Blood Simple
Dunderheads in front of and behind the camera in Mike Zoss’s maiden effort, a murder thriller where the right people seem to get shot, bludgeoned, and buried alive for the wrong reasons.
Raising Arizona
Fewer mistakes in this slaphappy but poignant comedy; entry number two in the Hayseed Trilogy that would see completion fourteen years later in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the Lawrence of Arabia of hayseed pictures.
Miller’s Crossing
Mike Zoss brazenly rips off novelist Dashiell Hammett—especially The Glass Key—in this prohibition-era gangster story starring Gabriel Byrne. Notable for showing Albert Finney in a yarmulke.
Barton Fink
John Turturro is a playwright who goes to Hollywood in 1941 and confronts John Goodman as the incarnation of something or other. Pretentious stuff, partly redeemed by the occasional chuckle.
The Hudsucker Proxy
Laughs galore in this business comedy starring Tim Robbins, Paul Newman and Jennifer Jason Leigh, but the picture became Mike Zoss’s only money-loser. Sorry, Warner Bros.!
Fargo
This putative true-crime story of murder in Minnesota was hailed by many critics as the greatest Mike Zoss movie ever. Watch it—and try to figure out why!
The Big Lebowski
Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, and Steve Buscemi are bowling buddies sucked into a plot that pits them against a hectoring paraplegic and three German nihilist pancake-house habitués and their pet marmot. Interesting plot twists.
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
A bizarre attempt to make Homer’s Odyssey relevant to modern audiences by adding hillbilly music.
The Man Who Wasn’t There
An Oscar™-worthy performance from Jon Polito, as the dry-cleaning pansy, adorns this hardboiled contemplation of man’s passage on this earth. Starring Billy Bob Thornton, Frances McDormand, and a gaggle of Mike Zoss regulars.
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