprits as we attempt to figure out what possible motives the guilty parties could have.

  • True Grit

    Movie Review | Anna | 11th February 2011

    From time to time a film comes along that marries the perfect story, perfect script, perfect director and perfect cast. Chinatown had it, The Godfather had it and True Grit's got it. Sit back and wallow in its sweet perfection.

  • Boner alert: True Grit trailer

    Movie Trailer | Ali | 27th September 2010

    The Coen Brothers reteam with The Dude to out John Wayne John Wayne? The first True Grit teaser trailer is this way, cowboy.

  • A Serious Man

    Movie Review | Anna | 21st November 2009

    According to the Shr�dinger's Cat paradox, if you put a cat in a sealed box with a vial of poison that has a 50-50 chance of being released and killing the cat (sorry cat lovers), then until the box is unsealed, the cat is neither alive or dead. It exists in both states until the box is unsealed and the cat is observed to be one thing or the other.

  • Burn After Reading

    Movie Review | Ali | 19th October 2008

    Just nine short months after No Country For Old Men was released to critical acclaim and just eight short months after it bagged the Best Picture Oscar (among others), the Coen brothers present a film that couldn't be more different in tone. There are similarities - like Llewelyn Moss, the central characters here are forced into...

  • Friday Fiver: The Coolest Coen Characters

    Movie Feature | | 17th October 2008

    After taking a dark and grizzly turn with No Country For Old Men, the Coens are back in goof mode for Burn After Reading, a tale of two hapless gym employees who get in over their heads when they attempt to blackmail a CIA agent. The film unites a star-studded cast of Coen veterans George Clooney and Frances McDormand with Coen ...

  • No Country For Old Men

    Movie Review | Ali | 4th January 2008

    Midnight. Llewelyn Moss stirs in his bed, gets up and puts his boots on. "I'm fixin' to do something dumber'n hell," he tells his wife Carla (Kelly McDonald) as he heads out of his trailer. A few minutes later, he's fleeing for his life across the pitch black desert plain, pursued by a truck full of shotgun-wielding ba...

  • Intolerable Cruelty

    Movie Review | Ali | 2nd January 2005

    The Coen brothers are part of that rare breed in Hollywood - a duo who are unafraid to take risks, who refuse to be pigeonholed into any particular genre and who maintain a wholly credible track record. Strange then, that they should choose to focus their attention on what appears to be a straight-laced romantic comedy, the kin...