Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed
A black comedy set in 1967 and centered on Larry Gopnik, a Midwestern professor who watches his life unravel when his wife prepares to leave him because his inept brother won't move out of the house.
Stats: 1,242 reviews
A putzy Jewish physics professor suffers from a series of problems including a failing marriage, bratty kids, students willing to do anything for a passing grade, financial troubles, and a ne'er-do-well brother. It's a retelling of the Book of Job as an absurdist comedy; frequen...( read more)
This is why the American movie-going public sucks: people hate this movie, but rush out to see crap like 2012.
The reason they hate this movie? It's because people don't like to think while they're watching a movie. They just like to be fed nonstop action and cliche storylines...( read more)
The Coen brothers have created THE NEW FIDDLER ON THE ROOF! Here are the reasons I say that: first, the trailer in its own way presents a musical composition to us; second, the opening scene presents roughly the same time period and place; third, the story takes place in an alm...( read more)
without question, this is a film i could see myself raising the score on over time. this is a deeply brooding and thought provoking film that carries along with no clear plot until the end, when suddenly it all makes sense. this alegory of the life of Job takes a unique turn, p...( read more)
A Serious Man works a lot more like Barton Fink in its' lack of glamour with "Physics vs. Fate" serving as the platform. It begins with a strange prologue that plays like Fiddler on the Roof written by Franz Kafka. Seeming to be the Coen's most intensely intimate film, it's als...( read more)
Seriously great look at a man trying to make sense of a senseless world; brilliantly observed and played, cheekily perplexing.
Quite funny without nearly as much darkness as I'd expected. Quite interesting thematically as well. Just plain good.
It's hard to love a movie that makes you feel anxious and miserable, and yet it's impossible not to respect a movie that has that power. full review
While there are plenty of oddball touches, some mystifying (like the Yiddish-language prologue, set in a Polish shtetl and seeming to have little to do with what follows it; and the abrupt ending) -- ... full review
This isn't a laugh-laugh movie, but a wince-wince movie. Those can be funny, too. full review
A Serious Man is a wonderfully odd, bleakly comic and thoroughly engrossing film. full review
What do the Coen brothers want of us? More specifically, what do they want us to think of the repellent people in this pitilessly bleak movie? full review
This seriously funny movie, artfully photographed by the great Roger Deakins, is spiritual in nature, barbed in tone, and, oh, yeah, it stings like hell. full review
A Serious Man is, like its biblical source, a distilled, hyperbolic account of the human condition. The punch line is a little different, but you know the joke. And it's on you, of course. full review
Man plans, God laughs, and so do the Coen brothers. full review
A Serious Man rejects the bland Jewishness of Judd Apatow films; it's similar to the black filmmakers' project in Next Day Air, in which social stereotypes get burlesqued, yet are used to reveal an es... full review
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