Top 10: The best adventure films reviewed by Film Excess to date

1. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) - Wes Anderson

2. The African Queen (1951) - John Huston

3. Avatar (2009) - James Cameron

4. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) - Andrew Adamson

5. Back to the Future Part II (1989) - Robert Zemeckis

6. Coraline (2009) - Henry Selick

7. Kon-Tiki (2012) - Joachim Rønning & Espen Sandberg 

8. Roman Holiday (1953) - William Wyler

9. Qivitoq (1956) - Erik Balling

10. The Bear/Lours (1988) - Jean-Jacques Annaud

Other great adventure films reviewed by Film Excess
(in alphabetical order)

Barry Lyndon (1975) 
Bolt (2008) 
Diamonds Are Forever (1971) 
The Lego Movie (2014) 
Men in Black 3 (2012) 
Moonrise Kingdom (2012) 
The Triplets of Belleville/Les Triplettes de Belleville/Belleville Rendez-vous (2003) 

Good adventure films and TV-series reviewed by Film Excess
(in alphabetical order)

The Adventures of Tintin - all 3 seasons (1991-92) 
The Avengers/Avengers Assemble (2012) 
Battle Royale (2000) 
The Blue Lagoon (1980) 
The Call of the Wild (1972) 
Cannibal Holocaust II/Natura Contro/The Green Inferno (1988) 
Captain Kidd (1945) 
Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992) 
Congo (1995) 
Midnight in Paris (2011) 
Oz the Great and Powerful (2013) 
Rango (2011) 
The Rum Diary (2011) 
The Sitter (2011)
Spirited Away/千と千尋の神隠し (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi) (2001) 
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) 
Super 8 (2011) 
Your Highness (2011) 

Mediocre or poor adventure films reviewed by Film Excess 
(in alphabetical order)


Alice in Wonderland (1999)
The Amazing Spiderman (2012)
Baby Geniuses (1999) 
The Brothers Grimm (2005) 
Circus World/The Magnificent Showman (1964) 
Coming to America (1988) 
Howl's Moving Castle/ハウルの動く城 (Hauru no Ugoku Shiro) (2004) 
John Carter (2012)
The Lost Boys (1987) 
Minions (2015) 
Mr. Peabody & Sherman (2014) 
X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

[48 titles in all]

Previous Top 10 lists:

The best adapted films reviewed by Film Excess to date 
The best action movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 

What do you think of these lists?
What adventure films are missing?
And which would you place differently?

The Name of the Rose (1986) or, The Monk Dective and the Monestary Horrors

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Adventure springs to mind from this neat, painted character-poster for Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Name of the Rose

The Name of the Rose is an adaptation of Italian writer-philosopher-semiotician Umberto Eco's (The Prague Cemetery (2011)) first novel and the fourth movie from French director Jean-Jacques Annaud (The Bear (1988)).
Annaud had developed and nursed the project for 4 years and taken his time with studies of the novel, the medieval portrayal and facts presented. And with the casting of all the monks in the film that all have very distinct and interesting faces.
Rose is a whodunit crime thriller set in the very unusual place of a 13th century monastery in Northern Italy. Here, a monk has thrown himself off the roof of the monastery in a hailstorm, and soon other eerie irregularities follow. William of Baskerville is a learned monk from another, more liberal order, who is called upon to solve the mystery. And he does so with the aid of his young apprentice, Adso.
Sean Connery (Time Bandits (1981)) is a major reason to watch Rose, although his casting wasn't obvious at the time of production, when his career was in a slump. But seeing him tackle the Sherlock Holmes-inspired character (Holmes is also referenced in a few lines in the film) is a joy. He has the warmth and humor that takes some of the gruesomeness out of the film, and the possibility of anything supernatural at hand never seems a possibility due to his straight-shooting nature.
As Adso, we get a 17 year-old Christian Slater (True Romance (1993)), who breaks his celibacy with a poverty-stricken girl in a feisty sex scene. Annaud's keen sense of the sensual is very clear throughout Rose, a film with lots of intellectual and religious ideas floating around, which is aptly balanced with the horrors of the monastery and the vileness of its inhabitants, as Annaud tackles the occult to great effect and seems to revel in the stuff. Most vile of them all is Ron Perlman (Drive (2011)), whose already somewhat ghoulish features have been heightened greatly to suit his menacing, humpbacked character here:

Ron Perlman in Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Name of the Rose

The details:

F. Murray Abraham (The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)) plays the adversary, who arrives late in the film after it has lost some pace.
Still, it is a very enjoyable time and a very specific, different, exotic place to be taken to for a couple of hours.
The film seems to have an implicit, agnosticist skepticism of all the (Christian) religion involved, which is represented mainly as ludicrous or of very poor consequences, but Baskerville also shows another, lighter alternative, retaining his Christian faith. And the ending is definitely no rejection of strong faith and quite memorable.
Annaud is working on his Chinese adventure movie Wolf Totem (2015) at present.

Related review:

Jean-Jacques Annaud: The Bear/L'Ours (1988) - Amazing bear story for (almost) the entire family

Watch the original trailer here

Sean Connery and Christian Slater in Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Name of the Rose

Budget: 18.5 mil. $
Box office: 77.1 mil. $
= Big hit, - mainly in Europe, (Rose only made 7.2 mil. $ in the U.S.)

What do you think of The Name of the Rose?
Other unusually located whodunits that you want to recommend?

The Bear/L'Ours (1988) - Amazing bear story for (almost) the entire family

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The intense, exciting poster for Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Bear

QUICK REVIEW:

A young bear in British Columbia loses his mother, when a rock-slide buries her, but luckily, he attaches himself to a huge grizzly bear. Nature, however, poses many dangers, none the least in the form of human hunters.
The Bear is a staggering accomplishment, because its leads are played by real bears doing all kinds of things and taking us emotionally into their world. This deeply impressive performance is told through a narrative, which is treated with crystal clear structure and lots of suspense and heart-rendering scenes. The Bear wisely never lets you sit back and wonder what you're doing getting involved in a movie about bears. But you do wonder how the footage was caught and the ordeals that must have been involved.
The alienation that I and most audiences feel against the 'evil' humans fortunately SPOILER gets mended in the end in a sweet but unsentimental ending. The balancing act of The Bear's storyline is outstanding.
The Bear doesn't say anything as such, (much as it is largely free of dialog and a score), and the dream sequences in it are primitive (and psychedelic), but the experience as a whole is unique, the nature grand and the tale gripping.
A fantastic film, ideal for family watch, bigger kids (age 6) upwards.
The French director of this French film, - which was shot almost entirely in the Italian and Austrian Dolomites, - is Jean-Jacques Annaud, who has made films like The Name of the Rose (1986) and Seven Years in Tibet (1997). He is working on a large adaptation set in China and Mongolia now, Wolf Totem, set to come out next year.

Related post:

Top 10: The best adventure movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 

Some images from the movie:

Watch the trailer for this fine film here

Budget: Unknown
Box office: 31.7 mil. $ (US only)
= Almost certainly a huge success

What do you think of The Bear?
Can you mention other fine films with animals in the leads?