Top 10 Best Coen Brothers Movies

The Coens at their grimmest. No music, no redemption, just the echo of choices, chance and the unstoppable Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) with his captive bolt pistol. An adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel, but 100% Coen in tone and morality. It won the Oscar for Best Picture, and deservedly so.

'Oh yah, you betcha!' Fargo is a pitch-black crime comedy balancing on the edge of tragedy. Frances McDormand shines as heavily pregnant police chief Marge in a story full of dim-witted criminals, frozen bodies and a twisted sense of justice. A masterpiece, completely unique.

The Dude. The bowling alley. The nihilists. The rug that really tied the room together. This film is now practically a religion, complete with annual conventions. What once flopped in theaters grew into a monument of absurd humor, inimitable dialogue and endless quoting. Lebowski isn't a film, it's a lifestyle.

Forget everything you think you know about Nicolas Cage: here he's at his most charming. With Holly Hunter, he plays a childless couple who decide to steal a baby. What follows is chaos, humor, absurd chases and surprisingly much heart.

A bluegrass epic about three escaped convicts in the American South, loosely based on Homer's Odyssey. Sounds absurd? Welcome to the Coens. George Clooney sings (sort of), there's a Cyclops, a cover-up and a country hit. Light-footed and biting.

A script reeking of sweat, rotting ambition and existential writer's block. Barton Fink is a nightmare about a playwright who comes to Hollywood and slowly loses his mind. John Turturro is great, but John Goodman steals the show. Strange? Yes. Fascinating? Absolutely.

Their debut, and an immediate knockout. Everything the Coens would later perfect, paranoia, blood and a whirlpool of wrong choices, is already here. A Texas thriller about murder, jealousy and total miscommunication. Raw, intense and expertly directed for a first film.

A gangster epic only the Coens could make: stylish, bloody and full of hidden agendas. Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne) navigates between loyalties in a city where everyone seems to carry a secret weapon. Visually stunning and thematically complex, a favorite among Coen fans.

A perfectly shot black-and-white noir about a barber who gets himself into trouble by simply... doing nothing. Billy Bob Thornton plays him as a walking vacuum: empty, distant and therefore fascinating. Dry, dark and soaked in philosophical undertones.

The most underrated Coen film? Perhaps. A Serious Man follows a Jewish physics professor overwhelmed by an avalanche of personal misery. A kind of biblical trial with rabbis, quantum mechanics and uncomfortably long silences. It doesn't get any darker, and yet it's wonderfully funny.