THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL Review

Wes Anderson's "The Grand Budapest Hotel" is a delightful farce, a wonderful romp and a screwball caper. It's fanciful and funny, but it's also perhaps Wes Anderson out-Wes Anderson-ing himself. I haven't seen everything out of the writer/director's canon, but I think I've seen enough, from his very best ("The Royal Tenenbaums," "Fantastic Mr. Fox," "Moonrise Kingdom") to his lesser efforts ("The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou"). It's certainly safe to say since 2009's animated entry, he has solidified, even more than before, a stylistic signature. With "Grand Budapest," the film comes standard with all the tropes we recognize with characters and cameras only moving at right angles, framed in pretty little boxes, with swiveling, pivoting cameras and swooping zooms, tiny miniatures and a cast of familiar faces (Owen Wilson, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman). The filmmaker is who he is, and with this latest outing his style has been refined to pinpoint precision.

Set in a fictional European town in between the world wars, the story is told through the visit of a young writer (Jude Law) to the now rather decrepit Grand Budapest, long past its glory days in the 1930s. He meets a man named Zero (F. Murray Abraham) who recalls his extraordinary tale of when he was a young lobby boy (played by newcomer Tony Revolori) under the wing of head concierge Monsieur Gustave H (Ralph Fiennes). Fiennes excels in the role with rapid-fire poetics and dialogue, an operatic man who acts as if all the wrongs in the world can be righted with proper manners. Etiquette, above all, defines his charmed era, which he refuses to believe is soon coming to an end, with darker times on the horizon.

When we switch from the older Zero recalling his tale to back in the day, the film switches from widescreen to a 4:3 aspect ratio, and cinematographer Robert Yeoman uses both to great effect; most recognizably the latter as every shot is squared off and perfectly symmetrical. And it's all set to a bouncy, delectable score from mainstay Alexandre Desplat. The winding tale springboards from the death of the 84-year-old Madame D (a hilariously elderly Tilda Swinton), one of the many female residents of the hotel Gustave had relations with. At the reading of her last will and testament by Deputy Kovacs (Jeff Goldblum), it's discovered that the Madame left her most prized possession, a Renaissance painting called "Boy with Apple," to not her ruthless son Dmitri (Adrian Brody), but instead Gustave. This puts Dmitri in a fit of rage, along with his dastardly henchman Jopling (Willem Dafoe), a man so cruel he'd even throw a cat out the window.

Gustave and Zero steal the painting, which launches an extravagant manhunt led by an Inspector played by Edward Norton, not dissimilar to the Scout Master he played in "Moonrise Kingdom." Zero at the same time is falling for his true love, the sweet bakery girl Agatha (Saoirse Ronan) whose Mendl pastries come into smart play. It all gets a bit nuts and slapstick, but the production design pops, and the characters lay into the humor and fluffiness of it all. The absurdity reaches its peak during a prisonbreak that looks straight out of an old cartoon, led by a bald, tattooed Harvey Keitel. While for a second you might think there's no real depth of feeling, the darkness lurking beneath the candy-colored confection, like a sweet pastry from Mendl's, rears its head.

"The Grand Budapest Hotel" is like a wind-up dollhouse with so many trinkets and moving parts, it's a marvelous contraption. But with spurts of coarse language, shocking violence and the impending gloom of war, there's an important line from older Zero recalling his hero, Gustave: "He was a glimmer of civilization in the barbaric slaughterhouse we know as humanity."

CARS 2 Review

"Cars 2" (2011)

This had better be the closest Pixar ever gets to selling out. Even more than the "Toy Story" franchise, "Cars" had the most opportunity for merchandising. With "Cars 2," it gets out of hand and becomes an obvious motive for making a painful sequel. The number of product tie-ins is staggering, and the verbal State Farm reference in the actual movie made me sick. 2006's "Cars" was the highest grossing Pixar movie but the least critically successful. So why did it warrant a sequel? Money.

It makes me want to grab veteran Pixar director John Lasseter by the shoulders, give him a good shake and demand, "Why?!" Some say this marks the first time Pixar has come out with a bad movie. For me that was the original "Cars," but now its sequel makes that look like a masterpiece. Lasseter is the man who directed the original "Toy Story," the crowning gem of Pixar animation. Now he's gone and directed the studio's low point, a rusted blemish on an otherwise nearly spotless record. It really is depressing if you think about it; a year wasted for Pixar.

All of your favorite car characters are back from the original -- barely. Instead, the movie introduces a new cast of cars to intermingle with the two leads, Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) and his bumbling simpleton rust bucket tow truck of a best friend, Mater (Larry the Cable Guy). McQueen has just got back from a racing tour when he's whisked off to face against the cocky Italian F1 racecar Francesco Bernoulli (John Turturro) in the brand new World Grand Prix taking racers from Japan to Italy to England. The race is sponsored by Miles Axelrod (Eddie Izzard) who has invented a new alternative fuel that will make oil gasoline obsolete. A message is begging its way through here, but it comes off as a misdirected and bizarre anti-"WALL-E."

This premise has little to do with the original's theme about small town American values and knowing your neighbor. It's replaced with international intrigue and a convoluted spy tale in which Mater gets completely swept up while McQueen is off racing. I don't know whose decision this was, but once a sidekick, Mater gets heaved to the front of the action. Thank goodness there are the welcome additions of the British intelligence Finn McMissile (Michael Caine) and Holley Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer) to offset what becomes the Mater show where it's all Mater all the time. After sitting through his constant so-called comic relief, I never want to hear Larry the Cable Guy's voice again in my life.

"Cars 2" manages to escape everything Pixar is about; that is, elevating animated and children's films to something much more, something every age group can embrace and admire with slack-jawed awe having the realization that you've witnessed something really special, a feeling that only Pixar can create. They've given us deep character development, charm, humor and emotion. This sequel does nothing in terms of that and actually depletes the relationships created in its predecessor. And as was the problem then, a world with only cars and no humans is hard to get invested in, so that's still that strike against it here.

The one Pixar quality that does make it through is technical proficiency in terms of sound and visuals. The music is sizzling from composer Michael Giacchino, the locations are exotic and lush with detail and the cars are shimmering smooth. The fact that it's great to look at does save it from being unwatchable.

The problem is that had "Cars 2" been made by any other animation studio, it'd probably be considered pretty good. But it is Pixar, and they've created a higher standard for themselves that -- unfortunately for them -- they're expected to uphold by this point. With the non-sequel "Brave" being released next year, it looks as if this studio is already on its way to redemption. Maybe John Lasseter was just out to have some fun, but it just didn't work. What did work was the "Toy Story" short preceding the feature, "Hawaiian Vacation," which was nostalgic and hilarious.

Archive: 'Marley & Me'

Movie Review
Marley & Me (2008)


This is the story of the world's worst dog that turns out to be the best addition to a family. The simple "Marley & Me" is adapted from the 2005 bestseller written by John Grogan. His book, and therefore this movie, tells about the period of his life when he settles into a new career path, finds a wonderful woman, starts a family with her, all the while taking care of a nuisance of a dog. The dog was John's first gift to his wife, Jennifer, and they called him the "clearance puppy" before naming him Marley. This lively Labrador is the central focus of the movie, a movie that shares the simple lesson that comes along with the human-canine connection.

This movie isn't just for dog lovers either, except one would probably have to at least be an animal lover. This movie won't turn anybody into an animal lover because, well, how could it? We're dealing with a most destructive dog that not only chews on furniture and other household items but literally eats them. You definitely know when Marley's passed through a room. John and Jennifer become irritated with him, yes, but they endure it and love him. He's a part of their family and honestly represents the messiness we all come across in life. As directed by David Frankel ("The Devil Wears Prada"), a seemingly vanilla premise about life with a dog becomes something surprisingly more. Here's a dog that joins a family at the cusp of its beginning and sees it through many, many moments.

After moving from Michigan to southern Florida, John takes a job at a newspaper and, while thinking he wants to be a reporter, switches to become a columnist from the pressure of a dryly humorous editor, played fittingly by Alan Arkin. Jennifer is a writer, too, but eventually gives up her job for her children. All three of them. She gets fed up with staying home, she gets fed up with the dog, and she occasionally snaps at her husband. Jennifer Aniston does a fine job of portraying a wife who knowingly sacrifices a part of herself while also knowing she couldn't have it any other way. Owen Wilson as John meanders along trying his very best to balance love, work, and children. His most effective moment comes near the end during a tender scene with Marley. And as for Marley, whatever dogs were retrieved to play such a pet (apparently 22 dogs were used total), kudos to that because it's hard to ignore the fact that it can be considered a performance on its own.

"Marley & Me" plays out exactly as it should. There's a nice scene that plays like a series of home video footage and captures the essence of how the Grogan family functions. The Grogans live their life plain and simple to the best of their ability, and there just happens to be an obnoxiously meddling pooch between it all. The human relationships formed on-screen are realistic and believable, but what is best of all is the human-animal relationship presented, which is the core and purpose of the movie. And while the movie holds a PG-rating, it really can't be considered for just children with such an adult perspective on life. It's a comfortable piece of entertainment that in the end turns unnecessarily manipulative in its style. That's to be understood, however, when you take a look at the heartstrings being so strongly tugged at.