Cast and Crew: Sam McMurray, Frances McDormand, M. Emmet Walsh

What It’s About:  Small time crook H.I. McDunnough (Nicholas Cage) meets cop Ed (Holly Hunter) when she photographs him each time he’s arrested.  The pair fall in love and get married, but there’s just one problem:  they can’t have children.  Their solution, kidnapping one of local furniture magnate Nathan Arizona’s (Trey Wilson) recent batch of quintuplets turns out to be far from the ideal answer to their problems.  Can they survive their encounters with Leonard Smalls (Randall “Tex” Cobb), the bounty hunter Arizona hires to find his missing child, and the Snoats brothers (John Goodman and William Forsythe), H.I.’s prison buddies who escape and hope to drag H.I. back into the criminal world?

Why Watch it Today?:  H.I. and Ed meet for the first time on November 29th, 1983.  Raising Arizona was the Coen Brothers’ sophomore directorial effort, a more overtly comedic follow-up to their blackly comic Neo-Noir thriller Blood Simple.  Raising Arizona gave the first hint of the range of films the Coens were capable of and remains one of their best.

Where to Get It:  Netflix (Rental only) or Amazon and iTunes, libraries

Mo Rating for Movember: H.I. sports the perfect Mo for the character, telling us pretty much all we need to know about him.  5 out of 5 Mos.