The Best Coen Brothers Movies Ranked (and Their Desk Motifs)

Any list of Coen Brothers films ranked will probably have this title near the bottom. There's nothing inherently bad about Intolerable Cruelty; it's just not that interesting. It is the lightest and least complicated of their pictures. The tone is consistent, and the performances are serviceable.

But for a romantic comedy, it's not very funny, and it's far from romantic.

Perhaps the involvement in a bonafide "studio picture" kept the Coens from flexing their usual muscles too much. The script was tossed around Hollywood for a while with different directors and stars attached.

Your best bet with this film is to play it at 2x speed on mute and soak up the colors, lights, and shadows.

For lovers of classic Hollywood, Hail, Caesar! hits all the right notes. The inner workings of the studio system and the eccentricities of the stars all play well.

The kidnap plot, the league of Communists, the musical numbers and the snappy dry dialogue are pure Coen Brothers. But the finished product is unconnected dots, and it falls flat.

The look of the film is spot-on. They've captured the costumes/sets of vintage Hollywood aesthetics. Deakins' cinematography pushes the bright technicolor sets and costumes with confidence. Naturally, the darker, noir scenes remind us once again of Deakin's mastery of shadow.

The musical number with Channing Tatum is a standout moment, both for its execution and subverted humor.

It is an homage and a send-up. It's one thing to "tip your hat" to the greats like Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire — it's another thing altogether to pull off a scene just like them.

The plot involves another hare-brained "criminal enterprise" undertaken by a collection of numbskulls. It has moments of cartoonish foolery and absurdist flourishes. The dialogue is writerly mixed with profanity.

Is this not the exact recipe for a classic Coen romp?

Tom Hanks steps into his oddball role as Professor G.H. Dorr and takes full advantage of the comic latitude he is given. Irma P. Hall plays Marva Munson as if she was born to do so.

From a filmmaking standpoint, the best scene is The General's botched murder attempt. As he sneaks up to Ms. Munson's room, the chiaroscuro cinematography becomes comically dramatic.

The Dutch angles and chiaroscuro lighting are effective and exaggerated. Because this is a comedy, this hyper-stylization plays for humor rather than drama.

The best shot is The General rounding the stairs, silhouetted by the window as his exhaled smoke flows around him. He steps into the light at the top of the stairs and walks past a low angle camera.

The seriousness of The General and this scene suggests his skills as an assassin. Of course, this is all undone when the cuckoo clock chimes, he swallows his lit cigarette and stumbles down the stairs to his death.

The God of the Coen Universe can't abide.

When it was announced that the Coen Brothers new movie would be an anthology of Western tales, no one was surprised.

Having Coen Brothers movies on Netflix makes total sense because they demand to be re-watched. Netflix knows this and brought them in for this first co-production.

Any anthology film hedges its bets by including many stories in one. Audiences will inevitably choose the story they like best and wish they had seen less of the others.

The variety of stories in Buster Scruggs is like a microcosm of the best Coen Brothers movies. There is Looney Tunes zaniness, and Old Testament justice meted out to hapless criminals. There are twists of fate and consequence mixed with violence out of the blue.

What's exciting about this mix of films is that they each have a different look and feel. As if each segment were handled by different directors, like other anthology films.

The first, eponymous chapter has the Coens firing on all cylinders. In many ways, this is the distillation of their work in 15 minutes.

The standout story in the collection is "All Gold Canyon." Tom Waits is the PERFECT gruff prospector, pursuing his dream of golden riches. The landscapes are gorgeous — an elemental setting for an elemental story.

And, for once, the Coens lean on an optimistic ending in this chapter. A happy ending in a Coen Brothers movie is as rare as the gold the Prospector dreams of.

What immediately stands out about this film is the look. The saturated yellows and greens of trees and fields are strikingly beautiful. It is an exaggerated color scheme that establishes the setting. It suggests a time and place, both familiar and slightly fantastic. But how do we blend the real with the fantastic?

For one example, our trio of protagonists discovers a trio of bathing singers in a river. The Sirens sing a seductive harmony while making the three escaped convicts drink liquor from a jug.

As the scene progresses, the sound, camera, and blocking slip into a more subjective experience. We are seduced just like they are.

In the final shot before they pass out, we see all three men one last time. The camera moves laterally across them before fading to black.

But the camera doesn't really move at all. The subjects themselves appear to be moving without walking. They slide into new positions while the camera moves slightly to motivate this strange repositioning.

This technique achieves what so many visual effects aim for. It provides a subjective and unnatural logic to the shot without calling attention to itself. Like Ulysses, Pete, and Delmar, the audience can experience what that moment must be like.

A smooth and peaceful transition into unconsciousness.

If you want more information on blocking and camera movement, check out our entirely free masterclass on filmmaking techniques. We have episodes on directing the camera and how to block your actors. 

MELANCHOLY FOLK

12. Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

The Coen Brothers handle violence in a very particular way. It is often shocking, both because it's often unexpected and gruesome. The tonal shift in these moments is substantial and dramatic.

There's no better example than in Burn After Reading. The film is another Coen comedy about inept and amateur criminals. Brad Pitt plays an airhead gym trainer who gets in over his head after he finds a disc with confidential information on it.

He is an incredibly goofy character, prone to dancing and an overall cheery disposition. Naturally, in the Coen Universe, a character like this is doomed from the outset.

When he breaks into Harry's (George Clooney) house, he hides in the closet when the owner comes home. Harry takes a shower and sings while Chad (Pitt) watches through the closet door. Spoiler alert!

NEO-NOIR

10. The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)

No doubt about it, The Man Who Wasn't There is the Coen's most visually perfect movie. Why it took them, especially with their secret weapon, DP Roger Deakins, almost 20 years to make a B&W film, we'll never know. And why haven't they done another one since then??

Of course, a 1950s American, suburban paradise should always be shot in B&W. That's what the world must have actually looked like back then because the aesthetic is so ingrained in the setting.

Billy Bob Thornton is perfectly cast as the soft-spoken cuckold barber, Ed Crane. We get our standard Coen voiceover, but Thornton's face says it all. We also have the typical stellar supporting cast we've come to expect from Joel and Ethan. James Gandolfini proves that he should have been in way more films for the Coens. The same goes for Tony Shalhoub, the loquacious lawyer from Sacramento.

Joel and Ethan Coen movies have an uncanny ability to mix the strange with the beautiful. A great example of this is a late-night conversation between Ed and Ann (Katherine Borowitz).

She is mourning her late husband with a thin veil with tiny black spots. She is backlit by a streetlamp, giving her an eerie glow. The reverse has Ed lit with dappled light as the wind pushes through the trees. 

Beautiful and strange. The Coens have perfected the curveball and here is just one example. The conversation begins with Ed's condolences but quickly turns to Ann's real concern: aliens.

She recalls a sighting she and her husband once had, claiming that everything since then, including his death, can be traced back to that moment. Naturally, near the end, Ed sees a flying saucer, and it all makes sense. What we previously wrote off as the ramblings of a grieving wife is part of the film's theme.

SCREWBALL THROWBACK

8. The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)

Audiences didn't quite get The Big Lebowski when it debuted in 1998. With the ardent fervor around it more than 20 years later, it's hard to imagine otherwise. The movie earned minimal returns at the box office and wasn't even murmured in that year's awards chatter.

No, their follow-up to their hit smash Fargo is a unique animal, a hybrid of influences and sub-genres. There's nothing quite like it, but there is a lot to appreciate within it.

Pound for pound, Lebowski might be the most quotable movie ever. There's a good reason for this. Coen Brothers dialogue has always been specific and quirky but not before or since have they reached this level of precision and wit. We could all learn from The Big Lebowski on how to write better dialogue. 

Joel and Ethan Coen movies are stuffed with charismatic and memorable characters. They tend to cast for the physical attributes in addition to acting ability. The Coens always cast the most interesting looking people, even day players with one line make an impression.

What Fargo includes that many other Coen films don't is hope. Honest-to-goodness, and without an ounce of cynicism, hope. The Coen Brothers worldview is often much less satisfying or optimistic as this. Marge Gunderson becomes this beacon as she counters the evil of the world with purity and goodness.

"I just don't understand it," she says. How or why would evil need to exist in this world?

Writing has always been the Coen's biggest strength. Through language alone, they can capture character, theme, setting, and tone. A great example is an early scene with our hero Marge (Frances McDormand).

She's just arrived at the murder scene where a cup of coffee awaits. Marge investigates the scene, speaking with a plain honesty that endears us to her from the start.

Marge can discuss the mundane (coffee, weather) and the grisly triple homicide without blinking. She's not naive, unlike her colleague, Lou. She can deduce the situation with the calm surety of every other movie detective we've seen.

She is your mother...if your mother was Sherlock Holmes.