The Coen Brothers are some of the best directors to ever work in film, and Ethan Coen’s latest film Drive-Away Dolls is about to hit theatres.
While Joel and Ethan Coen haven’t worked together since 2018’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the two will reportedly reunite in the future to direct a horror film sometime in the near future.
As we get ready for a new film by one of the Coens (co-written by Tricia Cooke, a veteran film editor and Ethan’s wife), let’s look back on our 10 favorite Coens movies from the duo’s accomplished filmography.
Lists like this are always subjective, so if your favorite Coens film isn’t on there, that doesn’t mean it’s not great (sorry, True Grit fans, we really love it, but it didn’t quite make the cut). However, let’s still dive in.
Honorable Mention: True Grit
Okay, fine, we have to still include True Grit. It’s an incredible Western, one of the Coens’ most stunningly imagined films (hello, Roger Deakins) and much better than the John Wayne film that inspired it.
You could ask us tomorrow, and we might change our mind and put this higher than an honorable mention. It really is stellar.
10. The Hudsucker Proxy
A criminally underrated installment in the Coens filmography, The Hudsucker Proxy feels positively Capra-esque (well, a hair twisted on that ethos) as its the most loving homage the brothers made to the actual Golden Age films that inspired them (with the system itself getting its due a couple of decades later with Hail, Caesar!).
Tim Robbins and Jennifer Jason Leigh are both superb as they handle the incredibly witty rat-a-tat dialogue (co-written by Sam Raimi) that mirrored the great screwball comedies that this film founded itself on.
9. Inside Llewyn Davis
Starving artists rarely inspire boring stories, and some regard Inside Llewyn Davis as the Coens’ finest work. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, as the titular Llewyn Davis rummages around his dreams of being a professional musician with pratfalls and personal failures aplenty.
It’s the kind of delightfully ironic odyssey that the Coens mastered during their careers, one that understands the dark humor and fractured pathos of failure and determination. It’s also Oscar Isaac’s finest moment as an actor.
8. Hail, Caesar!
A crackerjack sendup of old Hollywood and a love letter to the mayhem of making movies and the faith it takes to believe in something bigger than you, Hail, Caesar! is perhaps the funniest Coens movie (perhaps a controversial take), one that proved Channing Tatum’s genius comedic bona fides and introduced the world to the great Alden Ehrenreich.
This one really hammers in why the Coens’ tonal balance is so hard to match, as this one hides any direct cynicism for the industry behind an ornate dedication to the fiercely dedicated weirdos who keep movies going.
7. A Serious Man
The Coens are some of the most interesting directors to ever explore Biblical dynamics in their movies, and A Serious Man is easily one of their best.
It’s a fantastically blunt dramedy that takes loose inspiration from the story of Job via a hapless Minnesota professor (the amazing Michael Stuhlbarg) who must canvas his faith in the face of unexpected trials.
Wise beyond its years and unafraid to stare its themes in the face, this is one of the brothers’ best scripts and fully realized projects.
6. Raising Arizona
Raising Arizona is one of the Coens’ most recognizable films and helped establish Nicolas Cage as a singular screen presence. It remains a deliriously funny comedy, all at once heartwarming and a bit off-putting in the best way possible.
It’s a joyous satire about what it takes to raise a baby in a chaotic world and a slick crime caper with unforgettable characters and quirks.
5. Barton Fink
One of the great ruminations on the writing process and the madness to the method of creating life on the page, Barton Fink has no peers for what it’s exactly trying to do. You’ll never look at writers the same way again.
John Turturro was just one of those actors who was born to play in a Coens story, as was John Goodman who delivers one of the most unsettling performances in a Coens movie to date (“I’ll show you the life of the mind!”).
This is easily the best film about Hollywood that the Coens made, which is saying something.
4. The Big Lebowski
The Big Lebowski has ascended to a life of its own, one of the most purely iconic films of its generation and perhaps its most quotable. It’s just one of the most original films ever made, perhaps the best world the Coens imagined and the one filled with its best characters.
Jeff Bridges’ The Dude and John Goodman’s Donnie live eternal, and the entire aura this film permeates is just unmatched. This movie abides.
3. Fargo
Fargo is a masterwork, one of the best films we’ve ever gotten to dissect the uneasy balance behind good and evil in a world where everyone might come across as nice. It’s inspired a fantastic television anthology series, but nothing can touch the original.
Frances McDormand’s Marge Gunderson is one of our great movie heroes, and William H. Macy’s Jerry Lundegaard one of our great unintended villains.
“There’s more to life than a little money, ya know. Don’tcha know that? And here ya are. And it’s a beautiful day.”
2. No Country for Old Men
Widely regarded as one of the great movies of the 2000s (and of all time), No Country for Old Men is a scorching eulogy for a dying world, one caught between making sense of the unforgiving inevitability of consequence and coping with the uncaring engines that drive our greed and self-preservation.
Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh will haunt movie screens for the rest of the medium’s existence, his grim spectre floating through the chaos of the plot and reminding everyone he meets of life’s frailty on the flip of a coin.
This is easily one of the best films the Coens have made, and it’s absolutely one of the greats we’ll remember for decades to come.
1. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
O Brother, Where Art Thou? might be a perfect move. The Coens’ irreverent, Southern twist on Homer’s Odyssey is just filled to the brim with creativity, heart and a real sense of the world its in. It’s got perhaps the greatest soundtrack in movie history and some of the best performances the Coens ever got from an ensemble.
It’s also just such an incredibly rewatchable film, as you can dive in any point and stay there until the end credits. It’s as close to a perfect film as the Coens have made, and to be honest, it’s one of my favorite movies ever.
Long live the Soggy Bottom Boys, and long live the Coens.
