My thoughts about movies and TV shows I've been watching

See also my blog on books: Elliot's Reading

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Hoping for a Season 2 of Fargo

Much credit due to Noah Hawley, who wrote the entire Fargo TV series, each episode of which was smart and entertaining, just on the edge of believable without ever becoming mundane and procedural, and just over the edge without ever becoming preposterous and absurd. Unlike in so many other series, the plot felt well designed and well paced, not pulled together episode by episode from among the loose strands and broken pieces. (Possible spoilers about the end to follow.) I guess the final "message" is that crime doesn't pay and that honesty is the best policy - though of course the criminal minds at work and the gradual descent of Martin Freeman/Lester Nygaard into brutality and evil is the most engaging aspect of the series. Freeman is great and so is Billy Bob Thornton as Loren Malvo, the sadistic gun for hire who brings about his own undoing by taking on a case just for the hell of it - he should have walked away, as he advises Lester to do toward the end of the series. Hard to imagine that there won't be a Season 2, as the excellent and well-cast Allison Tollman (Molly) and Colin Hanks (Gus) have survived and it seems that they should continue, if Hawley has some other ideas for them. This unusual series - like the movie original - manages to be both brutally violent and sweetly sentimental, without ever being snide, snarky, or condescending toward its characters. Each episode began with a statement that this series was based on events that took place in Minnesota in 2006 and that only the names have been changed - preposterous on its face, but I do seem to remember there was a murder-for-hire case that went awry and I wonder what the factual basis behind the script might be; I'll have to look that up.

Monday, November 24, 2014

Phony as a $3 bill: Two bad movies

The Judge oh so painfully strives to be a great movie - and his has all the elements - family drama, prodigal son returns home, courtroom thriller, cute kid, romance between two attractive leads, even a touch of humor - and yet, and yet - it's as phony as a $3 bill, right from the first frame, when Rbt Downey Jr., playing a handsome but dislikable guy (ie playing himself?), a tough courtroom attorney, humiliates an opposing lawyer by literally pissing on him - and it gets worse from there. For some reason never explained sufficiently he's estranged from his father, and irascible tyrant paterfamilias played by Rbt Duvall (playing himself?). Downey has to go back home for first time in years when mother dies; father shuns him at first but eventually comes to need him and even warm to him, etc. etc., as Downey gets called upon to defend father in a legal matter. As in all movies, the entire town suspended its life during the years of his absence, so when he returns home, lo and behold, beautiful h.s. sweetheart is still there waiting for him! There's hardly a believable moment in the film - although some of the scenes focused on the younger brother who has some kind of retardation or mental disability are sweet in a way. The rest of the film is just contrived and listless and way, way too long. Will note for the record that I also watched the first five minutes of the crude, fake, and entirely unfunny This is 40 and for me - that was it. Screenwriters have to learn more about life and about the way people talk, act, interact, and behave - and less about script formatting and arcs of stories and three acts or whatever the # of acts is and then maybe we can get more movies that are actually funny, moving, or true to life - not like these 2 duds.

Sunday, November 23, 2014

A documentary a little behind its time and a movie like the most boring reality show of all time

Caucus, a new documentary in the acknowledged tradition of Maysels, Pennebaker, et al., is a hand-held camera view of the 2012 Iowa Republican caucus, with no editorial intrusions other than some still highlights of headlines and passages in news reports over the course of the primary campaign. There's a wide swath of material to cover and the team does a good job keeping a sense of narrative coherency. It seems so long ago - when there were many potential Republican challengers to Obama and the polls veered wildly from day to day, with as many as six or seven Republican aspirants leading in the poll at one time or another. And now who can even remember who won the Iowa primary? (It was Santorum, by a few votes over Romney.) And doesn't the Romney campaign seem like a generation ago, not just two years? So much has changed, especially since the devastation of the mid-terms; this documentary seems, sadly, to have waited till its moment was past. The surprise to me was the Santorum came off as the most winning personality in the entire field - you could almost imagine voting for him, until he gets onto some of the issues. But at least he was open and straightforward about his goals and beliefs. Most of the others were without a prayer (Pawlenty) or fringy, even for Republicans (Paul). The scarier alternatives were Bachman and Perry - who over time were exposed as shallow, sloganeering frauds - Gingrich, who is obviously intelligent but devious and mean - and Cain, who was exposed as morally corrupt and incompetent (a businessman to save our country? really? businesses are run so effectively?). That leaves Romney - who was possibly the most palatable in this frightening array, and I'll give him this at least: he said what he believed; he was able to stand before a group of the elderly asking about Social Security raises and telling them no, he couldn't promise that. One of the clips shows his famous "corporations are people, too, my friend" - and that pretty much sums up the Romney campaign: He cannot related to people; everything about him was abstract. And even Republicans soon realized that his view, though well expressed, were shallow: He was right about health care - until he was wrong. Also watched the first 40 minutes of Archipelago, a British film from 2010 about a family on vacation on some British island waiting for father's arrival and preparing to send off 20-something son to Africa; quite well acted, in that the entire 40 minutes seemed unscripted and like a reality show - but the most boring reality show in the history of TV or cinema. Maybe this movie was deep and subtle, but nothing in the first 40 minutes grabbed my sympathy or interest, and another hour was too much to give.

Saturday, November 22, 2014

Hating sadistic teachers - yet impressed by Whiplash

First off I hate movies about mean and sadistic teachers - yes, there are some such teachers, and for the most part they are horrible teachers and horrible people and despite the romance of films (and books) about them the damage children rather than push them to achievement and greatness. That said, Whiplash, about a young jazz drummer aspirant in a school obviously meant to be Juilliard where a sadistic teacher pushes him to become a great jazz drummer, is compellingly watchable, dramatic, and quite credible. Essentially, it's a Black Swan meets Full Metal Jacket: a teacher who's much like a Marine Corps drill sergeant but in a performing-arts setting - obviously much more of a "guy" movie than Black Swan (though the young drummer has a lovely girlfriend whom he more or less abandons to pursue his obsession, there are no other female speaking roles in the movie - I would guess that's a pretty accurate picture of jazz aspirants). We learn a lot about the demands on students of jazz throughout the course of the movie, and even though the teacher's cruelty is far over the top it's quite possible that there are sadists like him at various top-level music schools. The movie is for the most part honest: instead of producing great proteges, he ruins lives and careers; however (spoilers here), it will not be a great surprise that the main character does finally show his chops with a knockout performance a jazz concert. Two elements I particularly admire: there's a significant ambiguity and openness at the end of the movie: was the sadistic teacher actually trying to destroy the student (who'd ratted the teacher anonymously and gotten him fired from the school), or did he know that by humiliating the student publicly he would drive him to one great performance? Was it all a scheme - or did a scheme go wrong? Second - a real surprise here - the hero did not end up with the girl. Even though he pushed her away, when he regains his equilibrium and calls her up, asking her to come to the big concert, she says coolly that she'll have to check with her boyfriend. Of course she would not sit around waiting for him for six months - her life has moved on, as it would in "real life" but seldom does in cinema. A powerful, thoughtful, provocative film that unearths new material in familiar territory.

Friday, November 21, 2014

Fargo continues to be smart and totally engaging

Building toward its conclusion - now finished episode 8/disc 3 of Fargo, the series continues to be odd, funny, surprising, and totally engaging - a really great job on building from the premise and ideas of the original same-name movie. By this point in the narrative we have moved a year into the future and seen an evolutionary change in the lives of the two main characters: Molly, the Bemidji police deputy, is married now and pregnant, goofily happy in her new life, but troubled by the belief that the wrong man was imprisoned for the murder of the police chief; meanwhile, Lester Nygaard, having a taste of the thug life, has now learned to stand up for himself, physically, sexually, professionally - he's married to a lovely co-worker from the insurance agency, has just won a national sales award - and the episode ends with his getting a glimpse of the thug for hire, Malvo (Billie Bob Thornton), the psychopath who got hi involved in this string of crime and murder, regaling some folks in a Las Vegas hotel bar. We know the investigation will continue and that Nygaard is due for a big fall. The acting is terrific throughout - wish I could recall all the actors' names, will do a better job next post - the writing smart, the pacing fast, the plot artfully designed.

Monday, November 17, 2014

Death in the park: Virunga

Virunga, the Netflix documentary on the efforts under way to save the eponymous national park in the Congo from exploitation by oil exploration from a British company called Soco, against great odds and lethal opposition: the brave men of the national park service are up against the Congolese army - seemingly supportive of the drilling as the national government looks for ways to advance the economy of the region - and, far more sinister, a rebel group called M23 that routs the outmatched Congolese army and essentially just pursues bribes from everyone. The very brave documentary photographers and the young French journalist with whom they're working come out with some incredible footage of live combat - the camera crew literally dodging bullets and running for their lives - and some incredible hidden camera footage of the M23 leaders dealing with bribes and of some Soco employees talking over drinks after hours about how they are coercing the populace, whom they hold in great contempt: they're like children, etc. This is set against some lovely footage of the park workers at the rescue center for orphaned gorillas and some really scary footage of the park workers assemble and anticipating the attack coming from the rebel group - you hear gunshots and explosions in the distance and you know that the park workers are far outnumbered and outgunned. It's amazing anyone came out of the alive. The struggle is ongoing and was in fact in the NYT yesterday - a rare documentary in every sense: contemporary, bold, beautiful at times, though at times a little hard to follow as it jumps about quite a bit among many locations in the park and in the region, gripping and even frightening. Thanks no doubt to ever-improving technology for camera footage and surreptitious recording, this film has scenes rarely caught on film or video, till now.

Saturday, November 15, 2014

The incredibly watchable Fargo upends the rules of crime drama

The Fx series Fargo continues to be incredibly watching and intriguing through the first 5 episodes; it's notable how this series upends the rules and conventions of crime drama. We know, pretty much, exactly what happened in the triple murders in Bemidji, Minnesota, in 2006, and the story line essentially involves the pollice officers, from two departments (Bemidji and Duluth), sometimes bumbling, possibly even corrupt or maybe just plain cowardly and defensive, come to the same level of knowledge that we have. The mystery, for us, is what exactly motivates the main antagonist - Billi Bob Thornton, excellent as Lorne Malvo: is hie just a hit man, gun for hire, with no known back story, who sometimes freelances and initiates his own crimes of revenge or opportunity? Or is there more of a back story? Of course what also continues to drive our interest is the peculiarity of almost all the characters and the particular warmth of the leads: the bumbling Morton (?) Freeman as the inept insurance salesman who murders his wife (the part William Macy created in the movie), Allison Tillson (?) as Molly, the homespun and surprisingly astute small-town cop (the Frances Macdormand part), and Colin Hanks as the sweet and protective copy in the "big" city of Duluth who seems to be getting in way above his head and is developing a shy crush on Molly as they work their leads together - both opposed by dunderheaded superior officers who may be protecting something higher up or may just be protecting their own asses.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Potentially a good movie gone woefully wrong: Snowpiercer

It's easy to make Snowpiercer sound like a good movie although it actually is not - it's nothing more than a cinematic cartoon or comic book (I would certainly guess that the source material is a comic), done with no style, characterization, wit, or surprise - just a lot of "action" which mainly consists of mayhem and ridiculously staged combat. The story: after some poorly explained environmental disaster that wipes out life on earth, a group of several hundred people are on a train (how they got there is never even discussed) that circles the planet again and again, maintaining the last vestiges of human life. The train is rigidly class divided, with the "lower" classes in the cars to the rear kept in prison-like conditions and the upper classes (white and blond) living in luxury and debauchery at the front of the train. Some 17 years into this predicament, the lower classes (black, dark haired, or Asian) rebel, fight their way to the front of the train, and at last confront the mysterious "conductor." Initially, I was hoping for a film with a least some of the intelligence of Battlestar Gallactica - the premise is similar in some ways - but where as BG was about real people and their attempts to maintain a civilized environment and to preserve human life, Snowpiercer is about two-dimensional cartoon characters and makes no attempt to seem realistic even by the broadest of scifi conventions. One another level, however, Snowpiercer is quite accurate, despite its bludgeoning technique: You can see this train as an analogy for our planet or or our society whether its First World v Third World or the Koch Brothers-Romney-et al. v the 47 percent: it's certainly true that we have come to accept a world and a society of extreme disparity and far too many have bought into the ideology that the wealthy deserve all that they've "earned" and that many or most of the poor have only themselves to blame for not taking advantage of opportunities offered them etc. Once that point is made, however, the movie goes nowhere with it and just hammers home the obvious - not aided at all by a ludicrous performance by Tilda Swinton, some totally bizarre ideas (people cutting off limbs and feeding their own bodies to the hungry to ward of cannibalism - huh?). Somewhere in this mess was potentially a good movie. This isn't it.

Monday, November 10, 2014

A totally enjoyable movie if you can suspend disbelief: Chef

Though it breaks no new cinematic ground, Jon Favreau's Chef is a totally enjoyable movie - could even be a family movie, depending on family's tolerance for occasional language outbursts and a scene or two of smoking. Chef is in the long tradition of the "let's put on a how" movie: star chef (Favreau who wrote, diected, and starts) working an an LA restaurant where the owner (Dustin Hoffman, a not fully convincing heavy) insists on a traditional menu (this is the plot device that gets it moving - you have to just accept it) gets a lousy review from an aggressive online restaurant critic (Oliver Platt, under-used as the nemesis) and goes into a tailspin - but recovers his bearings, and builds loving relationship with young son (10 or so?), when he decides to go to Miami, start a Cuban food truck, and road-trip it back to LA (road-trip bonding is another movie trope, from Easy Rider to Miss Sunshine, with many in between). Add this to the list of many restaurant movies: Big Night, that ridiculous movie with Adam Sandler as a completely non-believable chef, East Drink Man Woman (four star!), Ratatouille  ... anyway, as noted, nothing much original here - yet it's a very charming film nevertheless, really seems to capture the behind the scenes style and ethos. The young actor playing Favreaus's son is excellent, by the way, and though I had trouble believing that it would be OK or even legal to put him to work in a food truck, I was very pleased that Favreau avoided a hoary movie cliche and had the son be a nice kid right from the outset - rather than a moody or troubled kid or young adult who "recovers" and becomes a dutiful and loving son (or daughter, cf Greek Wedding, for another restaurant as reform agent movie). The Cuban soundtrack music is terrific, it's always fun to watch expert chefs at work in the kitchen and at home, the dialogue is spry and credible, and if you can just suspend disbelief and accept a happy ending in which everyone holds hands and sings Kumbaya (figuratively), this movie is entirely pleasant and enjoyable.

Sunday, November 9, 2014

Manhattan revisited: Watching Woody Allen's movie again after 35 years

It's literally impossible to watch Woody Allen's 1979 film Manhattan with the same pleasure and interest we took in this film 35 years ago - knowing what we do about his troubled life. Here's a movie about a 42-year-old intellectual, comedy writer, and literary aspirant - played by Allen as one of the near-versions of himself - torn between two relationships: with a woman his age who's smart, cultured, a literary snob, pretentious at times, high strung, and gets all his jokes, in other words, Diane Keaton, and a woman, no a girl, beautiful and vapid, played by Mariel Hemingway, who is, get this: 17 years old. Perhaps that was a bit off-putting when the film came out in 1979, but looking back at the film now it's totally odd and disturbing - and mainly because nothing in the film, nobody in the film, has the slightest sense that there's anything perverse, in fact, illegal about this relationship. Allen and his friends just remark that she's "young." In most movies, the hero would have to make a choice and would inevitably realize that the young girl is totally inappropriate and would choose he coeval and intellectual punching weight, Keaton - but no, in this movie, as in other Allen films, the sad sack protagonist doesn't get the girl whom he should - he goes back to Hemingway, she's the one. The strengths of this movie are many, legion, most notably Gordon Willis's incredible cinematography; Manhattan has never looked better, especially in the stunning opening montage against the NY Symphony Orch playing Rhapsody in Blue (the score is great as well, with the NY Symph also playing orchestrated versions of various great 30s and 40s #s, Embraceable You, But Not for Me, etc.). It has rightly been noticed, however, that Allen "scrubs" Manhattan - leaving out the crime, dirt, crowds, grime, suffering - life for these characters is so easy - just one example, his best friend, a high-school English teacher of all things - on a whim drops down many thousands for a classic Porsche. Oh really? What's not noticed so often, however, is that Allen also "scrubs" the story: Hemingway (a terrible actress, by the way - no surprise that unlike so many Allen stars her career on screen went nowhere) has no life outside of her relationship with Allen: no friends, no siblings, no classmates, her parents are mentioned in passing but they seem to have no interest in or knowledge of her relationship with a 42-year-old guy? Oh what a shame and what a waste: there are so many fine scenes in this movie and some of the funniest movie lines ever (I wish people could mate for life - like pigeons, or Catholics; You're so beautiful tonight I can't keep my eyes on the meter). I wish I could like it more, or like it still.

Saturday, November 8, 2014

Counting by 7s: The Amazing Up Series by Michael Apted

49 Up, from 2005, is the next-to-most-recent entry into Michael Apted's amazing multiyear documentary social examination, the so-called "up" series, visiting about a dozen English men and women at 7-year intervals since they were 7 years old back in, I think 1966? - in this entry they're 49. At this point, only one has dropped from the project, quite amazingly. By this installment, the  changes in the peoples' lives are less dramatic and surprising - in part because, obviously, the 7-year intervals become "shorter" in relation to the entire life span (7 to 14 is a huge change whereas 42 to 49 is much less so). On the other hand, as the sometimes surprising evolution of the subjects settles and as they resolve themselves into mature adult life, it's easier to make general observations about what the series shows us. First of all, the initial premise proves to be almost entirely accurate: show me the child at 7 and I will show you the man (or woman). Whether by selective editing or not, we can definitely see how the early personalities remain intact all through life. More interestingly, we see that there is essentially no movement of social class - or to the slight extent that there is, it's entirely dependent on the decision as to whether to go to "university." The working-class kids from the East End stay in the working class, by and large; the ones in the boarding schools move on to professional success. That said, with the notable exception of Neil, suffering from severe mental problems and the heart and soul of the series, the subjects have all found prosperity and happiness far beyond the hardships and brutality of their childhood: I think we're all struck by very nice home environments of those who grew up in an orphanage or the tough East End, a mark of the improvement of life in England since the postwar years; as to the well-to-do, they are still prosperous but they are much more family-oriented than their parents were, and they are not sending their kids to those horrible, cruel boarding schools - and are generally happy with whatever decisions their children make about their lives. Several had divorced in or before 42 up and those who did are all remarried, apparently very happily - although some of their children seem to be making the same mistakes regarding early marriage or motherhood. Several of the spouses, btw, want nothing to do with this project and remain in the background. It's interesting to see how the young man who grew up in the orphanage and seemed to have learning disabilities has built a nice life for himself and his family in Australia: it's impossible to imagine him attaining the same success or happiness in class-bound England. I won't say much about Neil, as many will watch this film mainly to catch up on his life (Apted shrewdly leaves Neil to the last segment), but will only say that his odyssey continues - though, again, without the seismic shifts in life that we saw in him and others in some of the earlier installments. I'll watch 56 up (if nothing else, series has taught us to count by 7s), though not right away: it's good to leave at least a few years between your own viewing of these segments.

Friday, November 7, 2014

One of the great mysteries of American cinema: Why The Magnificent Ambersons?

One of the great mysteries of American cinema is why Orson Welles chose The Magnificent Ambersons, a very pedestrian best-selling novel of his day, as the source for his much-anticipated follow-up to Citizen Kane: though there are, at least as it appears from his screenplay, some opportunities for histrionic and cinematic tours de force - the emotional breakdown of Aunt Fanny, the Christmas ball, the sleigh ride and the car ride through the snow - the substance of the script is really pretty pedestrian - the daughter of the wealthiest man in a small Indiana town marries the wrong guy and, when they're both widowed, they are basically unable to find love with one another because of the jealousy and Oedipal rivalries that surround them; their children, seemingly destined to marry each other, are driven apart - and the movie ends in wistful sorrow. Not quite a great American tragedy, and, lacking in the strong central character whose evolution over time was driving force of Kane - and of course also lacking in the great mystery that forged the unusual plot structure of Kane. What Welles did find in this less promising material of Ambersons was the opportunity once again for some truly stunning scenes: the women gossiping in the beauty salon, facing the camera, in a composition as copmlex and odd as a Velasquez painting; the above-noted Christmas ball with its very long tracking shots; the plein air scenes in the snow, challenging to film and still beautiful today; the dark gothic interiors of the Empire-style midwest mansions, the emptiness of the train station late at night. Consistently, he shoots "up" at the characters - as he did in Kane - emphasizing their grandeur and power. Generally, directors are ill-advised to cast themselves, and their was no obvious role for Welles in this script, but you can feel his absence - none of the leads, even Joseph Cotton, is powerful enough to engage us fully. The closing credits are very cool, with Welles's voice-over crediting the major contributors to the film, actors and crew. I think there's a long history to this film, with many scenes cut of with $ running short - and perhaps W. had a much greater vision of its potential - maybe it could have been a tremendous operatic film about a death of a dyanstic family and a way of life (the arrival of the motor car in the Midwest is a big theme) - a fore-runner of Visconti's The Leopard, which did have a hugely powerful lead (Lancaster) and of course a much, much better source novel (Lampedusa).

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

The best (or worst) example ever of cinema high camp: Queen Margot

I can't quite tell if the French film Queen Margo is so bad it's good or if it's just plain bad. Probably the latter. Is there a grander example anywhere, however, of high camp? This weird film makes Peckinpaugh look like a Disney cartoon and Pasolini look like an ABC family made-for-TV. Ostensibly, it's a film about the massacre of the Hugeuonots in 18th-cerntury (?) France, under Catherine de Medici as the regent as her idiot son, Charles the IX?, ostensibly ruled - and Catherine's marrying off youngest child, the eponymous Margot, to a Hugueonot to bring about peace between the Catholics and Protestants - but really to bring the H's into Paris to celebrate the wedding and then to kill them all. Got it? It's literally impossible to follow the plot of this movie, so don't worry - that's not the point anyway. The point seems to be to show many scenes of brutal slaughter and of grubby and extremely unlikely sexual encounters. Hey, if you want to do a film in which a bunch of guys carrying swords get to run around about about 500 naked dead bodies - do a film about the massacre of the Hugeaunots, dress it up in historical garb. The acting is ridiculously over the top, esp Catherine, with her hair pulled back in a bun so tight her face looks distorted, like a botched face lift. The movie probably cost a fortune - the production values are actually excellent - probably won some Oscar or Cannes nods for costume design - but has so much money and talent ever been spent to serve such base purposes? I watched an hour plus of this 2.5 hour monstrosity - more than enough.

Monday, November 3, 2014

A stange conjuncion of old and new: Anatomy of a Murder

Otto Preminger's 1959 Anatomy of a Murder, is a classic of the genre and the forefather of dozens of other courtroom drama - but somehow none have the earnestness, the flair, and the sense of American hegemony - postwar America, when we thought the world was ours and that prosperity would be never-ending and that all was right with American democracy and social justice - as the 50s melodramas. This movie, very long and very earnest, even for its day, is a tautly plotted movie, based I would guess very closely on a novel, with some really strong actors - James Stewart, lee Remick, Ben Gazzzara, and a young George C. Scott - in the lead roles. Very briefly, Steward is a down-on-his-luck country attorney (the Michigan Upper Peninsula - a very cool and unusual setting for a Hollywood movie, and I suspect Preminger may have shot it on location - can you imagine that today? Not shooting on the location of the lowest taxes?); Gazzara is an Army lieutenant who, in a rage, kills the man - a local roadhouse owner - who allegedly raped his wife, a very sultry Remick. If this will surprise you stop reading here - but of course Steward gets Gazzara off, building a case that he killed in blind rage and didn't know what he was doing, so he's innocent of Murder 1. Well, I don't know about the niceties of the law but I would suspect the admitted killer would not have walked off free - and though the rapist was no doubt a horrible man, I feel a little disturbed by the movie's unflinching endorsement - the innocent verdict leads to riotous courtroom celebration - of a guy taking the law into his own hands - a precursor, again, of many right-wing movies of the 60s and 70s. That said, Preminger paces the movie really well and engages us in thinking through the plot in (almost) every scene, as least up to the supposedly feel-good ending. One of the extreme pleasures of the movie of course is a fabulous score by Duke Ellington - as cool as if JS Bach had scored one of Shakespeare's plays - and Ellington even appears (as a band leader named Pie Eye) and gets to say a few lines. The movie was extremely provocative in its day - I remember my parents' discussing it - and pretty advanced in its frank discussion of sexuality and violence - a strange conjunction - of old ordder and new - looking back from 55 years - of the avant garde and the last gasp of postwar American pro-military pseudo-patriotism.

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Second Time Around: The TV series Fargo may be better than the original movie

I'm off and on with the Coen Brothers, though they have done some fine films and maybe Fargo above all - my memory of the film has faded over the years, but it definitely established a tone - a mix of sentiment and snarkiness, affection and condescension - with a good story line suppposedlly based on "true events" and with some great acting - pretty much introduced Frances McDormand and William Macy to a wide audience. The TV series loosely based on the movie, from first two episodes, seems to have picked up just enough from the original while also expanding the plot wide enough to embrace a full season of episodes and possible season renewals. The seemingly ditzy but actually quite wise and brave female officer is still there, as is the self-effacing, insecure family man drawn into a brutal crime - and most of all the sense of the cold winter landscapes of northern Minnesota and the good people trying to get along with one another and live their lives of quiet desperation - until events upend their lives. The strongest character seems to be the malevolent but beguiling hit man - Billy Bob Thornton, terrific in the plot, charming and revolting all at once - who's a pro at his job but can't resist messing with the lives of others off the book, so to speak. The series works especially well - at least so far - because of the constant surprises that force us, again and again, to reconsider our initial assessments of the main characters, yet that also seem consistent with their behavior (and misbehavior); the film plays just at the edge of plausibility - OK, sometimes stepping over the edge (could BBT have actually survived so many close encounters with thugs and bullies, just by his menacing tone and demeanor?; is it possible that Macy character, Nygaard, could live in his hometown for 18 years before he suddenly re-encounters his bullying high-school nemesis? No, not really, but who cares?), and, at least to my memory, it is developing a whole new plot line centered on a Duluth cop (Colin Hanks) who encounters the killer BBT and must determine whether to report that info and risk the safety of his daughter.