Ethan and Joel Coen have been making movies since 1984. And not just your run-of-the-mill, “here’s another one” kind of movie. Thoughtful, delicately constructed masterworks. One after another. I truly think it’s fair to say that they don’t have a bad movie in the bunch, which makes the task of ranking them ever the more difficult. Each of their films have something in them to love; something unique worthy of cherishing. Be it a character, a stylish approach or brisk, bright bursts of comedy, they’re all bursting at the seams with life. In an attempt to parse out the differences though, it becomes clear just how united the Coen’s filmography is, even though at first glance, that couldn’t seem less the case.

Throughout the oeuvre that is the Coen’s collection of films, a throng of motifs rein supreme: a preeminent sense of irony; a deep connection to music (often Southern Gospel); thorny, desperate and maladjusted characters; and the role of chance and/or divine intervention in crucial life junctions. They are filmmakers at battle with themselves and their faith, a fact that she shone throughout their pantheon of work, and that has come to define them as artists and people.

But enough with the highfaluting introductions, let’s get to ranking the work of the kings of cult….

16. A Serious Man (2009)

As shrouded in mystery as a Coen bros film gets, A Serious Man is not a film I understood on my first watch five years back, nor is it a film I understood rewatching for ranking purposes. It’s a philosophical coming to terms with one’s beliefs, a struggle to understand one’s position in the world and, as such, posits “Life’s a big mystery, get over it.” While it is my least favorite of their films, I acknowledge how personal the whole affair feels. As such, A Serious Man seems more like a therapy session than a film at times, a long-winded, deeply earnest, soul exhale on behalf of the directorial doublet.

15. The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)

One of the Coen’s most peculiar films, The Hudsucker Proxy works in fits and starts. The story of Norville Barnes starts on a hysterical high but as he associated with Jennifer Leigh‘s Amy Archer, things begin to slump and the wonderfully “off” comedy mellows into something far more even-keeled. Tim Robbin‘s Barnes is almost too much of an egghead to really win us over but he definitely works the lunkish element to comic gold. It’s just a shame that they couldn’t keep the laugh ratio up throughout its runtime. You know, for the kids.

14. Burn After Reading (2008)

The most stacked cast the Coens have ever worked with showed up for Burn After Reading which had Brad Pitt return to his dunce roots (Lloyd – True Romance) and pit him against a fire-breathing John Malkovich. George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Richard Jenkins, and J.K. Simmons lent themselves to the effort as well, resulting in an easy to digest if not entirely transcendent product.

13. The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)

Photographed beautifully in black and white is a billow of a film; a smoky, somber meditation on drifting through life. It’s a Coen take on film noir and they nail the aromatic, poised time period nature of it all. As much as it is about spitting in the face of spiritualism and destiny, The Man Who Wasn’t There shows off the darker, more pessimistic tendencies of the Coen’s palette. For a meandering philosophical rumination, it avoids overt abstraction, preferring something more traditional that only once in a while will dip into the strange pools they often swim in. It’s remorsefully lyrical, partly brooding and entirely tragic with Billy Bob Thornton firing off a composed and nuanced performance and Carter Burwell tickling the keys to melancholy effect.

12. Intolerable Cruelty (2003)

When judging a book by the cover, Intolerable Cruelty clearly looks like the Coen’s worst but man, it really is a left field hit. Filled with all the wonderful quirk of the Coen’s best, it’s part courtroom drama, part black comedy rom-com, stuffed with buoyant performances and drippy dialogue that only the Coens could conjure up. It disintegrates a bit in the second act but all the more hammy elements they dredge up are meant to lambast rather than celebrate generic conventions, and do so perfectly.

11. Barton Fink (1991)

Barton Fink is the Coen’s at their most neurotic. Following a “hot” Jewish screenwriter as he transitions into the world of Hollywood and winds up with a cripple case of writer’s block, Fink is a nightmare of paranoia and frustration. It’s a yarn on the creative process with John Goodman providing the perfect meat-and-potatoes foil to John Turturro‘s unstable creative type. Their chemistry is palpably vexing and only the Coen’s know how to crank up and really get the fire raging.

10. True Grit (2010)

From Jeff Bridge‘s garbly enunciation to Hailee Steinfeld‘s polished vocabulary and all the grumbling Josh Brolin‘s and kinky Matt Damon‘s between them, True Grit is as much about word battles as it is about gun battles. Taking on the wild west in a quest for revenge, True Grit retells the 1969 John Wayne classic and for it earned Oscar nominations for its two stars. Although the saga soars when Bridge’s and Steinfeld spit words at each other like blow darts, the extended ending leaves us cold and wishing for less. Snakebite or no, it’s ok to leave us hanging.

9. The Ladykillers (2004)

Tom Hanks is a sugary riot, a sacrosanct revelation, an electric bugaloo. As the toothy, aristocratic thief with a penchant for wordy oration, he proves his worth as a national treasure. Hank’s plays a faux-gentleman with the gift of gab, his linguistic somersaults garrisoned by the bro’s preternatural handle on melding ye Olde English into modern, often Southern, conversations. He may seem out of place standing against Marlon Wayans (who sticks out like a sore thumb) but that only serves to highlight how brilliantly eccentric Hanks really is here. The messy elements that had many critics decry Ladykillers as the Coen’s worst are certainly present but Hanks rises above them, almost single-handedly rendering them moot.

8. Blood Simple (1984)

Love triangles, murder squares, betrayal pentagons, the Coens obsess over infidelities of all shapes and sizes, but none so much as their debut picture makes this tendency clear. From affairs to hits to traffic rundowns, everyone is out for everyone. Although it starts a little on the talky, Blood Simple soon settles into a visually arresting exploration of what it truly means to take a life. It’s a troubling chronicle of comeuppances; a rigmarole of making things square, even working only with circles.

7. Miller’s Crossing (1990)

The closest the duo have gotten to an all-out gangster film, Miller’s Crossing follows in the footsteps of Coen tradition in weaving a complex web of dealings and misdealings, alliances and allegiances gone sour. Featuring one of John Turturro‘s best performances, Miller’s Crossing is a frosty but fluid account of a mob man playing his marks like he’s Bobby Fisher. He moves one piece at a time but thinks twelve steps ahead. The bathrobe-clad shoot out scene is straight from a Scorsese movie and feels as close to that tone as the Coens ever got.

6. Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

As chilly and meanderings as the filmmakers get, Inside Llewyn Davis is a tone poem on the folk scene in 1960s Greenwich Village. It’s a love letter to a time that wasn’t very lovable; a nostalgic look back at a patently shitty time. Oscar Isaac shined in the lead role, despite Davis’ misanthropic tendencies, offering the audience a chance to fall for someone while fully acknowledging he deserves to get socked in the face.

5. Raising Arizona (1987)

A slapstick tale about a motley malingerer and his cop wife, Raising Arizona saw the brotherly combo shirk expectations on their second run around a Hollywood lot. Following up on the bloody, depressive Blood Simple, this goofy tale of infanti-steal was a delightfully doltish romp that seemed to define how disparate the filmmakers could be. If 1984 marked their introduction to the world, 1987 defined them as the movie makers they are today. Nicholas Cage and Holly Hunter shined as misfit lovers as the Coens showed off an innate ability to flex their slapstick muscle.

4. O Brother Where Art Thou (2000)

I can’t imagine the pitch meeting where Joel and Ethan Coen threw out the idea of adapting Homer’s “Iliad” as a deep-fried Southern gospel jail break story, complete with a Biblical flood, alluring sirens and John Goodman as a cyclops. On paper, it’s a wreck. But the crackly, old-timey ditties, zonked-out performances and entrancing cinematography from Roger Deakins made this plunderous misadventure a shocking home run and one that’s easy to return to over and over and over again.

3. Fargo (1996)

Fargo is almost as important for the legacy it’s left as it is as an actual film. Just in the last year, Fargo gave birth to two lordly spin-offs in the outstanding FX television show of the same name and the excellent feature from the Zellner Bro‘s, Kumiko The Treasure Hunter. Legacy notwithstanding, this early Coen’s classic is one not to be balked at. Made unnerving by inauthentic niceties and terrifying by wood chippers, Fargo traffics in the chipper gloom and doom of a Minnesota smile and the terror of what might happen when that smile fades.

2. No Country For Old Men (2007)

Few directors have attempted Cormac McCarthy. None have mastered it, save the Coens. Proving that the worse the haircut, the more evil a Coen’s character is, Javier Bardem‘s Anton Chigurh is pure terror. He’s the devil in slacks and a bowl cut. That coin toss alone is enough to send chills up the spine. No Country for Old Men found the Coen’s at their most cold and calculating, adapting an already ruthless story into a soul-wrecking masterpiece of misery and chance.

1. The Big Lebowski (1998)

The movie that turned The Dude into a proper noun, the Coen’s madcap magnum opus, The Big Lebowski, is a hallucinogenic odyssey that features not one, but two of the greatest movie characters of all time in Jeff Bridge‘s Dude and John Goodman‘s Walter. Every time Walter yelps “Mark it zero!” an angel gets its wings. In a career characterized by misunderstood characters getting wrapped up in circumstances beyond their scope of control, the Dude is the ultimate ringer, a bullseye of eccentricity and drug-fueled invention. This neo-absurdist noir is perfection in each and every aspect. It fully legitimizes those college nights spending stoned and howling at this riotous explosion of comedic brilliance and deadly quirky narrative onscreen.