I have decided (The what movies should Rilla buy thread)

[a500lbgorilla]

I love O Brother, I enjoyed Big Lebowski but Fargo must have been humor over my head. Nothing at all in that movie made want to watch the movie. I did not enjoy anything in that movie.

-'rilla

[dalecooper]

Hmmm. Well to each his own, I suppose.

Oh, about Evil Dead: I would probably start with Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness, which is technically Evil Dead 3. Evil Dead 2 is the apex of the three movies. It's about 50/50 split between stupid slapsticky humor and over-the-top gore and monster effects. There's a classic scene where the hero's hand is posessed, he lops it off with a chainsaw, and then has a fight with it that concludes with him trapping it under a bucket and putting a stack of books on top to weigh it down... and the top book is "A Farewell to Arms." If that kind of goofball stuff is up your alley, you'll probably like the movie. The acting is universally horrendous (except for the lead, Bruce Campbell) but it's overlookable because of the style of the movie.

Army of Darkness is straight-up silly, pretty much a midway point between Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and maybe something like an action movie parody. By that point there's nothing scary or even especially gory at all... just lots of homages to The Three Stooges and old movies like Jason and the Argonauts. Chances are you've heard about a hundred lines from that movie already without realizing that's where they came from. It's very silly.

The first one was an attempt to make a very gory, very scary low budget horror movie. Well... it's very gory, for sure. Parts are scary. And parts are funny (seemingly unintentionally) which is why the rest of the series went for such a strongly humorous approach. It does have a lot of style for a low budget, first-time feature; Sam Raimi, the director, invented some stylistic devices and camera shots that are now infamous. A few even show up in his last couple movies (a little series you may have heard of called Spider-guy or something like that).

While I'm rambling, Sam Raimi also directed a movie I like called A Simple Plan; this followed the Evil Deads and preceded Spider-man by a few years. It's grim, tense, a bit improbable, but really good. If you thought the idea from Fargo of people in the snowy north murdering each other was a good one, but the movie didn't deliver, you might try A Simple Plan for a very different take on the same thing. Billy Bob Thornton is in it and gives his best performance that I can recall seeing.

[michael1123]

Twin Peaks owns.

Fargo and The Man Who Wasn't There are the only Coen brothers movies I've seen that I really like. I haven't seen Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, and Blood Simple though. I thought Raising Arizona and O Brother were very overrated. Intolerable Cruelty was average, and Ladykillers was awful.

I also really like A Simple Plan.

[dalecooper]

I forgot Raising Arizona. I love that movie. But if you're not crazy about the wacky comedy side of the Coens, Michael, definitely see Blood Simple. It's a very grim Southern neo-noir; the tone is kind of similar to Red Rock West, if you ever happened to see that movie (although the plot relies less on astonishing coincidences). And if you haven't, see 'em both. Blood Simple and Red Rock West would make a great double feature. But I think the Coens' movie is the better of the two by a few yards. JT Walsh gives the slimiest performance he's ever given (and that's quite a competition), and Frances McDormand borders on hot - which is odd, because I've never found her all that attractive.

Barton Fink is not to all tastes. It's really strange and pretentious and all over the place plot-wise.

Miller's Crossing was the Coens' attempt at a gangster opus. It's got a lot of strange, funny dialogue and the best cinematography out of all their movies. I was disappointed in it when I first saw it, but it's grown on me a lot.