Inside Llewyn Davis (USA/France: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2013)

Inside Llewyn Davis (USA/France: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2013: 104 mins)

Benedict, Steven. "Coen Country." (Posted on Vimeo: February 5, 2015)

Beyl, Cameron. "The Coen Brothers [4.1]: Murder and Mayhem." The Directors Series (May 24, 2016)

---. "The Coen Brothers [4.2]: The Postmodern Pictures." The Directors Series (June 14, 2016)

---. "The Coen Brothers [4.3]: The Breakout Classics." The Directors Series (June 28, 2016)

---. "The Coen Brothers [4.4]: An Odyssey Into Style." The Directors Series (July 12, 2016)

Brody, Richard. "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Folk Singer" The New Yorker (December 5, 2013)

Castillo, Monica. "The 51st New York Film Festival #2." The Cinephiliacs (Occtober 3, 2013)

Collins, K. Austin, et al. "Ballad of the Coen Brothers." The Film Comment Podcast (September 26, 2018) ["“In their films—especially Barton Fink, The Man Who Wasn’t There, No Country for Old Men, A Serious Man, and Inside Llewyn Davis—there’s always the sense that the deck is stacked against us and that we’re the authors of our own misery, a doubly discomfiting, Camusian view that perfectly matches their aesthetic approach, an overwhelming omniscience that results in a kind of bravura melancholy,” Michael Koresky writes in his feature about Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs in our September/October issue. This week, Koresky, FSLC Editorial and Creative Director, moderates a special Film Comment Podcast featuring three more Coeniacs in conversation about the brothers’ dazzling 30-year-plus body of work, from greatest hits to lesser-known ballads: K. Austin Collins, film critic at Vanity Fair; Aliza Ma, head of programming at Metrograph; and Adam Nayman, Toronto-based critic and author of the new book The Coen Brothers: This Book Really Ties the Films Together (Abrams)."]

Enelow, Shonni. "The Great Recession: Restrained but resilient, a style of acting has taken hold that speaks to an era’s anxieties."  Film Quarterly (September-October 2016) ["This is another way to read the emotional withdrawal or refusal in these performances: as a response to a violent or chaotic environment, one that doesn’t offer an alternate vision of an open and embracing future. For even when representing an alienating or unfeeling world, actors of earlier eras generally appealed to the camera and their audiences to receive their feelings and implicitly trusted them to respond generously, either through vicarious sentiment or humanist compassion. Expressive acting—of which Method acting is one dominant form—is built on the conviction that audiences want an actor’s emotions to be in some way available to them. There’s a basic optimism in that conviction: the optimism that the world would be better if we all told each other the truth about what we feel. In contrast, many of today’s most lauded American film actors give performances that evince no such optimism about emotional expression. Returning to Winter’s Bone, for example, it’s clear that within the fiction of the film, Ree doesn’t trust the world to care about her well-being. But rather than contrast her character’s suspicion with an appeal to the (presumably) sympathetic film audience, Lawrence maintains her wariness throughout. Likewise, Mara doesn’t cut Lisbeth’s lowered gaze and near-inaudible, clipped speech with any revelation or outburst that would make us think she could be—or really is, deep down—other than she appears. There aren’t hidden motivations in these performances, and in fact, close to no subtext (the idea of subtext, with its inherently psychological schema, is parodied in Carol by a would-be writer who takes notes on the difference between what characters in movies say and what they really feel)."]

Lewis, Don R. "Inside LLewyn Davis." Film Threat (January 4, 2014)

Romney, Jonathan. "Songs of Innocence and Experience: The Coen Brothers continue to break new ground with Inside Llewyn Davis, a tender but tough portrait of a beautiful loser." Film Comment (November/December 2013) [Available to BCTC students through the BCTC Library.]