Barton Fink
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.05 You Save: $5.93 (59%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $2.60 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Barton Fink
Movie Review: A wrestling picture
Summary: 5 Stars
This marvellous surreal movie from the Coen brothers centers around Barton Fink (John Turturro), a successful New York playwright who is lured to Hollywood with the prospect of big money and stardom. On arrival though he gets writers block and is unable to produce the screenplay for the wrestling picture that Jack Lipnick requires.
Lipnick as played by Michael Lerber is the classic studio boss taken to the extreme. Both terrifying in his power and very funny. A truly mesmerising performance by Lerner. However the cast are all excellent. John Mahoney is also great as W.P. Mayhew a famous Hollywood writer that Barton looks to for help. As it turns out he is a roaring drunk and his wife actually does most of the writing. The scenes involving Mayhew are hilarious. A lot of the time he is not even in shot but you can hear him screaming in the background (for example "Honey! Where's my honey?") as Barton tries to arrange a meeting with him through his wife.
And then there is John Goodman. He plays Charlie Meadows ostensibly an insurance salesman staying in a room near Barton in the same hotel. However Meadows is not what he seems, but I'll leave it up to you to decide what he really is..... Goodman as he was in The Big Lebowski is in scene stealing form.
So this is a typical Coen brothers movie, very funny in places, very weird in places, and overall superb.
Movie Review: "A Lifetime or an Eternity."
Summary: 5 Stars
Like any Coen Brothers movie, this one recreates time and place perfectly for the viewer. You'll have few doubts that you are in 1941 Hollywood by the look and feel of this film. As always, they throw historical figures into the the mix like a terrific send-up of William Faulkner and John Goodman's "Mad Man Munt." Speaking of Goodman, I will say nothing of the plot here but you will be amazed as to how excelsior his performance is by the end. I don't know how he could possibly have been better than he was.
With Turturro's Barton Fink, the plot embraces a remarkable character. He is the classic playwright who disdains snobbery and longs to represent "the common man," but, when he actually meets one he has absolutely no interest in listening or getting to know him. Goodman tells him repeatedly, "I could tell you stories" but Fink interrupts and has no interest in listening. He is asked to write a wrestling picture but knows nothing about wrestling. The characters of Lipnick and Geisler are also real treats. The only bad thing I can say about it is that it wasn't "Miller's Crossing" but what is?
Movie Review: Did "Barton Fink" really happen?
Summary: 5 Stars
Barton Fink is one of the most fascinating films I've seen in a long time. The amazing thing about this movie is that having seen it, one immediately wants to talk to someone about what it really was about. Most of the characters are not what they seem -- they all have a normal and a very dark side, which gets revealed as the movie goes along.
A possible interpretation of this movie is that the entire movie from the opening scene to the end is nothing but a dream that exists in the head of the protagonist -- Barton Fink. There are so many sets and scenes in the film that have a creepy, surreal and dream-image quality. The movie is as plausible as nothing but a horrible nightmare from which the author, Barton Fink, must gratefully awaken at the end, rather than being a sequence of "real" events. Virtually all of the acting is first-rate.
I think this lesser-known movie is a great achievement, on a par with Fargo or even with O Brother Where Art Thou, in its own right. A must see whether you are a Coen Brothers fan or not.
Movie Review: at last this film is on dvd
Summary: 5 Stars
For those of you who have not seen this movie, it is an astounding film. This is among the best of the Coen Brother'swork. Don't expect Big Lebowski kind of comedy in this one though. It is a DARK comedy. Big Lebowski is much more lighthearted in its delivery. So, a brief synopsis goes like this: Young Barton Fink is the toast of Manhattan. His newest play is a major success, still his agent advises him to take a job writing films in Hollywood. Fink comes to find California to be very disturbing. His boss worships him and is clearly demented. The novelist Fink idolizes is a violent alcoholic who has been used up and spat out by the studio. To top it off his neighbor at his hotel is loud, dimwitted, and disrupting our Barton Fink's creative process. Will Fink be capable of writing a wrestling picture that captures the "Barton Fink" style? Will Hollywood devour poor Barton instead? Find out when this hits the shelves. For those of you who have seen this movie, I share your anticipation of its now inevitable release on DVD. Goodnight.
Movie Review: Barton Fink: I've always found that writing comes from a great inner pain.
Summary: 5 Stars
One of the finest Coen Brothers' films, "Barton Fink" (1990) is a skillful inspired mixture of the real and unreal, the nightmarish Lynch - Kafkaesque vision of 1940s Hollywood. Barton Fink, a talented and serious New York playwright is hired by a big movie studio to write a screenplay about wrestling. Soon he finds himself in a writer block, and his hotel neighbor, chatty insurance salesman Charlie (John Goodman, one of Coens' favorite actors) tries to help him out by teaching Fink about wrestling. The situation gets out of control, becomes more and more nightmarish and surreal; and then, one day, two homicide detectives show up at Fink's hotel and want to ask him a few questions.
"Barton Fink" broke the Cannes Festival's record taking three major awards, Golden Palm, the director's prize and the best actor award for John Turturro (the regular actor in Coens' films). I think all awards were well deserved - the film is unforgettable