In 2009, the Coen Brothers' "A Serious Man" introduced audiences to an uptight, uncertain man spiraling through a midlife crisis in 1960s Minnesota. F...
While many will argue that God's grace is notably absent elsewhere in the "Coeniverse," it is powerfully present in True Grit
In their 2009 film "A Serious Man," the Coens, for the first time in their career as moviemakers, decide to go back to their Minnesota upbringing and tell a story that touches on the Jewish depredations of Job and Kafka.
The Coen brothers had "Jewish technical advisors, helping with language and liturgical stuff" in their movie A Serious Man, as well as "a raft of translators for the Yiddish."
Attention celebrity publicists: Cut it out. You need to research the Golden Age of Hollywood. It was then that the star machine created real superstars.
My friend Jeffrey Wells recently ran a link to my review of Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island, which I really liked, on his always interesting website,...
For the first time in recent memory, none of the best-director nominees directed movies that weren't also nominated for best picture.
The Oscar nominations were out Tuesday morning, and there are a few more Best Picture contenders to consider. This year, for the first time since 1943...
This year's Oscar telecast won't exactly have the element of surprise. Here's my predictions of who will get nominated in most categories.
LOS ANGELES — The dramas "Precious" and "The Hurt Locker," the comedies "Up in the Air" and "The Hangover" and the animated tales "Up" and "Cora...
There was no better action film this year than Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker. By far the best Iraq war movie to date, it follows an elite team of soldiers whose sole job is to diffuse IED's on the streets of Baghdad.
The Coen universe is so meticulously crafted that the absence of an inherent order seems almost impossible. How could something of such exquisite function arise from something so absurd and meaningless?
I'll endure a dollop of political incorrectness for the sake of an insanely smart story; in this post-feminist world, I'm just that confident.
Once again, here's my top ten of 2009 -- an interesting year for movies. And no, I haven't seen Avatar yet.
Are newspapers alive or dead? Are the main-stream media fair and balanced or hopelessly biased? Is the New York Times too liberal or not liberal enough?
The Coens have created moral universes in which some of life's essential questions are asked -- if not always answered. It seems there's no question the brothers are afraid to tackle.
I have nothing against transgressive cinema; but Antichrist has the feeling of pushing buttons for its own sake, like a child smearing its own feces on a wall. Why does Lars von Trier do it?
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