O Brother, Where Art Thou?

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together and running from the law. Before you can say "Damn, we're in a tight spot," the trio are off on a fantastical road trip fraught with peril.

To be more specific, they run into a blind oracle on a handcar, a midget with a broom, a cow on a cotton gin roof, a gopher on a stick, a blues singer who in Robert Johnson style has sold his soul to the devil, a one-eyed Bible salesman, sirens on the rocks, a KKK drill team, a reform party, two old-style river baptisms, and a toad with a case of mistaken identity.

Written by brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, and loosely modeled on Homer's Odyssey, O Brother, Where Art Thou? (released in 2000) weaves cleverly in and out of subplots through a series of vignettes. But you don't need to have a working knowledge of Greek mythology to appreciate the movie. The Coens brought us Fargo, Raising Arizona, and The Big Lebowski. Their anti-action-hero, antiformulaic style and tongue-in-cheek humor breathe a down-to-earth realism into their fantastical characters and settings.