Get ‘Serious’

Though it has more in common with the zany dark comedies of Richard Lester, critics say director Steven Soderbergh’s left turn into The Informant! this month was a call out of the Coen Brothers playbook. Well, turnabout is fair play, and the Coens pull a Soderberghian trick with A Serious Man, casting near unknowns in the micro-budgeted drama, out this Friday. The 1967-set story revolves around a middling college professor whose wife threatens to leave him if he can’t find a way to squeeze his lay about brother out of their house—and lives altogether. Meanwhile, there are problems at the university where an anonymous foe has initiated a slander campaign against him that could ruin his chances of tenure and one enterprising student offers to bribe in exchange for a passing grade. Rated R.