Ethan Coen
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Fargo (1996)
Directed by Joel Coen
influenced Burn After Reading (2008), Honey Don't! (2025)
Themes Characters
…the Coen brothers made such great movies as "Fargo (1996)"…
I was excited at the prospect of a new tight comedy mystery from one of the minds who brought forth some of my favorites including Fargo (1996) and Hail Cesar! (2016). But at the end of the day, Honey O’Donahue is absolutely no Marge Gunderson.
Fargo (1996) may have the woodchipper, but there’s a sense of cruelty and brutality that makes much of the violence in Honey Don’t! uncomfortable to watch…
…the excellent production values and visual integrity that one would expect from a director of “Fargo” and “No Country for Old Men.”
Glenn Howerton, who was fantastic in the first season of Fargo…
With a few notable exceptions—Marge in "Fargo," the Dude in "The Big Lebowski," Tommy Lee Jones's mournful sheriff in "No Country for Old Men," Billy Bob Thornton in "The Man Who Wasn't There"—most of their characters have the bold outlines of cartoon figures that might have been devised by a combination of Tex Avery and George Grosz.
Her and Harry’s laughter isn’t sweet, though, but off-puttingly exaggerated — just like Joel McCrea’s in the Sullivan’s Travels sequence it nods to.
The Big Lebowski (1998)
Directed by Joel Coen
influenced Honey Don't! (2025), Burn After Reading (2008)
Themes
…and "The Big Lebowski (1998)."
Their zaniest works, like The Big Lebowski and Raising Arizona, let their sprawling ensembles loose in a fun-house-mirror reflection of reality.
Tonally, it’s reaching for something like “The Big Lebowski”—a mystery that’s less about the case and more about the weirdos bumping into each other along the way.
“Honey Don’t!” often feels like Coen is attempting to rekindle the magical comic noir he and his brother, Joel, created in “The Big Lebowski.”
Considering he and his brother’s The Big Lebowski was already a skewed, slacker vision of a Raymond Chandler story, Honey Don’t! feels reductive from the get-go. Ethan’s been here before, and the familiarity saps a lot of energy from the proceedings.
From someone with The Big Lebowski and Miller’s Crossing on their CV…
On Coen, rather than any one film
…a Coen Brothers dark comedy thriller…
…as controlled as the cine-worlds of the Coens…
On Coen, rather than any one film
Although the premise evokes the golden age of The Coen Brothers…
Although the premise evokes the golden age of The Coen Brothers and their money-hungry n’er-do-wells…
Raising Arizona (1987)
Directed by Joel Coen
influenced Drive-Away Dolls (2024), Honey Don't! (2025), Burn After Reading (2008)
Themes Characters Dialogue
Their zaniest works, like The Big Lebowski and Raising Arizona, let their sprawling ensembles loose in a fun-house-mirror reflection of reality.
…it is a mish-mash of archetypes from some of the Coens’ best work (Raising Arizona, No Country for Old Men, to name a few)…
And you could call Qualley’s Jamie a Coen archetype who goes all the way back to the Holly Hunter character in “Raising Arizona” — the Southern chatterbox, spewing her ironically literate folk wisdom. (“Raising Arizona” was the first of many movies in which the Coens built characters around the joke “Look! This drawling hick is actually smart!”)
While the film has echoes of past Coen Brothers films, especially Raising Arizona, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and Burn After Reading, it also feels fresh.
Qualley’s performance — the syrup-thick hillbilly accent wrapped around Byzantine dialogue — can’t help but recall “Raising Arizona,” the Coen brothers’ brilliant 1987 film. This, as Jamie might say, ain’t that (though she would use a lot more words to say it).
Stitch the pair together, and you’d probably end up with the kind of farcical melancholy that’s become the Coen trademark, delivered in various doses across the likes of Raising Arizona, A Serious Man, and Burn After Reading.
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, and it shares with the latter a cadre of disaffected rubes improvising schemes as they go along.
…strange little amalgam of movies like No Country for Old Men, A Serious Man, and Burn After Reading…
Miller's Crossing (1990)
Directed by Joel Coen
influenced Drive-Away Dolls (2024), Honey Don't! (2025), Burn After Reading (2008)
Visuals
Ethan Coen and brother Joel, after all, are no stranger to noir (Blood Simple, Miller’s Crossing, The Man Who Wasn’t There).
From someone with The Big Lebowski and Miller’s Crossing on their CV…
Cooke worked as an editor on numerous Coen Brothers films beginning with Miller’s Crossing in 1993…
…this, Dolls, and The Tragedy of MacBeth ain’t no Miller’s Crossing…
In 2021, Joel Coen made the serious, black-and-white Shakespearean adaptation The Tragedy Of Macbeth, echoing the dramatic tones and themes of No Country For Old Men, Miller’s Crossing, and Blood Simple.
On the surface, the Coen Brothers’ output is easily divided between the comedic entries in the fraternal filmography (Raising Arizona; The Big Lebowski; Hail, Caesar; etc.) and their dramas (Blood Simple, Miller’s Crossing, Inside Llewyn Davis, etc.).
Titles like Working Girls, Pariah, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and Carol are but a handful that shatter society’s thinly-sketched or dehumanizing visions of lesbian existence with their richly moving artistry.
…a breathtakingly explicit riff on George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez’s banter-filled sex scene in Out of Sight…
Humphrey Bogart famously said in “Casablanca” that “it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”
Titles like Working Girls, Pariah, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and Carol are but a handful that shatter society’s thinly-sketched or dehumanizing visions of lesbian existence with their richly moving artistry.
(Comparisons to their stellar sad-sack black comedies like Burn After Reading and Fargo are inevitable.
But even if he's obviously imitating "Burn After Reading" (the Coens' worst film) and "Fargo" (possibly their best), putting a satire in Bay's hands is rather like presenting the keys of a stolen Lamborghini to a drunken teenager.
It’s Burn After Reading jacked up to be Bad Boys.
There are loose similarities between this movie and their hateful little farce, Burn After Reading, but the ludicrousness there is at least truly ludicrous.
Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013)
Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche
influenced Honey Don't! (2025)
Themes
Their collaborative sapphic noirs aren’t exploitative or pervy like “Blue Is the Warmest Color,”…
On Coen, rather than any one film
One supposes this is what a Coen brothers movie may feel like were they ever to empathize with their wretched crooks.
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025)
Directed by Mary Bronstein
influenced by Ethan Coen by name
Visuals
On Coen, rather than any one film
…or a chaotic Coen Brothers caper…
I Care a Lot might be the most amoral, pitch-black comedy-thriller I’ve seen this side of Joel and Ethan Coen’s Burn After Reading .
This isn’t a case like “Fargo” or “The Man Who Wasn’t There” in which the banal senselessness is the point…
Ethan Coen and brother Joel, after all, are no stranger to noir (Blood Simple, Miller’s Crossing, The Man Who Wasn’t There).
Titles like Working Girls, Pariah, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and Carol are but a handful that shatter society’s thinly-sketched or dehumanizing visions of lesbian existence with their richly moving artistry.
…opting for more of an eye-rolling, Columbo-esque reveal than anything with any lasting impact…