From its first scene, in which its title character suffers a beating at the hands of a shadowy, unknown man, Inside Llewyn Davis is a disorientating, darkly funny and quietly menacing experience. Set in and around the Greenwich Village folk scene in 1961, it covers a week or so in the life of Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac), a folk singer who is perpetually broke, and spends pretty much the entirety of the film shuffling through the brutal New York winter, trying to bum a cigarette or grab a night's sleep on a couch from anyone he can, all the while hustling to get a few dollars together. As he pinballs from crisis to crisis, most, if not all of which are problems of his own making, he contemplates his sputtering career, failed relationships and dying friendships. Oh, and there's a cat who figures in there somehow.