Joel Coen
422 connections found
Filmography
Inside Llewyn Davis 2013 
The Hudsucker Proxy 1994 
Fargo 1996 
Raising Arizona 1987 
No Country for Old Men 2007 
A Serious Man 2009 
The Big Lebowski 1998 
Barton Fink 1991 
Blood Simple 1985 
Miller's Crossing 1990 
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs 2018 
Intolerable Cruelty 2003 
The Man Who Wasn't There 2001 
O Brother, Where Art Thou? 2000 
True Grit 2010 
Hail, Caesar! 2016 
The Tragedy of Macbeth 2021 View:
Connections, in both directions
One Battle After Another (2025)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
influenced by The Big Lebowski (1998), No Country for Old Men (2007), A Serious Man (2009)
Themes Visuals Characters
What it does do, however, is answer the question: “What if we gave one of the most talented filmmakers out there a blockbuster-sized budget and let him shoot the absolute shit out of The Big Lebowski-meets-Mission: Impossible?”
…the movie is like if Taken and The Big Lebowski had a baby…
…or the Coen’s No Country for Old Men…
There are strong echoes of “No Country for Old Men” and hints of “Goodfellas.”
…the fact that he plays most of the back half in a bathrobe makes Big Lebowski comparisons somewhat inevitable, as does the uproarious scene (featured in the trailers) when he attempts to make contact with his handlers, and cannot remember the damn passwords and spycraft in the slightest.
Pat/Bob plays like a variation of “The Dude” from The Big Lebowski (1998)…
The movie takes its title from Preston Sturges' "Sullivan's Travels."
The film's title and its opening 1930s chain-gang setting are a tip of the hat to Preston Sturges' classic Hollywood comedy "Sullivan's Travels," but what "O Brother" is really riffing off is something different.
Preston Sturges, in "Sullivan's Travels," told the story of a Hollywood director known for lightweight comedy who sets out to make a serious social statement in his next film, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"--though his producer insists it should be a musical.
Taking its classical-sounding title from an in-joke in Preston Sturges' screwball comedy " Sullivan's Travels ", "O, Brother" is resolutely uncategorisable.
The title comes from Sturges's great movie, the 1941 "Sullivan's Travels," in which a filmmaker (played by Joel McCrea) decides to draw inspiration for his next film from the "real world" and sets out with only ten cents in his pocket.
Yet, following an amiable trio of escaped cons through an embellished rendition of the Depression-era South, the Coens' new widescreen odyssey appears more strongly informed by The Wizard of Oz, Down by Law, the films of Preston Sturges (Sullivan's Travels in particular), and, perhaps most of all, the toe-tapping bluegrass tunes that pepper the soundtrack.
Cold Pursuit (2019)
Directed by Hans Petter Moland
influenced by Fargo (1996)
Themes Characters Plot
The movie has an odd shape to it, beginning as one thing and then widening into something reminiscent of the Fargo television series.
Cold Pursuit is tonally reminiscent of Fargo; beyond its snowy landscape, it’s also the injection of pitch-black humor into a gritty and violent crime thriller, an element that any future Neeson action flicks could use more of.
Emmy Rossum as a ski-town cop is supposed to remind us of Frances McDormand in “Fargo,” but bases her successful police work on the sexual manipulation of some poor sap in Denver.
Instead, Moland seems to lean closer to absurdity à la In Bruges or Fargo .
That, oddly enough, is a beautiful thing to watch and had me wishing this was a documentary about a guy trying to keep a mountain pass clear in the winter rather than another Fargo rip-off.
Sure, the unrelenting tension mounts into a climactic shootout, but the rest of the picture is more akin to the razor-sharp precision and gallows humor of “Fargo” than the merciless vigilantism of “Taken.”
In that way, Inherent Vice will undoubtedly remind younger moviegoers of The Big Lebowski, when in fact they’re both working from the same common set of references and echoes.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s combination energy – equally frantic and laid back, often at the exact same time – will evoke many pleasant memories of The Big Lebowski.
Adapted from Thomas Pynchon's 2009 novel, the movie has been compared by many to the Coen brothers' " The Big Lebowski ," a drug-fueled LA comedy with a similarly labyrinthian mystery (or "mystery") and some shared themes.
It’s already a cliché to describe the film as a combination of the Coen brothers’ “The Big Lebowski” and Robert Altman’s “The Long Goodbye,” and while that doesn’t capture everything it’s close enough to be irresistible.
Even with the added help of an imaginary female sidekick and narrator (Joanna Newsom, slightly vocal-fried and off-period), Inherent Vice dares you to tame it or compare it to similarly shaggy predecessors—to Robert Altman's radical The Long Goodbye or the Coens' The Big Lebowski.
The Big Sleep, which many have referenced as a companion, is full of dry wit and so too are convoluted mysteries like Kiss, Kiss Bang Bang and The Big Lebowski, which are also more fun.
The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020)
Directed by Jim Cummings
influenced by Fargo (1996)
Characters Visuals
Her role in this one is stellar--very reminiscent of Frances McDormand in Fargo (1996).
The movie does get some zingers in, and it balances the humor with nicely atmospheric creepy small-town vibes (courtesy of DP Natalie Kingston), but the tone is all over the place and a far cry from the “Fargo”-y Coen brothers feel Cummings seems to be going for.
Cummings wears his influences on his sleeve – Fargo and Zodiac here – without ever feeling like a lifeless imitation and somehow makes those inspirations his own voice.
Although Cummings is the lead, he interestingly shares the screen quite a bit with fellow female officer Julia Robson (Riki Lindhome) who, in true “Fargo” (1996) fashion, was very well-suited at solving the crime.
The wintry small-town feel present in “The Werewolf of Snow Hollow” has shades of “Fargo” with a hint of “ Zodiac ,” but most of all, Cummings crafts an indie horror flick of his own style.
The Seventh Seal (1957)
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
influenced The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021), No Country for Old Men (2007)
Themes Visuals
Or maybe it’s The Seventh Seal , except that instead of playing chess with Death you shoot at him.
I would compare it visually to the architecture of a cathedral or church, where the black & white creates similar themes of what Ingmar Bergman did with The Seventh Seal , The Virgin Spring , Through a Glass Darkly , and Winter Light .
At different points, the look of “The Tragedy of Macbeth” will recall a silky foreboding film noir, a Val Lewton horror film, a Sirkian soap opera, the cloistered dreamscapes of Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal” and Carl Theodor Dreyer’s “Ordet,” the fascist hellscape of Orson Welles’ “The Trial,” the hallowed glow of “The Chronicle of Anna Magdalene Bach,” the operatic catacombs of “Ivan the Terrible,” and Welles’ 1948 version of “Macbeth.”
It begins with the imagery, which is lushly rendered in a Bergmanesque gothic greyscale and is inspired by both that master’s more fantastical work ( The Seventh Seal is a pretty clear point of comparison), Olivier’s Hamlet , and Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood .
Emerging, croaking and genderless, lips cracked and limbs bending impossibly, Hunter appears as unsettlingly alien as Bengt Ekerot was as Death in The Seventh Seal .
The classic tale itself is powerful and influential and morbid (yet still not Shakespeare’s most adored work), though this adaptation primarily serves to offer different actors and a somewhat original visual presentation (reminiscent of “The Seventh Seal” and German Expressionism, with an unusually energetic, cinematic showdown), which will surely appeal only to a select audience.
Hell or High Water (2016)
Directed by David Mackenzie
influenced by No Country for Old Men (2007), True Grit (2010)
Characters Themes Visuals
They are stealing too little to generate FBI interest but more than enough to catch the eye of about-to-retire Texas Ranger Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges borrowing a few notes from Tommy Lee Jones in "No Country for Old Men").
Jeff Bridges, borrowing Tommy Lee Jones’ character from “No Country for Old Men,” plays a retirement-bound Texas Ranger who finds it amusing to pursue one last caper: Two outlaws are robbing a series of banks in a very strange way.
Like a less cynical, less open-ended 'No Country For Old Men'…
More often than not, however, it tries so hard to emulate the likes of “ No Country for Old Men ” at times that you can feel it practically straining from the effort without quite pulling it off.
It’s a modern-day Western along the lines of “No Country for Old Men” with a mixture of dry humor, unsettling violence and an examination of inner clockwork of damaged men in a damaged world.
Not since "No Country for Old Men" has a modern Western been so thematically rich.
Eddington (2025)
Directed by Ari Aster
influenced by No Country for Old Men (2007), Raising Arizona (1987), Blood Simple (1985), A Serious Man (2009)
Visuals Themes
…akin to cynical neo-Westerns like the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men…
I could not help but compare it to the work of the Coens, especially No Country for Old Men (2007) and Burn After Reading (2008). Like the former, Eddington is a stark look at the contemporary American Southwest…
It has the window dressing of rich Coen Brothers thrillers like Blood Simple and No Country for Old Men.
…the film shifts from somber to suspenseful, echoing the cat-and-mouse tension of No Country for Old Men.
…which fittingly recall the best bits from Roger Deakins’ lensing of No Country for Old Men (2007).
Part of the pacing problem may be the extended finale of mayhem that mixes elements of the Roadrunner cartoons and Russ Myers’ bloody excess, with a touch of Coen Brothers chaos of RAISING ARIZONA.
The Odyssey (2026)
Directed by Christopher Nolan
influenced by O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
Plot
Joel and Ethan Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), starring George Clooney…
Not in the way that O Brother, Where Art Thou? loosely adapted Homer’s story into a silly Southern romp.
Homer’s literary work has been adapted multiple times for the screen, including by the Coen Brothers in O Brother, Where Art Thou?
…rather than something more loosely inspired like O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Previous attempts to grapple with Homer’s epic veered into schlocky melodrama (Ulysses in 1954), artsy meditation (The Return in 2024) or comic metaphor O Brother, Where Art Thou? in 2000).
…most of the stuff I do remember only sticks by way of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which remains my favorite adaptation of the text.
It’s “The Mortal Remains,” which references John Ford’s classic “Stagecoach” yarn with a definite “Twilight Zone” twist.
In this, the Coens borrow a page from Quentin Tarantino's Hateful Eight, in the form of a discussion among a group of mismatched stagecoach passengers (both films were influenced by John Ford's Stagecoach.)
The final act is an outright homage to John Ford’s 1939 Western classic Stagecoach , with none of the social impact.
Back before John Ford and Cecil B. DeMille elevated the genre from pulp pablum to legitimate pop-art with their 1939 hits Stagecoach and Union Pacific , many of the most popular Westerns featured clean-cut, smiling do-gooders like Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and yes, John Wayne, who were quick with a gun but quicker with a song.
Arkansas (2020)
Directed by Clark Duke
influenced by Fargo (1996), Raising Arizona (1987)
Themes Visuals Characters
Like most dark comedies in the same vein as Fargo , it all starts with one body and goes downhill until Frog himself has to step in to deal with things.
As we’ve seen in similar films such as Fargo, Goodfellas and even No Country for Old Men, a wad of cash only gets you so far.
Like the Coens with Fargo, Arkansas native Duke has set a crime film in his home state, featuring chatty criminals and surprising violence.
He’s got a little Frances McDormand-in- Fargo to him.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The stuff Gen-Xers flocked to in the late ’90s, hoping to get a whiff of a taste of the magic of Pulp Fiction and Fargo .
The oafs-in-over-their-heads has a distinct Raising Arizona / Burn After Reading vibe.
The Big Sleep (1946)
Directed by Howard Hawks
influenced The Big Lebowski (1998), Miller's Crossing (1990), The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
Plot
You'd never guess that the movie is loosely based on Raymond Chandler's detective novel "The Big Sleep."
The Coens' ostensible goal is to play with the idea of a Raymond Chandler mystery like The Big Sleep (a sleuth, a millionaire, a good daughter, a bad girl, and a wide spectrum of Los Angeles weirdos), given a contemporary spin à la Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye.
That they would follow it up with O Brother, Where Art Thou? , their take on The Odyssey, speaks to a mission statement of sorts: like it, The Big Lebowski is a distillation of a classic piece of literature (Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep) that completely understands its simultaneous responsibility to its own medium and to its source material.
But the plot involving kidnapping, extortion and much stupidity is more like "Fargo" or a surreal version of Raymond Chandler's "The Big Sleep."
"Lebowski" boasts a dizzying concentration of elements, from a shambling '90s knockoff of "The Big Sleep" to a tribute to bowling culture, a delightful visual celebration of artificial light and synthetic surfaces, a send-up of art-damaged Euro-pretension, fantasy/dream sequences that would make Busby Berkeley or Michael Powell proud, a running gag on the conventions of voice-over narration and a paean to middle-American male sentimentality.
Known for their quirky, off-kilter genre experiments (Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo), the Coens were sure to give us something as unabashedly weird as their title, a take-off on that of the highly influential Bogart-Bacall vehicle The Big Sleep.
It just wants you to remember Los Angeles detective conspiracies like “Chinatown,” “The Big Lebowski” and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” lean back and enjoy the ride.
While the film isn't as tightly edited as a Coen product, there are shades of The Big Lebowski in its narrative, which spins out to outlandish lengths only to culminate in a bit of throwaway irony.
Basically, it’s Inherent Vice without the highbrow aspirations, or The Big Lebowski with two Dudes.
El detective de poca monta y el detective por casualidad no llegan a ser narradores tan explícitos como el rompedor de la cuarta pared que encarnó Robert Downey Jr. en Entre besos y tiros; pero sí protagonizan una monumental cantidad de situaciones propias de la comicidad que Black y otros exponentes -como los hermanos Coen en El gran Lebowski (The Big Lebowski, 1998) o Paul Thomas Anderson en Vicio propio (Inherent Vice, 2014)-, le han inyectado a las tramas de crimen y misterio.
There are echoes, too, of Magnolia, Get Shorty, The Big Lebowski , and Quentin Tarantino’s oeuvre.
The Nice Guys is of a piece with two previous films: The Coen Brothers’ 1998 The Big Lebowski and Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2014 Inherent Vice.
Pain & Gain (2013)
Directed by Michael Bay
influenced by Fargo (1996), No Country for Old Men (2007)
Themes
Set in the early ‘90s, “Pain & Gain” desperately wants to be a ‘90s classic in the vein of “Pulp Fiction” or the Coen Brothers’ “Fargo,” but Bay has clearly overestimated the fairly pedestrian and conventional script from Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely ("Captain America: The First Avenger").
Some of this material recalls the warped sense of humor embraced by the Coens (think the woodchipper in Fargo) and Tarantino ("The Bonnie Situation" in Pulp Fiction), among others.
Where inspired violent comedies like “Seven Psychopaths” and “Fargo” deliver their jolts with deadpan, tongue-in-cheek precision, “Pain & Gain” hits its thumb with the hammer.
Without Frances McDormand’s Marge, Fargo probably wouldn't have landed an Oscar.
Bay, a frequent subject of conversation on Wahlberg’s long-running series “Entourage,” may have intended “Pain & Gain” to be the “Fargo” of Miami-Dade true crime stories.
On social media, in the days leading up to the release of Pain & Gain , this pitch-black serio-comedy was alternately described by those lucky enough to see it in advance as “Michael Bay’s Boogie Nights ” or “ Fargo for idiots.”
Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (2014)
Directed by David Zellner
influenced by Fargo (1996)
Visuals Themes
Instead of tilting at windmills, her Kumiko is convinced she sees treasure where everyone else sees Roger Deakins’ memorable snowy-white landscapes from the Coen brothers classic, “Fargo.”
Rinko Kikuchi does her best to give weight to the slight protagonist, a lonely and unhappy Japanese woman who finds an old VHS of Fargo and – believing the story to be true – sets out to retrieve the cash buried by Steve Buscemi in the Coens' crime drama.
She travels to Minnesota, questing for the briefcase full of money Steve Buscemi's character buried in the snow at the end of "Fargo."
After being nudged by her boss Sakagami (Nobuyuki Katsube) as being on the aged side for an office lady at 29, the lonely outcast decides to take action on the treasure she's been charting from the 'true story' of "Fargo" which she's been analyzing via a beat up VHS tape and become "Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter."
"Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter" is a moody comic allegory about desperation, disconnection and dreams that uses "Fargo," the Coen brothers classic, as a touchstone to examine modern life.
No Sudden Move (2021)
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
influenced by Fargo (1996), Miller's Crossing (1990)
Characters Visuals Plot Themes
And when the nervous, bumbling Matt, who’s reminiscent of William H. Macy in “Fargo,” gets to his office, he discovers that the document isn’t there.
A home-invasion scene where Russo drapes a blanket over a woman’s head evokes the Coen brothers’ sarcastic Fargo rather than the moody, penetrating look at middle-class American tragedy in the Coens’ best film, The Man Who Wasn’t There .
He comes from the same mold as William H. Macy’s Jerry Lundegaard in Fargo (1996), caught up in a crime and barely managing to keep afloat.
His latest film is the HBO Max original No Sudden Move , a crime movie that falls somewhere between his own Out of Sight and the Coen Brothers’ Fargo .
Owing a debt to nostalgia-dipped movies like "Devil in a Blue Dress" and the Coen brothers (the film stylistically resembling the most recent season of "Fargo"), the action unfolds in 1954 Detroit, where Cheadle's Curt Goynes and Del Toro's Ronald Russo are thrown together to handle what should be a pretty basic job: holding a family hostage long enough to compel the patriarch (David Harbour) to hand over some precious documents.
Watching this film reminded me of the Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing and Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep .
In Order of Disappearance (2014)
Directed by Hans Petter Moland
influenced by Fargo (1996)
Visuals Plot Themes
In addition to such gags, Moland diminishes the grimness by alluding to other neo-noirs, ranging from Jean-Luc Godard's "Breathless," with a line echoing the misogynistic last words of that film, to the Coen brothers' "Fargo," with its extreme long shots of snow-filled vistas dotted with minute figures illuminated by police lights.
As Skarsgård drives around the desolate Nordic tundra of Tyos, Moland does right to evoke the essence of Fargo with a bit more carnage (said many times, but wholly true).
To add to the intrigue, snow makes it both far easier to stash away a suitcase of money (see: Fargo ) or even to temporarily conceal a body and, conversely, more difficult to cover one’s tracks.
Describing Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland’s violent black comedy “In Order of Disappearance” as an Arctic version of “Fargo” is in the ballpark but doesn’t go nearly far enough.
What some have already hailed as “Norway’s response to Fargo” has been one of the biggest revelations of the festival’s 64th edition.
A kind of Norwegian mash-up of "Fargo," "Taken" and "Seven Psychopaths," it soon ramps up to a dark, mordantly hilarious blast.
She gathers her children in the family car and drives toward chaos—a tornado swirling in the distance, recalling the final scene from the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man (2009)—and leaves Burt behind with their new baby.
On one level, it’s a direct allusion to similar scenes of chaos on the New Jersey streets in War of the Worlds (the key difference being that Tom Cruise is driving away from the danger rather than towards it), but on another, it also recalls the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man, which ends on a tornado being a kind of expression of God’s continual heaping of misery onto the characters.
The last big-ticket American movie to put these cultural concerns so front and center was the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man , which Spielberg evokes—perhaps accidentally—in an early scene involving a tornado that hints at the Fabelmans’ stormy fortunes.
They might have taken inspiration by watching the prologue to A Serious Man by the Coen Bros.
Instead, check out the 1937 Yiddish film The Dybbuk or re-watch the Coens’ A Serious Man.
For those who've never seen the Coen Brothers' " A Serious Man ," a dybbuk is a Jewish demon of sorts and they've been being exorcised in rites for centuries (check out YouTube for some 'real' 'live' ones).
Thor (Hemsworth) in particular, is doing a great job of channelling Jeff Bridges’ The Dude, the lovable layabout from The Big Lebowski , in an amusing and entirely self-aware manner.
In other news, and perhaps the one light at the end of the tunnel, the newly restored Guardians of the Galaxy – just don’t think too hard about how they’ve been restored – are joined by Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, who in one of the movie’s best choices, has been temporarily transformed into an all-powerful version of The Dude from The Big Lebowski – paunch, beer, grey sweater and all.
It is not a joke to consider his hilarious turn as a tribute to “The Big Lebowski.”
(All of the Avengers are coping in their own way, with Captain America leading a self-help group and Thor going into denial and basically turning into The Big Lebowski’s Dude.)
He’s more The Dude from The Big Lebowski (1998) than a superhero that’s starred in three of his own movies.