On November 16, 2018, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs landed on Netflix, and Joel and Ethan Coen haven’t made a movie together since. For 34 years and 18 features, starting with the 1984 Texas noir Blood Simple, the brothers were one of the most distinctive voices in American film: four Oscars between them (including Best Picture for No Country for Old Men), a Palme d’Or for Barton Fink, a stock company of regulars like Frances McDormand, John Goodman, John Turturro and Steve Buscemi, and the cinematography of Roger Deakins set to the music of Carter Burwell. Along the way they gave us a cultural religion (The Big Lebowski), a franchise-spawning TV series (Fargo) and some of the most quotable dialogue ever put on screen.
Then they split. Joel went solo with the handsome but icy The Tragedy of Macbeth, while Ethan teamed with his wife, Tricia Cooke, on the pulpy Drive-Away Dolls and Honey Don’t!, neither of which made much of a mark. If anything, the solo years have proven how much each brother brought out in the other: Joel’s precision misses Ethan’s anarchic humor, and Ethan’s goofiness misses Joel’s rigor. The good news is they’ve already written their reunion, a horror film Ethan has described as “pure horror” that “gets very bloody,” in the spirit of Blood Simple. The bad news is it’s still waiting behind Joel’s next solo project, now pushed to 2027. Consider this a plea: make the movie.
Originally published in August 2014 as “A Definitive, Indisputable, Unarguable Ranking of the Coen Bro’s Films.” Updated in November 2026 with Hail, Caesar! and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.
In the meantime, here’s my ranking of every Coen brothers movie, from The Big Lebowski at the top to Hail, Caesar! at the bottom.
Quick list:
- The Big Lebowski (1998)
- No Country for Old Men (2007)
- Fargo (1996)
- O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
- Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
- The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
- Raising Arizona (1987)
- Miller’s Crossing (1990)
- Blood Simple (1984)
- True Grit (2010)
- The Ladykillers (2004)
- Barton Fink (1991)
- Burn After Reading (2008)
- Intolerable Cruelty (2003)
- The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)
- The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
- A Serious Man (2009)
- Hail, Caesar! (2016)
Critics and Audience scores from Rotten Tomatoes; ratings from IMDb. Scores as of October 2026.
18. HAIL, CAESAR! (2016)
The Coen Brothers’ Hail, Caesar! exists in some zany cinematic purgatory of indecisiveness. Their critique of 1950s Hollywood dwells in an occasionally bemusing middle ground; that is, it can’t decide whether it wants to be a skewering of or a love letter to the golden era of tinsel town.
The Coen Brothers have crafted a film similar in tone to the wandering entropy of A Serious Man, Hudsucker Proxy and Barton Fink with this “comedic” endeavor, a Hollywood satire with a few chuckle but a dearth of real laughs. Like a bite from a toothless vampire, Hail, Caesar! leaves almost no impression and makes up one of the brotherly director’s least engaging efforts to date.Read the full review
17. 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, 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.▶︎ Watch on Prime Video
16. 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.▶︎ Watch on Tubi
15. 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.
14. 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.
13. 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.
12. 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.▶︎ Watch on Hoopla
11. 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.
10. TRUE GRIT (2010)
From Jeff Bridges’ 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.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy
9. 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.▶︎ Watch on HBO Max
8. 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.
7. 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.
6. THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS (2018)
The Coens’ last film together (so far) is a six-part Western anthology that plays like a greatest-hits sampler of their sensibilities. It opens with Tim Blake Nelson’s singing, sharpshooting title cowboy in pure cartoon mode, then darkens chapter by chapter into something mournful and strange, from Tom Waits’ lone prospector to Zoe Kazan’s wagon-train romance to an eerie stagecoach finale. Uneven by design, and moving in ways you don’t see coming.▶︎ Watch on Netflix
5. 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.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy · Read the full review
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.▶︎ Watch on Prime Video
3. FARGO (1996)
Fargo is almost as important for the legacy it’s left as it is as an actual film. In 2014 alone, 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.▶︎ Watch on Kanopy
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.▶︎ Watch on Peacock
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 Bridges’ 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.▶︎ Watch on Pluto TV
Now comes the fun part where you tell me that I’m wrong and correct my every misstep. So what do you think is the Coens’ best?
FAQ
What is the best Coen brothers movie?
By my ranking, The Big Lebowski (1998) is the best Coen brothers movie, followed by No Country for Old Men and Fargo.
What is the worst Coen brothers movie?
Hail, Caesar! (2016) sits at the bottom of my ranking.
How many movies have the Coen brothers made together?
Eighteen features, from Blood Simple (1984) to The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018). This ranking covers all of them.
Are the Coen brothers making a new movie together?
They have co-written a horror film that Ethan Coen has compared to Blood Simple, but it is waiting until Joel Coen finishes his next solo film, Jack of Spades, which has been delayed to 2027.
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By: Matt Oakes
Started blogging about film in college when the university paper wouldn’t have him. Dislikes your consensus film Twitter favorites. Devotee of horror movies that make him die a little inside. Catches films at festivals when he can. Proud SFCS and OFCS member and Tomatometer-approved critic. Editor-in-chief of Silver Screen Riot.
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