Review of Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) by Thomas W — 23 May 2014

I'm not really sure how this one went un-reviewed for so long. While 12 Years a Slave won the Academy Award for Best Picture last year, my personal favorite film got a single nomination! That film would be Inside Llewyn Davis, a Coen Brothers film about a Greenwich Village folk singer in the early 1960s played by a shame-he-wasn't-nominated Oscar Isaac (Drive).

The beautifully shot film -- its sole nomination was cinematography -- recreates an authentic-looking NYC of yesteryear and showcases a folk scene long-ago forgotten when people believed their music and lyrics meant something and could change the world if people simply listened.

At times antagonistic, insolent, self-interested, loathsome, independent and proud, Llewyn Davis struggles as we all do while being most responsible for his own roadblocks to the elusive "stardom" he hopes to one day achieve.

Justin Timberlake, Carey Mulligan, John Goodman and Garrett Hedlund co-star as either fellow folk-artists or people he meets on his difficult-or-impossible (?) journey. There is mythic inspiration and real-life influences in Llewyn .

.. the Coen Brothers done good. They done real good! I LOVED this. Oh ... and the soundtrack is awesome-ness!