Joel Coen

LOS ANGELES — "True Grit" seized the reins at the weekend box office with $15 million, taking the No. 1 spot and becoming the first Western to top t...

True Grit is a unique, stylish, exciting movie, but there isn't enough substance to provide real insight into the characters.

Both of these films offer the opportunity to catch Bridges at the peak of his craft, and, genres be damned, there's true grit in Tron: Legacy, too.

If you believed the movies, to venture across the George Washington Bridge is to court danger down every street. But NYC's not alone in this treatment by Hollywood, and we've got the filmed documentation to prove it.

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."

There's something about the appeal of Jeff Bridges that goes deeper than his engaging performances, good looks, charm, brains and acting chops. That was the mystery that I may have stumbled into figuring out.

It's a basic tenet of good storytelling that whatever plans your characters put into action, it can't hurt if things don't go quite as smoothly as anticipated.

Perhaps his clean-cut, boyish image obscured my ability to recognize the astonishing talent he possessed from the start. Regardless, I could see it now: Jeff Bridges has always been a lot more than a pretty face.

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.

LOS ANGELES — Joel and Ethan Coen scored their biggest opener to date by raking in $19.4 million in ticket sales for "Burn After Reading" and he...