All Coen Brothers Movies, Ranked: Bowlers deal with blackmailers. Burglars become bunglers. Imperfect crimes fall apart as easily as snow falls from the sky. Kitschiness is found in the most highbrow of places. Those are just some of the motifs that outline the filmography of Joel and Ethan Coen, who have been staking a claim over the American cinematic landscape for close to 40 years. Few filmmakers have been able to simultaneously flaunt their influences and push the medium forward in as exciting of a way as the Coen brothers have. Toying with conventions to the point that they’ve quietly pulled the rug without viewers even noticing, the writer-director siblings have given new meaning to comedy, drama, horror, westerns, film noir, and even musicals. And they’ve done it all without ever going so far as to make the same film twice.

It could be said that it’s just...