Cop (James B. Harris, 1988)

Cast: James Woods, Charles Durning, Lesley Ann Warren, Charles Haid, Raymond J. Barry, Randi Brooks, Stephen Lambert. Screenplay: James B. Harris, based on a novel by James Ellroy. Cinematography: Steve Dubin. Production design: Gene Rudolf. Film editing: Anthony Spano. Music: Michael Colombier. 

Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet, 1975)

Cast: Al Pacino, John Cazale, Charles Durning, Chris Sarandon, Sully Boyar, Carol Kane, James Broderick, Lance Henriksen, Susan Peretz, Judith Malina. Screenplay: Frank Pierson. Cinematography: Victor J. Kemper. Production design: Charles Bailey. Film editing: Dede Allen.

Dog Day Afternoon is a tragicomic docudrama about an ill-advised, ill-planned bank robbery that went wrong in almost all ways imaginable. It gave Al Pacino one of his most entertainingly flamboyant roles as Sonny Wortzik, who wants the money to pay for his lover's sex reassignment surgery. In its day, this motive might have been played more for laughs than it would be today, but Chris Sarandon's performance as Leon, who wants to transition to female, brought a measure of sympathy to the character that it might otherwise have lacked. The film is, like so many of director Sidney Lumet's, notable not only for standout performances like Pacino's and Sarandon's, but also for its exceptional ensemble work among the hostages in the bank and the cops outside, a result of Lumet's going beyond the screenplay (which won an Oscar for Frank Pierson) to workshop dialogue and business among the groups, playing up the emerging Stockholm Syndrome of the hostages and the itchiness of the impatient cops. 

The Hudsucker Proxy (Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, 1994)

Cast: Tim Robbins, Paul Newman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Charles Durning, Jim True-Frost, John Mahoney, Bill Cobbs, Bruce Campbell. Screenplay: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Sam Raimi. Cinematography: Roger Deakins. Production design: Dennis Gassner. Film editing: Thom Noble. Music: Carter Burwell.

Maybe the most divisive of the Coen brothers' movies. It's certified rotten on Rotten Tomatoes at 57%, but even there you'll find reviewers who think it "criminally overlooked and sinfully wonderful" and "A wickedly funny and incisive lampoon of big business." I had avoided it for years, but when I gave in and finally watched it I was occasionally amused and sometimes surprised. What doesn't work for me, however, is its hommage to the screwball comedies of the 1930s and '40s. That sort of thing is rarely worth doing, unless you do it with unabashed affection, as Peter Bogdanovich did in What's Up, Doc? (1972). Bogdanovich wisely took the tropes of classic screwball and updated them. The Coens and co-writer Sam Raimi, however, make the mistake of retaining for their film the period in which screwball flourished, and the contrast of their ersatz screwball with the real thing becomes apparent.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2000)

On the scale for goofy Coen brothers films, O Brother, Where Art Thou? falls somewhere between Raising Arizona (1987) and The Big Lebowski (1998) from goofiest to least goofy. It is, I think, more over-the-top than is absolutely necessary, especially in the idiot hick accents adopted by John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson in their roles. Or maybe they just seem that way because of the differently over-the-top performance of George Clooney as Ulysses Everett McGill, a man who thinks he talks more intelligently than he does. Still, I like Clooney in this mode, more than I do when he's playing a serious character, and it's to the Coens' credit that they cast him in the role: His performance gives an odd kind of off-balance stability to that of the other two. The chief glory of the movie, however, is its music, chosen by T Bone Burnett, superbly evoking a time and place. As for that time and place, Depression-era Mississippi, the movie pretty much ignores reality in favor of goofing around. It was the era of Bilbo and Vardaman, politicians of deeply cynical evil, and the rival candidates played by Charles Durning and Wayne Duvall don't even approach their horror, even when lampooning it. I laughed when the Ku Klux Klan performed what looked like a marching band half-time routine with a chant that evokes the parading monkey guards in The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939), but maybe it's the outcome of the recent presidential election that made me feel a little nauseated at even the notion of a comical Klan. A kind of irresponsibility mars the Coens' approach to the material, brilliantly funny as it often is. That said, the pacing of the movie is lively, and it's filled with ever-watchable performers like Durning, Holly Hunter, and John Goodman at their best. And there's always that music: If I'm inclined to forgive the Coens for their irresponsibility, it's because they introduced a lot of people who went out and bought the soundtrack album to some great music.