Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

merelyaninnuendo Inside Llewyn DavisEthan and Joel seems a bit distracted somewhere in the middle through a brief period of time but then comes back with more than anticipated and leaves you mesmerized in the end.

disinterested_spectator The Coen brothers have made a movie about a self-important, obnoxious bum who sponges off people because he believes he was meant for better things than holding down a job. But such a movie, without any frills, would immediately be dismissed as irritating and boring. And so it needs some frills.First, they decided to make this bum a folk singer. They had previously made the movie "O Brother Where Art Thou?" (2000), which succeeded with people that liked the music, although it failed miserably with anyone that did not. So maybe they figured this movie would appeal to people that like folk music. And even if the folk music in the movie is pretty bad, at least as far as the music performed by the title character is concerned, we know we are supposed to overlook the fact that he is a self-important, obnoxious bum because he is an artist, and that means we are supposed to care.Frill number two is a cat. Having a cat continually appear and then disappear gives the movie a motif, making it appear that there is some deeper, hidden meaning to it all. There isn't, but something has to get this movie on its legs. The cat eventually turns out to have the name Ulysses. Gosh, you mean the return of the cat is like the return of Ulysses? Well, telling a dumb story with parallels to "The Odyssey" worked for James Joyce, so maybe the Coen brothers figured it would work for them too. And it recalls the main character in the movie "O Brother Where Art Thou?" So make that two dumb movies by the Coen brothers that are supposed to be spiced up somehow by alluding Homer's epic, with the second one also alluding to the first.Finally, there is a time loop. Sort of. Except that in the second iteration of the time loop, the cat does not get away. Now, there are some pretty good time loop movies. "Dead of Night" (1945) was the first movie I know of to try this, and it worked fairly well. And, of course, the greatest such movie is "Groundhog Day" (1993). But does a time loop belong in a movie about a folk singer? I mean, some genres don't really mix well. It's like a movie that starts out as a murder mystery, and halfway through, while we are trying to figure out who done it, Godzilla comes to town. However, the Coen brothers were desperate for another frill to keep this movie from seeming to be what it really is, and so a time loop is what we get.

jfgibson73 So I think this movie is saying that terrible people can be capable of beautiful art. It spends its time following around a folk singer bumming through Manhattan. He gets his friend's girlfriend pregnant, he sleeps at other peoples' apartments, he treats people poorly, and then he gets on stage and sings nicely. That's it. When the movie ended, I decided I hadn't really cared about anything I'd watched, and I wasn't especially taken by its message, either. Are the filmmakers trying to excuse themselves for something they've done by making a movie about the redeeming qualities of art? It's kind of like what Woody Allen seemed to be saying with Deconstructing Harry. But the bottom line was that there weren't any very entertaining moments.

sharpobject2424 ** SPOILERS **Inside Llewyn Davis personally swept me away the first time I saw it and my head was swimming with the events throughout the story and the interpretations of them as I understood it. Please keep in mind as you read this that I'm speaking of art and interpretations are all they could possibly be, not anything concrete. But I have gathered that some people don't take much from the movie while I found at least the overall theme of an endless cycle to be pretty much blatant. Anywho this review is mostly for those viewers. So the most salient theme like I said is that of the endless cycle we follow Llewyn through. The relentless, crushing cycle of Llewyns life and the painful monotony of it all is only magnified by the casual way the viewer glimpses into it, as if it's inconsequential when the story starts or ends. I felt that in the last leg of the movie it was very obvious that this was simply another week in the life of Llewyn Davis. The constant familiar occurrences of a person making the same decisions in the same place, something not exclusive to a struggling musician but relevant all the same. It can be argued that none of these events are actually very significant, but simply tell Llewyns revolving story. The end is a kind of repeat of the beginning, but I feel convinced that some things may have not been there before when Llewyn experienced it. First I found that the poster Llewyn notices before his last gig seems very important. It's a movie poster that says "The Fantastic Journey" or something of the sort, a stimulus that to me suggests that Llewyns repetitive misadventures are not the end-all, but instead a means to an end. In other words the idea as I'm explaining it is that perhaps his story was not meaningless and it was a journey taking him to whatever's next. He plays his last gig and is socked by the same or similar goon as he was in the beginning, while Bob Dylan performs at the Gaslight, probably for the first time. If the goon represented the folk scene, or Llewyns environment in general (both of which were constantly "kicking him down" or whatever), then Llewyn literally says goodbye to that life at the end as the goon is driven away. This is placed perfectly with Bob Dylans performance because the monumental success of Dylans career was sure to be the final nail in Llewyns coffin. I also like to think that maybe there were signs earlier in the movie that Llewyn was staging his gradual exit. For instance, he got his shipping papers in order but there was a setback. So of course here he is playing The Gaslight again, and the cycle continues. Only now he is one big step closer to moving on and possibly, finally, being released from the cycle. So it can even be interpreted that any other week in this story is similar, but maybe peppered with these small steps. Another example of this is how he didn't let the cat out of the apartment the second time he left. Another small step. (The cat is a whole different review worth of speculation btw). Exceptional film. Perfectly executed I thought, and with a real artistic integrity. I think some people are bored by the music scenes, and I'm a musician so I really can't comment on that too objectively, but at the risk of sounding smug I can't help but say that if you didn't have the patience for the music scenes in this movie, or Treme, or things of the sort, then you really might not love music as much as you probably say you do.