Inside Llewyn Davis
CBS Films | Release Date: December 6, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
93
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 53 Critic Reviews
Positive:
53
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The AtlanticJon FroschNov 8, 2022
A razor-sharp deadpan comedy suffused with sorrow. Read full review
100
Screen DailyTim GriersonAug 7, 2017
Thanks to a sterling lead performance from Oscar Isaac, the Coen brothers have once again delivered an impressively nuanced character study — one that has much to say about art, compromise and all the aspiring hopefuls who never got their moment in the sun. Read full review
100
CineVueDaniel GreenAug 7, 2017
Featuring a breakthrough lead turn from Oscar Isaac as a struggling folk singer, the Coens have returned to the high watermark of such classic efforts as Miller's Crossing and Barton Fink. Read full review
100
IGNLeigh SingerAug 7, 2017
The times they are a-changin’ but the Coens keep bringing the hits back home. A masterpiece. Read full review
100
Total FilmPhilip KempJan 21, 2014
The Coen brothers on top sardonic form with a winning tale of an incorrigible loser. Hits the right note on every level, from period vibe to performance (human and feline). Read full review
100
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallJan 9, 2014
The Coens fashion an atmospheric descent for Llewyn, a meticulous re-creation of Greenwich Village's folk scene in 1961, around the time Bob Dylan hit town. Read full review
100
Portland OregonianMarc MohanDec 20, 2013
As flawless as any film this year and rock-solid confirmation that Joel and Ethan Coen are the greatest filmmakers working in America (and perhaps anywhere else) today. Read full review
100
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaDec 20, 2013
Inside Llewyn Davis plays like some beautiful, foreboding, darkly funny dream. Read full review
100
Washington PostAnn HornadayDec 19, 2013
This soulful, unabashedly lyrical film is best enjoyed by sinking into it like a sweet, sad dream. When you wake up, a mythical place and time will have disappeared forever. But you’ll know that attention — briefly, beautifully — has been paid. Read full review
100
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonDec 19, 2013
What Inside Llewyn Davis is all about: the passion, and the pain, of being an artist. Read full review
100
EmpireDan JolinDec 19, 2013
Inside Llewyn Davis throbs with melancholy, hunches under heavy skies, revels in music history's unsexiest scene and unapologetically leaves you dangling. It is also beautiful, heartfelt and utterly enthralling. Read full review
100
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezDec 19, 2013
Inside Llewyn Davis is one of the Coens’ smallest movies — this one doesn't have the broad appeal of "True Grit" or "No Country For Old Men" — but like Llewyn’s music, it comes from the heart and it is deeply felt. It is also one of their best. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comGlenn KennyDec 6, 2013
The most satisfyingly diabolical cinematic structure that the Coens have ever contrived, and that's just one reason that I suspect it may be their best movie yet. Read full review
100
SalonAndrew O'HehirDec 5, 2013
For my money, the 33-year-old Isaac – who was born in Guatemala, raised in Florida, and has been working his way toward stardom for years – gives the year’s breakout performance, and Inside Llewyn Davis is one of the Coens’ richest, strangest and most potent films. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranDec 5, 2013
While the bleak, funny, exquisitely made Inside Llewyn Davis echoes familiar themes and narrative journeys, it also goes its own way and becomes a singular experience, one of their best films. Read full review
100
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanDec 5, 2013
An evocative vision of self-destruction, a gorgeously crafted time capsule, and a fantastic showcase for Oscar Isaac in the title role. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottDec 5, 2013
This is not a biopic, it’s a Coen brothers movie, which is to say a brilliant magpie’s nest of surrealism, period detail and pop-culture scholarship. To put it another way, it’s a folk tale. Read full review
100
Time OutJoshua RothkopfDec 3, 2013
But mainly, it’s the film’s folk music that roots in the heart like a faraway lure. Read full review
100
Village VoiceStephanie ZacharekDec 3, 2013
Although the Coens are consummate craftsmen, they don't always show the lightness of touch or the depth of feeling they do here. Read full review
100
Time Out LondonDave CalhounMay 20, 2013
The Coens have given us a melancholic, sometimes cruel, often hilarious counterfactual version of music history. It's a what-if imagining of a cultural also-ran that maybe tells us more about the truth than the facts themselves ever could. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 20, 2013
Brilliantly written, terrifically acted, superbly designed and shot; it's a sweet, sad, funny picture about the lost world of folk music which effortlessly immerses us in the period. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMay 20, 2013
This is instant A-list Coens; enigmatic, exhilarating, irresistible. Read full review
100
VarietyScott FoundasMay 20, 2013
Inside Llewyn Davis is a revelatory showcase for Isaac, who sings with an angelic voice and turns a potentially unlikable character into a consistently relatable, unmistakably human presence — a reminder that humility and genius rarely make for comfortable bedfellows. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyMay 20, 2013
This is a gorgeously made character study leavened with surrealistic dimensions both comic and dark, an unsparing look at a young man who, unlike some of his contemporaries, can’t transcend his abundant character flaws and remake himself as someone else. Read full review
100
The PlaylistKevin JagernauthMay 20, 2013
Inside Llewyn Davis isn't about someone trying to make it big, but someone just trying to make it, and the Coens celebrate the hard road that can inspire great art. Read full review
95
NPRIan BuckwalterDec 6, 2013
In a movie set up to trap us within Llewyn's repetitive loop of failure, baiting us with hope before quashing it with quiet desperation again and again, something more than comic relief is needed to soften the blow a little, and the film's musical interludes are that pillow. Read full review
95
Film.comJordan HoffmanMay 20, 2013
It’s a character piece, and one of the best and most understated movies I’ve ever seen about the grieving process. Read full review
91
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerDec 5, 2013
In top form, Joel and Ethan Coen offer up feel-bad experiences that, like fine blues medleys, make you feel good (although with an acidulous aftertaste). Inside Llewyn Davis is one of their best. So many movies are emblazoned with happy faces; this one wears its sadness, and its snarl, proudly. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanDec 4, 2013
With Inside Llewyn Davis, they've made a film that is almost spooky in its perversity: a lovingly lived-in, detailed tribute to the folk scene that — hauntingly — has shut their hero out. Read full review
91
IndieWireEric KohnMay 20, 2013
An ode to art for art's sake, Inside Llewyn Davis is the most innocent movie of the Coens' career, which in their case is a downright radical achievement. Read full review
90
Paste MagazineJonah FlickerAug 7, 2017
The Coens have created a film that is wholly original and highly entertaining. Read full review
90
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzDec 23, 2013
This is one of the strangest yet most satisfying movie experiences of the year, one of those films in which you can’t really appreciate what you’ve seen until it’s over. You just have to trust that the trip is worth the trouble. And it is. Read full review
90
SlateDana StevensDec 5, 2013
Despite its atmosphere of failure and melancholy, Inside Llewyn Davis is ultimately a dark valentine to both its hero and his milieu. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 5, 2013
The film's centerpiece is Mr. Isaac's phenomenal performance. He's an actor, first and foremost, who is also a musician. Read full review
90
The DissolveKeith PhippsDec 3, 2013
Where Barton Fink sometimes resembled a horror movie, Inside Llewyn Davis plays like an elegy. Its conclusions are more regretful than angry, and while the conflict between art and commerce is no less central, there’s much more emphasis on that conflict’s personal toll. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinDec 2, 2013
Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis is an exquisitely crafted tale of woe with heartfelt early-sixties folk music — and an overarching snottiness. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesDec 19, 2013
Shot in winter grays with no warming ambers and the whiff of tuberculosis hanging around all the players, Inside Llewyn Davis is a chilly thing – a nominal comedy in brisk shivers. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrDec 19, 2013
A transporting cinematic experience with a churl at its center, and how you feel about the movie may depend on how you feel about the churl. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsDec 19, 2013
Folk standards such "500 Miles," "The Death of Queen Anne" and "Dink's Song" infuse the movie, and as in the Coens' "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" T Bone Burnett has done first-rate work supervising the musical landscape. The film, I think, falls just a tick or two below the Coens' best work, which for me lies inside "A Serious Man" and "Fargo." Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperDec 18, 2013
This is a well-crafted look at the American folk music scene of the early 1960s, a sometimes hilarious dry comedy — and oh yeah, the music is terrific. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 5, 2013
One thing's for sure about this raw provocation from the Coens: Like the music, the pain runs deep and true. You'll laugh till it hurts. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineChris CabinSep 29, 2013
As played by an eloquently beleaguered Oscar Isaac, Llewyn Davis is arguably the most vivid and complex character the Coens have dreamed up since Marge Gunderson. Read full review
83
The Film StageRaffi AsdourianAug 7, 2017
Like much of their work, there is a lot to enjoy from this experience, yet despite this high level of filmmaking and attention to detail, the concept doesn’t stand out in originality when compared to their impressive oeuvre. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Dec 4, 2013
Beautifully shot by Amélie cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel, Inside Llewyn Davis is instantly recognizable as the work of its sibling auteurs. But it’s also something of a departure — looser and more rambling than the average Coen concoction, with a lovingly recreated period setting. Read full review
80
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottDec 20, 2013
Inside Llewyn Davis isn't as goofy as 2008's "Burn After Reading," nor as solemn as 2009's "A Serious Man," but it's an embraceable film just the same. Read full review
80
The New YorkerAnthony LaneDec 2, 2013
If you love the Coens, or follow folk music, or hold fast to this period of history and that patch of New York, then the film can hardly help striking a chord. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)James AdamsDec 20, 2013
Inside Llewyn Davis only really kicks into gear at its 55-minute mark. Unsurprisingly, this occurs with the arrival of Coen venerable John Goodman, playing an acerbic jazz hipster who has little truck with the folk idiom but a large appetite for heroin. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleDec 18, 2013
The Coens, with this film, are like people who fly all the way to Paris on vacation and then eat at McDonalds every night, because that's what they know. Why bother making the trip at all? Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliDec 9, 2013
This is adult drama with an impeccable sense of period and a strong focus on character. With today's cinema sadly lacking in movies like this, it makes Inside Llewyn Davis all the more welcome, especially for those who care about the kind of music it honors. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia PuigDec 5, 2013
As played by Oscar Isaac, he's snidely funny, world-weary and deeply sad. Though his story is enigmatic, the film itself is brilliantly acted, gorgeously shot and altogether captivating. Read full review
75
New York PostKyle SmithDec 5, 2013
The Coens, so cutting to so many of their characters, are gentler with Llewyn, inviting us to wander and wonder along with him as he ponders why he must forever play the jerk. Read full review
70
TimeRichard CorlissDec 18, 2013
Inside Llewyn Davis is more deserving of a Grammy than an Oscar. Problematic movie, great album. Read full review
63
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreNov 25, 2013
The movie is so “interior,” it so zeroes in on Isaac and his baleful stare, that we’re relieved any time something overtly funny happens. Read full review
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