The: Ladykillers

The plot is wonderfully absurd: Professor Marcus (played with manic energy by Alec Guinness) puts together a gang of diverse criminals to pull off a bank heist. To do so, they take rooms in a lopsided, dreamy house near King’s Cross station in London, pretending to be an amateur string quintet practicing classical music.

While the 2004 Coen Brothers remake has its fans, it never quite captures the surreal, claustrophobic brilliance of the original. The original is a "tragedy in slow motion" masked as a farce. The Ladykillers

The irony is the core: these dangerous men are not defeated by the police, but by their own squeamishness regarding a harmless old woman and their inability to work together. The plot is wonderfully absurd: Professor Marcus (played

, including Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers? More trivia about the Ealing Studios productions? Let me know what interests you most! The original is a "tragedy in slow motion" masked as a farce

If you love dark comedies, clever writing, and the "most English" of films, The Ladykillers is required viewing. It’s a polite reminder that sometimes, the sweetest people are the deadliest. the 2004 Coen Brothers remake?

All five hardened criminals end up squeezed into a tiny cupboard, unable to justify their presence.

If you haven’t seen the original 1955 Ealing Comedy directed by Alexander Mackendrick, you are missing one of the finest blends of farce and noir ever put to film. It is a story so blackly comedic that producer Michael Balcon famously protested, “There are six characters and at the end five of them are dead, and you say it's a comedy?”. Yes, Michael. It is. And it works perfectly. The Setup: A Misfit Gang Meets a Misfit Landlady