97/100

An odyssey through cigarette smoke, carrying a lonely soul from couch to couch and from disappointment to disappointment. Chilly, wintry cinema, packed with typical Coens humor (I could listen to Mulligan rant about condoms for days) but also distanced from the crisp time-period that it's depicting. Like the Coen Brothers have said, there's no need to parody the folk genre as everything is right up there on the screen, but there's still a plethora of swelling comfort and unwelcoming depression to be found, sliding a detailed character study into the aura of a peculiar environment. My favorite Coen Brothers film, and if I had to pick one reason why, I'd point you to the moment where an orange tabby cat experiences the rush of the subway for the first time, following the rapid lights as they strobe into oblivion.

a hell of a lot of truth in this. a hell of a lot of truth. broad cuts at the divide between living & simply being alive, but perhaps more than anything else a gently devastating look at how people change (or how they don't). need to let this one kick around (and will surely revisit a ridiculous number of times over the years) but already comfortable saying that it's up there with the the Coen brothers' very best.

"Llewyn is the cat."

Even richer on second viewing. I feel you could watch this movie 100 times and not reach bottom. I laughed more, and I was moved more, and one performance choked me up more.

Someone needs to do a video essay putting the opening and closing scenes side by side, comparing and contrasting each shot and line reading, and examining what's changed and what stays the same, and why.

oscar isaac is TOO POWERFUL

this movie could have been about ten minutes long but instead it was two and a half hours, the character development was awful, there was no plot, BUT the music and visuals were somewhat redeeming

Love the picture it painted: that there are artists that will never find their breakthrough, the ones stuck in a loop, the ones who'll just accept the cesspool. It's a hard reality but that's what makes the film really endearing. It shows the never ending struggle of artists who are most of the time unaware of what they want or resigned to what's just available for them.

Great performances, of course from Mr. Isaac himself as the damaged, desperate but in denial Davis and Mulligan as a sharp-tongued temptress. The folk songs are the food for the soul and the inclusion of the cats really brings all the fuzzies.

Here's to the ones who dream...oops, wrong film.

an adorable cat & oscar issac singing? i loved it

"Fare thee well."

Optimism, disappointment, success, failure, cynicism, self-destruction, failure, disappointment, self-destruction, surrender.

That damn cat.

96%

Hang me oh hang me...

wheeww that was EXCELLENT