Burn After Reading / Fargo

BURN AFTER READING, 2008, Focus Features, 92 min. Directors Joel Coen and Ethan Coen. Hard-drinking ex-veteran analyst Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) polishes off his memoirs and another bottle, as his wife (Tilda Swinton), runs-off with Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), a married federal marshal. When a computer disc containing Cox's memoirs falls into the hands of internet-dating, cosmetic-surgery-obsessed Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) and her fitness hardbody collegues, Chad Feldhimer (Brad Pitt) and unrequited admirer Ted Treffon (Richard Jenkins), a series of darkly hilarious encounters is spirals out of control.

FARGO, 1996, MGM Repertory, 98 min. 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 have a falling out.