Coen Brothers Films Ranked
Minnesota filmmaking brothers Joel and Ethan Coen have been a household name under their moniker The Coen Brothers for 40 years now.
For the first two decades of their careers, due to antiquated guild rules, Joel was the sole credited director and Ethan was credited as producer, but both brothers have always written and directed together.
Known primarily for darkly funny crime capers and twists on the standard genre picture, the Coens won the Palme d’Or for Barton Fink in 1991 and received multiple Academy Awards nominations, finally winning Best Picture and Best Director for No Country for Old Men in 2008.
With 18 feature films to their name, countless distinct oddball characters with memorable turns of phrase, and some beloved regular collaborators, ranking their entire filmography is quite a task, but we’re going to do it. Based on critical and audience reception, and how strongly they have permeated popular culture, this is The Film Magazine’s ranking of every feature film directed by the Coen Brothers: The Coen Brothers Films Ranked from worst to best (or most to least funny-looking).
Read First: Where to Start with the Coen Brothers
18. The Ladykillers (2004)
A lowbrow and ill-conceived remake of the Ealing classic, the Coen Brothers transposed the post-war London heist comedy to contemporary Southern USA.
“Academic” confidence trickster Goldthwaite Higginson Dorr (Tom Hanks) plans to use the basement of his new landlady Mrs Munson (Irma P Hall) as the staging ground for his gang, masquerading as musicians in need of a rehearsal space, to tunnel into the bank next door, but they get far more than they bargained for.
The intention behind this was probably pure: the Coens paying tribute to one of their favourite comedy films and putting their own spin on it. Why it doesn’t work all comes down to clumsy execution, misunderstanding what made the original work, and misjudging a too-crude tone for many of the jokes.
They also fatally underestimated how long it would take for Tom Hanks, dressed and talking like Colonel Sanders, to start to grate.
17. Intolerable Cruelty (2003)
TV producer Donovan Donaly (Geoffrey Rush) comes home to find his wife in bed with another man and files for divorce. But, when his wife enlists hotshot lawyer Miles Massey (George Clooney) to represent her, things get a lot more expensive for him.
Clooney’s Massey soon finds himself on the back foot too, in his case to a woman gaming the system. Marilyn (Catherine Zeta-Jones) begins to make his professional and personal life a living hell.
Credit where it’s due: Clooney and Zeta-Jones are just as charming as you’d expect them to be, both bringing real star power. The story is unnecessarily convoluted however, and the script – which the Coens collaborated on with Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone – lacks the sharpness and wit of their best work, too often coming off like it’s trying to sound clever when really it’s just smug.
16. Hail, Caesar! (2016)
In 1950s Blacklist-era Hollywood, the star of an upcoming biblical epic, Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), goes missing, forcing infamous studio fixer Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) to traipse across Tinseltown looking for him, unearthing a vast industry conspiracy in the process.
A surprising amount of what we see on screen here is actually true. For instance, there really was a heavy employed by MGM called Eddie Mannix who was tasked with keeping the studio stars in line and out of the papers, covering up scandals, pregnancies, closeted sexuality and occasionally actual crimes, but you’ve got to allow for Coen-y creative licence elsewhere.
Brolin playing the straight man to all the mad Hollywood hijinks is incredibly entertaining, as is Clooney as another goofball. And special mention must be reserved for the already iconic scene of Alden Ehrenreich’s cowboy actor spectacularly failing to break into prestige period dramas (“Would that it’wer so simple”). Most of the rest of it is a bit forgettable though, and the Coens allow a few clever initial ideas to run away from them in the final act.
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15. True Grit (2010)
The Coen Brothers’ True Grit is the second film adaptation of Charles Portis’ classic novel following the iconic 1960s film directed by Henry Hathaway and starring John Wayne. We follow fourteen year-old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), who hires the past-his-best bounty hunter Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to get revenge against the outlaw who murdered her father.
It’s not that the Coen Brothers’ take on True Grit is inferior to the first version exactly, it’s just different. It’s grittier, but more wry and knowing as well, and sometimes there’s a tonal mismatch between the fairly austere source material and the Brothers’ usual tendencies.
Though he received some good reviews, it could be argued that star Jeff Bridges isn’t exactly stretching himself playing another dishevelled substance abuser, and his performance certainly lacks the impact of John Wayne boldly deconstructing his star persona, but it is undeniable that Hailee Steinfeld made everyone sit up and take notice with her spectacular big screen debut. Steinfeld’s performance is one that demonstrates a maturity and perceptiveness far beyond her years.
