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“... and down here you’re on your own.’ These are the opening moments of Blood Simple, Ethan and Joel Coen’s first movie, released in 1983, and they look like an agenda, an announcement of work to come. They look that way only now, though, when we have seen the later films; learned that the appearance of raw and gritty realism in that first movie was ...”

“... Joel Coen’s​ The Tragedy of Macbeth takes its cue from the witches. Or, rather, its one witch, played by Kathryn Hunter, who multiplies herself when she feels like it. Early in the film she stares at us across a pool while talking to Macbeth and Banquo. She is alone but there are two reflections in the water, neither of them in the right place to be hers ...”

“... Joel and Ethan Coen often look like moviemakers in search of a movie; as if their perfect film were waiting for them out there and they had to do something while they were looking for it. What else could have driven them to their 2004 remake of the Ealing comedy The Ladykillers? Even if Tom Hanks is funnier in that film than our idea of Tom Hanks ought to allow, he’s not Alec Guinness ...”

“... Eddie Mannix​ , in the Coen Brothers’ new movie, Hail, Caesar!, is not a devout or informed Catholic but he does like to confess. He’s not doing well with his plan of giving up smoking, as he promised his wife he would. The first words we hear in the film come from an unseen priest behind the screen in a church: ‘How long since your last confession?’ Mannix, his face half in shadow, says: ‘27 hours ...”

“... everyone around, especially the rugged individuals so infatuated with their own independence. The Coen brothers’ new film restores Mattie to the narrative; it gives her a voice-over and quotes her a lot. The actress who plays her (Hailee Steinfeld) and the designer who dressed her (Mary Zophres) get across a good deal more of the weirdness of this ...”

“... just mildly desperate. Except that of course desperation is funny too, if you tell it right. The Coen Brothers’ new movie, A Serious Man, contains several jokes of this kind, and is such a joke itself. It doesn’t get funny until you start thinking about how ineptly unfunny it is. The ineptness of the genre is captured with disturbing conviction, and ...”

“... Batman and Robin (1997). I’m more than happy to forget the last two of those films, directed by Joel Schumacher, but the first two, both directed by Tim Burton, have much to recommend them – not least the presence of Jack Nicholson as the Joker, whose cheerful idea of havoc, very fine in its way, if essentially identical to what Nicholson is up to in most ...”