"A Serious Man" (my 0-10 rating: 9)
Genre: Subtle Comedy-drama with sophisticated wit and humor undertone
Directors: Ethan & Joel Coen
Writers: Ethan & Joel Coen
Cast: Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Sari Lennick,
Aaron Wolff
Time: 1 hr., 45 min.
Rating: R (vulgarity, some sexuality/nudity, brief violence)

"Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble." (from the Book of Job: 14:1)
"Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind ..." (from the Book of Job: 38:1).

Inspired by the Book of Job in the Bible comes the Coen Brothers' daringly intelligent 1967-set movie of high-level subtlety and rarefied humor as only they can do it. The broad range of critical ratings of "A Serious Man" was no doubt expected by them. Their major mistake, in terms of audience communication, was in failing to use those quotes as captions at beginning and end.

For the Job quote would have suggested an explanation to the ending, in which God appears as a tornado, implying that in the world of disorder, God has more to do than simply care for the trivial troubles of humanity. Take responsibility for thine own self, appears to be the divine message.

Not for the short attention span, not for the impatient. In fact it's not for any but a limited audience who can readily abide a sense of the tragi-comedy in human travail, and even cruelty. Rating the film for its entertainment value is quite the challenge because, while it's a super-sophisticated movie, its indifference to lowering its abstraction level to a reasonably accessible level sometimes feels like almost a death wish.

Steeped in American-Jewish culture, part old-world, part-new, the tale is told of a plain but intellectual guy who is so bold, or so futile, as to be looking for the meaning of life and, of all things, what God wants of him. But first the film starts with an old Jewish folk tale about a Polish husband and wife who are brought to expel a wise and just old man, who may be a ghost, from their humble abode.

Now it's 1967, when under-30s were in a fury over the failures of those who had raised them, and 30-somethings were just confused. Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a plain, honest man, married with children. He is a physics professor at a tranquil Midwestern University.

Troubles are piling up. First, his wife Judith (Sari Lennick) announces that she's leaving him. Why? Oy, you should only ask. She's fallen for his unctuous, pompous acquaintance, widower Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed). Compared to the ineffective, feebly spirited Larry, Sy, she says, is a more substantial man -- a serious man. She tells Larry to get out and go live in a motel.

More? Sure. There's Larry's unemployable brother Arthur (Richard Kind) sleeping as usual on the couch. Son Danny is a delinquent of sorts at Hebrew school. Daughter Sarah is purloining cash from his wallet -- saving up for a nose job.

And at work? Well, there's an anonymous letter-writer who appears to be out to torpedo Larry's upcoming tenure at the university. Then there's the apparent bribe attempt by a student looking for a higher grade. He says he'll sue Larry for defamation. And Larry has a gun-freak neighbor who can be very menacing. Could there be anything worse? How about the lovely next door neighbor who sunbathes nude? And, of course, some car accidents. Or the man from Columbia Record Club who keeps calling to inquire as to when to expect payment for five monthly records sent to Larry by a send-an-automatic-record contract entered by Larry's son.

So Larry is off to find advice by rabbis. How to become a "mensch" (non-translatable, but, roughly, a serious man). And so many, many more questions.

Larry would desperately like to know what God wants of him. Wandering around in deadpan, he looks for signs. Surely they must be there. But all he finds is absurdity, nonsense and ambiguous rabbis. So is there no God? Meantime, his son's Bar Mitzvah is upcoming. And the X-rays are due from Larry's car accident. The doctor calls and says, "You better come on in."

The appearance of the tornado at the end, which is obviously God, is evidently the answer to Larry's multitude of questions, but one must go to Job for the answers. Perhaps Larry should have been presented with the ancient Zen Buddhist preachment, "There are no questions."

The film is open to complaint that the Coen's are reaching too far beyond most audiences' willingness to interpret what they've seen. I'll hold, however, that if any given level or class of educated and intelligent people are entertained by a product of the arts, then it must be rated for that particular group. With that in mind, "A Serious Man" is an exceptional work, accomplishing every minute encounter between its players with fastidious attention. One is brought to not merely watch an exchange, but to study it. Do that and you'll find an intrinsic tension leading to suspense.

Watch, for instance, when Larry, standing in his physics class before a two-story high blackboard saturated with arcane mathematical equations and formulae, revels in the certainty and preciseness of math, but then explains that sometimes an equation will conclude with a contradiction.

Does one have to be Jewish to appreciate the movie? No, but it sure doesn't hurt. The guilt, the sense of persecution, the distraught pleadings for an answer from God, is pretty basic and ancient stuff. But so is the fierce dedication of the Jewish passion for education, especially in this otherwise unruly Bar Mitzvah boy's discipline to the Torah (the first five books of the Bible).

For the non-Jewish Coen Brothers buff, their weird, beyond-offbeat references and exacting focus upon hidden meanings in ordinary conversation are all there. For us, there is pain, but it's a kind of cringing pain, not just for Larry, but for yourself over why you find this funny. It can be boisterously chuckle-worthy. But unquestionably, the Coens have pressed the envelope beyond its tearing point and laid out their film on a precariously high plateau of intellectual filmmaking.



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If you are a movie buff, then you must have seen some movies or heard of the Irish actor "Colin Farrell". Though this actor has not done a large number of Hollywood movies, but he has done a brilliant job in all the movies he has done. In this article, we will discuss a few Hollywood movies in which this actor has acted.

"Phone Booth" is an amazing Hollywood movie in which Colin Farrell has acted in the lead role. This movie was released in 2003. Joel Schumacher has directed this movie. The story of this movie is unique in itself. In this movie, from the starting and till the end Colin gets trapped in a phone booth as he has wrongly received a call from that phone booth. Rest of the movie is full of excitement, action and efforts of the actor for getting away with this problem. If you want to see a movie with a really different kind of plot, then go for this movie. You would love this movie.

However, if you wish to watch Colin Farrell playing the role of a villain in a super hero movie, then you should watch "Daredevil". This movie was released in 2003. It is full of relevant action and special effects. Colin Farrell has done a short role in this movie. But he has played the role of a dangerous villain in this movie. If you wish to watch a science fiction movie of Colin Farrell, then you can watch "Minority Report". The lead role in this movie is done by Tom Cruise.




Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Greg_A_Brown

Hollywood movies are famous all around the world and so are Hollywood actors. There are a lot of Hollywood actors which have fans in numerous countries of the world. One such Hollywood actor is Walter Bruce Willis. This actor is popular by the name of Bruce Willis. This actor was born on 19th of March, 1955. He began his career from television in the year of 1980. This actor has played lead roles in a large number of movies. In this article, we will give a short review of one his latest movie which has released with the name of "Surrogates".

The movie "Surrogates" has been released in 2009. This is a science fiction movie. Other stars which have worked in this movie are Radha Mitchell, Rosamund Pike and Boris Kodjoe. The story of this movie represents a time in the future in which people have become able to carry out their day to day activities through their surrogates. It is shown that science has developed so much that people do not need to go out of their home for anything. Bruce Willis plays the role of a cop who undertakes the responsibility to uncover the mystery behind the murder of some surrogates and their owners.

This movie is full of action, emotion and entertainment. With his awesome performance in this movie, Bruce Willis has proved again that he is still one of the best actors of Hollywood. This movie is a real treat for all those movie buffs who love to watch science fiction movies.



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Movie reviews this week looks at the ecological suspense thriller The Day After Tomorrow with Dennis Quaid (Inner Space) as a climatologist Jack Hall, who for years has been warning the U.S. government and the world in general that its' reliance on fossil fuels is causing a great deal of harm to the planet (a couple of years before Al Gore's Oscar winning An inconvenient truth).

His estimations of a global disaster from global warming which would usher in another ice age, which he predicts as a best guess estimate certainly not in his lifetime; that polar melting would disrupt the North Atlantic current, suddenly escalates to the present, with an ice age hitting the vast majority of America, and Jack in a desperate rush against time to save his son, Sam Hall played by Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko), who is trapped in New York, which unfortunately is at the epicentre of this ice age.

This is one of the first movies to highlight the environment impact of our reliance on fossil fuels, with several scenes to ponder the potential disaster on our hands, one of these is a helicopter going over Scotland that suddenly just freezes at minus 150 degrees Fahrenheit and there is a great scene, where Jack has been telling the scientific community would happen albeit with some scoffing, that the sun would accelerate the rapid decline in temperature to beyond freezing point, immediately freezing structures, and anything that happens to pass within the rays of the sun at that particular time, unfortunately he gets to witness this phenomenon first hand in a desperate race against time to find shelter while everything around him freezes as the sun comes up.

There is also an unforgettable scene as the Tower of Liberty freezes solid.

Not only does he have to breach the bitter cold, he also has to fend off dogs that have gone insane from hunger, looking for anything warm blooded to eat, ergo any humans they can find.

We find out that Jack feels he has let down his son a little, and this journey to find him is something he has to do to make up for their relationship, there is a brilliant conversation at the beginning, where Jack finds out Sam has failed Calculus, and Sam replies he got every question right, and the only reason the lecturer failed him was because he didn't write out the solutions but did it instead in his head, Jack asks him if he told the lecturer, he told him he did, but the lecturer said if he couldn't do it in his head neither could Sam.



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