It’s totally possible for the freakin’ Coens to make a movie with Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, and freakin’ George Clooney, and still have it be an unwatchable mess.
Honestly, this brand of farce — in which terrible things happen to lots of miserable people, and which the Coens clearly love — doesn’t need to be done again after Fargo. And the brothers do much strong work when they undertake more meaty fare, such as their previous high point and the recent adaptation of No Country for Old Men, both of which remind us more of their neo noir debut than broad, grotesque messes like Burn After Reading and Intolerable Cruelty. I have no fear about their upcoming project, but I really hope they stop beating this particular farcical horse in the future.
Given how good the vast majority of their output is, I’m more than happy to let them slip by with a couple of misses.
Hard to argue with that, but the late-mid career Coen oeuvre is much weaker than their initial sprint. I give ’em A to A+ for Blood Simple, Arizona, Miller, Barton, and Hudsaker, and a B+ for Fargo. Lebowski and O Brother are solid A to A+ material. Man Who Wasn’t There is B+-ish.
Intolerable Cruelty is a C. No Country was a solid A+, perhaps their best work. Burn After Reading only rates a D given their back catalog. I haven’t seen Ladykillers or A Serious Man, so I can’t comment on them.
Related: Holy crap, they’ve made a bunch of movies. Also related: Jesus, Blood Simple was a long time ago.
Cathy and I loved A Serious Man. It is what you expect from the Coen bros.
I guess my takeaway, though, is that we have a couple categories of things to expect: broad farce, or something with a bit of subtlety. Sometimes, just-farce works (Arizona, Fargo). Most of the time, though, you need more.