BARTON FINK (1991)
This was the Coen brothers’ fourth film, written during a period of writer’s block for their third, Miller’s Crossing. By a spooky coincidence, that is the same problem that afflicts John Turturro’s eponymous New York scribe, who has sacrificed intellectual pride for a shot at commercial gratification in 1940s Hollywood. It’s a portentous, stylised black comedy with a cracking turn from John Goodman as an affable insurance salesman and a coda that mirrors the rise of Nazism. But it remains unreleased in the region 2 format, so Fink fans must look to the West for the US version.
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Ed Potton