Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) - Elderly Brits meet India in Madden's delightful best film to date

5/09/2015

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) - Elderly Brits meet India in Madden's delightful best film to date

♥♥♥♥♥

1 Time Film Excess Nominee:

Best Supporting Actress: Maggie Smith (lost to Agnieszka Grochowska for In Darkness)

The ensemble-stressing poster for John Madden's The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

QUICK REVIEW:

A group of Third Aged Brits travel to India, where they are to live in a cheap home for the elderly, which turns out to be more unfinished than they had imagined.

Best Exotic is a surprisingly good film; an adaptation of Deborah Moggach's (Driving in the Dark (1988)) These Foolish Things (2004) by Ol Parker (The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015)), it has well-written characters and enough stories for several films, but it somehow manages to balance them all in first-rate fashion. English director John Madden's (The Debt (2010)) film also has funny, spot-on India/England observations and an ensemble cast of exceedingly lovable actors:
Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire (2008)) is charming and funny as the Indian host-proprietor; Tom Wilkinson (In the Bedroom (2001)), Judi Dench (Philomena (2013)), Bill Nighy (Notes on a Scandal (2006)) and Penelope Wilton (Match Point (2005)) each play their parts very real and are just super. - And Maggie Smith (Quartet (2012)) is simply divine as the curmudgeon, who SPOILER makes the greatest change of them all.
The film is a little thick at one junction and sort of stretches its dough a little to SPOILER afford us its happy ending. - But what of it, since we really want it.
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is one of the most wonderfully appealing movies of the year.

Related post:

2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]

Two of the first ladies of British cinema, Judi Dench and Maggie Smith in John Madden's The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Londoner Dev Patel is great in John Madden's The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Watch the wonderful trailer for the film here

Cost: 10 mil. $
Box office: 136.8 mil. $
= Huge hit
[Best Exotic, which was filmed partly on location in India, was first shown at the Sorrento cinema trade show in 2011 and was publicly released in early 2012. The film was a smash especially in countries related to Britain; in the UK it made a whopping 31 mil. $ (the 4th highest grossing picture of 2012 there); it was 2012's third highest grossing film in New Zealand (4.4 mil. $) and Australia (21.2 mil. $). It made 46.4 mil. $ (34 % of the total gross) in the US.]

What do you think of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel?
Is Madden's 2015 sequel also good?

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Donald Sutherland has passed away

Born in Canada, Sutherland battled polio as a child. His first credit was in Suspense (1963, TV-series) and his first film was The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Later credits in his remarkable career include The Saint (1965-66), The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), 1900 (1976), Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Ordinary People (1980), A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), Outbreak (1995), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), Fierce People (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lord of War (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), The Undoing (2020, miniseries) and many more. He passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Roger Corman has passed away

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Corman had a sprawling, intellectually hungry life as a youth and young man before arriving with his first film in 1955, Five Guns West. He would follow that with titles such as Apache Woman, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Cave Man, A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Intruder, The Raven, The Terror, The Masque of Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Wild Angels, The Trip, Bloody Mama and many more. As a producer he was behind almost 500 films. Arguably among the most important filmmakers of the 20th century, Corman passed away at age 98. R.I.P.

William Friedkin has died

Born in Chicago, Friedkin accrued TV credits prior to his advance to the big screen as the director of Good TImes (1967), The Birthday Party (1968), The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) and The Boys in the Band (1970) before his major breakthrough, The French Connection (1971), for which he won his only Oscar. He followed it up with the even bigger smash, The Exorcist (1973), arguably the best horror film of all time, for which he was Oscar-nominated. Later credits include Sorcerer (1977), Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Rampage (1987), Rules of Engagement (2000), Killer Joe (2011) and The Devil and Father Amorth (2017, documentary). Friedkin passed away at age 87. R.I.P.

Louise Fletcher has passed away

Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Jean-Luc Godard has passed away

Born in Paris, France, Godard lived much of his life in Switzerland. He wrote for French film criticism magazine Cahiers du Cinema and became foundational for the New French Wave that inspired new waves in scores of other countries across the world with his Breathless (1960). Later credits include A Woman Is A Woman (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Petit Soldat (1962), Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967), Weekend (1967), Every Man for Himself (1980), King Lear (1987), Century of Cinema (1995, documentary), Goodbye to Language (2014) and many more. Godard died of assisted suicide at age 91. R.I.P.

Wolfgang Petersen has died

James Caan has died

Caan was born the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany in New York. He got his start on TV in the early 1960s. His credits include El Dorado (1966), The Rain People (1969), Brian's Song (1971, TV movie), The Godfather (1972), - for which he earned his only Oscar nomination, - Slither (1973), The Gambler (1974), Funny Lady (1975), Rollerball (1975), Silent Movie (1976), Hide in Plain Sight (1980), - the only film he also directed, - Thief (1981), Misery (1990), Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Bottle Rocket (1996), Eraser (1996), Dogville (2003), Elf (2003), Las Vegas (2003-07), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and many more. Caan passed away at age 82. R.I.P.

Jean-Louis Trintignant has died

Born in Vaucluse, France, Trintignant's theatrical debut as an actor was in If All the Guys in the World... (1955). Later credits include ...And God Created Woman (1956), The Seven Deadly Sins (1961), Inferno (1964), A Man and A Woman (1966), My Love, My Love (1967), A Man to Kill (1967), The Great Silence (1968), Z (1969), The Assassination (1972), Three Colors: Red (1994), Amour (2012), Happy End (2017) and many more. He also wrote and directed two films in the 1970s. Trintignant passed away at age 91. R.I.P.

Ray Liotta has died

Adopted from an orphenage at a young age, Liotta got hooked on acting in high school. He had various TV credits in the late 1970s and early 80s, with his film debut in The Lonely Lady (1983). Later credits include Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Goodfellas (1990), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Youth in Revolt (2009), The Details (2011), Killing THem Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Shades of Blue (2016-18), The Simpsons (2018, TV-series), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), Black Bird (2022, TV-series) and many more. Liotta passed away at age 67 in his sleep while on production in the Dominican Republic. R.I.P.

Philip Baker Hall has died

Born in Ohio, Hall didn't start acting until he was 30. His long list of credits include Zabriskie Point (1970), Miami Vice (1987, TV-series), Midnight Run (1988), Ghostbusters II (1989), Cheers (1993, TV-series), Hard Eight (1996), The Rock (1996), Air Force One (1997), Boogie Nights (1997), Seinfeld (1991-98), Rush Hour (1998), The Insider (1999), Magnolia (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Bruce Almighty (2003), Dogville (2003), The Zodiac (2005), Zodiac (2007), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2004-09), Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011), Modern Family (2011-12) and many more. Hall passed away at age 90. R.I.P.

Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!

Eagerly anticipating this week ... (15-24)

5/09/2015

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) - Elderly Brits meet India in Madden's delightful best film to date

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