Favorite Movies Countdown — No. 22

22. Miller's Crossing (1990)

Starring: Gabriel Byrne, Albert Finney, Jon Polito, Marcia Gay Harden, John Turturro, and J.E. Freeman

About: So the Coen Brothers make the first of two appearances on this list. "Miller's Crossing" was their third feature film, and for a long time it was my favorite. It is also one of the lesser known Coen Brothers films.

The film centers on a dispute between rival bosses — one Irish (Finney) the other Italian (Polito). There's also a love triangle and a player with a gambling problem working all the angles (Byrne). This isn't your typical mob movie though, it's got that traditional Coen Brothers twist.

One of the things I like best about the Coen Brothers is their gift at writing dialogue. It's a cut above what you get in most movies, and the same goes for "Miller's Crossing." There are also fascinating characters, very period-specific lingo, and some great scenes. There are, in fact, several iconic scenes in this film.

It's a great lead performance from Byrne, and the rest of the supporting cast — including frequent Coen collaborators Polito, Turturro, and Steve Buscemi — do a great job as well. This film instantly appealed to me the first time I saw it, and it still does.

Other Coen Brothers gems:

Barton Fink (1991)
This comedy — starring John Goodman and John Turturro — is off beat, to say the least. It is about a writer with writers' block, and incidently the Coen Brothers worked on it while suffering writers' block in the middle of working on "Miller's Crossing." It's one of their strangest films, and also my favorite Coen Brothers comedy.

The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
This is another comedic gem from the Coen Brothers. There is an argument to be made that they really started hitting their stride in the 1990s. Consider this string of films — "Miller's Crosssing," "Barton Fink," "The Hudsucker Proxy," "Fargo," and "The Big Lebowski." Those are the Coen Brother's films in the 1990s. "Hudsucker," which stars Tim Robbins and Paul Newman, is a strange little film, but it's a lot of fun.

The Man Who Wasn't There (2001)
It takes a lot of guts to turn out a modern film in black and white, but that's what the Coen Brothers did with this film starring Billy Bob Thornton. The cinematography is beautiful and the story mixes all the classic Coen Brothers elements.

True Grit (2010)
Most filmmakers wouldn't even try to re-make a classic film — much less a celebrated western for which John Wayne won his only Academy Award. But the Coen Brothers aren't most filmmakers, and they proved it again with this gem of a film. I still feel it was the best film in 2010 not to win a single Academy Award.

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