The Ladykillers always comes in last.

Click here to read David Haglund's essay on watching all of the Coen brothers' movies.

Ranking the films of Joel and Ethan Coen is something of an online pastime. Christopher Orr of the Atlantic submitted his order last December, the same month Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post offered her more eccentric take (check out Nos. 11-14), and just after Andrew Osborne did the same for Nerve. Salon outsourced the question of "best Coens movie" to several writers and film folk a year before that, while AMC let visitors to their website decide the question. Rotten Tomatoes has compiled a list of the 10 best-reviewed Coen movies.

Averaging all of the rankings, you get a list that looks something like this:

1. Fargo
2. Raising Arizona
3. Miller's Crossing
4. No Country for Old Men
5. The Big Lebowski
6. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
7. True Grit
8. Barton Fink
9. Blood Simple
10. Burn After Reading
11. A Serious Man
12. TheHudsucker Proxy
13. The Man Who Wasn't There
14. Intolerable Cruelty
15. The Ladykillers

A few notes: Fargo was never ranked lower than third; Raising Arizona was never ranked higher than third; No Country for Old Men would rank second if not for Ann Hornaday's oddly complete distaste for it; Barton Fink (as high as No. 2 and as low as No. 13) and The Big Lebowski (from No. 1 to No. 11) are probably the most divisive. The bottom four are almost unanimous.

I have no particular desire to be a contrarian, and my own list is not far from what seems to be the (very rough) consensus. I do think that A Serious Man and, to a lesser extent, The Man Who Wasn't There, are underrated (their common feature: both are a little boring), while O Brother Where Art Thou? and, to a lesser extent, Miller's Crossing are a bit overrated (their common feature: a Southern setting?). My preference, I will freely admit, is for the stranger of the Coens' movies, which is reflected in the labels I've given to the groupings below. (I feel stronger about the groupings than I do about the order within them). I settled on Fargo at No. 1 in part because, with its noir-ish plot, dark humor, and Minnesota setting, it feels a bit like the quintessential Coen brothers movie.

By the way, even the "misfires" are pretty good. All but the last two in this list reward repeated viewing. (I tried to watch The Ladykillers a second time; I failed.)

The Trinity

Fargo
The Big Lebowski
No Country for Old Men

The Great Oddities