Tag: ethan coen

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Coen Brothers Film Festival Brings Fargo, The Big Lebowski Back To Big Screen

The Big Lebowski

It’s hard to overstate the impact Joel and Ethan Coen have had on American film. Beginning with 1984’s Blood Simple, the two brothers from Minneapolis were a major influence on the indie revolution of the 1990s. 1987’s Raising Arizona made a star out of Nicolas Cage and proved that smart, surrealist comedy could attract an audience. Today, the TV series inspired by their Cannes- and Academy Award-winning 1996 film Fargo, keeps their legacy alive by being one of the consistently best things on the little screen.
With new film releases scarce because of the pandemic, Malco Theatres is celebrating the Coen brothers with a mini-film festival, which runs from November 20-26. The six titles represent a cross-section of the Coens’ work, from legendary comedy to existential drama. And the price is right, at $2 per ticket.

The twin crown jewels of the Coens’ filmography came out back to back in 1996 and 1998. Fargo is a crime thriller like no other. Frances McDormand, who happens to be Joel’s wife, won her first Oscar for her portrayal of Marge Gundersen, police chief of Brainard, Minnesota, who uncovers a plot by used car salesman Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) to fake the kidnapping of his wife Jean (Kristin Rudrud) that goes terribly wrong. Here’s McDormand delivering one of the greatest soliloquies in all of film history as she takes kidnapper Gaear (Peter Stormare) to face justice.

Coen Brothers Film Festival Brings Fargo, The Big Lebowski Back To Big Screen

Two years later, the Coens took a wild left turn and made one of the most beloved comedies of all time. The Big Lebowski forever associated Jeff Bridges with The Dude, an unreconstructed hippie turned amateur detective. Intended as a parody of Southern California noir classics like The Big Sleep, The Big Lebowski’s greatest strength is as a series of indelible character sketches. Just check out this legendary bowling alley scene with Bridges, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, and John Turturro.

Coen Brothers Film Festival Brings Fargo, The Big Lebowski Back To Big Screen (2)

2003’s Intolerable Cruelty is a rarity. It did not start out as a Coen script, but the brothers took over the production and rewrote it. It’s not one of their classics, but if anyone else had made it, it would have been the highlight of their career. It features remarkable comedic performances from George Clooney, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Cedric the Entertainer, and Billy Bob Thornton.

Coen Brothers Film Festival Brings Fargo, The Big Lebowski Back To Big Screen (3)

2007’s No Country for Old Men was the Coens’ adaptation of a late-period Cormac McCarthy novel which won Best Picture, Best Director(s), and Best Screenplay Oscars, as well as Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Javier Bardem as the killer Anton Chigurh.

Coen Brothers Film Festival Brings Fargo, The Big Lebowski Back To Big Screen (4)

2008’s Burn After Reading saw the Coens returning to Big Lebowski-style comedy, this time set in Washington DC. It features a powerhouse cast, including McDormand, John Malkovich, George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, and Brad Pitt. Here’s McDormand and Pitt trying to blackmail soon-to-be-former CIA agent Malkovich.

Coen Brothers Film Festival Brings Fargo, The Big Lebowski Back To Big Screen (5)

The next year, the Coens returned to their Midwestern Jewish roots with A Serious Man, which they describe as a Yiddish folk tale that never was.

Coen Brothers Film Festival Brings Fargo, The Big Lebowski Back To Big Screen (6)

You can review Malco’s COVID policies here and buy tickets for the Coen Brothers Film Festival here, on their website.

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Film Features Film/TV

Hail, Caesar!

Fewer Communists, more Clooney.

That’s a film critique I never thought I would offer, but here we are. Like all right-thinking Urban Achievers, I am a Coen Brothers fan—a fanatic, even. Who else has been able to create great films in so many different genres? They’ve produced two great film noirs in Miller’s Crossing and The Man Who Wasn’t There, expanded the crime genre with Fargo and the Best Picture-winning No Country for Old Men, added to the Western legacy with True Grit, and crafted some of the greatest comedies in film history with Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski. Basically, if Joel and Ethan Coen make a movie, I’m there, no questions asked, because there’s always going to be something great onscreen. This is true even in the case of misfires like Hail, Caesar!

The strengths of their comedies have always been rooted in crackling wordplay, characterizations which walk the line between the wacky and sympathetic, and a burgeoning sense of the absurdity of life. The premise of Hail, Caesar!, an eventful day in the life of an Eisenhower-era Hollywood fixer named Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) seems like perfect fodder for the brothers. If you’re looking for absurdity, Hollywood presents a target-rich environment. Capitol Pictures, Mannix’s fictional studio, is a circus of stars like DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson), a squeaky-clean protagonist of water ballet pictures whose image is put at risk when she gets pregnant; Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich), the singing cowboy whose almost superhuman roping and wrangling skills are of no use when the studio thrusts him into the role of a big city swell in Laurence Laurentz’s (Ralph Feinnes) latest chamber drama; and Frances McDormand as accident-prone film editor. Best of all is George Clooney as Baird Whitlock, the epically vain actor whose kidnapping from the set of his newest sword-and-sandals flick by a group of communist screenwriters who collectively call themselves The Future provides Hail, Caesar!‘s plot momentum. Clooney, rocking the praetorian haircut like it’s 1998 on the set of ER, is loaded for bear, ready to go O Brother, Where Art Thou? big. And that’s what we all want, right? Critics like me have to pay lip service to subtle naturalism, but there’s nothing like seeing a really great actor vaulting over the top, grabbing scenery to chew. But Clooney’s efforts are largely wasted as he ends up imprisoned by the communists for much of the film while the Coens try to wring humor out of mid-century Marxist rhetoric. The basic joke is sound—the commies claim to have scientifically cracked the code of history, and yet they were unable to predict defeat by the capitalists—but the scenes meander endlessly. Clooney’s manic energy should have been at the heart of the picture, but he’s just the MacGuffin.

Let the kidnapped Clooney chew the scenery.

The Coens are operating in Lebowski mode, so the kidnapping plot is just a contrivance on which to hang the comic digressions and character moments that are the film’s real meat. The Hollywood setting allows them to try on different genres every few minutes, such as Channing Tatum’s gay sailor musical number “No Dames,” but too often it comes off as empty riffing. The Coen’s clockwork timing seems broken.

I personally enjoyed Hail Caesar!, but I cannot recommend it to anyone outside the Coen cult. It is their least funny film since The Ladykillers in 2004, but, to be fair, the last decade has seen the brothers occupied with existential dramas like 2009’s A Serious Man. Roger Deakins’ photography is, of course, first rate, and the production design is off the charts good. In a way, Hail, Cesar! reminds me of a mid-period Woody Allen picture, expertly crafted but lacking a certain energy. And consider this: When The Big Lebowski was released in 1998, it was considered a disappointment after the universally hailed Fargo, but time was good to the Dude, and it is now rightly ranked as one of the greatest comedies ever made. Considering the majesty of the Coen’s True Grit remake and the crackerjack work they did on the screenplay for Stephen Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies, maybe the days of the gonzo Coen comedy are over, and the brothers should stay serious.

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Film Features Film/TV

The Conversion

In January 1989, Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies, and videotape won the Audience Award for best feature at the Sundance Film Festival, kicking off the modern Indie film movement.

To audiences, “Indie” usually means quirky, low-budget, character-driven fare that is more like the auteurist films of the 1970s than contemporary Hollywood’s designed-by-committee product. But “Indie” originally referred to films financed outside the major studios by outfits like New Line Cinema, which produced Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1981) and the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple (1984). By 1990, The Coen Brothers had crossed over into the mainstream with Miller’s Crossing, a film that brought together the meticulous plotting, brainy dialog, and stunning visual compositions that would garner them acclaim for the next 25 years.

As the 1990s dawned, a whole crop of directors stood up with a mission to make good movies on their own terms — and that meant raising money by any means necessary. Robert Rodriguez financed his $7,000 debut feature El Mariachi by selling his body for medical testing. It went on to win the 1993 Audience Award at Sundance, and his book Rebel Without A Crew inspired a generation of filmmakers.

Richard Linklater’s 1991 Slacker threw out the screenwriting rulebook that had dominated American film since George Lucas name-checked Joseph Campbell, focusing instead on dozens of strange characters floating around Austin. The structure has echoed through Indie film ever since, not only in Linklater’s Dazed And Confused (1993) but also the “hyperlink” movies of the early 2000s such as Soderbergh’s Traffic and even more conventionally scripted films such as Kevin Smith’s 1994 debut, Clerks.

Quentin Tarantino is arguably the most influential director of the last 25 years. His breakthrough hit, 1994’s Pulp Fiction, was the first film completely financed by producer Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax. But even then, the definitions of what was an “Indie” movie were fluid, as the formerly independent Miramax had become a subsidiary of Disney.

Indie fervor was spreading as local film scenes sprang up around the country. In Memphis, Mike McCarthy’s pioneering run of drive-in exploitation-inspired weirdness started in 1994 with Damselvis, Daughter of Helvis, followed the next year by the semi-autobiographical Teenage Tupelo. With 1997’s The Sore Losers, McCarthy integrated Memphis’ burgeoning underground music scene with his even-more-underground film aesthetic.

In 1995, the European Dogme 95 Collective, led by Lars von Trier, issued its “Vows of Chastity” and defined a new naturalist cinema: no props, no post-production sound, and no lighting. Scripts were minimal, demanding improvisation by the actors. Dogme #1 was Thomas Vinterberg’s The Celebration, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 1998.

Meanwhile, in America, weirdness was reaching its peak with Soderbergh’s surrealist romp Schizopolis. Today, the film enjoys a cult audience, but in 1997, it almost ended Soderbergh’s career and led to a turning point in Indie film. The same year, Tarantino directed Jackie Brown and then withdrew from filmmaking for six years. Soderbergh’s next feature veered away from experiment: 1998’s Out Of Sight was, like Jackie Brown, a tightly plotted adaptation of an Elmore Leonard crime novel. Before Tarantino returned to the director’s chair, Soderbergh would hit with Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich and make George Clooney and Brad Pitt the biggest stars in the world with a very un-Indie remake of the Rat Pack vehicle Ocean’s 11.

Technology rescued Indie film. In the late ’90s, personal computers were on their way to being ubiquitous, and digital video cameras had improved in picture quality as they simplified operation. The 1999 experimental horror The Blair Witch Project, directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, showed what was possible with digital, simultaneously inventing the found footage genre and becoming the most profitable Indie movie in history, grossing $248 million worldwide on a shooting budget of $25,000.

The festival circuit continued to grow. The Indie Memphis Film Festival was founded in 1998, showcasing works such as the gonzo comedies of Memphis cable access TV legend John Pickle. In 2000, it found its biggest hit: Craig Brewer’s The Poor & Hungry, a gritty, digital story of the Memphis streets, won awards both here and at the Hollywood Film Festival.

In 2005, Memphis directors dominated the Sundance Film Festival, with Ira Sach’s impressionistic character piece Forty Shades Of Blue winning the Grand Jury Prize, and Brewer’s Hustle & Flow winning the Audience Award, which would ultimately lead to the unforgettable spectacle of Three Six Mafia beating out Dolly Parton for the Best Original Song Oscar.

Brewer rode the crest of a digital wave that breathed new life into Indie film. In Memphis, Morgan Jon Fox and Brandon Hutchinson co-founded the MeDiA Co-Op, gathering dozens of actors and would-be filmmakers together under the newly democratized Indie film banner. Originally a devotee of Dogme 95, Fox quickly grew beyond its limitations, and by the time of 2008’s OMG/HaHaHa, his stories of down-and-out kids in Memphis owed more to Italian neorealism like Rome, Open City than to von Trier.

Elsewhere, the digital revolution was producing American auteurs like Andrew Bujalski, whose 2002 Funny Ha Ha would be retroactively dubbed the first “mumblecore” movie. The awkward label was coined to describe the wave of realist, DIY digital films such as Joe Swanberg’s Kissing on the Mouth that hit SXSW in 2005. Memphis MeDiA Co-Op alum Kentucker Audley produced three features, beginning with 2007’s mumblecore Team Picture.

Not everyone was on board the digital train. Two of the best Indie films of the 21st century were shot on film: Shane Carruth’s $7,000 Sundance winner Primer (2004) and Rian Johnson’s high school noir Brick (2005). But as digital video evolved into HD, Indie films shot on actual film have become increasingly rare.

DVDs — the way most Indies made money — started to give way to digital distribution via the Internet. Web series, such as Memphis indie collective Corduroy Wednesday’s sci fi comedy The Conversion, began to spring up on YouTube.

With actress and director Greta Gerwig’s star-making turn in 2013’s Francis Ha, it seemed that the only aspect of the American DIY movement that would survive the transition from mumblecore to mainstream was a naturalistic acting style. Founding father Soderbergh announced his retirement in 2013 with a blistering condemnation of the Hollywood machine. Lena Dunham’s 2010 festival hit Tiny Furniture caught the eye of producer Judd Apatow, and the pair hatched HBO’s Girls, which wears its indie roots on its sleeve and has become a national phenomenon.

The Indie spirit is alive and well, even if it may bypass theaters in the future.

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Film Features Film/TV

The Sweet Thereafter

In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Memphis Flyer (our first quarter quell, as it were), I have chosen my personal favorite film from each year since the Flyer began publication. Then, for each of those films, I unearthed and have excerpted some quotes from the review we ran at the time. — Greg Akers

1989: #1 Mystery Train, Jim Jarmusch (#2 Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee)

“While all the scenes in Mystery Train are identifiable by anyone living west of Goodlett, their geographical relationship gets altered to a point where we start to trust Jarmusch more than our own memories.” — Jim Newcomb, March 8, 1990

“Filmed primarily at the downtown corner of South Main and Calhoun, Jarmusch does not use the Peabody Hotel, the Mississippi River, Graceland, or most of the other locations that the Chamber of Commerce would thrust before any visiting filmmaker. His domain concerns exactly that territory which is not regularly tread by the masses, and his treatment of Memphis is likely to open a few eyes.”
— Robert Gordon, March 8, 1990

1990: #1 Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese (#2 Reversal of Fortune, Barbet Schroeder)

“This may not be De Niro’s best-ever performance, but he’s got that gangster thang down pat. His accent is flawless, his stature is perfect, and, boy, does he give Sansabelt slacks new meaning.”
— The Cinema Sisters, September 27, 1990

1991: #1 Terminator 2: Judgment Day, James Cameron (#2 The Silence of the Lambs, Jonathan Demme)

“Terminator 2 is an Alfa Romeo of a movie: pricey, sleek, fast, and loaded with horsepower. By comparison, the first Terminator was a Volkswagen. On the whole, I’d rather have a Volkswagen — they’re cheap and reliable. But, hey, Alfas can be fun too.” — Ed Weathers, July 11, 1993

1992: #1 Glengarry Glen Ross, James Foley (#2 The Last of the Mohicans, Michael Mann)

“Mamet’s brilliantly stylized look at the American Dream’s brutality as practiced by low-rent real estate salesmen who would put the screws to their mothers to keep their own tawdry jobs doesn’t relax its hard muscle for a moment. In the hands of this extraordinary cast, it is like a male chorus on amphetamines singing a desparate, feverish ode to capitalism and testosterone run amuck.”
— Hadley Hury, October 15, 1992

1993: #1 Dazed and Confused, Richard Linklater (#2 Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg)

“Dazed and Confused is a brief trip down memory lane. The characters are not just protagonists and antagonists. They are clear representations of the folks we once knew, and their feelings are those we had years and years ago. Linklater doesn’t, however, urge us to get mushy. He is just asking us to remember.”
— Susan Ellis, November 4, 1993

1994: #1 Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino (#2 Ed Wood, Tim Burton)

“Even though Tarantino is known for his bratty insistence on being shocking by way of gratuitous violence and ethnic slurs, it’s the little things that mean so much in a Tarantino film — camera play, dialogue, performances, and music.”
— Susan Ellis, October 20, 1994

1995: #1 Heat, Michael Mann
(#2 Toy Story, John Lasseter)

“I’m sick of lowlifes and I’m sick of being told to find them fascinating by writers and directors who get a perverse testosterone rush in exalting these lives to a larger-than-life heroism with slow-motion, lovingly lingered-over mayhem and death, expertly photographed and disturbingly dehumanizing.”
— Hadley Hury, December 21, 1995

1996: #1 Lone Star, John Sayles
(#2 Fargo, Joel and Ethan Coen)

“Although Lone Star takes place in a dusty Texas border town, it comes into view like a welcome oasis on the landscape of dog-day action films … Chris Cooper and Sayles’ sensitive framing of the performance produce an arresting character who inhabits a world somewhere between Dostoevsky and Larry McMurtry.”
— Hadley Hury, August 8, 1996

1997: #1 L.A. Confidential, Curtis Hanson (#2 The Apostle, Robert Duvall)

L.A. Confidential

“L.A. Confidential takes us with it on a descent, and not one frame of this remarkable film tips its hand as to whether we’ll go to hell or, if we do, whether we’ll come back. We end up on the edge of our seat, yearning for two protagonists, both anti-heroes … to gun their way to a compromised moral victory, to make us believe again in at least the possibility of trust.”

— Hadley Hury, October 2, 1997

1998: #1 Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg (#2 The Big Lebowski, Joel and Ethan Coen)

“Spielberg is finishing the job he began with Schindler’s List. He’s already shown us why World War II was fought; now he shows us how. … Spielberg’s message is that war is horrifying yet sometimes necessary. And that may be true. But I still prefer the message gleaned from Peter Weir’s 1981 masterpiece, Gallipoli: War is stupid.” — Debbie Gilbert, July 30, 1998

1999: #1 Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson (#2 The End of the Affair, Neil Jordan)

“Magnolia is a film in motion; there’s a cyclical nature where paths are set that will be taken. It’s about fate, not will, where the bad will hurt and good will be redeemed.”
— Susan Ellis, January 13, 2000

2000: #1 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Ang Lee (#2 You Can Count On Me, Kenneth Lonergan)

“Thrilling as art and entertainment, as simple movie pleasure, and as Oscar-baiting ‘prestige’ cinema. Early hype has the film being compared to Star Wars. … An even more apt comparison might be Singin’ in the Rain, a genre celebration that Crouching Tiger at least approaches in its lightness, joy, and the sheer kinetic wonder of its fight/dance set pieces.”
— Chris Herrington, February 1, 2001

A.I. Artificial Intelligence

2001: #1 A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Steven Spielberg (#2 Amélie,
Jean-Pierre Jeunet)

“What happens when Eyes Wide Shut meets E.T.? What does the audience do? And who is the audience?”
— Chris Herrington, June 28, 2001

2002: #1 City of God, Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund
(#2 Adaptation., Spike Jonze)

“The mise-en-scène of the film is neorealist, but the cinematography, editing, and effects are hyper-stylized, as if The Bicycle Thief had been reimagined through the post-CGI lens of Fight Club or The Matrix.”

— Chris Herrington, April 3, 2003

Lost in Translation

2003: #1 Lost in Translation, Sofia
Coppola (#2 Mystic River, Clint Eastwood)

“Lost in Translation is a film short on plot but rich with incident; nothing much happens, yet every frame is crammed with life and nuance and emotion. … What Coppola seems to be going for here is an ode to human connection that is bigger than (or perhaps just apart from) sex and romance.”
— Chris Herrington, October 2, 2003

2004: #1 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Michel Gondry
(#2 Kill Bill, Quentin Tarantino)

“This is the best film I’ve seen this year and one of the best in recent memory. Funny, witty, charming, and wise, it runs the gamut from comedy to tragedy without falling into either farce or melodrama. Its insights into human loss and redemption are complicated and difficult, well thought out but with the illusion and feel of absolute spontaneity and authentic in its construction — and then deconstruction — of human feelings and memory.”
— Bo List, March 25, 2004

2005: #1 Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee (#2 Hustle & Flow, Craig Brewer)

“The film is a triumph because it creates characters of humanity and anguish, in a setup that could easily become a target for homophobic ridicule. Jack and Ennis are a brave challenge to the stereotyped image of homosexuals in mainstream films, their relations to their families and to each other are truthful and beautifully captured.” — Ben Popper, January 12, 2006

2006: #1 Children of Men,
Alfonso Cuarón (#2 The Proposition, John Hillcoat)

“As aggressively bleak as Children of Men is, it’s ultimately a movie about hope. It’s a nativity story of sort, complete with a manger. And from city to forest to war zone to a lone boat in the sea, it’s a journey you won’t want to miss.”
— Chris Herrington, January 11, 2007

2007 #1 Zodiac, David Fincher
(#2 There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson)

“[Zodiac is] termite art, too busy burrowing into its story and characters to bother with what you think.”
— Chris Herrington, March 8, 2007

2008: #1 Frozen River, Courtney Hunt (#2 The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan)

“Frozen River is full of observations of those who are living less than paycheck to paycheck: digging through the couch for lunch money for the kids; buying exactly as much gas as you have change in your pocket; popcorn and Tang for dinner. The American Dream is sought after by the dispossessed, the repossessed, and the pissed off.”
— Greg Akers, August 28, 2008

2009: #1 Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze (#2 Julie & Julia, Nora Ephron)

“I know how ridiculous it is to say something like, ‘Where the Wild Things Are is one of the best kids’ movies in the 70 years since The Wizard of Oz.’ So I won’t. But I’m thinking it.”
— Greg Akers, October 15, 2009

2010: #1 Inception, Christopher Nolan (#2 The Social Network,
David Fincher)

“Nolan has created a complex, challenging cinematic world but one that is thought through and whose rules are well-communicated. But the ingenuity of the film’s concept never supersedes an emotional underpinning that pays off mightily.”
— Chris Herrington, July 15, 2010

2011: #1 The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick (#2 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Tomas Alfredson)

“The Tree of Life encompasses a level of artistic ambition increasingly rare in modern American movies — Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood might be the closest recent comparison, and I’m not sure it’s all that close. This is a massive achievement. An imperfect film, perhaps, but an utterly essential one.”
— Chris Herrington, June 23, 2011

2012: #1 Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow (#2 Lincoln, Steven Spielberg)

“Zero Dark Thirty is essentially an investigative procedural about an obsessive search for knowledge, not unlike such touchstones as Zodiac or All the President’s Men. And it has an impressive, immersive experiential heft, making much better use of its nearly three-hour running time than any competing award-season behemoth.”
— Chris Herrington, January 10, 2013 

2013: #1 12 Years a Slave, Steve
McQueen (#2 Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón)

“Slavery bent human beings into grotesque shapes, on both sides of the whip. But 12 Years a Slave is more concerned with the end of it. McQueen and screenwriter John Ridley are black. It’s one of those things that shouldn’t be notable but is. If you consider 12 Years a Slave with The Butler and Fruitvale Station, you can see a by-God trend of black filmmakers making mainstream movies about the black experience, something else that shouldn’t be worth mentioning but is.”
— Greg Akers, October 31, 2013