O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) - Much to love in fabulous Coen music yarn

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Three convicts flee a chain gang with part of the chain still attached on this neat poster for Ethan and Joel Coen's O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Three escaped convicts in Mississippi in 1937 venture out on an adventure after a buried treasure, which will soon get flooded, and they record a country single on their way.

 

O Brother, Where Art Thou? is written and directed by Minnesotan master filmmakers, brothers Ethan and Joel Coen (Blood Simple (1984)). Ethan Coen also produced the film. It is a very loose adaptation of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey (8th/7th century BC).

It is an enthusiastic yarn full of fun, speed, visual panache (cinematography by Roger Deakins (Shadey (1985))), a delicious color scheme, - and energetic actors: Tim Blake Nelson (Dallas & Robo (2018, TV-series)) especially as the simple-minded Delmar, and George Clooney (Red Surf (1989)) as vain idiot Ulysses McGill are terrific.

Clan members and politics get mixed into the bargain, and towards the end things get a bit thick and contrived. But O Brother, Where Art Thou? is still a good and fun film that could only have come from the inimitable Coen brothers.

 

Related posts:

Ethan and Joel Coen: Hail, Caesar! (2016) - The Coen brothers serve a whimsical, flashy letdown
Unbroken (2014) - Despite good elements, Jolie's Grand WWII Biopic is mostly distant and weak (co-writers)

2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V] 
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) or, The Man Who Wasn't Dylan  
True Grit (2010) - The Coens' grand western present

Top 10: Best dramedies reviewed by Film Excess to date 

2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III] 

2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II] 
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
A Serious Man (2009) - One of the Coens' best; a philo-religious serio-comedy
Burn After Reading (2008) or, Idiocy 2008

No Country for Old Men (2007) - Undigestible McCarthy adaptation lets you hang in midair 
Top 10: Best comedies reviewed by Film Excess to date
Top 10: The best big hit movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 
The Big Lebowski (1998) - The stoner comedy to reign over all

1996 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

Top 10: Best crime movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 

Fargo (1996) - The Coen brothers make movie magic with dark-humored crime thriller 

Top 10: Best films about filmmaking 
Barton Fink (1991) or, The Writer's Hell

 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 26 mil. $

Box office: 71.8 mil. $

= Box office success (returned 2.76 times its cost)

[O Brother, Where Art Thou? premiered 13 May (Cannes Film Festival, main competition) and runs 107 minutes. Neither of the Coens have ever read the Odyssey. The title of the film is a reference to Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels (1941). Clooney was paid 1 mil. $ for his performance in the film. Shooting took place from June - August 1999 in Mississippi and California, including in Los Angeles. The film opened #27 to a 195k $ first weekend in 5 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #9 and in 847 theaters (different weeks), grossing 45.5 mil. $ (63.4 % of the total gross). The film was nominated for 2 Oscars: Best Adapted Screenplay, lost to Stephen Gaghan for Traffic, and Cinematography, lost to Peter Pau for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It was also nominated for 4 BAFTAs, a European Film award, won 1/2 Golden Globe nominations and 2 Grammys, among other honors. Roger Ebert gave the film a 2.5/4 star review, translating to a notch under this one. The Coen brothers returned with The Man Who Wasn't There (2001). Clooney returned in The Perfect Storm (2000); John Turturro (Somewhere Tonight (2011)) in Two Thousand and None (2000); Nelson in The Good Girl (2002); and John Goodman (In the Electric Mist (2009)) in The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle (2000). O Brother, Where Art Thou? is certified fresh at 79 % with a 7.20/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of O Brother, Where Art Thou??

Noi the Albino/Nói Albinói (2003) - Kári's personal, escape-themed debut

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+ Best Icelandic Movie of the Year

 

The title character sprints through a winter landscape on this poster for Dagur Kári's Noi the Albino

When Nói doesn't get up for school, his grandmother goes out and gets the shotgun and fires a shot off out through his window. Nói may be a wunderkind, as his psychologist announces, - but he is also preoccupied and lazy, and a bit of a rascal.

 

Noi the Albino is written and directed by debuting, great Icelandic filmmaker Dagur Kári (The Good Heart (2009)).

It is an unpredictable film that Kári has made, marking the arrival of the Icelandic Jim Jarmusch-reminiscent auteur. He stylishly serves us a mercilessly cold and undesirable portrayal of Icelandic life, which is only uplifted by harsh absurdly comical scenes, SPOILER such as Nói's dropping pig's blood all over his grandmother and father, or when he has to dig a grave in the middle of a blizzard.

Ultimately Noi the Albino is a tragedy that celebrates the eternal dance with the idea of escape, poignantly understandable here in a small Icelandic fishing village.

 

Related posts:

Dagur Kári: 2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]  

The Good Heart (2009) - Cox/Dano paired again in Kári's financially disastrous, original, warm and great dramedy 

2003 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II] 

Watch a 1-minute clip from the film here

 

Cost: 1.1 mil. €, approximately 1.28 mil. $

Box office: 1.3 mil. $

= Big flop (returned 1.18 times its cost)

[Noi the Albino premiered 24 January (Angers European First Film Festival, France) and runs 90 minutes. Shooting took place in Iceland, including in Reykjavik, and in Cuba. The film opened #92 to a 4k $ first weekend in North America (New York), where it peaked at #81 and in 7 theaters, grossing 60k $ (4.7 % of the total gross). The film sold 5,511 tickets in co-producing country Denmark, coming to approximately 418k DKK or 65k $ (5.1 %). The film won 6/11 Edda awards, Iceland's Oscar, was nominated for 3 European Film awards and several other honors. Kári returned with Dark Horse/Voksne Mennesker (2005). Tómas Lemarquis (Blade Runner 2049 (2017)), who plays Nói, returned in Nina's House/La Maison de Nina (2005). Noi the Albino is certified fresh at 87 % with a 7.00/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Noi the Albino?

Nowhere in Africa/Nirgendwo in Afrika (2001) - Link's powerful African exile drama

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Two intimate photographs make up the major part of this poster for Caroline Link's Nowhere in Africa

A Jewish lawyer flees out of Germany to Kenya with his family shortly before Kristallnacht, and in the foreign African country they are made responsible for a small farm, while the situation worsens for their kin left behind in Germany.

Nowhere in Africa is written and directed by great German filmmaker Caroline Link (Sommertage (1990)), adapting the same-titled, autobiographical 1995 novel by Stefanie Zweig (Irgendwo in Deutschland (1996)).
The Jewish family, - and not least the mother and wife, portrayed in a central, fantastically human and strong performance by Juliane Köhler (The Whole Shebang/Alles Inklusive (2014)), - are very German, and their culture clash with the Kenyans is skillfully utilized. The film shows how differing cultures can coexist peacefully, - but not without each making their mark on the other.
Nowhere in Africa is handsomely produced and thoroughly well-made and well-acted. It insists that life for the persecuted Jews abroad wasn't all misery but that it also entailed new relations and love. Obviously many more difficulties for the family came after the film ends, as they ventured back home. 
It is a valuable and very worthwhile grand film about being on the run, losing one's country, to be a refugee, - SPOILER with a very powerful climactic scene during an invasion of locusts, which with mythical precision seems to show the affectingly bared, vulnerable situation that the family find themselves in.

 

Related post:

 

Top 10: Best German movies

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 7 mil. €, approximately 7.9 mil. $
Box office: 24.3 mil. $
= Box office success (returned 3.07 times its cost)
[Nowhere in Africa was released 27 December (Germany) and runs 141 minutes. Shooting took place from January - April 2001 in Kenya and Germany. The film had a slow release that continued into 2004. It opened #71 to a 22k $ weekend in 2 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #18 and in 78 theaters (different weeks), grossing 6.1 mil. $ (25.1 % of the total gross). The film's biggest market was its production country Germany with 10.2 mil. $ (42 %). North America was the 2nd biggest, and Spain was 3rd with 2.3 mil. $ (9.5 %). The film won the Best Foreign Film Oscar. It was also nominated for a Golden Globe and won 5/6 German Film award nominations. Link returned with A Year Ago in Winter/Im Winter ein Jahr (2008). Köhler returned in My First Miracle/Mein Erstes Wunder (2002). Nowhere in Africa is certified fresh at 85 % with a 7.51/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Nowhere in Africa?

The Great Escape (1963) - Sturges' further manly exploits in war-adventure classic

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An elaborate, dramatically drawn and painted poster for John Sturges' The Great Escape, which effectively screws up expectations

The [in fact far from] true story of the ambitious escape mission from German POW camp Stalag Luft III during WWII by mainly English and American officers.

The Great Escape is written by W.R. Burnett (Sergeants 3 (1962)) and James Clavell (Five Gates to Hell (1959)), adapting the same-titled 1950 book by a survivor of the camp, Paul Brickhill (The Dam Busters (1951)), and directed by John Sturges (The Man Who Dared (1946)).
Compared to some of the other great prison escape films, I don't count The Great Escape among the most suspenseful, and the filmmakers' multi-character approach carries a large part of the guilt for this. Even so this popular classic is ripe with beautiful images, (cinematography by Daniel L. Fapp (A New Kind of Love (1963))) and in the very manly cast especially Richard Attenborough (Secret Flight (1946)) is in top shape in it.

Related posts:

John Sturges:  The Eagle Has Landed (1976) - Sturges' enjoyable, last man's adventure
Chino/Valdez, Il Mezzosangue/Valdez the Half BreedThe Valdez Horses (1973) - Bronson is his own man only in Sturges' good spaghetti western

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 3.8-4 mil. $ (different accounts)
Box office: In excess of 11.9 mil. $
= Uncertain - but at least a box office success and more likely a big hit (returned at least 2.92 times its cost in North America alone)
[The Great Escape premiered 20 June (London) and runs 172 minutes. Brickhill played a minor part in the escape mission in the Stalag Luft III camp but lived to tell the story: 50 allied airmen were executed as punishment for the escape, which only succeeded in getting 3 free; two Norwegians and one Dutch. The book had first been adapted for TV in 1951. Many in the star-studded cast had served in the war, including Attenborough, Charles Bronson and Donald Pleasance (who actually spent a year captured in the German Stalag Luft I POW camp); James Garner (The Pink Jungle (1968)) served in the Korean War. Shooting took place from June - October 1962 in Germany. Steve McQueen (The Reivers (1969)) did his own driving in the film's famous climactic motorcycle chase, except for the jump stunt, which was performed by stuntman Bud Ekins. The film changes the actual history on several fronts, making composite characters of altered nationalities and changing many facts surrounding the escape. It was the year's 10th highest rental grossing title in North America and likely similarly popular internationally, although gross numbers are regrettably not reported online. It was nominated for an Oscar: Best Editing, lost to How the West Was Won. It was also nominated for a Golden Globe and won a National Board of Review award, among other honors. It has been re-released many times, recently a 2019 re-release in the UK grossed the film another 227k $. An unofficial TV movie sequel was made; The Great Escape II: The Untold Story (1988). IMDb's users have voted the film in at #137 on the site's Top 250, sitting between Howl's Moving Castle (2004) and All about Eve (1950). Sturges returned with The Satan Bug (1965). McQueen returned in Soldier in the Rain (1963)); Garner in The Thrill of It All (1963)); and Attenborough in The Third Secret (1964). The Great Escape is certified fresh at 94 % with an 8.27/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Great Escape?

La Grande Illusion (1937) - Renoir's high-flying anti-war smash

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The dove of freedom dies gruesomely on the barbed wire inside of a war-time soldier ensconced in grey on this evocative, artsy poster for Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion

We follow some mainly French soldiers in a German POW camp during World War I, their brotherhood amongst themselves, and even with their enemies, - and eventually their escape from said camp.

La Grande Illusion is written by Charles Spaak (Two Women/L'Empreinte du Dieu (1940)) and great French co-writer/director Jean Renoir (Whirlpool of Fate/La Fille de l'Eau (1925)). The film features a rebellion using flutes! And towards the end of the story we follow two of the prisoners, who now co-habitate with a German women, again in a striking harmony.
This is a very fine film about humanism on a profound level. The proposed humanity, in the context of the First World War, - and one inevitably also watches it and reflects on the Second World War, - seems somehow escapist, though, in its strange, combat-free idealization. Still the film attains rare moments of brotherhood while it commits a powerful portrayal of the illusion behind humanly made grand conflicts, which has made it an especially scholarly favorite.

Related post:

Jean Renoir: Top 10: Best French movies

The Human Beast/La Bête Humaine/Judas Was a Woman (1938) or, Train of Love, Lust and Murder!

Watch an original French trailer for the film here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unknown 
= Uncertain - but seemingly at least a box office success
[La Grande Illusion premiered 8 June (Paris) and runs 114 minutes. Shooting took place in France from February - May 1937. Jean Gabin (Their Last Night/Leur Dernière Nuit (1953)) wore Renoir's aviator's uniform from the war, in which he actually served in France's air force. The film reportedly sold the incredible amount of 12.5 mil. tickets in production country France. However, fearing its possibly detrimental impact on the national fighting moral, the French authorities banned the film in 1940 for as long as the Second World War would last. In Germany, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels declared the film "cinematic public enemy no. 1", and Nazi troops seized prints and negatives of the film, when they marched into France in 1940. La Grande Illusion became the first foreign film to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, which it lost to You Can't Take It with You. It won 3 National Board of Review awards, a prize at the Venice Film Festival and a few other honors. Regrettably neither the cost nor the gross numbers are known, but the film is recorded to have made 174k $ in a 2012 North-American re-release. No doubt if the huge French admissions tally is correct, La Grande Illusion was at least a box office success. The film was nearly lost due to the Second World War and the few left prints were scattered in Germany and later the Soviet Union. Roger Ebert gave the film a 4/4 star review, translating to 2 notches higher than this one. Renoir returned with La Marseillaise (1938). Gabin returned in The Messenger/Le Messager (1937); Pierre Fresnay (Les Affreux (1959)) in La Bataille Silencieuse (1937); and Erich von Stroheim (The Honeymoon (1930)) in Under Secret Orders (1937). La Grande Illusion is certified fresh at 97 % with a 9.37/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of La Grande Illusion?

The Fugitive (1993) - Ford runs fast in Davis' overrated action thriller

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+ Most Overrated Movie of the Year

Harrison Ford is running next to a train in motion on this effective poster, which screams high-octane thrills, for Andrew Davis' The Fugitive

Dr. Richard Kimble is wrongfully convicted the death penalty for the murder of his wife, - but then he escapes!

The Fugitive is written by Jeb Stuart (Lock Up (1989)) and David Twohy (Waterworld (1995)), based on the same-titled 1963-67 TV-series by Roy Huggins, and directed by Andrew Davis (Under Siege (1992)).
The film has an enviably simple narrative thrust to begin with, which I feel is later dissolved by the simplistic cat-and-mouse story that follows, which also gets thick several times; SPOILER as when Kimble's death row bus crashes onto train tracks and is immediately in collision with a train.
Jeroen Krabbé (Sahara Sandwich (1991)) is good as Kimble's deceitful doctor friend, SPOILER but why he and the one-armed man Sykes killed our hero's doctor never becomes clear to me. The smartly handled action pace and James Newton Howard's (Nightcrawler (2014)) great score does a good job of overshadowing the weak points in this massive hit.

Related posts:

Andrew Davis: Collateral Damage (2002) - Good anti-terrorist Arnold vehicle derailed due to 9/11

1993 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 44 mil. $
Box office: 368.8 mil. $
= Mega-hit (returned 8.38 times its cost)
[The Fugitive premiered 29 July (California) and runs 130 minutes. Shooting took place in North Carolina and in Chicago, Illinois from February - May 1993. The train crash used a real train in a single take and cost 1 mil. $. The film opened #1 to a 23.7 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it held the #1 spot in the subsequent 5 weeks, then spending another 2 weeks in the top 5 (#2-#3), ending up grossing 183.8 mil. $ (49.8 % of the total gross) from a reported 44 mil. tickets sold domestically, where it was the 3rd highest-grossing film of the year. It was the first major US film to screen in China in decades, but regrettably its international gross numbers are not made public. It was nominated for 7 Oscars, winning for Best Supporting Actor (Tommy Lee Jones (Cobb (1994))). It lost Best Cinematography (Michael Chapman (Gotham (1988, TV movie))) to Janusz Kaminski for Schinder's List, Sound Effects to Jurassic Park, Film Editing to Schindler's List, Score to John Williams also for Schindler's List, Picture to Schindler's List and Sound to Jurassic Park. It also won 1/3 Golden Globe nominations, 1/4 BAFTA noms and other honors. Roger Ebert gave the film a 4/4 star review, translating to 3 notches higher than this one. Davis returned with Steal Big Steal Little (1995). Ford returned with an uncredited cameo in Jimmy Hollywood (1994) and as a leading man in Clear and Present Danger (1994). Jones returned in the flop sequel U.S. Marshals (1998), which is actually a bit better than the original film.The film was remade in India as Nir Nayam (1995). Leslie Nielsen starred in the parody Wrongfully Accused (1998). The Fugitive is certified fresh at 96 % with a 7.94/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Fugitive?

Farewell to the Ark/さらば箱舟 (Saraba hakobune) (1984) - The next to last film from Japanese surrealist Terayama

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A mysterious, beach-set, surrealist poster for Shûji Terayama's Farewell to the Ark

All the clocks of an entire village are buried. A relationship between two cousins is plagued by the chastity belt forced upon her by her father, along with taunts from the villagers and accusations of impotence, - which lead to homicide. The couple attempt to flee. SPOILER But they invariably return to where they came from, the man loses his mind and is killed.

Farewell to the Ark is written by Rio Kishida (The Boxer/Bokusâ (1977)) and co-writer/director Shûji Terayama (Pastoral Hide and Seek/Den-en ni shisu (1974)) as a loose adaptation of One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) by Gabriel García Marquez (Of Love and Other Demons (1994)). The film has visually amusing and distinguished qualities; the hole in the ground, the green goddess sequences, the escape and the ending. As well as occasionally poetic observations.
- But overall the magical allegory of Farewell to the Ark is too ambiguous too relay much else than that modernism stinks. Another problem is that this very theatrical, circus-like film drags out.

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Uncertain
[Farewell to the Ark premiered 8 September (Japan) and runs 127 minutes. Details about its making and release are not immediately found. Terayama passed away before its release. It competed for the Palme d'Or at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival. Terayama had one last film to his name, which also came out in 1984: Our Age Comes Riding on a Circus Elephant/Jidai wa sakasu no zo ni notte' 84. 285 IMDb-users have given Farewell to the Ark a 7.3/10 average rating.]

What do you think of Farewell to the Ark?

Escape from Alcatraz (1979) - Siegel, Tuggle and Eastwood's phenomenal prison escape thriller

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The sparse but effective poster for Don Siegel's Escape from Alcatraz

Frank Morris arrives at the maximum security prison at San Francisco's Alcatraz Island and soon learns that he does not intend to stay there. An incredible plan for escape begins to take shape.

Escape from Alcatraz, written by Richard Tuggle (Tightrope (1984)), based on the book Escape from Alcatraz (1963) by J. Campbell Bruce about the 1962 Alcatraz escape, and directed by Chicagoan master director Don Siegel (Jinxed! (1982)), is a phenomenal prison escape film that dramatizes the notorious flight from The Rock. It combines several nuanced, sympathetic human portrayals of inmates, guards and the warden (portrayed by Patrick McGoohan (Elephant Gun (1958))), who also to some degree remains understandable. And then, of course, there's Clint Eastwood (Hang 'Em High (1968)) as Morris, a more subdued part here than in some of his films from the period, but not one that lacks force or memorable lines, though, SPOILER such as when he moves away from the step inhabited by the black 'king' of the prison and tells him with a sly smile, reaffirming his relentlessly steep character; "I just hate niggers."
The circumstances concerning Alcatraz and the escape contribute greatly in making this an incredibly exciting thriller.

Related reviews:

Don Siegel: Charley Varrick (1973) or, The Last of the Independents
Dirty Harry (1971) - Eastwood's great, signature renegade cop character comes to life
The Beguiled (1971) - Intense, erotic Civil War kammerspiel thriller
Coogan's Bluff (1968) or, Dopes and Hippies, Beat It!  

Listen to a piece of Jerry Fielding's score for the film here, entitled Carpenter Shop

Cost: 8 mil. $
Box office: 43 mil. $ (North America only)
= Uncertainty (most likely a huge hit)
[Escape from Alcatraz was released 22 June and runs 112 minutes. Tuggle had a hard time getting his script read and had it refused many times before he got Siegel on the phone and made up a lie in order for him to read it. Siegel outmaneuvered Eastwood by buying the rights for 100k $ and getting Paramount involved, which created a rift between the two friends, and Escape from Alcatraz became their fifth, last (and best) collaboration, following Coogan's Bluff (1968), Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), The Beguiled (1971) and Dirty Harry (1971). 0.5 mil. $ were paid to make Alcatraz ready for shooting, including pulling 15 miles of power cables from the city to it. The prison had been closed in 1963, shortly after the escape, - which it isn't known positively to be successful or having resulted in the drowning of the escapees. Shooting took place from October 1978 - January 1979 in Alcatraz, San Francisco and in LA's Paramount Studios. No stunt doubles were used for the dangerous escape down the prison wall, and Siegel twice thought that his three actors had drowned. The film takes some fictional license with story and characters. It opened #2, slightly behind Alien, with a 5.3 mil. $ first weekend in North America. The film's world gross is unknown. It was, undeservedly, not nominated for or won any awards, although it was well-reviewed and the 15th highest-grossing film of 1979 in North America. Siegel made only two more films, both far inferior in quality. Escape from Alcatraz is fresh at 95 % with a 6.9 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Escape from Alcatraz?