Latest news with #BloodSimple
Sydney Morning Herald
17 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Ethan Coen's new crime caper pays homage to campy B-movies
As half of the Coen brothers, Ethan Coen has written and directed films with his brother Joel that pay tribute to many genres, while always looking unmistakably like Coen Bros movies. Going back to 1984, their first feature, Blood Simple, was textbook noir: shot in the shadows, ordinary people doing unspeakably bad things, laden with atmosphere. The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) leant into the snappy dialogue-driven dramas of the '50s; No Country for Old Men adapted Cormac McCarthy's novel with appropriate gravitas; The Big Lebowski (1998) was an absurdist comedy about friendship, bowling and a missing rug. The brothers have carved out their shared name as the go-to weekend entertainment for the university educated. After making The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, their 2018 western, they decided to take a break from working together. What now? Joel Coen chose to make an austere version of Macbeth with his wife, Frances McDormand. His brother, meanwhile, turned to a pleasure he shares with wife Tricia Cooke: B-movie trash. Out of the bottom drawer came a script they wrote 20 years earlier, just as a fun thing to do together, called Drive-Away Dykes. It was a crime caper about a lesbian adventuress and her timid friend who discover on a road trip – which includes a lot of stop-offs at lesbian bars in unexpected places– that they are inadvertently driving away some very dodgy goods. Drive-Away Dolls, as it was renamed for distribution, had a very mixed response. Coen and Cooke, however, felt newly energised. The second in what will be their trilogy of lesbian genre films is Honey Don't!. This time they have gone hard-boiled, with a detective played by Margaret Qualley – who also played the adventurer in Drive-Away Dolls – set against an assortment of dead bodies, dumb cops and a profiteering preacher played with great gusto by Chris Evans, aka Captain America. Like Drive-Away Dolls, it is shot with brightly lit verve by Australian cinematographer Ari Wegner. Neither of them can say exactly what led them down this road. At the most basic level, they are writing the kind of movies they like to see. 'We like B-movies, we like detective movies, we like genre movies and genre fiction of the hard-boiled kind: Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, that kind of stuff,' Ethan Coen says. 'So you write the kind of stuff that you find yourself liking as an audience or as a reader, but it's unlike most examples of the form in that the detective is a lesbian.' They are also on a kind of mission. Cooke says she started looking for films with lesbian characters as a student. 'I didn't really understand my sexual orientation until I was almost an adult, maybe 18,' she says. 'And then, when I was very aware of who I was, I thought I'd watch some lesbian movies – and there just aren't that many. This was the '80s, so most of the ones that existed had tragic ends.' Queer cinema took off in the '90s, but the films were still generally decidedly earnest. Where were the fun lesbians? The road movies and horror? 'So we decided to do that because nobody was doing it.' Cooke joined the Coens' team in 1989. Recently graduated from New York University's film-making course, she got a job as a camera assistant on Miller's Crossing, shooting in New Orleans. Unlike most film buffs of the time, she hadn't seen Blood Simple or Raising Arizona, but someone had put in a good word for her. Later, when she expressed an interest in moving to editing, the brothers took her on as an apprentice in New York; meanwhile, a friendship was brewing. 'Ethan asked me on a date, and we went to see Drugstore Cowboy,' she told Moviemaker magazine. 'I told him, 'I'm a lesbian, I'm not interested'.' In the end, that didn't seem to matter. They married in 1993 and had two children, now adults; the relationship has clearly endured in an unconventional way, with both husband and wife having other partners. 'It's not easy sometimes, and it can be very difficult for even our friends and family to understand,' Cooke said in the Moviemaker interview. 'You navigate it one day at a time. We've been in this kind of dynamic for over 20 years, and we still take it one day at a time.'
The Age
17 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
Ethan Coen's new crime caper pays homage to campy B-movies
As half of the Coen brothers, Ethan Coen has written and directed films with his brother Joel that pay tribute to many genres, while always looking unmistakably like Coen Bros movies. Going back to 1984, their first feature, Blood Simple, was textbook noir: shot in the shadows, ordinary people doing unspeakably bad things, laden with atmosphere. The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) leant into the snappy dialogue-driven dramas of the '50s; No Country for Old Men adapted Cormac McCarthy's novel with appropriate gravitas; The Big Lebowski (1998) was an absurdist comedy about friendship, bowling and a missing rug. The brothers have carved out their shared name as the go-to weekend entertainment for the university educated. After making The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, their 2018 western, they decided to take a break from working together. What now? Joel Coen chose to make an austere version of Macbeth with his wife, Frances McDormand. His brother, meanwhile, turned to a pleasure he shares with wife Tricia Cooke: B-movie trash. Out of the bottom drawer came a script they wrote 20 years earlier, just as a fun thing to do together, called Drive-Away Dykes. It was a crime caper about a lesbian adventuress and her timid friend who discover on a road trip – which includes a lot of stop-offs at lesbian bars in unexpected places– that they are inadvertently driving away some very dodgy goods. Drive-Away Dolls, as it was renamed for distribution, had a very mixed response. Coen and Cooke, however, felt newly energised. The second in what will be their trilogy of lesbian genre films is Honey Don't!. This time they have gone hard-boiled, with a detective played by Margaret Qualley – who also played the adventurer in Drive-Away Dolls – set against an assortment of dead bodies, dumb cops and a profiteering preacher played with great gusto by Chris Evans, aka Captain America. Like Drive-Away Dolls, it is shot with brightly lit verve by Australian cinematographer Ari Wegner. Neither of them can say exactly what led them down this road. At the most basic level, they are writing the kind of movies they like to see. 'We like B-movies, we like detective movies, we like genre movies and genre fiction of the hard-boiled kind: Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, that kind of stuff,' Ethan Coen says. 'So you write the kind of stuff that you find yourself liking as an audience or as a reader, but it's unlike most examples of the form in that the detective is a lesbian.' They are also on a kind of mission. Cooke says she started looking for films with lesbian characters as a student. 'I didn't really understand my sexual orientation until I was almost an adult, maybe 18,' she says. 'And then, when I was very aware of who I was, I thought I'd watch some lesbian movies – and there just aren't that many. This was the '80s, so most of the ones that existed had tragic ends.' Queer cinema took off in the '90s, but the films were still generally decidedly earnest. Where were the fun lesbians? The road movies and horror? 'So we decided to do that because nobody was doing it.' Cooke joined the Coens' team in 1989. Recently graduated from New York University's film-making course, she got a job as a camera assistant on Miller's Crossing, shooting in New Orleans. Unlike most film buffs of the time, she hadn't seen Blood Simple or Raising Arizona, but someone had put in a good word for her. Later, when she expressed an interest in moving to editing, the brothers took her on as an apprentice in New York; meanwhile, a friendship was brewing. 'Ethan asked me on a date, and we went to see Drugstore Cowboy,' she told Moviemaker magazine. 'I told him, 'I'm a lesbian, I'm not interested'.' In the end, that didn't seem to matter. They married in 1993 and had two children, now adults; the relationship has clearly endured in an unconventional way, with both husband and wife having other partners. 'It's not easy sometimes, and it can be very difficult for even our friends and family to understand,' Cooke said in the Moviemaker interview. 'You navigate it one day at a time. We've been in this kind of dynamic for over 20 years, and we still take it one day at a time.'
Toronto Star
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Toronto Star
‘Honey Don't!' review: With this off-kilter Margaret Qualley mystery, a lone Coen brother strikes a strange tone
Honey Don't! 2.5 stars (out of 4) Starring Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza, Chris Evans and Charlie Day. Written by Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke. Directed by Ethan Coen. 89 minutes. Opens Friday at theatres everywhere. 'Have you ever thought about the grand design?' asks an employer of his hapless underling in 1985's 'Crimewave.' The slapstick noir, directed by Sam Raimi, was co-written by Joel and Ethan Coen, fresh off the success of their debut, 'Blood Simple,' one year earlier. For the most part, 'Crimewave' has been written out of all three filmmakers' careers in the decades since (for good reason — it is torturously unfunny), but this winking prompt is a handy entry point into the Coen corpus.
San Francisco Chronicle
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
The Coen brothers have been writing together in San Francisco. But first, there's ‘Honey Don't!'
Good news for Coen brothers fans: Ethan and Joel Coen are getting back together. Eventually. 'I wrote (a script) with Joel maybe a year and a half ago now,' Ethan told the Chronicle, recalling that 'for some reason we were staying in the Castro.' 'It's a horror movie that I hope we get made at some point,' he continued. 'You just don't know in what order they're going to happen.' The reunion won't happen right away, though. The Coen brothers, who debuted in 1984 with the neo-noir 'Blood Simple,' went their separate ways after their 20th film together, 2018's ' The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.' While Joel, a Marin County resident, realized a dream project — an adaptation of Shakespeare's ' The Tragedy of Macbeth ' (2021) — his brother was in New York reconnecting creatively with his wife, Tricia Cooke, an editor of several Coen brothers films. The couple's latest project, 'Honey Don't!,' which Ethan co-wrote with Cooke and directed, is the second entry in a loose lesbian B-movie trilogy, after last year's ' Drive-Away Dolls.' It stars Margaret Qualley as wisecracking Bakersfield private detective Honey O'Donahue, who romances a cop (Aubrey Plaza) while getting in deep with a murder case that might involve a sleazy pastor (Chris Evans). Qualley, who also headlined the crime caper 'Drive-Away Dolls' alongside Beanie Feldstein and Geraldine Viswanathan, has become Cooke and Coen's avatar in the cinematic series. 'She's up for anything you ask her to do,' Cooke said, sitting next to her Coen husband in a recent video interview. 'She just loves to have fun and loves to explore the characters. She also plays well with others and is really great on set; (she) gives back a lot. 'Plus, she's fun to hang out with when you're not shooting, which is the majority of the time you're on set.' Like 'Drive-Away Dolls,' which came in at No. 22 on a recent list of the greatest lesbian-themed movies ever made, 'Honey Don't!' has a pulpy, 1970s grindhouse aesthetic. Coen, the younger of the brothers, said they wanted it to 'feel like one of those movies with Kris Kristofferson in it or something.' 'We looked at a bunch of '70s movies,' he said. 'Detective movies like Robert Altman's 'The Long Goodbye,' but also non-detective movies, like a John Huston movie, 'Fat City,' which is Northern California, Stockton. Movies were better then.' The trilogy also has brought Coen and Cooke's nontraditional relationship into the spotlight. The two have been married since 1993 and have raised two children. But while Coen, 67, is straight, Cooke, 60, is a lesbian. Each is in a relationship with another person. They originally wrote the first draft of 'Drive-Away Dolls' together two decades ago, and decided during the pandemic that they needed to work more closely together. 'We get on really well. We've always been the best of friends,' Cooke said of Coen. 'It's been fun to collaborate with someone that you know you can trust. So it's, 'OK, we're picking up and we're doing this together.' When you're raising kids and, you know, we don't have a conventional relationship, we didn't get to spend as much time together (in the past).' But Cooke notes their project isn't just playful genre fare. It's also an act of resistance shaped by her concerns about the growing threats against unconventional relationships like theirs and the MAGA movement in general. 'This movie flies in the face of what they're trying to take away from us,' Cooke said. 'There's a bit in this movie about guns, like Honey says, 'Why do you assholes always have guns? ' I do a lot of gun violence prevention, activism work. The people in power who were elected by the majority are taking away everything that we worked so hard for. So (this type of movie) is something that they're going to want to get rid of soon. Like, who knows what's coming.' For now, Coen and Cooke are working on their third B-movie lesbian project, which has the working title of 'Go, Beavers!' and centers on the reunion of a women's college crew team. And then there's that Coen brothers reunion, which would seem to have some motivation behind it. In June, the New York Times polled film industry luminaries, critics and the general public to assess the 100 greatest movies of the 21st century so far. Four Coen brothers movies, including the Oscar-winning ' No Country for Old Men,' made the list. 'Um, what was wrong with the other 15 we did? I felt slighted,' Coen joked. 'No, It's great. I don't know what to make of it, but it's great.'
Time Out
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
A Simple Accident
It's a suitably arresting set-up for Jafar Panahi' s politically charged and darkly hilarious abduction movie – especially when it becomes clear what's going on: impulsive mechanic Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) believes he's caught the brutal interrogator who once tortured him for three months and left him scarred – a man given the epithets 'Peg Leg' and 'the Gimp' by his victims. The guy in cuffs has a prosthetic leg, just like the Gimp, who lost his fighting in Syria. It scans. But like so much else in this blackly brilliant film, a question mark hangs over this Blood Simple- style scenario. Is this man, played by Ebrahim Azizi, really the author of his suffering or is he just a family man called Eghbal, as he claims? All the Gimp's victims were blindfolded, so how can anyone be sure? Panahi is a formidably courageous filmmaker who has spent time in jail at the hands of his country's repressive regime. Here, he brings deep feeling to a movie that often plays closer to a straight comedy than a fiercer indictment of the state or a Munich -like morality tale about justice and vengeance. You can definitely sense the directorial wish-fulfilment in the carnivalesque that follows as Vahid drags the drugged Eghbal around Tehran in his beat-up transit van, gathering a small band of fellow victims to help him identify the man and decide what to do with him. Joining this increasingly hapless quest are wedding snapper Shiva (Mariam Afshari), a soon-to-be newlywed couple (Hadis Pakbaten and Majid Panahi), and the relentlessly impulsive Hamid (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr). All have traumatic personal connects to the torturer. Farhadi has a whale of a time taking the piss out of his country's corruption The director is clearly having a whale of a time taking the piss out of the corruption, cruelty and bribery rife in his country. One police officer even fishes out a card reader to take a bribe when the gang don't have cash to hand to get out of a tight spot. Panahi holds this tonal range expertly as laughs give away to a probing, philosophical third act that upends expectations in quietly thrilling style. And there's deep seriousness, and a streak of real darkness, beneath the big laughs. The fact that a soon-to-be-married couple, dressed in their wedding finery for a photoshoot that Vahid has interrupted, join the revenge mission is not just the punchline for some great jokes, it feels symbolic too. A Simple Accident is a journey through a county whose trauma still needs healing before healthy new bonds can begin to form. The question of how to achieve that lies at the heart of this masterful movie.
