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DVD Barton Fink
A darkly comic ride, this intense and original 1991 offering from the Coen brothers (Fargo, Blood Simple) gleefully attacks the Hollywood system and those who seek to sell out to it, portraying the writer's suffering as a loony vision of hell. John Turturro (Miller's Crossing, Jungle Fever) plays the title character, a pretentious left-wing writer from New York City who is brought to 1930s Hollywood to write a script for a wrestling movie for palooka actor Wallace Beery. Fink thinks the job is beneath him, but his desire for acceptance gets the better of him, and he suddenly finds himself holed up in a fleabag hotel in Los Angeles, where he is almost immediately afflicted with writer's block. Various distractions begin to enter his life, first in the form of a famous southern writer (John Mahoney) whom Fink idolizes, and then his neighbor in the hotel, a seemingly amiable salesman played by John Goodman (Sea of Love, Raising Arizona). The writer turns out to be a self-loathing drunk whose secretary (Judy Davis) is the one actually doing the writing. And the neighbor, the working-class hero who Fink made his reputation writing about, may have a horrifying secret of his own. Equal parts social commentary and hilarious farce, and winner of the Best Picture, Actor, and Director prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, Barton Fink is a visionary and original comic masterpiece not to be missed. --Robert Lane
Barton Fink is one of my favorites movies ever and the best film from the Coen Brothers. It's funny and darkly, elegant and vanguardist. John Turturo, John Goodman and Judy Davis are greats. A Masterpiece!
A Bunch of Intersting characters Does Not Equal a Good Movie
Do not be fooled by this movie. It pretends to be Deep, but it is far from having any depth whatsoever. The movie progresses well until halfway through the movie when suddenly a plot twist comes out of nowhere, and instead of developing some of the characters further, they get bumped off. How convenient. The writers obviously did not know how to end the movie and the audience is left with no resolution and no plot. It sets a bad precedent for future movies. It's not enough to be able to come up with a bunch of interesting, and bizarre, characters. There needs to be a plot, character development, and redemption or resolution, as well as foreshadowing if there is going to be a complete 180 degree turn in the plot. Otherwise, you are left with a movie with no meat on its bones, and no real point to watch. And I certainly do not enjoy being manipulated - I like a little "hmmmm, I wonder what's really going on..." and not something completely off the wall just because the writers have reached a stone wall and are throwing something in to pick up the plot..... Character develpoment is always much more better than a twist that makes no sense whatsoever.
Don't waste your time on this one.
Ooh the Irony
This is a movie with a weak plot about a screenwriter who can't think of a plot. He thinks he's brilliant, but is reprimanded by a the owner of the film company for writing a screenplay so intellectual it will go over most people's heads. Such irony.
Arguably the best film by Joel and Ethan Coen, the 1990 Miller's Crossing stars Gabriel Byrne as Tom, a loyal lieutenant of a crime boss named Leo (Albert Finney) who is in a Prohibition-era turf war with his major rival, Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito). A man of principle, Tom nevertheless is romantically involved with Leo's lover (Marcia Gay Harden), whose screwy brother (John Turturro) escapes a hit ordered by Caspar only to become Tom's problem. Making matters worse, Tom has outstanding gambling debts he can't pay, which keeps him in regular touch with a punishing enforcer. With all the energy the Coens put into their films, and all their focused appreciation of genre conventions and rules, and all their efforts to turn their movies into ironic appreciations of archetypes in... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gabriel Byrne - John Turturro - Albert Finney Director(s): Joel Coen - Ethan Coen DVD Release Date: Released the 20 May 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The debut film of director Joel Coen and his brother-producer Ethan Coen, 1983's Blood Simple is grisly comic noir that marries the feverish toughness of pulp thrillers with the ghoulishness of even pulpier horror. (Imagine the novels of Jim Thompson somehow fused with the comic tabloid Weird Tales, and you get the idea.) The story concerns a Texas bar owner (Dan Hedaya) who hires a seedy private detective (M. Emmett Walsh) to follow his cheating wife (Frances McDormand in her first film appearance), and then kill her and her lover (John Getz). The gumshoe turns the tables on his client, and suddenly a bad situation gets much, much worse, with some violent goings-on that are as elemental as they are shocking. (A scene in which a character who has been buried alive suddenly... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): John Getz - Frances McDormand Director(s): Joel Coen - Ethan Coen DVD Release Date: Released the 18 September 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The Coen brothers (Raising Arizona, Fargo) have become the most consistently original filmmakers in the land. In a salute/reworking of the fast-talking comedies of the '40s, we follow Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins) and his amazing rise to the top. But he's only a puppet for the evil Sidney J. Mussburger (Paul Newman), who wants the company for himself. The Coens' design is the real star, and their first big-budget film will stimulate movie fans. The story weakens in the middle, but you will find very few films that move with this much imagination. As a Kate Hepburn hybrid, Jennifer Jason Leigh is wonderful in an almost unplayable role. The less you know about the film, the better it plays, so just think of it as How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Tim Robbins - Jennifer Jason Leigh - Paul Newman Director(s): Ethan Coen - Joel Coen DVD Release Date: Released the 18 May 1999 Usually ships in 24 hours
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For all of its late-1940s cold war paranoia, pulp fiction dialogue, and frenzied greed, Joel and Ethan Coen's The Man Who Wasn't There is their most cool and collected film since Blood Simple. An unassuming barber with a scheming wife (Frances McDormand) and a serious smoking habit, Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton) is an onlooker to his own life, a ghostly presence set against a silver-toned film noir backdrop. Only when he decides to alter his fate by blackmailing his wife's lover (James Gandolfini) in order to invest with a traveling salesman (Jon Polito) touting the wave of the future--dry cleaning--do we begin to hear the full extent of Ed's understated, existential lament. As his lawyer (Tony Shalhoub) says in Ed's defense at his eventual trial for murder, "He is modern... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Billy Bob Thornton - Frances McDormand Director(s): Ethan Coen - Joel Coen DVD Release Date: Released the 01 October 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Blood Simple made it clear that the cinematically precocious Coen brothers (writer-director Joel and writer-producer Ethan) were gifted filmmakers to watch out for. But it was the outrageously farcical Raising Arizona that announced the Coens' darkly comedic audacity to the world. It wasn't widely seen when released in 1987, but its modest audience was vocally supportive, and this hyperactive comedy has since developed a large and loyal following. It's the story of "Ed" (for Edwina, played by Holly Hunter), a policewoman who falls in love with "Hi" (for H.I. McDonnough, played by Nicolas Cage) while she's taking his mug shots. She's infertile and he's a habitual robber of convenience stores, and their folksy marital bliss depends on settling down with a rug rat. Unable to... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Joel Coen - Ethan Coen DVD Release Date: Released the 03 August 1999 Usually ships in 24 hours
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