Jason Schwartzman

The Grand Budapest Hotel

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Grand Budapest Hotel
  • IMDB: link

The Grand Budapest HotelFor his latest film writer/director Wes Anderson takes his trademark style to the fictional Republic of Zubrowka and a once-proud mountainside resort known as The Grand Budapest Hotel with a rich history to share. Relying heavily on narration, the film struggles a bit to get going by beginning in the present and slowly peeling back layers (each jumping 20 years or so into the past) until we finally arrive in the pre-World War II 1930s and the story of fastidious old-school concierge M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) and his the new lobby boy Zero (Tony Revolori).

During the overly-elaborate and unnecessarily complicated (although certainly not boring) first 20-minutes or so as the movie introduces an elderly author (Tom Wilkinson) beginning his own flashbacks to his time at the hotel as a younger man (Jude Law) when he happened to meet the elderly version of Zero (F. Murray Abraham) and thus learned his story, Anderson relies on a variety of his usual bag of tricks involving beautiful cinematography and set design highlighted by the use of some marvelous miniatures.

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Saving Mr. Banks

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Saving Mr. Banks
  • IMDB: link

Saving Mr. BanksWritten by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith, and based off pieces of the life of P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson), Saving Mr. Banks is half of a really good film. The story is broken into flashbacks of Travers’ childhood and decades later when Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) was attempting to buy the rights from the author’s children’s books to make Mary Poppins.

Although there is much to enjoy in the later Disney years (despite the oversimplification of Travers’ stubbornness) the film gets bogged down in the weight of the constant flashbacks which may offer a peek at the real story that first created Mary Poppins on the page but ignores much of the life story of the woman who wrote her.

The scenes involving the young Travers’ () drunken but imaginative father (Colin Farrell), troubled mother (Ruth Wilson), and larger-than-life aunt (Rachel Griffiths) fall in the realm of Dinsey-ized melancholy, but the scenes in California between the equally stubborn Disney and Travers provide its magic.

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Pirates, Vegans, and Lesbians. Oh, my!

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
  • IMDb: link

Based on the comic series of the same name young Canadian slacker Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) meets the girl of his dreams (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) only to learn he must face-off against, and defeat, all seven of her evil ex’s (Jason Schwartzman, Chris Evans, Brandon Routh, Satya Bhabha, Mae Whitman, Keita Saitou, Shota Saito). Director Edgar Wright‘s take on the comic is an awful lot of fun and holds up well to multiple viewings. For more check out my original review of the film.

The Blu-ray version of the movie is loaded with extras including multiple audio commentary tracks, featurettes on the making of the film as well as its look and sound, alternative footage, deleted scenes (with director commentary), bloopers, along with standard BD Live extras, a copy of the film on DVD, and the ability to stream either Pitch Black or Tremors for free.

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Fantastic Mr. Fox, Simply Fantastic

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Fantastic Mr. Fox
  • IMDB: link

I’m far from director Wes Anderson’s biggest fan. Although I enjoyed The Royal Tenenbaums (and to a lesser extent The Darjeeling Limited), in my opinion, most of his work seems to value style over, and sometimes at the cost of, substance.

Anderson’s latest Fantastic Mr. Fox is a stop-motion animated adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book about a fox fighting his own nature to steal from the wealthy farmers Boggis (Robin Hurlstone), Bunce (Hugo Guinness) and Bean (Michael Gambon), and provide his family with what he feels they deserve.

And, I must admit, it’s really, really good. In many ways the film is a perfect fit for Anderson and merge of its offbeat humor with his own. The stop-animation allows the director to play to his strenghts and design a a complete world. And as a book the story is naturally divided into the kinds of chapters Anderson enjoys breaking his film into (here he even provides titles for each).

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Walk Hard

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
  • IMDB: link

“It ain’t easy to walk to the top of a mountain.  It’s a long hard walk, but I will walk hard.”

walk-hard-poster

The collaboration between Jake Kasdan and Judd Apatow is a perfect parody of recent overly serious and sentimental music biopics like Walk the Line and Ray which examine the entire life of an artist with all the skill and depth of a Behind the Music special.  The film follows Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly, who plays the character from the age of 14 to 71) who faces the tragic death of his brother to an unfortunate machete accident, the disapproval of his father (Raymond J. Barry), drugs, booze, and women, to become a legend.

Although it helps if you’ve seen the films this one parodies it’s not a necessity to get most of the jokes (though you will miss some of more subtle moments including specific shots and camera work).  Reilly is terrific in a role that let’s him prove just what a great dumbass he can play.  And, as he proved in A Prairie Home Companion (read that review), he can sing.  It’s a combination of the music and sharp unrelenting wit that transforms this film from the regular mass produced parodies like the Scary Movie franchises, and moves into the elite company with This Is Spinal Tap and Airplane.

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