The Coen Brothers

1h 39m

The debut. A Texas noir where every character acts on incomplete information.

1h 34m

Nicolas Cage steals a baby. Cartoon-fast and completely unlike the debut.

1h 55m

A Prohibition gangster film of astonishing formal control. Their most underrated.

1h 56m

A playwright with writer's block in a hotel that may be hell. Won the Palme d'Or.

1h 51m

A screwball pastiche about the invention of the hula hoop. Their first flop.

1h 38m

A kidnapping plot collapsing under its own stupidity, and Frances McDormand. The best starting point.

1h 57m

A mistaken-identity noir where the detective is a bowler in a dressing gown.

1h 47m

The Odyssey relocated to Depression-era Mississippi, with a soundtrack that outsold the film.

1h 56m

Black-and-white 1940s noir about a barber who barely speaks. Cold and beautiful.

1h 40m

A studio romantic comedy with Clooney and Zeta-Jones. Their most anonymous film.

1h 44m

A remake of the Ealing comedy, with Tom Hanks. Widely considered their worst.

2h 2m

Four Oscars including Best Picture. Almost no score, and Javier Bardem's haircut.

1h 36m

A spy farce in which nobody knows anything. The immediate follow-up to No Country, deliberately.

1h 46m

A Jewish physics professor in 1967 Minnesota, punished by God for no reason. Their most personal.

1h 50m

A straight western, played straight, and their biggest hit. Hailee Steinfeld at fourteen.

1h 44m

A week with a folk singer who will never make it. A circle, not an arc.

1h 46m

A 1950s studio fixer and a kidnapped movie star. A series of sketches, several great.

2h 13m

Six western short stories, made for Netflix. The last film the brothers made together.

1h 45m

Joel alone, in stark black-and-white, with Denzel Washington. No comedy anywhere in it.

1h 24m

Ethan alone. A road-trip crime comedy, loose and very silly.

1h 29m

Ethan again, with Margaret Qualley as a small-town private investigator.