BLOOD SIMPLE, 1984, MGM Repertory, 99 min. Hangdog Texas bar owner Marty (Dan Hedaya) hires a corrupt and corpulent detective (M. Emmet Walsh) to kill Abby, his unfaithful wife (Frances McDormand) and her lover (John Getz). What follows from this simple, familiar noir premise is one of the most assured moviemaking debuts from the 1980s. It’s Joel and Ethan Coen’s first feature film, and it’s a doozy, full of memorably poisonous one-liners as well as several guaranteed-to-give-goosebumps suspense setpieces.
FARGO, 1996, MGM Repertory, 98 min. One of Joel and Ethan Coen’s most acclaimed films. Cool, calm, collected policewoman Marge (McDormand) tracks the kidnappers of a used car salesman’s wife in North Dakota’s snow-covered wasteland. Salesman Jerry’s (William H. Macy) inept plot to get out of debt by staging the hoax unravels in gory fashion when his two bizarrely mismatched henchmen (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) have a falling out.