A Serious Man

It reviews better than it plays — admired more than it is enjoyed.

• “One doesn't know how (auto)biographical any or all of this is, but there's a tartness to the telling of what amounts to a well-shaped series of anecdotes that bespeaks distant pain or, at least, wincing memory twisted into mordant comedy by time and sensibility.”

  Todd McCarthy, Variety · 100

• “See this film immediately.”

  Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out · 100

• “I found this beautifully crafted movie to be frequently hilarious, consistently surprising and rigged with spring-loaded narrative bombs, from its opening scene to its devastating final shot.”

  Andrew O'Hehir, Salon · 100

• “Writer-directors Joel and Ethan have seized the opportunity afforded by the Oscar-winning success of "No Country for Old Men," to make their most personal, most intensely Jewish film, a pitch-perfect comedy of despair that, against some odds, turns out to be one of their most universal as well.”

  Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times · 100

• “The story is at once hilarious and horrific, its significance both self-evident and opaque. The same could be said of most of the Coen brothers’ movies, in which human existence and the attempt to find meaning in it are equally futile, if also sometimes a lot of fun. (For us, at least.)”

  A.O. Scott, The New York Times · 100