Fantastic Cinema Club - Hudsucker Proxy (1994 The Coen Brothers)

Our March screenings pair two wildly different tones to tell the same joke about modern life: the Coen Brothers’ The Hudsucker Proxy and Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17.

Both films orbit the “little guy” swallowed by an absurd, self-perpetuating machine. Hudsucker renders capitalism as an Art Deco cartoon, where boardrooms are literal echo chambers and innovation is just a circle sold back to the masses. Mickey 17 pushes that logic into sci-fi horror-comedy, where labor is so disposable it’s cloned, rebooted, and killed on repeat. One film laughs in screwball rhythms; the other freezes the smile into something darker—but they’re locked in the same critique.

Stylistically, they rhyme as well. Both films feature precise production design, heightened performances and slapstick violence. Both directors use genre play to ask the same question: what happens when a system built on efficiency and profit collides with human messiness, hope, and stubborn individuality?

Seen…