Joel & Ethan Coen

The Coen brothers (“No Country for Old Men”) open with a scene in Yiddish set a century before the story proper, then pile on malicious spirits, plots nobody can prove and the pitch-black humour they do best. At the centre is a lecturer who asks three rabbis why all this is happening to him. — Larry Gopnik teaches physics in suburban Minneapolis in 1967, and his life is coming apart on every front. His wife wants a divorce, his jobless brother has moved into the house, and somebody is sending anonymous letters about him to a committee at the university. He takes his troubles to a rabbi, then to a second rabbi, then to a third. — Nomination for Best Film | Oscars | 2010 Nomination for Best Screenplay | Oscars 2010 Nomination for Best Actor (Michael Sthulbarg) | Golden Globes | 2010

Before Nolan took on “The Odyssey”, it inspired the Coen brothers, who hadn’t even read it. George Clooney, John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson are convicts who escape a Mississippi chain gang to find treasure, and their road, like Odysseus’s, has sirens, a one-eyed Bible salesman and plenty of song. — Everett has promised his two fellow convicts a fortune buried in a valley that will be under water in four days, so in the summer of 1937 the three of them walk away from a Mississippi prison gang still in their chains. On the road they meet eccentrics, demagogues and musicians. They even stop at a radio station to sing for money. — Nomination for Best Cinematography | Oscars | 2001 Nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay | Oscars | 2001 Best Actor (George Clooney) | Golden Globes | 2001 Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 2000

Joel and Ethan Coen made their first film with Frances McDormand (“Nomadland”), who was making her first film too. This Texas neo-noir really is simple, but the Coens’ wit and playfulness are already there in a tight, funny comedy of errors where everything that can go wrong does. — Marty runs a roadside bar in Texas, and the private detective he hired brings bad news: his wife is sleeping with one of the bartenders who work for him. The detective even has photos from the motel. So Marty offers him ten thousand dollars to kill them both. — Grand Jury Prize | Sundance Film Festival | 1985 Best Director | Film Independent Spirit Awards | 1986 Best Male Lead (M. Emmet Walsh) | Film Independent Spirit Awards | 1986

The Coen brothers won the Grand Prix at Cannes with this film about a folk singer, in which a ginger kitten plays a key role. Oscar Isaac doesn’t just act but sings, live on set, through a week in the life of a man with talent to spare and almost nothing to show for it. — It’s winter 1961 in Greenwich Village, and Llewyn Davis has made a record nobody buys. With no bed of his own, he drifts from one friend’s couch to the next while their hospitality slowly runs out. Then the neighbours’ ginger cat slips out into the stairwell and vanishes, and Jean, who is married to another singer, tells him she’s pregnant with his child. — Nominated for Best Cinematography | Oscars | 2014 Nominated for Best Sound | Oscars | 2014 Grand Prize of the Jury | Cannes Film Festival | 2013 Nominated for Best Film - Musical or Comedy | Golden Globes | 2014 Nominated for Best Actor - Musical or Comedy (Oscar Isaac) | Golden Globes | 2014 Nominated for Best Original Song | Golden Globes | 2014

George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich and Tilda Swinton play the characters the Coen brothers themselves call idiots, in a spy comedy about people who are absolutely sure they know everything. They haven’t a clue, and they learn nothing at all. — A CIA analyst quits his job to write a book, while his wife, secretly planning a divorce, copies his files for her lawyer. The disc ends up on the floor of a gym locker room, where two trainers find it and decide they’re holding state secrets. They call the analyst for money, he laughs at them, and so they try to sell the disc to the Russian embassy. — Nominated for Best Film - Musical or Comedy | Golden Globes | 2009 Nominated for Best Actress - Musical or Comedy (Frances McDormand) | Golden Globes | 2009