Does have its delicious moments and Michael Stuhlbarg does give an excellent, exasperated, frazzled lead performance... But without any warmth or expansiveness it all seems too cruelly easy and shrivelling somehow.

| Aug 30, 2018

The entire script is a mishmash: funny, droll, and anxiety producing, just like daily life in many Jewish families.

| Jan 17, 2018

See this movie for a good laugh, and know that no matter what's going on in your life, A Serious Man proves things can certainly get worse.

| Original Score: B | Sep 11, 2017

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 16, 2011

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 16, 2011

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 16, 2011

The Coens may play around with that tradition, they may disparage it or mock it. But they are irrevocably a part of it, and that's all to the good.

| Original Score: B+ | Jul 6, 2010

If you're puzzled by the Coen Brothers' horrific comedies, this is the closest thing you'll get to an explanation.

| Jul 6, 2010

A sincerely sympathetic portrait of an American family man in crisis - even as it insults its characters and derides their culture.

Full Review | Jul 6, 2010

Admirers of the Coens - including those who have lapsed, like myself - will rejoice in their best film for a long while, and one of their most irreducibly oddball.

Full Review | Nov 27, 2009

Admirably low-key, deeply compelling and their warmest movie since Fargo.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 20, 2009

The film's potency is rooted in quiet precision and detailed realisation. Roger Deakins's typically polished photography gives an oppressively hard edge to Midwestern suburbia.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 20, 2009

A Serious Man represents the brothers at their sardonic best, wringing a sacrilegious amount of gallows humour from the trials of their latterday Job.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 20, 2009

Euphoric, sad and thoughtful all at once... The Coens have finished the noughties as America's pre-eminent film-makers.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 20, 2009

A Serious Man, whether by accident or design, feels like a scratchier, more personal, less goofy version of the Coens' aesthetic than they've revealed before. Here's hoping their films get even more truculent in the future.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 20, 2009

For proof of comedy and tragedy's close relationship, watch this. Larry is essentially having a nervous breakdown yet it's the Coens' most humanely funny script in years.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 20, 2009

There's no real answer given, but then the Coen brothers have never been known as philosophers. They are, however, pretty smart film-makers.

Full Review | Nov 20, 2009

Another impudent and exquisitely engineered comedy from Joel and Ethan Coen.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 20, 2009

Comedy, even tragicomedy, should not feel like such hard work.

| Nov 20, 2009

Some will call this a masterpiece; others will find it dull. It's a well-made film, but many audiences will find it hard to engage with.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 20, 2009