Ever notice that every blockbuster movie has the same fundamental pieces? A hero, a journey, some conflicts to muck it all up, a reward, and the hero returning home and everybody applauding his or...

Los Angeles: Noir-ish MythologyThe Coen Brothers wanted to pay homage to Raymond Chandler's gritty Los Angeles of the '40s and '50s, but they also wanted to put a new spin on it: instead of a sly g...

Single Storyline With VoiceoverWhen it comes to narrative technique, The Big Lebowski is pretty straightforward: one Dude, one story, all kinds of far-out consequences. Although The Dude is trying...

Comedy, Crime, SatireComedyThe Big Lebowski is first and foremost a comedy: it wants to make its audience laugh, and laugh we do. The Big Lebowski derives its humor from the witty absurdity of its...

The title is the name, or rather nickname, of a character in the movie, the wealthy Jeff Lebowski. But it's also a reference to the Raymond Chandler novel, The Big Sleep. The Big Sleep, which was m...

As far as endings go, The Big Lebowski's is probably one of the more satisfying. The Dude solves the mystery, defeats the Big Lebowski, and gets rid of those pesky German nihilists. Everything coul...

RThe Big Lebowski got an R rating because it's chock full of drugs, liquor, curse words, guns, and sexual situations. Even though kids today have probably seen everything, nobody wanted to expose t...