The new season of FX's Fargo is about a month away. It became one of the most original series on the air when it premiered in 2014, and it remains just as innovative and compelling, which says maybe as much about the indefatigable creativity of its showrunner, Noah Hawley, as it does about the self-regurgitating ouroboros of modern television. We're used to anthology series by now — "American Horror Story," "The Wire," "Black Mirror" — but we aren't used to seeing prestige dramedies done in this format. "Fargo" is gorgeously mounted, always features an impressive cast, hooks viewers in each time with a new, juicy Midwestern mystery.
This time around, "Fargo" will star the eye-catching line-up of Juno Temple, Jon Hamm, and Jennifer Jason Leigh in a tale of kidnapping, cover-up, and harmless housewives who are secretly anything but.
Sound familiar? It's because this season of "Fargo" sounds a lot like the...
This time around, "Fargo" will star the eye-catching line-up of Juno Temple, Jon Hamm, and Jennifer Jason Leigh in a tale of kidnapping, cover-up, and harmless housewives who are secretly anything but.
Sound familiar? It's because this season of "Fargo" sounds a lot like the...
- 10/28/2023
- by Ryan Coleman
- Slash Film
The Coens’ rereleased thriller about a pregnant police chief investigating a bungled kidnapping is a noir without cynicism; a macabre black comedy with purity at its core
Now rereleased for its 25th anniversary, Ethan and Joel Coen’s perfectly flavoured comedy-thriller Fargo has become an established classic noir. Or maybe noir-blanc, a tale of criminal wickedness and weakness in the vast, snowy-white landscapes of Minnesota and North Dakota. Since 1996, something in Fargo’s macabre black comedy – the Garrison-Keillor-meets-James-m-Cain approach – has proved fertile: it inseminated a streaming-tv property now spanning four seasons. But the original film now looks better than ever, and it’s down to its keeping the quirkiness relevant and in check (something the Coens maybe haven’t always been able to achieve), and its brilliance in making the forces of law and order look as interesting and funny as the bad guys.
There is an outstanding performance from Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson,...
Now rereleased for its 25th anniversary, Ethan and Joel Coen’s perfectly flavoured comedy-thriller Fargo has become an established classic noir. Or maybe noir-blanc, a tale of criminal wickedness and weakness in the vast, snowy-white landscapes of Minnesota and North Dakota. Since 1996, something in Fargo’s macabre black comedy – the Garrison-Keillor-meets-James-m-Cain approach – has proved fertile: it inseminated a streaming-tv property now spanning four seasons. But the original film now looks better than ever, and it’s down to its keeping the quirkiness relevant and in check (something the Coens maybe haven’t always been able to achieve), and its brilliance in making the forces of law and order look as interesting and funny as the bad guys.
There is an outstanding performance from Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson,...
- 6/10/2021
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Fargo (1996) I guess that was your accomplice in the wood chipper. Synopsis Facing a mountain of debt, Minneapolis car salesman Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) hires thugs Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife Jean (Kristin Rudrüd) and ransom her for money from his wealthy father-in-law Wade (Harve Presnell). When Carl and Gaear leave three bodies in their wake on the car ride to their hideout in Brainerd, Minnesota, the pregnant local police chief Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) gets involved in the case. Why We Love It When he first reviewed it in 1996, Roger Ebert wrote “films like Fargo are why I love the movies.” I couldn’t say it any better myself. The crowning achievement in the illustrious careers of Joel and Ethan Coen, it’s the movie that most fully displays their preternatural knack for blending insightful character depictions with a keen sense of the ways genre work. It...
- 12/2/2009
- by Robert Levin
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
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