Sure, let's do another one of these posts. Eight more movies! I was bitten by the Oscar bug a couple of weeks ago and decided to take a peek at several nominees, along with some other random odds and ends. I've now watched 17 movies in January. I hope this sort of makes up for my lack of progress on other logging fronts.
The Grand Budapest Hotel
This is arguably Wes Anderson's best movie. Moonrise Kingdom, his last movie, was also arguably his best movie. The man is so clearly in the prime of his career right now, and everything he makes from here on out will probably qualify as a "must see" for me. The only other director I can say that about, off the top of my head, is Quentin Tarantino - another middle-aged guy who made his debut in the '90s, has made eight films, and has a style so unique that his last name doubles as a description of his work. Anyway, The Grand Budapest Hotel. It probably isn't for everyone, like any Wes Anderson movie, but I absolutely loved it. Interestingly, actors are rarely very memorable in Anderson's movies; they all tend to do a perfectly adequate job, but it's the writing and the visual flourishes that make his films so damn fun. I say this only because here, in The Grand Budapest Hotel, Ralph Feinnes was absolutely amazing. I can't say enough good things about this whole thing, and frankly, as was the case with Moonrise Kingdom, I expected to have no less of a reaction.
Divergent
The wife watched this one while I was away on a belated bachelor party and she really enjoyed it. She saved it on the DVR for me and when I finally got around to seeing it, I just didn't care for it. Granted, I didn't expect to like it. I do like Shailene Woodley and I think she's a poor man's Jennifer Lawrence (right down to the recent Kate Gosselin haircut), but Divergent felt like a poor man's Hunger Games at best, and The Hunger Games wasn't even a very good movie. This one is set in a dystopian future version of Chicago, where people are divided into five different factions based on their personality traits: farmers, police-soldiers, civil servants, teacher-scientists, and government workers, I think. When you turn sixteen in this society, you need to declare your faction. But if you're cut out for more than one faction, you're - yes - "divergent." Lo and behold, main character Shailene Woodley is divergent. There were some heavy-handed parallels here to high school cliques and feeling like an outcast, and I'm sure those themes worked brilliantly on their target demographic, but I'm just not into these types of movies. Marissa has a real soft spot for big budget PG-13 action flicks, so neither one of us expected me to like this one as much as she did. And that's fine!
Frank
Here's an odd one. Michael Fassbender plays Frank, an eccentric frontman for an experimental indie band. Except you never really see Michael Fassbender's handsome face, since Frank never takes off the giant papier-mâché head seen on the above film poster. Maggie Gyllenhaal also appears in a relatively minor role and turns in the type of performance that makes you go, "wait, they needed Maggie Gyllenhaal for that? Was this a passion project of hers?" I didn't hate this movie - I'd even say I found it charming and endearing - but I also can't pretend I fully understood or appreciated what they were going for. Frank was kind of a maniac; was the point here that deeply tormented artists have to put on a mask every day so that the rest of us ignore their pain? There's no need to check this one out unless you've got a real and specific interest in doing so.
The World's End
Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are back for the conclusion of Edgar Wright's "Cornetto" trilogy in The World's End, a thematic sequel to the likes of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. I loved Shaun of the Dead and liked Hot Fuzz just fine, but from the first time I heard about this movie I just wasn't interested. A group of friends goes out for a pub crawl and along the way fends off an alien invasion? It just came across as trite and banal. Now, hindsight being twenty-twenty, I can appreciate that the movie was supposed to seem that way at first glance, and that, much like its predecessors, it transcended its genre pretty effortlessly. It wasn't a straight satire or spoof of the "one last guy's night out" sub-genre any more than Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz lampooned zombie flicks and cop movies, respectively. Rather, in all three films, Edgar Wright seems to be saying, "look at how much fun you can have making this particular type of movie without straying too far from the conventions of the genre." The World's End comes closer than either of the previous two to suggesting that it has something important to say about arrested development and trying to relive your adolescence in your forties, but for me it registered as the weakest entrant in the unofficial trilogy. Still a great movie, and still one I'd recommend to almost anyone, and certainly much better than I initially thought it looked like it would be. (What the hell was I expecting? Paul? Probably Paul.)
Boyhood
Here's your frontrunner for Best Picture honors a month from now. It's a movie that took twelve years to make and it tells the story of one boy's personal journey from six-year-old to college freshman. There doesn't seem to be much backlash against all the hype this film has generated, and the only negative things some people have said about it are that there's no real plot. Frankly, I couldn't care less. This movie is about growing up and dealing with hardships and embracing the good times and so on. Did your childhood have a "plot" to speak of? Mine didn't. The story here is simply that of a boy growing into a man - and his father growing up too, a little later in life, and his mother learning from some of her mistakes but not form others, and a number of other characters growing, changing, evolving, what have you. I loved it. To me it managed to boil twelve years down into three hours in such a way that I felt the weight and heft of those twelve years but never felt the movie dragging. As soon as you're getting used to one scene - one slice of life, really - you get whisked ahead by a few months or a year and everything has changed. Richard Linklater movies aren't for everyone, and the final third of this one - where the quiet boy has become a mopey teenager spouting philosophical mundanities - may be particularly taxing on those who want more from a movie than to hear people pontificating about life and reality. Even if that's not your cup of tea, I'd say that this one's worth checking out for the scope alone - and also the likely Best Picture win.
Gone Girl
Blog readers know that I just read this book a week and a half ago. The movie seemed like a great adaptation, and perhaps the best one possible. But chalk up another tally in the "book was better" column. Perhaps it's just because I had only just read the book, but throughout the movie I couldn't help but notice cuts, changes, and omissions - not to mention casting decisions that caught me off guard. Before reading the book at all, I'd heard that David Fincher had found a way to really elevate his so-so source material into a truly great movie. As it turns out, I do think that this was a pretty good movie, but I also thought that Gone Girl was a great book in the first place. Where some saw an elevation, I just saw a non-bungled translation. Props and praise, all the same. And please, read or watch this story.
The Immigrant
I saw this one getting some love in year-end "best" lists, so I figured I'd give it a Netflix shot. The movie was objectively great, but I did find it, personally, to be a bit boring. Marion Cotillard stars as a Polish immigrant to Ellis Island in the 1920s. She gets caught up in what we'll call a love triangle - even though that's not really what it is, but, hey, bear with me here - between Joaquin Phoenix and Jeremy Renner. All three are great, but it's Cotillard who shines brightest. The woman is a French-born actress, keep in mind, and if you've seen her in Inception or The Dark Knight Rises you know how thick that French accent usually is. But here, in order to play a Polish immigrant, she learned some basic Polish so that she could speak English with a Polish accent. Imagine that - speaking a second language in a third accent. Now that's commitment! Anyway, this was a good movie, but it wasn't one I'd put near the top of any sort of "must-see" list.
Frances Ha
And lastly, here's a critical darling from 2013. I'll admit, I was still waiting for some sort of third act to break on this one when the credits began rolling after just 80 minutes. Short! And sort of fun, I guess. Just not substantial. Greta Gerwig plays the eponymous Frances, a dancer in her late twenties in New York who feels like a character straight out of Girls. She's awkward and naive and embarrassing, but she's also stubborn and loaded with self-confidence and more pride than her circumstances should allow her. The film follows her to Sacramento and Paris before ending up back in New York. It was decent. I can't really give a broad recommendation for this one, but I liked it just fine, and hey, maybe you would too.
And that's curtains for January. Here's hoping I can recommit to some real backlog items in February and beyond.
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