Cheap The Ladykillers (Widescreen Edition) (DVD) (Ethan Coen, Joel Coen) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Ladykillers (Widescreen Edition)

Coen Brothers need to take a sabbatical
The Coen Brothers have slipped. It was inevitable, nothing so good could ever last for so long without a fall. Since their mid-80's debut Blood Simple, they have delivered more films than most directors manage in an entire lifetime, and each film has pushed boundaries and tickled expectations. After the commercial success brought by Fargo, the Coen brothers movies have generally become more relaxed and comical - more Raising Arizona than Blood Simple, with the exception of their last great work, The Man Who Wasn't There. <
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>Intolerable Cruelty was a different film for the Coen Brothers, different from their past work in that it had a plot with a more conventional Hollywood ending and rather tame subject matter. Unlike previous works, IC borrows from the Coen Brothers' extensive oeuvre of work but contributes little, and more significantly, it takes place outside the Coen Brothers characteristic universe of hyper-reality mixed with black humor and a shot of existentialism. <
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>The Ladykillers takes up where IC left off. The Coen Brothers go through the motions, but this time, without the killer script that IC had, LK falls flat. Without doubt, this is the Coen Brothers first great failure in film making. Listing all the reasons why LK is a bad movie would only reiterate the points others have made here previously far better than I could have (although I'm mystified by the all the pretentious braying over profanity). But while LK is unrewarding as a film viewing experience, it is quite devastating to me as a Coen Brothers fan. If the Coen Brothers were a rock band, LK would be their "reunion album," a studio project patched together by a bunch of middle aged men who've lost their passion. It is always hard to watch even as great artists publicly thrash and grope their way out of the creative doldrums. <
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>Perhaps the Brothers could use a sabbatical, or something else entirely, like the making of a few political documentaries. Or like Stanley Kubrick, they could go into hiding and emerge after sustained periods of regeneration with a searingly brilliant film as a snapshot of their slowly evolving perspective. The pace of Coen Brothers' releases since the mid-80s has been breathtaking, and nobody could fault them for easing into a steady gallop as they pass into middle age. Or maybe something more obvious is afoot, like the Brothers swapped wives and then got all funky over it. There's no telling why they've slipped, but a falling out of the Coen Brothers artistic relationship would be a great loss to American Cinema.

"That's an aweful lot of letters"
Contrary to popular opinion here, I found this movie to be quite enjoyable (and yet not so quiet). I have recommended it to several people despite the flogging that critics have given it and most people have really enjoyed it. Profane, yes. Rude, yes. Potty humor, yes. Bad Southern dialect, maybe. Despite all these socially unacceptable properties (defined by those living in polite, prudish knitting circles), this movie gives you: bulldog death by gas mask, finger removal via explosives mishap, guttural explosives via IBS, Poe recitals, painting of dead husband with changing facial expressions, and bad geology. Who could ask for more? If you are new to the Cohen Bros, then consider this. Little problems and/or simple plans always escalate into situations of greater complexity with not so simple outcomes. The best laid plans of mice and men, huh? The Cohen Bros excel with this type of plot and I think they pulled it out once again for "The Ladykillers".