Kurt Loder Reviews Inside Llewyn Davis and Out of the Furnace

Inside Llewyn Davis is a ramblin’ kind
of movie with several things to recommend it. The ramblin’ is a
problem, though, says Kurt Loder. The Coen brothers, co-writing and
-directing once again, have set their story in the Greenwich
Village folk scene of the early 1960s. The movie is selectively
drawn from The Mayor of MacDougal Street, a 2005
memoir by the late Village folksinger Dave Van Ronk. Oscar Isaac,
who plays the fictitious Llewyn Davis, doesn’t much resemble Van
Ronk—a bear of a man with bluesy inclinations. But Isaac’s sweeter
voice has its own appeal, as does his unadorned fingerpicking
guitar style. Out of the Furnace, by contrast, is both
unflinchingly brutal and strikingly pointless, says Loder.

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