Lens-2

Where would we be without the Coen brothers? Well, Prozac sales would be up for sure! Oh Brother... is a wonderful tale that offers up a hilarious antidote to the classic Steinbeck view of 30s America.

The dialogue manages to deliver wit through bathos and sharp visual humour through slapstick - no mean feat that. The movie is not just buoyed along by the amazing soundtrack, it is propelled by it.

I saw this film on a long-haul plane trip and then watched it all over again on the way back - it was even better the second time. If you don't get this movie, you probably don't get much at all.

I give Homer 9, Ethan and Joel 10.

This takes a notion that has been used in movies before - that it is possible for someone someone to take on the form of another through various forms of mutilation (e.g. Silence of the Lambs or LA Confidential), but elevates it to the central premise.

The CIA, their wonders to behold, have developed a level of technology capable of transforming John Travolta into the perfect image of Nicholas Cage. This may seem just a tad far-fetched to those of us who recall that the same organisation thought that the best way of deposing Castro was to offer him an exploding cigar (perhaps they were getting Karl Marx muddled up with Groucho).

Anyway, with this huge hole in the middle of the plot this turkey could never hope to get off the ground.

If you believe that it really was Santa who bought you that pair of funky snowman socks for Xmas, that aliens supplied the blueprints to Rameses I or that Jim Carey is a comic genius - you'll love this one.

What a wonderful idea to cast Dirk Bogarde and Sarah Miles against James Fox and Wendy Craig - the subversives against the establishment. Bogarde's predatory gay character and the libidinous Miles are pitched against a couple whose only reason for being together seems to be upper class conventionality. Showing absolutely no moral qualms, Bogarde and Miles go about opening up a fissure between them and supplanting their social superiors and taking over control of the house in which Bogarde is (ostensibly) the butler.

Tight cinematography helps to keep this movie on the edge all the way through.

A minor British masterpiece.

8/10