Big Lebowski

Year: 1998

Grade: A-

Country: USA

Director: Coen

Review

a fine fine comic effort from the coen brothers. later coen brothers films don’t make much use of camera movement and this film follows that trend. raising arizona and blood simple both have relatively active cameras. i don’t know that there’s a definitive reason for the switch of style so much as it is just a matter of progression. raising arizona is a wacky picture so it sort of demands a lot of camera movement, and blood simple was their first picture so perhaps they were just trying out a few different things. at any rate, this film doesn’t move the camera much, but it does stretch itself cinematically through a couple different dream sequences that are surrealistic and rather funny. at one point they put a camera in a bowling ball and roll it down the lane which captures fairly well the dizzy feeling following being hit on the head. despite all this the real strength of the film is the writing and acting. turturro has a couple of great scenes as jesus, goodman is perfect, as is bridges. supporting actors from hoffman and moore to buscemi and tara reid are also very good.