Film Reviews, Interviews and Articles
Structured like a New Yorker zine and just as wryly smug and pandering to the self-proclaimed intelligentsia, The French Dispatch is an ego-driven misfire for visionary director Wes Anderson who has done little more than projectile vomit his signature quirk on the screen in thick gobs, forgetting to actually make a movie along the way. Read More
Ben Stiller‘s approach to round two of the Zoo is akin to chucking a baby bird from the nest to see if it will fly or plummet, only to discover a 25-pound lead weight secured to said birdling’s ankle bits. No scene demonstrates this better than when Hansel (Owen Wilson), in an attempt to elicit Derek’s (Stiller) magical modeling stopping power, is throwing objects at the now-out-of-fashion Derek Zoolander. Failing to summon the “fire” that stopped Mutagatu’s (Will Ferrell) M-shaped throwing star and saved the Malaysian Prime Minister all those years back, each progressively larger prop strikes Zoolander’s duck-face curtly in the sucker. By object four or five, a tasty-looking bottle of Reposado that acts as an accidental stand-in for the cockeyed audience, Zoolander cries out, “This just isn’t working.” No Ben Stiller, it really, really isn’t. Read More
Synopsis: “American businessman Jack Dwyer (Owen Wilson), wife Annie (Lake Bell) and their two young daughters arrive in Southeast Asia to begin a new life. As his company plans to improve the region’s water quality, the family quickly learns that they’re right in the middle of a political uprising. Armed rebels attack the hotel where they’re staying, ordered to kill any foreigners that they encounter. Amid utter chaos, Jack must find a way to save himself and his loved ones from the violence erupting all around them.” Read More
It’s been 15 years since Derek Zoolander shot his last Blue Steel at the camera and, for better or worse, he’s back in the first full trailer for Zoolander 2. Years retired and now thought of as a bit of a joke, Zoolander is recruited once more to stop the evil fashion designer Mugatu (Will Ferrell) from assassinating all the beautiful people in the world, including, of course, Justin Bieber and Kayne West. Read More
Originally packaged with a much more apt title (The Coup), the ambiguously-named No Escape is still the second surprise thriller of the summer (the first being the shockingly excellent The Gift). John Erick Dowdle, who delivered the monstrously underrated As Above/So Below last year, again proves his knack for preeminently nail-biting sequences with a 103-minute zombie feature that replaces said zombies with radicalized “Asians”. Whereas zombies lack motive, the bloodthirsty nature of the enemy in No Escape is their defining feature and makes for antagonists who are thinly drawn but hugely imposing. Moments of cliche are all but drown out by the overwhelming panic at the heart of the film, a film that manages to tap into the epicenter of terror – having your family hacked to pieces in front of your eyes. It is, in three words: intense as f*ck. Read More
Fiennes, Brody, Dafoe, Goldblum, Murray, Law, Swinton, Ronan, Norton, Keitel, Schwartzman, Seydoux, Wilson, Balaban, Amalric, Wilkinson. Wes Anderson‘s latest may have more big names working for it than ever before but their characters are more paper thin than they’ve been, more fizzle than tonic, more Frankenstein’s creations than humans. His company of regulars – joined by a vast scattering of newbies – are relegated to playing furniure-chomping bit roles, filling the shoes of cartoonish sketches, slinking in long shadows of characters. From Willem Dafoe‘s brutish, brass-knuckled Jopling to a caked-up and aged Tilda Swinton, gone are the brooding and calculated, flawed and angsty but always relatable characters of Wes yore. In their place, a series of dusty cardboard cutouts; fun but irrevocably inhuman. Read More
As an obsessive Wes Anderson fan, I relish in any piece of his inspired artwork, so while most posters don’t really get me excited, this one for The Grand Budapest Hotel does for all of its Wes Anderson-esque goodness. While I rather enjoyed his last film, Moonrise Kingdom, it was hardly one of my favorite of his and I’m excited to see Anderson return to the adult world. As always, he’s got a cast and crew to be oogled with season Anderson loyalites Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton and Adrien Brody will join Ralph Fiennes, Harvey Keitel, Jude Law, Saoirse Ronan, Mathieu Amalric, Lea Seydoux, F. Murray Abraham, Tom Wilkinson, and newcomer Tony Revolori.
Although little is known about the film, the plot description per IMDB details:
“A famous hotel’s legendary concierge strikes up a friendship with a young employee who becomes his trusted protégé.”
For me, Anderson’s best films come from with exploring themes of wounded humanity. Films like Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Darjeeling Limited are as deeply tragic as they are comedic and I’m hoping for something of the same from his latest without quite as much snarky childhood wist as his last two, The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Moonrise Kingdom.
With this first poster debut, we can hopefully expect a full synposis or trailer in the near future.
The Grand Budapest Hotel is directed by Wes Anderson and stars Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Ralph Fiennes, Harvey Keitel, Jude Law, Saoirse Ronan, Mathieu Amalric, Lea Seydoux, F. Murray Abraham, Tom Wilkinson, and Tony Revolori. It will hit theaters sometime in 2014.
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