Ranking The Coen Brothers' Filmography

A little something different for this post… After watching The Tragedy of Macbeth, I decided to watch the Coen Brothers’ entire filmography in chronological order a few months back. I had seen many of them but had missed a decent amount too. And it gave me a chance to watch some classics I hadn’t seen in years. So without further ado, here is my very, very subjective ranking of the films of Joel and Ethan Coen.

19) The Ladykillers

The only Coen Brothers’ movie that I thought was just plain bad. Nothing quite worked for me from the dated, stereotypical portrayal of a churchgoing, Black southern lady, the over-the-top performances, especially Marlon Wayans, or the humor, which was often childish and scatological. I’m all for a good fart joke, but using IBS over and over as a joke wasn’t funny. What did work? Tom Hanks’ weird hybrid of Colonel Sanders as a thief was mostly a fun time.

18) Hudsucker Proxy

Another film that just didn’t work for me. Tim Robbins’ overly cartoonish performance just wasn’t the right tone for the movie, I thought. Besides the invention of the Hula Hoop, the Capraesque plot wasn’t particularly interesting, especially its too-on-the-nose critique of corporate capitalism. But Hudsucker had enough going for it to make it at least watchable, including a fabulous set design of Art…