Coens

Here is a saucy, silly, queer road-movie caper from director Ethan Coen and his partner, co-writer and co-producer Tricia Cooke; it’s Coen’s second film without his brother, Joel, following his Jerry Lee Lewis documentary in 2022. Drive-Away Dolls is a flimsy lark wrapped up smartly and economically in 84 minutes with a perfunctory (and cheerfully nonsensical) MacGuffiny premise that makes it look like a Xerox of Coen brothers classics such as No Country For Old Men or Fargo. Lead player Margaret Qualley’s twangy…

Late 90s and early 00s cinema wasn’t all bad, but it was responsible for a crop of particularly dismal crime flicks. Including pictures such as the now notorious Rancid Aluminium, these were painfully contrived and agonisingly ironic winks to camera, made by film-makers who watched the movies of Tarantino and the Coen brothers and figured, how hard can it be? So it’s disappointing that Ethan Coen’s solo directorial outing (his brother Joel having already ventured out alone with the sombre, stylised The Tragedy of Macbeth)…

A road trip. A mix-up. A fast-talking hero, prone to tossing off bewilderingly verbose sentences. Some criminals who run the gamut from eccentric to psychotic to painfully inept. (Sometimes, they’re all three at once.) Dangerously sudden violence. Dangerously dark humor. Dangerously outrageous hairdos. The feeling that you’re watching a vintage film noir story run through a Looney Tunes filter. You are in the presence of a Coen brothers movie — whaddaya need, a road map?! Actually, some sort of GPS system would be…

By Lindsey Bahr | Associated Press “Drive-Away Dolls” is, technically speaking, made up of old parts. Its script was written two decades ago, when references to Ralph Nader and Chelsea Clinton’s security detail were current. Its homages are even more vintage, with trippy transitions harkening back to the acid-soaked B-movies of the 1960s. There’s a mysterious, sought-after briefcase, odd couple thugs on the hunt for it and some innocents who find themselves unwittingly entangled in the drama. It is all very familiar, and…

“Drive-Away Dolls” is, technically speaking, made up of old parts. HT Image Its script was written two decades ago, when references to Ralph Nader and Chelsea Clinton’s security detail were current. Its homages are even more vintage, with trippy transitions harkening back to the acid-soaked B-movies of the 1960s. There’s a mysterious, sought-after briefcase, odd couple thugs on the hunt for it and some innocents who find themselves unwittingly entangled in the drama. It is all very familiar, and yet, in the…

Ethan Coen has brought us some wildly entertaining movies in partnership with his brother Joel, including Fargo and The Big Lebowski (and they now have a horror movie in the works), so it’s no surprise that his upcoming road comedy Drive-Away Dolls has piqued the interest of movie lovers. The film, which stars Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan, is scheduled to hit theaters February 23 after a months-long delay due to last year’s entertainment industry strikes. Critics have screened the film, and the majority…

The Coen brothers temporarily parted ways for solo projects on haunted charismatic wrongdoers: for Joel it was Macbeth, for Ethan it has turned about to be insurgent rock’n’roll legend Jerry Lee Lewis, the shuddering, quivering Pentecostal shaman of the devil’s music, who is still alive at the age of 86.Coen has put together a thoroughly enjoyable documentary composed entirely of archive footage of Jerry Lee throughout the years and his interviews and performances, starting with his sensational beginnings in the 1950s,…