Awesome, 100% perfect movie - a definite 10/10.

Rating: 10/10 (20 February 2001)

This film shines like a great big ball of burning gas in the sky, providing all who live beneath its great shining beauty with warmth and light and happiness. It truly is one of the most amazingly brilliant masterpieces ever made, packed with visual and verbal invention, skill and class. Every second, every frame is simply magical, from the grimy milky toilet of the opening scene through all those wonderfully colourful, crazy dream sequences to the final pan of the camera away from our heroes, a riot of colour, imagery and beauty. The story is a wonderfully rambling, sprawling tale based loosely on Raymond Chandler and old Bogey movies, packed with Chandler staples and nods to great classic film noir, the characters are all brilliantly conceived, written and played. Bridges and Goodman make a truly classic odd-buddy combination, Buscemi and Turturro play wonderful minor comic figures wonderfully, Julianna Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, David Thewlis, the list of great actors playing out of their skins goes on and on. The music is perfect, Sam Eliot's narration is awe-inspiring (who else could possibly have played that part?), but above all it is the visual splendour of every scene which makes this film really stand out. What the Coens have created here will last forever as one of the very last great cinematic achievements of the Twentieth century, and sets a standard towards which all future filmmakers will have to stretch themselves to the utmost to reach. A truly flawless film which leaves the viewer with a lasting sense of pleasure and satisfaction and even manages to improve with each successive viewing, The Big Lebowski deserves every possible award and recognition available, and should be seen by every sensible person on the planet as often as possible. Only through this can true world peace and prosperity be achieved.