I liked Felicia’s Journey, for what that’s worth, but I haven’t seen it since it came out and haven’t seen any of Egoyan’s other movies.
It hasn’t come out in my city yet, and when it does, I fear I’ll have to see the Veronica Mars movie that weekend, since my wife kickstarted it. We’ll definitely see Grand Budapest Hotel though and I’m looking forward to it.
Regardless of his repetitious styling, Anderson does it well. Even Fantastic Mr. Fox really wasn’t different thematically or shot differently. Call him a creative dead end, or a one trick pony, but people such as myself will gladly keep watching his movies. And then re-watching them.
Life Aquatic is my favorite.
I thoroughly enjoyed The Grand Budapest Hotel. It’s really quite wondrous. Not as deeply felt or touching as Rushmore or Tenenbaums, but it’s an exquisitely crafted cinematic adventure comedy where the setting is the star attraction. It’s less laugh-out-loud funny and more mouth-hanging-open-in-astonishment. It reminded me of The Pink Panther series quite often and it has a surprising amount of The Fantastic Mr. Fox in it as well. I think it might even be a tour de force.
I have not seen it, but I have been listening to the soundtrack, which I am madly in love with.
I agree except I like it overall slightly less.
Haven’t seen it yet, but one (another) unusual thing about Wes Anderson movies is that people seem to be equally likely to pick any of his movies as their personal favorite. That seems really rare for directors with more than a couple of films.
That’s really true. And I wonder what effect an individual’s order of viewing has on which film becomes that personal favorite.
In hindsight, the Bottle Rocket guys robbing Hinckley Cold Storage wasn’t just a fun, low-budget exercise in genre… it was only the beginning of Anderson’s fascination with crime capers. And they’ve just gotten more mechanically intricate and visually elaborate ever since.
I feel like I need to see Grand Budapest again not for its story but just to luxuriate in the bespoke craft of the goddamn thing. It’s almost unbelievable that such a movie exists.
The closing credits are worth enjoying just for the swelling music and the little animated dancer in the corner. Polly Platt, Richard D. Zanuck, and Kumar Pallana were given a nice remembrance… Mr. Littlejeans is in good company.
Loved it! It’s a classic Wes Anderson movie. I heard complaints, that he always makes the same films. You could tell this about many great artists. Like Francis Bacon. He painted always the same images. Or Flaubert wrote the same novel over and over again. This is because those artists found their theme(s) … That’s why you can identify Beethoven within the first bars or Mozart. I can’t see a problem here…
Small PSA for people who care about spoilers: for reasons unknown to me (practical joke, maybe) one of the titles in the official soundtrack is an enormous, blatant spoiler. It literally describes a key plot event (taking place in a room full of suits of armour) in detail. If you haven’t seen it yet, avoid the soundtrack - or just don’t look at the titles.
Good of you to point that out for those who may prefer to avoid it, but I think the reason for the track name would be that the movie treats its events as history being passed down through the generations. So a soundtrack title like that is no more a spoiler than something like The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald or The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. At least, I think that’s what they’re going for.
Quite excited to see this tonight!
Went in with high expectations after the trailer, but was afraid it wouldn’t love up to that - fortunately, that wasn’t the case. I like Fiennes in general, but he’s really terrific in this one. Also loved the look of the movie - great locations, superb set design. Gorgeous visuals overall. I also liked this weird world they created in which the Hotel had the name “Budapest” in it whereas everything had fictional names despite being obvious references to Germany, Austria and Hungary.
Agreed, absolutely, especially with the way they present some of the events at the very end of the movie. I guess I was just looking out for people who’d rather make discoveries like that during the movie.
Fantastic movie. Starting with The Fantastic Mr Fox Anderson gave up any notion of depicting three-dimensional characters and instead set up shop as a straight-out teller of fables, and it works much better with his style. This is a first rate fable, especially as in the end Anderson follows through on some of the punches he deliberately pulled in Moonrise Kingdom.
And it looks amazing. There are no throwaway shots here: every image is a little marvel of graphic design.
Huh, so judging by reactions here and reviews online, I gather that everybody liked this movie. I found it really quite tedious. I was really looking forward to it, because I think that the thematic elements are incredibly strong: the dissolution of the old world and the rise of the post-war/soviet era hold tremendous fascination for me, but I felt like Anderson didn’t really understand the strength of the material, or didn’t do anything with it.
I’ve read reviews that say that it was thrilling, or beguiling or hilarious, but I just couldn’t get into it. It was very pretty, but it didn’t feel like there was anything to hold on to. I didn’t care at all about any of the characters, and I felt there was no tension at all in the heist elements. It seemed like it was trying to be funny…but it felt like people telling me about jokes rather than telling me the jokes themselves. I could see “oh, this is where the joke is supposed to be”, but they never landed. It seemed like a lot of it was meta-humor along the lines of “Can you believe it’s this actor? Remember that other movie he was in?”
Many scenes were impeccably staged, visually, but since there was nothing to grab onto throughout the movie, the pretty visuals just became exhausting. I feel like the movie works better in screenshots than actually having to sit through the movie itself. Several times I found myself thinking “Wow, this looks like a very expensive set”, but just thinking that, not actually being impressed by it because there wasn’t anything there to generate emotion. The whole thing crossed over from deadpan to bored.
There’s probably nothing in this post that hasn’t been said a hundred times about Wes Anderson’s films. But I’m pretty sure I’ve liked his movies before, whereas this one just seemed self-indulgent.
Yeah, a lot of craft, and not much affection, as near as I could tell. I think “tedious” captures it pretty well, Mr. Wheeljack. All that attention to detail to very little effect. But I did like that instead of Wes Anderson’s sometimes cloying optimism, it ended with the fatalism you’d expect from a writer who lived through that period. How many Wes Anderson movies ultimately consign themselves to disease, fascism, and communism?
That said, Ralph Feinnes is sooooo good with comedy. See also In Brugges. He almost single-handedly rescued Grand Budapest Hotel from its tedium.
-Tom
“Oh, fuck it…”
If you go into a Wes Anderson movie expecting dramatic tension, or characters with more than a dimension and a half, you’re bringing the wrong things with you. Surfaces are what he does.
I kind of liked the idea that we’re seeing what’s really a pretty dark story, colored by the imagination and perspective of the young girl reading the book, but overall it left me kind of flat. Then again, I really disliked The Darjeeling Limited the first time I watched it and I’ve since warmed up to it quite a bit so maybe I’d enjoy this more on a second viewing as well.
I am the world’s biggest Wes Anderson honk…and this was–I think–his first absolute failure as a director, even more so than Darjeeling. Unfocused and telling a story I’m not sure even Wes particularly enjoyed…it really did feel like a threadbare script.