joel coen

By the time the Coen brothers made Miller’s Crossing, their third movie, it had become obvious that their films weren’t really set in the real world. Like Blood Simple and Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing is set in an adjacent reality constructed entirely from moviescapes and populated with characters we seem to have met before. That it works brilliantly, both as pastiche and as a drama in its own right, is the difference between the Coens and some others who try the same thing. That it also manages to be funny when it should be and tense as hell when necessary, marks them out as something really special. The film is built around askew … Read more