Introducing: Re-coen-sidering

By some criteria, you might consider Joel and Ethan Coen my favorite directors of all time. After all, they have two films in my top ten on Flickchart: Fargo (#8), and the film holding the very peak position on that chart, Raising Arizona. Inside Llewyn Davis, which I have now seen three times in its four years of existence, is at #98 and steadily climbing.

However, the Coens have also made films I absolutely loathe. Well, maybe only one I absolutely loathe. But there are a few others I don’t like, or at least, not at the level that other people like them.

So for a bi-monthly series in 2018, I’ve decided to reconsider – to re-coen-sider – their films that trouble me the most, to see whether I’m the one who’s wrong about them, or other people are. And if I’m wrong, it could make it a lot clearer that these guys do, in fact, deserve that “favorite director” status.

There are easily six films that would qualify for this series, films I don’t like nearly as much as others seem to. The only trouble is, I’ve already re-coen-sidered two of them on my own time. The first and perhaps most shocking of those is The Big Lebowski, which I have always struggled to like more than I do, the most recent attempt at which I wrote about here. The other, shocking in a different way, is No Country for Old Men. I did like it a bit better on the second viewing, which I wrote about here, but I still don’t like it as much as I wish I did.

So that leaves me with only four films where my opinion is significantly disconnected from the popular perception of them. Only four films where I like it less than others, I should say. There’s one where I seem to like it more, and that’s Intolerable Cruelty, though I have also re-coen-sidered this one on my own time. It dropped in my estimation on second viewing, but not hugely.

For the fifth film, I will start the series on a positive note by re-coen-sidering a film I love but have only seen once: Miller’s Crossing. This is my fourth favorite Coen film, but I’ve never gotten in that second viewing to confirm. So I suppose, in trying to start on a positive note, I could be starting on a negative one if I ended up finding out I don’t like this movie as much as I think I do.

That’ll be how we get started in February. From there, I will proceed chronologically and disperse these titles at two-month intervals: O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), The Ladykillers (2004), Burn After Reading (2008), True Grit (2010) and Hail, Caesar! (2016)

My math is not off. There are six films in this series, but one of the non-Miller five I listed above is a movie nobody likes. In watching The Ladykillers, I will not be trying to get what other Coen fans got out of this movie. Most Coen fans do not like this movie, and I’m no different. So it might just be submitting myself to the tedium of watching it a second time.

There are a couple Coen movies I've seen only once that I’d like to revisit just because I like them, particularly Blood Simple (1984) and The Hudsucker Proxy (1994). But they will have to wait until they find their way back on to my viewing schedule organically.

You can follow along if you like, but I don’t need to tell you that. You’re an adult. You can do whatever you want.