The Coen Brothers’ Movies Have Been Ranked Using Emoji, and It’s Brilliant

Ranking the Coen Brothers’ movies is nothing new, but using emoji to do it is. Actor Paul Rust has done just that on Twitter, and it’s a testament to both the cinematic siblings’ singular body of work and Rust’s emoji-choosing abilities that it’s surprisingly easy to decipher his choices. When #1 is signified by a pregnant woman and a female cop, for instance, it’s clear he’s chosen “Fargo” as his top choice; a bowling ball and pins can only mean that “The Big Lebowski” has come in at #5.

Here are all of his choices:

Coen Bros ranked
1. 🤰👮‍♀️
2. 💈
3. 🤼‍♂️🎞
4. 🚫🇺🇸👴🏻
5. 🎳
6. 💉🤤
7. 👶
8. ⭕️
9. ✝️ 🎞
10. ✡️🌪
11. 🔥 📖
12. 🎼🗽
13. 🌬 🎩
14. ⚖️ 💔
15. 🤠🐴
16. 👨‍👩‍👧‍👧 ❓
17. The Ladykillers

— Paul Rust (@paulrust) October 20, 2018

And here they are decoded (#9 wasn’t so easy to figure out):

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

Rust’s low placement of “True Grit” is somewhat questionable, but his choices are otherwise solid — “The Man Who Wasn’t There” is truly one of the brothers’ best outings, though it’s rarely recognized as such, and “No Country for Old Men” being right next to “The Big Lebowski” demonstrates their range as clearly as anything else could.

We’ll soon have another movie to add to the list, as the Coen Brothers’ “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” recently premiered at the Venice Film Festival. An anthology Western, it’s divided into six short tales and won the festival’s Best Screenplay award. Netflix will release the film on November 16.