15. “Burn After Reading” (2008)
After the exhaustive critical lauding and box-office success of “No Country,” it’s fair to say the thoroughly dark lampooning that is “Burn After Reading” came as a bit of a curve ball (though they have a certain sensibility in common for certain). Leave it to the Coens to stick to their guns, shepherding a cast of big-time regulars (Frances McDormand! George Clooney! Richard Jenkins! Music by Carter Burwell!) and equally seasoned A-listers (John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, and especially Brad Pitt, clearly relishing the opportunity) through a tangled web of jealousy, lust and, above all, violent stupidity in the world of Washington, D.C. intelligence. “Burn After Reading” feels like an unfussy lark, a way for the Coens to revisit the mind games of “Barton Fink” and the sudden bursts of violence peppered throughout their work, all the while generously parodying the spy genre. The film is chock-full of emphatic scenes with hilariously low stakes, characters puffing out their chests and shifting their eyes. Pitt’s personal trainer is a highlight: The actor, whose early roles were tinged with a pretty-boy vacancy, presents a tightrope performance, suggesting an innate idiocy at odds with an all-consuming ego. But both he and some of the other performances also exemplify a certain sourness that’s the film’s biggest weakness: The Coens’ critics often accuse them of misanthropy, and here they might have a point, with the bleakness of “No Country” carried through to this film’s pack-of-idiots satire.
14. “Hail, Caesar!” (2016)
The Coens’ latest was perhaps a victim of skewed expectations. The film looked, at a distance, like a Coens crowd-pleaser, a celebration of old Hollywood with an all-star cast and lavish production values. But as ever, Joel and Ethan had little interest in giving you what you want, sneaking in a film closer to “A Serious Man” than to “Burn After Reading,” an existential drama about the meaninglessness of life in a godless world (the film’s key moment: the slide “Divine presence to be shot” inserted into footage of the film-within-a-film-of-the-title). Which is to say that we understand why people might not have liked it. Josh Brolin is again the Coen’s moral center as studio fixer Eddie Mannix, left searching for missing star Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), who’s been abducted by communist screenwriters. As with ‘Burn,’ the equal-opportunity scorn being thrown sometimes feels a bit tiresome, and you’re so spoiled for choice with the cast here that many of them feel underused (there are worse problems to have, especially when one of the less well-known, Alden Ehrenreich, is stealing the film away). But it’s the film’s unexpected point-of-view, of using the studio lot as a sort of metaphor for the randomness and inexplicability of the universe, and Brolin’s exasperated decency that elevate it beyond some of the other second-tier Coens pics.
13. “True Grit” (2010)
Every so often in their career, the Coens transform themselves into the unlikeliest of crowd-pleasers, crafting sizable, audience-friendly hits while maintaining their oddball allure and idiosyncratic directorial flourishes. “True Grit” was their greatest such success, bringing in more than $250 million at the box office and scoring a whopping 10 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director for the Coens. While the brothers claimed in interviews before the film’s release that it would be a new adaptation of Charles Portis‘ novel and not a straight remake of the 1969 Western, it’s a surprisingly faithful take, right to down to the eye-patch of Rooster Cogburn, played this time by Jeff Bridges. Also along for the ride were their discovery Hailee Steinfeld, startlingly mature without feeling precocious as the young girl seeking revenge for the murder of her father; and first-time collaborator Matt Damon, the best thing in the film, to the extent that it’s disappointing that they’ve not worked together since (though he’s starring in the Clooney-directed Coens script “Suburbicon”). It’s eminently watchable, and has a real warmth to it that’s not always there in their films. If it feels a little less distinctive than some of their films, that’s perhaps made up by how utterly satisfying the more old-fashioned, classical approach ends up feeling.
12. “The Hudsucker Proxy” (1994)
After the one-two punch of “Miller’s Crossing” and “Barton Fink,” the Coens returned to a script they had written more than a half-decade before (with their frequent collaborator and BFF Sam Raimi): a hugely expensive riff on the films of Frank Capra and Preston Sturges that was produced by, of all people, action guru Joel Silver. In the film, Tim Robbins plays a rube who is elevated to the executive level of a giant corporation called Hudsucker Industries, in a scheme by its board (led by a mustache-twirling Paul Newman) to reduce stock prices. Of course, Robbins invents the hula hoop while he’s there, a far-fetched idea that the board thinks is complete nonsense but ends up a rousing success. The Coens used ingenious visual effects to create a dreamlike, fantasy version of Art Deco New York, and while the movie sometimes tips dangerously from pastiche to parody, the film also contains some of the Coens’ most unforgettable moments, including several characters leaping (or nearly leaping) to their deaths from the skyscraper’s top floors, the nearly wordless sequence explaining the history of the hula hoop, and a sequence where two random cab drivers (never identified or heard from again) narrate Robbins’ and Jennifer Jason Leigh’s characters’ first meeting. A financial disaster that nearly crippled the Coens’ career, it’s been somewhat redeemed today by fans, and helps perhaps to explain the central tug-of-war between art and commerciality at the heart of “Inside Llewyn Davis.” Except, you know, for kids.
11. “Blood Simple” (1984)
The opening narration says it all: You can be the Pope, the President of the United States, Man of the Year — something can and will always go wrong. But the cynical philosophy of this character (played by the great character actor M. Emmet Walsh) boils down to one’s milieu: “But what I know about is Texas, and down here, you’re on your own.” Murder, betrayal, adultery, crimes and punishments. While not as morally and thematically textured as some later Coen Brothers films about the same subjects would be, as modern nail-biting film noir, “Blood Simple” is nearly as good as it gets. Centering on a suspicious Texas bar owner (Dan Hedaya) who hires a private detective (Walsh) to spy on and then kill his wife (Frances McDormand) for cheating on him (with one of his employees, played by John Getz), this seemingly straightforward murder is complicated by deceits, double-crosses and those looking out for their own interest in this dog-eat-dog world. If Tommy Lee Jones waxes philosophically, lamenting the moral decay of humanity in “No Country For Old Men,” then M. Emmet Walsh’s Southern brand of ideology in “Blood Simple” is akin to the smiling scorpion amiably warning the frog that in this world, you are bound to get stung. Crimes add up in “Blood Simple,” and give way to fear, guilt and fatal misunderstandings that snowball out of control. Nothing is simple in the Coens’ debut, outside of the uncontestable fact that blood is red and getting away with murder is the hard part.