The Score. Decent cat-and-mousing. Shape-shifting characters seems like a whole thing back in the 90s/2000s. Fun to see actors that are just plain old now in their younger and more athletic days. I love when movies show all the gadgetry and tools that thieves put to use, borrowing from other realms to suit the need.
Primal Fear. Ugh.
Birdman. Not for me. But like I said, If you like reading writers writing about how hard writing is, and also acting, you might like it. I appreciate the one-camera, no cuts constraint, but it feels claustrophobic after a while. Sweet soundtrack. Keaton is still the man.
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.
The Bourne Legacy. If you tend to like the Bourne movies, you’ll like this Bourne movie. Favorite moments: the wolf rivalry, the climb from basement to upstairs window and the con to enter the factory. We even got a little fruit cart cameo. I’d love to see more more movies that show how insane and terrifying drones are.
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:
Mark Larson 