12 Jan 2014

Folk Yeah!: "Inside Llewyn Davis" and "Lone Survivor"

By Mike Schulz

Oscar Isaac, Justin Timberlake, and Adam Driver in Inside Llewyn DavisINSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS

There are some Coen-brothers movies - Fargo and O Brother, Where Art Thou? and True Grit come immediately to mind - that, because they exude such palpable filmmaking energy and are so spectacularly quotable, I wanted to talk about immediately after first seeing them. Then there are the rarer Coen-brothers movies, among them The Hudsucker Proxy and Intolerable Cruelty and Burn After Reading, that I didn't feel much like talking about afterward, mostly because I didn't enjoy them much on a first go-round. (Though I've consequently become a big fan of Joel's and Ethan's Hudsucker and Burn, in the case of Intolerable Cruelty, second and third go-rounds did nothing to improve matters.)

And then there are Coen-brothers movies such as the new Inside Llewyn Davis, a work that is, I think, so good that I don't want to discuss it for fear of not coming close to doing it justice.

23 Dec 2010

Hello. My Name Is Mattie Ross. You Killed My Father. Prepare to Die.: "True Grit" and "Yogi Bear"

By Mike Schulz

Jeff Bridges and Hailee Steinfeld in True GritTRUE GRIT

Over the course of their careers, the films of Joel and Ethan Coen have, of course, inspired a wide variety of responses: amusement (and quite a lot of it), excitement, fascination, terror, confusion, astonishment, mortification. (Oh, the depressing spectacle of Intolerable Cruelty ... .) But while we audiences have laughed and gasped and occasionally scratched our heads, we haven't, prior to the Coen brothers' True Grit, been moved to tears by scenes of unbridled yet honestly earned sentiment. Guess we can now scratch that one off the list, too.

14 Oct 2003

Tarantino and Coens Stumble with Latest Flicks: "Kill Bill Volume 1," "Intolerable Cruelty," "Out of Time," and "Balseros"

By Mike Schulz

Uma Thurman in Kill Bill: Volume IKILL BILL: VOLUME I

Miramax's decision to release Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill in two installments was probably smart, as it'll inevitably boost the film's collective box-office intake and doesn't require audiences to commit, all at once, to a three-and-a-half-hour homage to Japanese samurai flicks.

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