The last time the Coen brothers attempted a remake, it was 2004's The Ladykillers, a remake of a beloved bit of a British comedy from 1955 featuring inspired performances from the likes of Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers. It was a spectacular failure, as graceless as the original was graceful, shockingly unfunny, and by far the worst film the pair had ever helmed. What followed was a three-year sabbatical during which they presumably regrouped and figured out where they'd gone wrong, since their next film was No Country for Old Men. more ›

The question most film remakes need to answer is whether or not they bring something new or different to the table that justifies their existence. For American remakes of foreign films, that justification is generally language accessibility. When there's a great idea for a movie out there already done once, but there's an untapped audience that just doesn't enjoy reading subtitles, it's an attractive prospect to skip all that creative development and just make the same movie in English. The results (with plenty of notable exceptions) tend towards pale and uninspired reflections of the original film. more ›

"I didn't do anything!" is the repeated mantra of Larry Gopnik, a nebbishy professor of physics at a suburban Minneapolis community college, and the central character of the Coen brothers' A Serious Man. And if he didn't do anything, as he keeps suggesting, then why is it that so many awful things keep happening to him? How could Hashem (the Jewish word for God, one of a handful of Yiddish vocabulary words Goys are likely to learn from the movie) be so cruel? His wife is leaving him, he's broke, his kids are ungrateful brats whose only use for him is to steal money from his wallet and send him up to the roof to adjust the aerial so they can watch F-Troop, he's a victim of extortion and a plot to sabotage his bid for tenure, and his freeloading mental-case of a brother tends to hog the bathroom to suction fluid from a cyst on the back of his neck. more ›

I was beginning to wonder if the Coen Brothers had lost it. About halfway through their ill-advised remake of the Ealing classic The Ladykillers, I was gripped by the same sort of sadness that comes with the childhood realization that your parents aren't infallible, nor do they have all the answers. For the first time in their filmmaking career, they seemed not just human, but deeply flawed. Redemption is a world away from directing Tom... more ›

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Major Release: No Country for Old Men We'll be covering the latest release from the Coen Brothers in more depth tomorrow, but in the time being, we'll tell you this: not only have the filmmakers recovered from the mediocre doldrums of their last couple of outings, but they have returned with a bloody vengeance with a... more ›