With a revival of Clifford Odets’s Paradise Lost running at Intiman, now’s the perfect time to revisit the Coen brothers’ creepy comedy about an Odets-like writer trapped in 1940s Hollywood hell. Perched stylistically between the slow-boil smallness of Blood Simple and the arch cartoonishness of The Hudsucker Proxy, Barton Fink claimed a rare sweep at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, winning best picture, best director, and best actor (for John Turturro). Go see why. (Metro Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave NE, 781-5755. 6:50 and 9:10 pm, $10.)

David Schmader—former weed columnist and Stranger associate editor—is the author of the solo plays Straight and Letter to Axl, which he’s performed in Seattle and across the US. His latest...

4 replies on “‘Barton Fink’”

  2. I believe I must be the only person on earth who hated every second of this movie, its script, and Turturro’s performance. HATED it. I loved “Blood Simple”, and “Hudsucker” was, eh, mildly entertaining, but “Barton Fink” is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. Every other person in the universe disagrees with me.

  3. @2- Don’t worry fnarf, most people haven’t actually seen Barton Fink.

    But if they had, they’d disagree with you.

    It is a work of pure genius.

  4. @2,

    We may disagree on Muriel Spark, but we’re in perfect accord on Barton Fink. One of the most tedious, cliched movies I’ve ever seen.

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