Often cited as the nadir of the Coen Brothers filmography, in many ways, while The Ladykillers is far from some world changing film, and obviously a rather slight entry in their filmography, it still, to me at least, amounts to a very funny and entertaining film, and probably the closest the Coens have come to being completely "mainstream".

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I can now say, with much pride and satisfaction, to have seen every single feature length film that the Coen Brothers have made.

I finish my dauntless trek through their filmography with this, their seventeenth, and most recent feature, which plays as a laid back, droll self deprecating look at the mighty dream factory that was Hollywood at the very heights of the storied Studio Area.

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The Coen Brothers' debut feature, Blood Simple., is a vital part of their filmography, not only because its a debut that already shows artists confident in their own skill, but also as a sort of stripped down, demo version of much of their later work.

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When I first saw True Grit not long after its release, I didn't quite understand it. Here was a film that seemed to be a straightforward revenge tale, but with an ending that, at the time, seemed a bit of a downer. However, I have now revisited the film, and have done so with a far better knowledge of the style that the Coen Brothers have carefully cultivated, and now I can say that I have come to an understanding with the film, and in doing so, have found yet another excellent western

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O Brother, Where Art Thou? stands as one of the most unique films in the already supremely unique filmography of the Coen Brothers.

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The Coen Brothers' third film does what a great Coen Brothers film should always do: Take a genre (this time gangster films), deconstruct it with a sardonic and dry wit, only to then spin around and become one of the great entries in the very genre it's deconstructing.

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A surprisingly upbeat and chipper film, yet still carrying their trademark biting satire, the Coen Brother's fifth feature was, and still is, a bit of a black sheep in their filmography. Instead of a brooding neo-noir like Miller's Crossing and Blood Simple, or the strange fever dream surrealism of Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy instead takes its cues from the wild screwball zaniness of Raising Arizona, but instead of the quirky outback of Arizona, the

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The Coen Brothers, eclectic as always, take on film noir in this hyper subdued, intentionally self serious yet absurd deconstruction of the film noir genre, where, in playing the standard tropes and motifs of the genre dead straight, stretching them to the point where they snap back on themselves. It's a dense, cerebral film, and one that, while lacking the gonzo charms of, say, O Brother, Where Art Thou? or The Hudsucker Proxy, still manages to be a fascinating work of art, and a

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Okay, I'll admit it right off the bat. This film is, very much, an example of "minor" Coen Brothers. The story for the film was actually devised by Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone (no, not that Matt Stone), and was shopped around for several years to directors such as Jonatham Demme and Ron Howard, before the Coen Brothers themselves finally picked up the project, and wrote the last draft of the screenplay. So, in that way, it's true that this film is perhaps the closest they've gotten for

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Burn After Reading is the Coen Brothers sarcastic and intentionally screwball riff on the notoriously straight laced genre of spy thriller. Intentionally taking the multitudes of tropes and plot points that fill the genre and playing them for pure absurdity, the film revels in it's madness and lack of logic, in a way that really, only a Coen Brothers film can.

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