{"id":5263,"date":"2017-01-04T15:56:46","date_gmt":"2017-01-04T20:56:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/?p=5263"},"modified":"2025-02-15T12:19:38","modified_gmt":"2025-02-15T17:19:38","slug":"a-serious-man-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/?p=5263","title":{"rendered":"A Serious Man-2009"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>A Serious Man-2009<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Director Joel Coen, Ethan Coen<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Starring Michael Stuhlbarg<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Scott&#8217;s Review #582<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/70114021.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-5264\" src=\"http:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/70114021-210x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"210\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/70114021-210x300.jpg 210w, https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/70114021.jpg 284w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 210px) 100vw, 210px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Reviewed January 4, 2017<\/p>\n<p><strong>Grade: B<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A Serious Man (2009) is a quirky, odd film that is a character study.<\/p>\n<p>Directed by the Coen brothers who typically have an offbeat style to their films (No Country For Old Men-2007, and Fargo-1996 spring to mind), A Serious Man is no different, offering wonderful, richly written supporting characters.<\/p>\n<p>The film, however, lacks the violence of other Coen Brothers films, instead, adding more humorous situations and an overall comical premise.<\/p>\n<p>It tells the story of a Jewish Professor, Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), living in the 1960s, and has a string of bad luck. People close to Larry begin to drop dead all around him and he seems cursed with a string of bad luck.<\/p>\n<p>The film centers around how he deals with crisis after crisis.<\/p>\n<p>The first half of the film admittedly drags a bit, but the second part picks up nicely. The plot suddenly comes to a head rather quickly.<\/p>\n<p>To stress, A Serious Man is a witty, dark comedy, so much of the dialogue is either tongue-in-cheek or dry.<\/p>\n<p>The rabbis that Larry meets, combined with his son Danny and wife Judith are very funny and well-carved-out characters, many certain &#8220;types&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The character of Larry also contained elements of the Larry David character on TV&#8217;s Curb Your Enthusiasm.<\/p>\n<p>Also, for those cinema lovers who pay close attention to or have an appreciation for good set design, the film captures the 1960&#8217;s style (dress, furniture, cars), perfectly.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oscar Nominations:\u00a0<\/strong>Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay<\/p>\n<p><strong>Independent Spirit Award Nominations: 2 wins-<\/strong>Best Director-Joel and Ethan Coen, Best Cinematography <strong>(won)<\/strong>, Robert Altman Award <strong>(won)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Serious Man-2009 Director Joel Coen, Ethan Coen Starring Michael Stuhlbarg Scott&#8217;s Review #582 Reviewed January 4, 2017 Grade: B A Serious Man (2009) is a quirky, odd film that is a character study. Directed by the Coen brothers who typically have an offbeat style to their films (No Country For Old Men-2007, and Fargo-1996 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/?p=5263\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A Serious Man-2009<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[308,49,179,41,215],"tags":[2047,6329,1481,2825,5695,6141],"class_list":["post-5263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2009-movie-reviews","category-comedies","category-darkcomedies","category-indiefilms","category-indie-comedies","tag-adam-arkin","tag-amy-landecker","tag-coen-brothers","tag-michael-stuhlbarg","tag-richard-kind","tag-simon-helberg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5263"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19728,"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5263\/revisions\/19728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}