This trailer is put together more masterfully than most movies:

Trailer

...even the trailer is getting amazing reviews


Getting amazing reviews:

Variety Review

Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune (who I don't especially like) said it's one of their best ever.

Rolling Stone

A.O. Scott from the NY Times said it's top 3 best Coen movies ever.


"A Serious Man is my favorite Coen Brothers film produced in the last decade, the exact period of time since Ethan and Joel created the comedy cult classic The Big Lewbowski. It is not only a brilliant dark comedy which will have you laughing out loud, but a masterful character study filled with great performances, of a family in crisis, the moral decisions they face, and the horribly funny consequences that result. The ending will have you talking about the movie well after leaving the theater, which to me is one of the definitions of great cinema."


Rotten Tomatoes:
Consensus: Blending dark humor with profoundly personal themes, the Coen brothers deliver what might be their most mature -- if not their best -- film to date.


EDIT: Interesting note... this movie has almost no one from previous Coen movies. The only two actors of note are character actors Richard Kind and Michael Lerner.

i'm there on opening night. the trailer freaks me the fck out.

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It definitely depends on a lot of factors (almost always controlled completely by the studio, since they have to sell the movie to the public), but most of the time it's a 3rd party company that specializes in trailers. The Coens are obviously pretty unique though and almost certainly put this together themselves "with" their longtime editor Roderick Jaynes.


EDIT: The A Serious Man trailer was cut by Mark Woollen of Mark Woollen and Associates, the company behind the award-winning campaigns of Schindler’s List, Traffic, and The Royal Tenenbaums, among others. Myles Bender, Senior Vice President of Creative Advertising, Focus Features, oversaw the creative direction and remembers his first meeting with the Coens to discuss the concept. “They wanted something ‘different,’” Bender says, remembering the Coens asking, “‘Can you find one scene from the movie for our trailer and not do the traditional trailer structure?’ And then one of them said, ‘Maybe just show the guy getting his head bashed in for 30 seconds.’ I took that suggestion a little more seriously than they expected me to!”

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Oh, I totally understand what you're getting at... and what I'm saying is that I'm sure that anytime the studios do that to the movie, the directors feel like murdering several children. The studios will have the trailer cut the way that they think can get the most people in the theater... plain and simple. You don't get to make a trailer on your own until you've earned it over time.

One thing to think about though is how the Coen's hardly ever have movies that are massive financial successes... so why would a studio even want them to make a movie for them? I would think, as a studio, that you might rather have Michael Bay in your fold than Joel and Ethan... but that's neither here nor there. I'm just glad that they've earned total control over all future movies and hope that they live as long as Clint Eastwood.


The list of movies that rolls at the end isn't even fair to show. It just makes every other director on earth look... average. (...and they didn't even include some of the Coen's best movies)

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Yeah, I've seen it before, but it's pretty awesome.

http://www.fandango.com/aseriousman_124256/readuserreviews

These awful fan reviews make me even more excited to see it.

Finally opened in Des Moines this weekend. It's not even listed as showing on Fandango, because it's only showing at the local art-house cafe theater. I'm be going tomorrow night, will report back.

I just saw this tonight, but I don't really have many comments. It's not really fair to judge the movie so soon because, like it's been mentioned previously, Coen movies get better with time. I will say, however, that when I left No Country, I was like, "Wow, that had to be one of the best movies I've ever seen." I didn't have anywhere close to that same feeling leaving the theater tonight.

I did laugh really hard when the Rabbi, or whoever, was trying to hold up the heavy scroll during the Bar Mitzvah, and he mutters fairly loudly... "Jeeesus Christ!" Just remembering that scene makes me laugh.

This movie is REALLLY slow and dark. The humor is very subtle. Don't go in expecting Lebowski, Raising Arizona or Hudsucker.... that's for sure.



I think I'm going to go again this week.

GAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!

I HATED THIS MOVIE!

GAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Seriously, I've been to a lot of bad movies, but the whole point of this one seems to be to get in your face and make you hate it. I've been a big fan of the Coens, but they just dropped a lot in my eyes. I feel like they intentionally stole $20 from me. The movie is well-made and acted, as you would expect, but it is totally pointless. It seems that that is the point of the movie, but if is is: F*** YOU. It seems to be sort of a Nihilist comedy about Nihilism. Rather than the intelligent commentary I expect from them, it felt like something a stoned college student would write ("like, wow man, life is pointless and we can't understand it...").

I've very pissed. I want my money back, and they should come to my house and kiss my feet and apologize.

I'm calling BS on that. I'm a smart person, and I understand what they were doing, and it's just not a worthwhile use of my time.

In a way, it reminds me of that movie from a couple years ago, I think it was called "Waking Life". It was an animated film, and got great critical reviews for it's deep philosophical discussions, but I left it saying WTF. It wasn't "deep", it was the type of philosophical discussion stoned college kids have. Wrapping it in a pretty wrapper doesn't make it deep. I feel the same way about this movie. The "message" is a bumper sticker: "Life sucks and then you die. And there are no answers." An the movie is structured to reflect that -- a literal vision of nihilism. Guess what, I understood it on the bumper sticker, I don't need 2 1/2 hours of exploration of that idea.

Don't get me wrong, they nailed what they set out to accomplish. The acting, the cinematography, the writing -- right on the money. But it's all pointless.

Also, I do have to say, it had a lot of nice touches. Any individual scene is very good. But it's just a bunch of random scenes in support of a bumper sticker.

I used to fall asleep stoned to Waking Life.

Based on this...yeah, they absolutely nailed it.

Man, I didn't think I liked it very much... but I liked it WAY more than you did.

It's a very odd reaction that I had... I still had to admire their commitment to their vision, and the quality of their work. I've seen a lot of bad movies, but they don't actually piss me off, I usually just feel disappointed. This one I felt like they very intentionally and skillfully made a movie whose point was to be pointless. It would've been easier if had just been terrible, a complete miss.

Also, I feel like to be really excellent at anything, you have to swing for the fences. Their strikeout percentage is lower than any other filmakers I can think of, so I do have to be fair and give them credit for a valiant attempt, and recognize that with their body of work, it would be unreasonable for me to expect to like all of them. I'm still pissed, but at least it got a strong reaction, something a really terrible movie could never do.

Also, I felt just as mad at the critics. It was 84% positive on rottentomatoes.com, and there's no way that many should've liked it. It was a Coen Bros vanity project, just made for themselves. I felt like a lot of the critics said they liked it just because of who made it and it's offbeat, confusing storyline -- "Oh, it's artsy, if I say I dislike it, people will think I'm dumb."

I believe you are giving it a terrible rap. You need to watch it again. I can't believe that I'm defending this movie, but there were many very funny lines and scenes that work amazingly well. See it again.

I agree with you on that -- there are many funny and touching scenes. Any individual scene would be one of the better scenes in most movies. The tooth mystery scene is exceptional. But I expect more from movies than a series of good scenes. In this case, the whole is less than the sum of the parts. Again, probably intentionally, but that's not what I want in a movie. If I had to narrow down what can make a movie good for me, it always involves either 1) a compelling plot that is going somewhere, or 2) interesting characters that change and learn, or 3) things blowing up. This had none of those. Interesting characters, yes, but they are the same at the end, and we don't really learn anything about them that isn't obvious in the first scene.

I was rolling when his kid interrupted his meeting asking about that TV show. Man, that was hilarious.

Finally saw this. On a tiny airplane screen. Even on a small screen, this movie was clearly well shot, directed and acted - as we all expect from the Coens. I just don't think that the message of "If you think your life is bad now.... you ain't seen nothing yet" was profound enough to justify the slow build up to nothing.

I kept waiting for the Professor to finally snap and wind up in a tower with a rifle. Of course he did finally "snap" and compromise his core values to incure the wrath of God, but it was so terribly unsatisfying.

I don't think it was pointless at all, actually. Pointlessness might have been the point, actually. Would it make you like the movie anymore, if you knew they described it as a modern re imagining of the story of Job?


I thought the movie was great. If I was jewish, I'd probably love it beyond words, as it is a particularly jewish movie ( i mean that not in the slur way, but in the fact the movie focuses on jewish culture in suburban midwest america in the late sixties).

****ing loved the scene with the father of the Asian student.

racist neighbor, concerned tone: Is this man bothering you?

I think of Serious Man to be more about Jewish American, than strictly Jewish. To my way of thinking, to be Jewish, or in particular, Israeli, is to have a stronger sense of nationalism, and of identity than most Westerner's have. (This idea is totally cribbed from the book Vengeance by George Jonas, which the movie Munich was then partially based on.)

In my memory, Larry Gopnick and family aren't that interested in their Jewish nationalities, and much as their faith, and then their standing in their whitebread community.



My favorite line comes from the story within the story that is told about the dentist. "Could Sussman eat? No!! Sussman could not eat!"

Yeah, I think I said that at one point -- that the point is that life is pointless. So what, that's drunken college student philosophy. I expect something better from the Coens than something that we sat around the dorms discussing when we were depressed. At least give me a reason why I should care that these people have pointless lives.

Instead, I think the movie was a jab at the viewer: "ha ha, I made you sit through this, and it's pointless at ever step of the movie. We got you good! See, even the movie is pointless!"

No, it doesn't help knowing it's the story of Job, because I don't know that story. I'm biblicly illiterate, for the most part.

This is sort of how I experienced the movie. But if asked about the movie, I would probably say, "I kinda liked it."



Every scene with the Asians was great.