Director: Wes Anderson
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Tony Revelori, F. Murray Abraham, The Wes Anderson Repertory Players
After seeing Moonrise Kingdon I swore that I would not see Wes Anderson's followup. I harbored no ill-will towards Moonrise, but like most Anderson's films I was forced to conclude that "it wasn't for me". His movies are trifles that ping pong between preciousness and moroseness so rapidly that I've never emotionally invested in them. Even Rushmore a film about a precocious high schooler, fell flat when I watched it as a precocious high schooler. In the past I've joked that I enjoy Anderson's film for the first hour, but by the hour mark I am yelling at him to stop playing with his dolls.* If you'll excuse the cliched metaphor his films are like the confectioneries in them, beautifully constructed, delicious, but eat more than one and you'll be reaching for a toothbrush.
As one can glean from that preamble, I was not prepared to like Grand Budapest Hotel. GBH is Anderson at his most precious: it features three framing devices, multiple aspect ratios and takes place in a fictional country, with fictional flags and military uniforms. Most of the main action resides in the eponymous hotel that carefully constructed and full of Andersonian trinkets and tchotchkes.
Surprisingly, the film won me over; it's propulsive and engaging: I laughed out loud several times (generally the most Anderson's films can get from me is a knowing chuckle or a sly smirk). I also rolled my eyes several times, had dollhouse fatigue a couple times and didn't think the film had much to say about dealing with loss or World War II or civility or much of anything, but I enjoyed the 100 minutes I spent with this movie, which, for me, is an unqualified rave; sometimes one needs to satiate their sweet tooth.
*It's surprising that the film of his I found most palatable is Fantastic Mr. Fox, where he is literally, playing with dolls. It's to me the only film where Anderson's style matches his content. I expect want a stop-motion animated adaptation of a beloved children's book to be mostly sugary highs. It is a romp from start to finish and is not derailed by the cloying regrets of well-to-do dreamers.
Friday, February 27, 2015
Friday, January 30, 2015
Inherent Vice - 2014 - NR
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Katherine Waterston, Owen Wilson
Imagine, if you will, a Frank Luntzian dystopia where every time you experience art you are also forced to record your emotions in an "Instant Reponse Focus Group". You have a dial in your hand and are continuously rating what you are viewing on a scale of quality from 0-100. Ignoring the futility of quantitatively rating art, which experience would you rather experience, one where your dial is at 50 for the entire runtime or one where you are at 0 half the time and 100 the other half?
Though the two hypothetical experiences above both average to a 5/10, I'd certainly prefer the latter. Fleeting bouts of transcendence are rarer and more valuable than sustained mediocrity and I am willing to wallow through garbage for a taste of greatness, which brings us to Inherent Vice. Inherent Vice, Paul Thomas Anderson's (apparently) faithful adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's (apparently) inscrutable novel is shaggy dog story that is lively and energetic and beautifully photographed, except for when it's not.
Inherent Vice is a slacker noir in the tradition of The Long Goodbye and The Big Lebowski, we follow our counter-cultural gumshoe, in this case "Doc" Sportello (Joaquin) Phoenix, through a labyrinthine conspiracy that will not be solved when the final reel ends. IV's lack of narrative closure is part its genre, not a fault, but without a gripping narrative the film is dependent on its vignettes consistently working; unfortunately its digressions are scattershot and the misses undermine the film's momentum.
What makes this film so hard to grade is when hits the mark, Anderson produces true 100/100 moments. A tracking shot with Can's Vitamin C playing over the big, bright, neon title credits, Doc and Shasta (Katherine Waterston) running in the rain while Neil Young plays in the background, A close up of Bigfoot (Josh Brolin) fellating a chocolate covered banana, the phrase "pussy eater's special", each of these would be the best parts all but a few movies I saw last year. PTA is such a talented director that it's impossible for him to make a 150 minute movie that doesn't have several awesome scenes, but Inherent Vice's ratio of awesome : mediocre is lower than most PTA fare. It's a qualified success whose occasional brilliance make this movie a must-see, which currently translates into a number of stars that neither I nor Frank Luntz can appropriately gauge.
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Katherine Waterston, Owen Wilson
Imagine, if you will, a Frank Luntzian dystopia where every time you experience art you are also forced to record your emotions in an "Instant Reponse Focus Group". You have a dial in your hand and are continuously rating what you are viewing on a scale of quality from 0-100. Ignoring the futility of quantitatively rating art, which experience would you rather experience, one where your dial is at 50 for the entire runtime or one where you are at 0 half the time and 100 the other half?
Though the two hypothetical experiences above both average to a 5/10, I'd certainly prefer the latter. Fleeting bouts of transcendence are rarer and more valuable than sustained mediocrity and I am willing to wallow through garbage for a taste of greatness, which brings us to Inherent Vice. Inherent Vice, Paul Thomas Anderson's (apparently) faithful adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's (apparently) inscrutable novel is shaggy dog story that is lively and energetic and beautifully photographed, except for when it's not.
Inherent Vice is a slacker noir in the tradition of The Long Goodbye and The Big Lebowski, we follow our counter-cultural gumshoe, in this case "Doc" Sportello (Joaquin) Phoenix, through a labyrinthine conspiracy that will not be solved when the final reel ends. IV's lack of narrative closure is part its genre, not a fault, but without a gripping narrative the film is dependent on its vignettes consistently working; unfortunately its digressions are scattershot and the misses undermine the film's momentum.
What makes this film so hard to grade is when hits the mark, Anderson produces true 100/100 moments. A tracking shot with Can's Vitamin C playing over the big, bright, neon title credits, Doc and Shasta (Katherine Waterston) running in the rain while Neil Young plays in the background, A close up of Bigfoot (Josh Brolin) fellating a chocolate covered banana, the phrase "pussy eater's special", each of these would be the best parts all but a few movies I saw last year. PTA is such a talented director that it's impossible for him to make a 150 minute movie that doesn't have several awesome scenes, but Inherent Vice's ratio of awesome : mediocre is lower than most PTA fare. It's a qualified success whose occasional brilliance make this movie a must-see, which currently translates into a number of stars that neither I nor Frank Luntz can appropriately gauge.
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