A Serious Man (the Coen brothers, 2009)

The Coens get back on track after some wobbles with a walk in the shoes of Allenesque nebbish Larry Gopnik, a physics professor in a parodically drab Minnesota in 1967. We follow his travails as he gets progressively crapped on from all sides, finding safe haven neither with family nor work, and ineffectually incredulous at the build-up of anxieties from financial to medical, culminating in the spiritual.
Of course it probably helps the Coens' task that they're firmly on home ground, incorporating many elements of their Mid-Western childhoods, and ambition is therefore not this film's key virtue. But making a put-upon drip's midlife crisis at once excruciatingly hilarious and poignant is no small order, and it's executed with their trademark lightness and elan. Few filmmakers display such a mastery of the nuances and twists of dialogue or characterisation.

7/10