Rating: 
Summary: A Beautiful and Thought Provoking Picture
Review: This is one of the best Coen brothers films (they're all great, but this one is REALLY great). The ending is a little confusing the first time you watch it (what's in the box, et cetera) but if you watch it again and give it some thought, the message is simple. Do yourself a favor and watch this movie!
Rating: 
Summary: This movie stinks.
Review: This was possibly the worst movie I have ever seen. Do not watch it. Save two hours of your life. Trust me.
Rating:
Summary: Coen Brothers do it again
Review: Excellent movie. The plot is great, and obviously finishes like a Coen brothers movie. John Tuturro is great. Probably the finest acting ever from John Goodman. Steve Buscemi is great as Chet the bellhop. All around excellent movie
Rating:
Summary: A symbolic look at the creative impulse
Review: The Coen brother have this amazing ability to look beyond the mundane world at the sinister, surreal existence beyond. It is in "Barton Fink" where they apply that talent to their own craft; writing. Barton is a relative virgin to the literary world. His inexperience, his naivete, only increase our shock and surprise when we see Charlie as he really is. Best line in the whole film: "I'll show you the life of the mind!" This is a movie not to be missed, with amazingly good performances from all players involved.
Rating:
Summary: Difficult but rewarding
Review: Barton Fink is a nightmarish film and a black comedy, much of which takes place in a lifelike hotel sparsely populated by grotesque characters. Barton is himself a nervous, self-absorbed nerd, and fits right in. His roomate, Charly, is an overweight salesman with an ear infection who has some kind of bizarre telepathic connection with the hotel. Their conversations are sublimely entertaining, and undeniably the work of the Coen brothers. Even if the somewhat self-absorbed plotline of a playwright unable to write a wrestling screenplay due to personal eccentricities doesn't interest you, the film is visually fascinating from beginning to end. Stylistically, it resembles a mutation of David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick, which in itself should promise a good, eerie, challenging two hours of surrealism and allegory. Indeed, it's full of clever visual clues that will spark arguments over what it all means. Should be of interest to the artsy-fartsy crowd, conventional types shoudn't waste their time.
Rating:
Summary: TALK ABOUT WRITER'S BLOCK!
Review: Nobody stares at a wall trying to ride out a bad case of "writer's block" better than John Turturro's character in "BARTON FINK." In what may be the most cerebral of the Coen pictures, "BARTON FINK" takes you inside the mind of the writer paralyzed by pressure to deliver a quality product on deadline. Like each Coen offering, this film also has a certain "feel" to it; we can enter at any point and know we are in Barton's world. His environment is one of pseudo- isolation. His sequestered hotel room is certainly no source of inspiration. Nor is his "appearances-can-be-deceiving" neighbor (John Goodman, in a superlative performance). Any venture outside this ensconcement is pure distraction and further separates Barton from his writing. Turturro is awesome in this picture, vacillating between indifference and concern for the people around him and authentically conveying the anguish of the idea-starved scribe. John Mahoney and Michael Lerner are splendid in their supporting roles. And there's the obligatory Steve Buscemi inclusion--this time, as a chatty clerk without much character enhancement. Through it all, we're rooting for this Fink guy to just get his act together and write something! How hard can it be? I liked the film's macabre ending, a fitting exclamation point on the page that, although blank, says a lot!
Rating:
Summary: Surreal masterpiece, though not for every taste
Review: Great stories have a "magic moment" when everything comes together - like the "Aha!" realization at the end of every good Twilight Zone episode; the moment when the themes and ideas snap into place like pieces of a puzzle and the whole reveals itself. Barton Fink has such a moment, near the end, and if you are of the temperament to enjoy somewhat obscure, surrealist symbolism, this one will take your breath away. It is 1941 in New York, and the well-meaning but insufferably pretentious playwright Barton Fink is pretending not to enjoy the success of his first major work. Hollywood comes calling through his agent and, with a brilliant cut to a Pacific Ocean wave crashing on a boulder, we suddenly find him (and ourselves) on the West Coast. Barton Fink checks in to the hot, decaying Art Deco hell of the Hotel Earle ("A day or a lifetime" reads the stationery), and begins a descent into the nightmare world of Joel and Ethan Coen. Writer's block. Bombastic studio heads. Type-A movie producers. Alcoholic novelists (and their muses). Serial killers. All of these elements converge in a tightly woven plot by turns hilarious and unnerving. Is it a horror film with laughs? Or a comedy with scenes of real terror? In the Coens' typically understated style, Barton Fink balances on the knife's edge. A clue to where it's going comes when Barton (John Turturro) becomes a suspect in the murder of Audrey (Judy Davis), assistant and lover to alcoholic novelist W.P. Mayhew (John Mahoney). The two L.A. police detectives who question him are named Deutsch and Mastrionotti - German and Italian. Deadpan send-ups of stock film noir characters, the cops don't even try to disguise their anti-Semitism ("Fink. That's a Jewish name, isn't it?...I didn't think this dump was restricted!"). Coincidence, given that the story is set on the eve of America's involvement in World War II? I think not. John Goodman is outstanding as Charlie Meadows/Madman Mundt, the real serial killer. He's Barton's WASPish, working-man doppleganger, and is both endearing and malevolent. He may represent America itself - the oafish do-gooder with a dark side, who both rescues and oppresses Barton Fink. By the time Meadows' true nature is revealed in the stunning climax, the film's allegory seems to crystallize. Or...maybe not. The central question - did Meadows/Mundt really kill Audrey - is never fully addressed. Neither is the other disturbing loose end - just what is in that box Barton carries around at the end? Audrey's head? I think so. But Barton Fink's ultimate meaning, despite the seeming clarity of its symbolism, remains just out of reach. You can brush it with your fingertips, almost grasp it. Then it slips away, demanding another viewing, another visit to the Hotel Earle. For people who enjoy this sort of thing - and you know who you are - it's a no-brainer. Buy it.
Rating: 
Summary: The devil lives in L.A. after all
Review: The Coen brothers have made a lot of good movies including this one, which was not particuarly well-accepted by critics when it was released. I think a lot of critics didn't get the main subject of the film, that writer John Turturro goes to Los Angeles, where he learns the Devil resides.
Once you can accept that, everything about the movie makes sense in the Coens' typical art-crazy midlife style. This film and "Miller's Crossing" are, in my opinion, the apex of art by the filmmakers. Their later achievement with "Fargo" was more mainstream and less wilful than this artful production. The nonsense they have produced since that time starring George Clooney indicates they have sold out to the Hollywood moneymaking machine.
So enjoy this flick and "Miller's Crossing" as great works of art from the Coen brothers, films that can take you from this world to another and back where suspension of disbelief is easy and the rewards are great.
Rating:
Summary: Another Coen Classic!
Review: What an honor to be the first to review a masterpiece such as this collection of celluloid.
"Barton Fink" explores the relationship between, artist, subject, audience, and those people of power whom facilitate art while not always sympathising with it.
Barton (played by Tutorro) is a playright who is responsable for a broadway hit based on the lives of fishmongers. Unlike other mediums in the performing arts, this is one wherin the author enjoys the lion's share of the adulation when adulation is due. Barton, however, is a man of princable and feels a great deal of trepidation when a new offer comes his way. The offer is from Hollywood, and with a great sense of guilt, he accepts.
Barton's princables, as well as his guilt, are the subject of this entire film. Ofcourse Joel and Ethan Coen do a magnificent job with the camera, characters, and sets, but if you can't sympathise with Barton Fink's torment, you might be better off seeing "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou". For those who enjoy trying to understand a character, his motivations, desires, ambitions, and insecurities, look no further.
John Tutorro (I can't be spelling that right) deserves the highest praise for bringing out every nuance in such a complex character. He really rose to the challenge, and if it were not so, the film surely would have drown in its lack. Look also for a ramarkable turn in John Goodman's resumee, he proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that he can handle any chore a screenwriter might bequeeth him. He's not just a funny-man, and I for one would just like to say, "well done John, well done indeed.
I'm sure some will call the film pretensious, when in fact, it exposes the original sin, which is pretencion.
One of the best films of the 20th century!
Rating:
Summary: Think Fink
Review: Not a term I'd normally self-apply, but thought is provoked by this brilliant film. Barton Fink's real name is either John Miller or Arthur Steinbeck. He goes to Hollywood, egged on by a bunch of decadent NY Anglos in the critic business. Sells out. He meets Darryl B. DeCohn, or someone like him, aka Mussolini or Goering. Then he meets Scott Faulkner and Sheila Graham. Then he meets The Common Man, aka The Devil. Birth of a Salesman, if you will. The lift boy (sic) is Charon; the floor is 666; the desk clerk is Hermes. There are other happenings, but what the film seems to be about is Christians, Jews and Nazis. Hell on earth, in other words. Charlie Meadows' real name is Karl Mund: Karl = Man; Mund = Mouth = Mond = world. The cops are called Masterman & Deutsch. They are Nazis, natch. Charlie mentions Hell and Christ quite a lot. He has a weighty cross to bear. What's with the wash-basin plug-hole? Seems to symbolize copulation and birth, ingestion and evacuation. What about that picture? Either it's Woolworth kitsch, or else it's another masterpiece by E.Hopper. How did the Coens direct the seabird to dive on cue? Don't be silly --- it must have been faked in some way. Like Raymond Chandler (or do I mean Carver?) said: when you don't know what happens next, bring in a man with a gun. In this case, a man with a shotgun, fitted with a silencer; and have a Lady in a Bed. No lakes in this flick. Kick off two pairs of shoes, and let the feet leave the floor. If you can't get even, get ahead. Was it all Poppy's fault? We know that poppies can generate fantastic dreams, some almost as bad as Nebuchadnezzar's. Seems to me that for the last one or two thousand years Man has believed in something: after the burning fiery furnace, he believes in nothing. He is a Nihilist, who beleefs in nuzzing. He has no ethos. In spite of what Einstein said, there is no answer to anything. However, there is, after all, a Little Lebowski on the way. Tamam Shud.
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