Barton Fink (DVD)

I like to start out an opinion on a Coen Brothers film with a quote that ended a review of The Big Lebowski. "In a perfect world every movie would be a Coen Bros movie" That really does sum it up as every film they've made from Blood Simple onwards has something fascinating, there's nothing you can point your finger at and say it was terrible. Sure some people may find their films empty, slow and plodding. But that's these peoples loss. The Coen's make films, not movies. These films often emulate genres of the thirties and forties but put a modern day spin on them. Barton Fink was an idea that came quickly after they ...  Read the complete review

Coen brothers films are known to have a slightly quirky, surreal quality to them. For this they have managed to win numerous fans, me amongst them but this doesn't mean I'll automatically like every film they release (I didn't like Fargo). Whilst this 1991 film isn't there best (that accolade is reserved for 'Raising Arizona') but its certainly a fine film, a point which is showed by the three awards it appears to have won at the Cannes film festival. Barton Fink is a New York scriptwriter in 1941, who wants to write about and for the common man. This is something that Barton is quite passionate about and Charlie (John Goodman's ...  Read the complete review

You have to be very patient when you watch this, the least screwball and most potentially irritating of all of the Coen Brothers' movies. It's the one with the most impenetrable layers, and in Barton Fink (John Turturro), the Coens have created their most hard-to-like hero (especially when compared to the delightful innocents in 'The Big Lebowski', 'The Hudsucker Proxy' and 'Raising Arizona'). Fink is a leftwing playwright (modelled on Clifford Odets), lured to Hollywood by a rich studio owner (modelled on Louis B. Meyer) to write cheesy wrestling movies. Lodged in a crumbling hotel, Fink gets mixed up with a strange neighbour ...  Read the complete review

I love it. It's insane, quirky and slightly confusing, but every minute is enjoyable. This is the story of Barton Fink (John Turturro) a successful playwright who gets signed by a Hollywood studio to write a wrestling picture. This clearly doesn't come natural to Barton, who quickly finds that he has no indea how to write one. With his writers block comes many other problems: He is living in a seedy hotel (Steve Buscemi is a spookily efficient bell boy)where the wallpaper is slimily falling off the walls. His superiors are pressuring him to produce a work of genius, and he gets into trouble with a headless body. His only refuge is in his friend (played ...  Read the complete review

Turturro and Goodman are both excellent in this film. Everyone is good in it and I can see why people would rate it as a brilliant movie. However, it reached into the deep, dark parts of my paranoid psyche and scared me to death. There was something too surreal yet real about this film for me. The Cohen brothers have produced another classic in this film (although it is one of those films with lots of bits that I actually didn't understand - I wonder whether some people say it's brilliant just because they didn't understand it, or whether because they did and it is!) but it is not for everyone's taste. ...  Read the complete review