Lost in Translation

2015-03-312018-02-03 ~ Mark

Lost in Translation. Bill Murray is the best. Johansson is really good, but I don’t see this movie working without him.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

2014-04-062018-02-03 ~ Mark

The Grand Budapest Hotel. I dig it. It’s got the usual fussy-awesome art direction and some technically interesting camera stuff, but what I really liked here: a good heart. Didn’t have much of the rooted dysfunction or cynicism or weariness that made some of his previous movies kind of a drag for me at times. I think I’ll call this my favorite of the Wes Anderson movies I’ve seen.

2013-08-282017-11-12 ~ Mark

Bill Murray has a good face for this kind of thing.

2012-12-23 ~ Mark

The one time I got a bunch of prizes, I just assumed I’d win them all. […] I really saw something in myself and I thought, ‘Oh, my God. I really did want that thing!’ Some part of me was disappointed that I got tricked into thinking it was important. I told myself, if that happens again, I don’t want to do that. I’ve since realized that it was good I didn’t win, because I wasn’t ready.

Bill Murray on the zen of not winning the Academy Award for his role in Lost in Translation.

Moonrise Kingdom

2012-06-152018-01-24 ~ Mark

Moonrise Kingdom. Wes Anderson is simply not my director. When I wrote about Bottle Rocket, I had the thought:

I wonder if I’d like his movies more if I’d seen them as serials?

I wonder about this because the structural repetition really wears on me over the course of a movie. Repetitive framing, symmetry, truck here, pan there, dolly now and then. It’s like a slideshow sometimes. I respect the precision and fastidiousness, but for most of it I just couldn’t sustain an emotion beyond “that’s kinda neat”. Because I have no heart, basically. Or I don’t function well with magical realism. Or because the script is on the bad side, and while there’s invention, there are no surprises. Everything tidy, labeled, anticipated. It’s not terrible, though. Just frustrating. I did LOL on multiple occasions. And using The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra to open the movie, and then mirroring that work, was clever. Kids run away (main theme), then we follow reactions by the group of scouts, the scout leader, the cop, the parents, and social services (variations). My rankings for Anderson’s films that I’ve seen: