ASTEROID CITY**

Sigh.  

It feels as though Wes Anderson peaked somewhere around GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL and has been offering diminishing returns ever since. To be sure, ASTEROID CITY isn't quite as pointless as THE FRENCH DISPATCH but it isn't far off.  The film looks beautiful. It is as full of Wes Anderson being Wes Anderson as ever. But at what point do we just say, "Halt! Enough!" Because of all this useless beauty becomes merely self-parody if it doesn't also make us feel.

Maybe the problem is that the stuff that is meant to make us feel has been done before, many times, by Wes Anderson.  The self-cannibalisation just feels lazy.  How often can we watch a film about the awkwardness and sweetness of first love?  We've already seen it done better in MOONRISE KINGDOM and indeed in GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL, but with way more consequence in the latter.  The story of a widower struggling to tell his kids about their mother's death and calling in his father to help is also ripped straight out of THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS.  Ask yourself if Jason Schwartzman's emotional crisis, which barely registers on screen, moves you as much as Ben Stiller's manic energy in TENENBAUMS? Everywhere I looked at this film I saw pale dilutions of ideas already worked and reworked. And nothing approaching the mournful or comedic heights of the best of Anderson's oeuvre. It's like watching the last two decades of Woody Allen knowing that MANHATTAN was once possible.

ASTEROID CITY is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 105 minutes. It played Cannes 2023 and opened last month.

THE FRENCH DISPATCH** - BFI London Film Festival 2021 - Day 5

 

Wes Anderson's THE FRENCH DISPATCH is all whimsy and stunning design but completely lacking in meaning or profundity for all bar about 3 minutes of its running time. This gives me no pleasure to say as a great fan of his work. But the genius of GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL was marrying his unique eye with a story that both made us life but also made us cry, and tackled the most profound and moving of subjects.  By contrast, Anderson's homage to literary magazines seems deeply unambitious and frivolous and thus uninvolving and dull. This is no doubt exacerbated by a portmanteau structure that prevents or plot character development. Indeed, this may be his worst film since THE DARJEELING LIMITED.  I wonder if he is too spoiled by being able to get every actor he wants for cameos that pile up into shagpile carpet of zanily dressed but pointless characters. He badly needs an editor and some focus.

So, the film is about a literary review editor played by Bill Murray and the magazine he created as demonstrated by three stories from the magazine brought to life. The first is a prison love story about an homicidal maniac artist (Benicio del Toro), his muse / guard (Lea Seydoux), his agent (Adrien Brody) and an art critic (Tilda Swinton).   The second is about a 1968 student demo led by Timothee Chalamet and reported on by Frances McDormand.  The third has a food critic (Jeffrey Wright) recall the kidnapping of the son of a police chief.  

There are some, but not enough, laughs in the film.  Anderson flicks from colour to black and white for no real reason.  The only scene of any power is where Jeffrey Wright's critic, clearly influenced by James Baldwin, recalls how he was once arrested for being gay and the editor saved him.  

Every mirror needs a dark backing so that we can see our reflection in it.  Anderson needs to bear that in mind.

THE FRENCH DISPATCH is rated R and has a running time of 108 minutes. It played Cannes, San Sebastian and the BFI London Film Festival 2021. It opens in the USA and UK on October 22nd.

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL

Wes Anderson's THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL is a wondrous set of films within films and memories within memories of a world that never quite existed and yet has such a profound resonance with our own.  It begins with an earnest young girl making a pilgrimage to the memorial of an un-named writer (Tom Wilkinson) in an unspecified Mittel-Europische town. In a technical flourish we change aspect ratio and film stock - something that the unversed viewer will only subliminally mark as a shift in perspective - to see that writer as a middle-aged man, trying to give a po-faced TV interview about how he wrote his now famous work about The Grand Budapest Hotel.  He sits in a perfectly appointed 1970s apartment - every attention paid to the production and costume design - his focus disturbed by his mischievous son shooting a BB gun.  Echoes to THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, and once again, a shift in perspective and memory.  We unravel another layer of wrapping paper to this box of magic and go back further to a Central European Soviet setting with that peculiarly gharish and soul-destroying imposition of dun-coloured formica upon the face of our beloved majestic wedding cake ostentatious Grand Budapest Hotel.  A now younger writer, played by Jude Law, comes across a mysterious vaguely exotic hotel guest (F Murray Abraham) who invites him to dinner to reminisce about the hotel's hey-day.  And at last, we are at the heart of the box of tricks, in the mythical country of Zubrowka, in the mythical hotel that established a kind of aristocratic service that only ever existed in the fictional Browns Hotel of Agatha Christie, or in today in the grand hotels of Venice, like the Danieli or the Gritti, that aspire to give us a sepia-tinted view of the past closer to Downton Abbey than reality.

The lynchpin of the story - the man who gives it its drive, its power, its comedy and its tragedy - is the hotel concierge Monsieur Gustave, played with delicious camp glee by Ralph Fiennes, in his funniest role to date. He squires the hotel's ageing guests, genuinely delighted in their attentions and gifts - a man so far removed from reality and yet utterly self-aware. The mechanics of the plot sees his M. Gustave inherit a priceless (fictional!) piece of art from Madame D., a wonderfully aged up decrepit Tilda Swinton, invoking the ire of her mean son Dmitri Desgoffe-und-Taxis (Adrienne Brody) and his henchman Jopling (Willem Defoe.) There follows a kind of caper movie as M. Gustave secures his prize, is thrown in jail, and conceives an escape with his fellow cellmate Ludwig (Harvey Keitel) and the legendary Society of the Crossed Keys led by Bill Murray.  All this, and I haven't even mentioned Zero yet!  Zero is M. Gustave's protege, a refugee from somewhere vague and oriental, with no-one to look after him and no papers, hence the name.  And it's the relationship between the camp, extravagant M. Gustave and this earnest, lost little boy that gives the brilliantly shining mirror of a movie its dark backing.  For in this fictional world, a fictional SS is about to arrest Zero for having incorrect papers, and when M. Gustave calls them "darling" and explains that they can't POSSIBLY arrest the Bellboy at The Grand Budapest Hotel, we see the clash between the hermetically sealed world of Wes Anderson and the dark realities of European history.  We see that behind the indulgently rich detailed creation of hotel liveries and scrumptious pastries in delicate ribbon-tied boxes there is a reality that mean and in antithesis to all the values of heroic friendship that M. Gustave embodies. And suddenly this fairytale world becomes even more tragic because we truly understand how fragile it is, and our minds are drawn back to its fate as a crumbling 1970s Soviet bloc bath-house. 

The standard take on Wes Anderson is that he always made these delightfully detailed, beautifully imagined confections whose only failing was their solipsism and similarity. But now, with THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL, he has finally made an important film, whose profound subject matter lives up to the wonder of the detailed design indulgence.  But when you sit back and really think about it, his movies have always contrasted hermetically sealed children's worlds of wonders,and shown the tragedy inherent in confronting reality.  They are monuments to the infantile shock at the adult world.  RUSHMORE quite literally memorializes a school;  THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS is about returning home to mother in the shadow of incest, suicide, addiction and death; and MOONRISE KINGDOM uses the metaphor of Noah's flood to show our loss of innocence.  Parents are frail, love is desperate and doomed, children are overlooked and hurt.  Wes Anderson's worlds may be as scrupulously curated as a beloved Victorian doll's house, but they are dangerous places.  The only difference in THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL is one of scale - the stakes here are higher - it is not just a single child losing innocence, but a whole European civilization caught on the pyre of a fascist war. 

What IS knew in GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL is the continuous, raucous comedy, that is far more sweary and frank than much we have seen before in Wes Anderson's films, as well as the patchwork of overt homages to different film genres and directors. We have the chase scene involving the lawyer Deputy Kovacs (Jeff Goldblum) that feels like something out of THE THIRD MAN, and the jail break scene that's straight out of THE GREAT ESCAPE, as well as countless other nods to the films of Powell and Pressburger (especially Colonel Blimp).  The humour seems to be something taken from an Ealing Studios caper comedy starring Sir Alec Guinness, and overall, the movie has the air of something from wartime British cinema.  This together with the deft and deliberate handling of the differing aspect ratios, and the self-conscious use of miniature work and stop-motion animation, coupled with the over-arching theme of memory, mis-memory and world-building, makes THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL, par excellence, a self-conscious movie about cinema.  It's a film that addresses full-on our need for escapism - what else is it that the hotel sells to its old-maid residents?  It's a film that sympathizes with that need, and delights in providing it, but which also knows the limits of that fiction - and that when confronted with violent reality - the confection inevitably melts away.

This is then, for all those reasons, Wes Anderson's most thoughtful, entertaining, technically accomplished and tragic film to date.  It's also, for those that care, the best movie of the year to date. 

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL premiered at Berlin 2014 and is currently on release in the Netherlands, France, Belarus, Belgium, Germany, Greece, Israel, Macedonia, Austria, the UK, Ireland and the USA. It opens on March 13th in the Czech Republic and Kazakhstan; on March 14th  in Canada and Lithuania; on March 20th in Hungary, Singapore and Slovakia; on March 21st in Spain, Norway, Romania and Sweden; on March 27th in Argentina and Denmark; on March 28th in Estonia and Poland; on April 3rd in Brazil and Chile, on April 10th in Australia, Italy, New Zealand and Portugal; on April 11th in Finland; on April 18th in Turkey and in June in Japan. 

MOONRISE KINGDOM

Wes Anderson was, for me, a film-maker like Tim Burton.  A man with a distinct and beautiful visual style but whose tendency to rework the same themes, with the same actors, playing essentially the same characters, had begun to pall.  I particularly hated his last live action film, THE DARJEELING LIMITED, for its self-absorption, narcissism, rather exploitative attitude toward its Indian context, and ultimately for just being dull. With this in mind, I went into  MOONRISE KINGDOM with barely any hope that I would find the kind of film - at once whimsical and yet also profound (echoes of Tarsem Singh's THE FALL!) - that I had fallen in love with while watching THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS.

Well, my fears were groundless. MOONRISE KINGDOM is a simply wonderful film.  It is, of course, beautifully designed, rich in background detail, empathetically scored, and well-acted.  It affects a sweet yet knowing innocence - it's full of characters struggling to deal honestly with themselves and their loved ones - it deals with the darkest of emotions but it drips with hope - in friendship, in people doing the right thing - in family.  It's as if everything that began to feel so clichéd about Wes Anderson has finally been re-united with sincere emotion - and that this emotional authenticity has cut through the stagey-ness of the costumes, locations, soundtrack - and transformed a whimsical confection into something altogether more lasting, provocative and memorable.  It's as if Wes Anderson finally gave in and just told the story he always wanted to tell - about first love.

Suzy B (Kara Hayward) falls in love with an eagle-scout called Sam (Jared Gilman) one golden summer in 1965. The carefully hatched plan to leave together triggers a sequence of scrapes, jams, shenanigans, emotional revelations and deeds good and ill.  

Anderson perfectly captures that intensity of feeling when you're a kid and you feel nobody understands you apart from this one perfect person. Suzy's trying to escape her family - her kid brothers, her distant father (Bill Murray) and the mother (Frances McDormand) she suspects of sleeping with local policeman (Bruce Willis). Sam's an orphan and a misfit with a good heart. In one of the most affecting scenes, written in exact mimicry of how we speak at that age, Sam tells Suzy he loves her but she's talking nonsense for hating her parents. Suzy and Sam run away together.  They're at the age and living in the time when you're hold world fits into a suitcase, and you take your're favourite adventure stories rather than clothes. When you can place you're entire life into the hands of another person without second-guessing yourself.  

There's a deep vein of melancholy running through the film. Most of the adults seem desperately lonely, none moreso than Ed Norton's majestically decent scout leader.  The exception is the almost mechanical Social Services, played by Tilda Swinton with steely efficiency. But the kids are in their own world, where all things are possible, and where adults barely skim the surface, except as occasional constraints and only too rarely as facilitators. There's excitement and wonder and threat and crushing disappointment. As the movie builds to a pivotal final scene (superbly scored to Britten's Noye's Fludde) I realised that I deeply cared about these kids.  I wanted desperately to know what they happened to them, and not just to download the soundtrack they were listening to. It's been a long time, but we finally have a Wes Anderson movie that makes us feel as well as admire its surfaces.  

MOONRISE KINGDOM opened Cannes 2012. It is on release in France, Germany, Ireland, Turkey, the UK and he USA. It opens next weekend in Belgium, Iceland, Hungary and the Netherlands. It opens on June 6th in Sweden, on June 8th in Norway, on June 15th in Greece and Spain, on June 21st in Russia, on June 2nd in Portugal and Lithuania, on August 16th in Slovenia and Argentina and on August 30th in New Zealand.

London Film Fest Day 2 - FANTASTIC MR FOX - Bina007's review

Intrigued by Professor007's negative response I checked out FANTASTIC MR FOX today at the 6pm screening sans red carpet. I came to it with a different perspective, having both read the Roald Dahl short story as a child, and having seen all of Wes Anderson's movies.

The bare bones of the story are simple. Mr Fox steals chickens, cider and ham from three mean farmers in order to feed his family who live in a burrow nearby. In retaliation, the mean farmers lay siege to the fox family. Brilliantly, Mr Fox steals all their stores from under the farmers' noses, provoking the ultimate retaliation and a fantastic finish. This being Roald Dahl, the mean farmers are nasty, venal and petty, and Mr Fox is universally lauded as being clever, brave and wonderful! After all, he's forced to steal to feed his family.

Wes Anderson brings his own obsessions to the story: obsessions which at first sight were fascinating and entertaining (see my review of THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS) but which now look re-hashed and tired. The character of Mr Fox (George Clooney) is simply Royal Tenenbaum as an animated fox - he's charismatic, eloquent, charming but hey - he's just going to do what he wants to do. His wife, Mrs Fox (Meryl Streep) is the classic wise, suffering mother-figure that we see again and again in Wes Anderson films, though not played by Angelica Huston this time. Mrs Fox wants Mr Fox to settle down and be responsible. They're not starving in this version, you see. Mr Fox just steals for kicks. The classic Wes Anderson dynamic carries over to the relationship between Mr Fox and his son Ash (Jason Schwartzman) - a Chas Tenenbaum figure - desperate for his father's approval but always overlooked for another - in this case cousin Kristoffersen (Eric Chase Anderson). They even fight over a bored sounding love interest - I'm guessing an uncredited Angelica Huston.

You get the point. This isn't a faithful reworking of Dahl's Fantastic tale, but Wes Anderson goes animated.

So how does it all work? On one hand, I was utterly gobsmacked by the arrogance of Wes Anderson to basically steam-roller everything that made the original book so typically Dahl and just shoe-horn it into his tired MO. What was all this estate agent nonsense? And what on earth was Anderson doing in his pastiche of Battlestar Galactica's use of FRACK with his own word CUSS as in Cuss Off and Cluster-cuss? Mr Fox saving the starving little foxes is a film with stakes. Mr Fox pissed off because he can't flip his house for profit is banal.

On the other hand, you can't deny that, as with all Wes Anderson films, the visuals are beautifully imagined and rendered. George Clooney IS charming as Mr Fox - then again, he's had enough practice as Danny Ocean. The rest of the voice cast is good, with an especially fine turn by Schwartzman as stroppy son Ash. The visual humour works - it is fun to see a possum's hypnotized eyes, and dogs knocked out by valium laced blueberries.

Overall, I was disappointed but I didn't have a terrible time. The film isn't as unwatchable and patronising as THE DARJEELING LIMITED. But it isn't as original and moving as TENENBAUMS or BOTTLE ROCKET. It's a rehash - a re-casting - a re-working. I just wish Wes Anderson had the confidence, and indeed the respect, to have connected more with the source material. He really needs to shed some of his directorial ticks.

FANTASTIC MR FOX opened London 2009 and goes on release in the UK on October 23rd. It opens in the US on November 13th; in Singapore on Nov 19th; in Romania on Nov 20th; in the US on Nov 25th; in Italy on Nov 26th; in Brazil on Dec 4th; in France on Dec 23rd; in Sweden on Dec 25th; in Australia on Jan 7th; in Tawian on Jan 23rd; in Russia and Finland on Jan 28th; in Germany, Estonia and Norway on Feb 5th; in Belgium on Feb 10th; in the Netherlands on Feb 18th; in Argentina on March 4th and in Denmark on March 10th.

Eventual tags: children, animation, wes anderson, roald dahl, bill murray, goerge clooney, meryl streep, adrien brody, owen wilson, willem dafoe, jason schwartzman, brian cox, michael gambon, angelica huston, helen mccrory, roman coppola, garth jennings, jarvis cocker,

London Film Fest Day 1 - FANTASTIC MR FOX - Not so fantastic....

This review was written by our Austrian correspondent, Professor007

Maybe it’s my lack of familiarity with the underlying children’s story, but despite being positively biased after experiencing the star-studded line-up at the opening of the 53rd London Film Festival, the film not only left me completely cold but started to seriously annoy me towards the end.

The story is as follows: Mr. Fox (voice by George Clooney) does what foxes do, he steals and kills chickens. He does so also when meeting his lovely future wife, Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep), but after both get trapped during this pursuit, he promises to his wife that he would never steal chickens again and start a proper job instead – writing a column for the local newspaper. However, after 12 (fox) years living the happy, but rather average family life and raising a son (who turns out to be a bit of a loser), his old ambition for recognition and admiration overwhelms him and he decides to rob the gruesome humans Boggis, Bunce, and Bean. After some initial success, the humans decide to fight back, however, and thus starts a colossal battle between animal and human foes. Unsurprisingly, after several increasingly absurd confrontations, the Foxes win and everyone is happy.

So what made it bad? Firstly, none of the sub-plots was sufficiently developed nor particularly convincing. The supposed initial happy love story between Mr & Mrs Fox did not come across on screen, nor did the conflict that arose following his breach of his promise. The conversations between the two appeared haphazard and neither witty nor deep. Similarly, it is unclear how “ueber-foxian” Mr. Fox feels about his underachieving son: he only shows some positive emotion following a completely unexplained mega-performance during the final rescue mission. And the list goes on. Secondly, I also found the film “technologically” disappointing: the voices didn’t seem to properly match the movements of the animated figures and the detail in the graphics has been done better elsewhere.

It’s not that I don’t like animated films per se, Finding Nemo made me laugh and cry and Ratatouille was exceptionally sweet. Wes Anderson might tell me that this stop motion movie is a different kettle of fish. Maybe, but do I care?

FANTASTIC MR FOX opened London 2009 and goes on release in the UK on October 23rd. It opens in the US on November 13th; in Singapore on Nov 19th; in Romania on Nov 20th; in the US on Nov 25th; in Italy on Nov 26th; in Brazil on Dec 4th; in France on Dec 23rd; in Sweden on Dec 25th; in Australia on Jan 7th; in Tawian on Jan 23rd; in Russia and Finland on Jan 28th; in Germany, Estonia and Norway on Feb 5th; in Belgium on Feb 10th; in the Netherlands on Feb 18th; in Argentina on March 4th and in Denmark on March 10th.

Eventual tags: children, animation, wes anderson, roald dahl, bill murray, goerge clooney, meryl streep, adrien brody, owen wilson, willem dafoe, jason schwartzman, brian cox, michael gambon, angelica huston, helen mccrory, roman coppola, garth jennings, jarvis cocker,

Wes Anderson's THE FANTASTIC MR FOX to open London 2009

After the genius of BOTTLE ROCKET and THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS and the self-indulgent fiascos of THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU and THE DARJEELING LIMITED, all eyes are on Wes Anderson's next project, an animated adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic, THE FANTASTIC MR FOX. Set for release in the UK on October 23rd and in the US on November 13th, the movie will open the London Film Festival this year. Let's hope it can break the hoo-doo of recent open films which have all been picked on commercial rather than critical grounds - mediocre, solid but that's all. I give you films such as THE CONSTANT GARDENER, FROST/NIXON and oh, that awful biopic, SYLVIA. So far, things look good. We have a voice cast stuffed with Anderson regulars - Owen Wilson, Angelica Huston - but we also have top notch British characters - Michael Gambon, Helen McCrory - not to mention genuine Hollywood A-list in Meryl Streep (stepping in for Cate Blanchett as Mrs Fox). I also love that Anderson has gone back to old school stop motion animation. Sounds, if not fantastic, given his recent record, at least intriguing....

London Film Festival Day 14 - THE BROTHERS BLOOM

THE BROTHERS BLOOM is the visually delightful but ultimately self-indulgent follow-up film from writer-director Rian Johnson. His first film, BRICK, reinjected noir with a teen sensibility and seemed genuinely unique. It's tragic, then, to see Rian Johnson decide to make a film that seems to be something of a Wes Anderson rip-off. The elaborately designed sets; the anachronistic costumes; the richly choreographed sight-gags; the international jet-set milieu; the suffocating family relationships; the longing romanticism........oh, it's all there. And if the best of Anderson is present in this movie, so too is the worst. All that carefully placed beauty and absurdity does get a bit, well, boring after a while. And the layers and layers of artifice alienate the audience, and prevent us from feeling the reality of the attempted emotional ending. So much for the critique, what of the substance? THE BROTHERS BLOOM opens with a tour-de-force prologue which is narrated entirely in rhyme in a sort of Dr Seuss fashion. Two orphan brothers grow up poor in a rich town. The younger romantic boy wants to talk to a sweet girl but can't work up the courage. So his protective older brother comes up with a complex con in which he'll make some cash, his brother will impress the girl and all the kids will think they've stumbled upon a magic cave. Fast forward twenty years and the elder brother (Mark Ruffalo) is still trying to find the perfect con and the younger brother (Adrien Brody) is still looking for real love. They are joined by a female Japanese equivalent of Silent Bob (Rinko Kikuchi) and their mark, cloistered millionairess Penelope (Rachel Weisz). The first hour of the film is brilliant fun. Kikuchi steals every scene she's in and Weisz shows that she has real comic acting ability. Even Ruffalo and Brody are fine. The problem is simply that the fun and games go on too long and deaden the impact of the ending. 

THE BROTHERS BLOOM played Toronto and London 2008. It goes on release in the US on December 19th.

Overlooked DVD of the month - ROCKET SCIENCE

ROCKET SCIENCE is an alpha-gamma movie. Or rather, it's a gamma-alpha movie. The opening sequence was a blatant rip-off of Wes Anderson. A Max Fisher-style character, complete with bow-tie and preppie confidence, is speaking at a school debate. This is over-laid with a self-conscious, portentious narration by an actor called Dan Cashman who sounds just like Alec Baldwin in the opening sequence of THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS. As we moved onto the meat of the movie, I still felt wary about the movie's derivative feel. The sound-track, shooting style, dead-pan comedy and focus on eccentricity and quirk all had me bewailing the pervasiveness and same-ness of modern American independent movies.

The good news is that once the movie settles down it becomes really rather wonderful. Writer-director Jeffrey Blitz paints a convincing picture, evidently drawing on his own experience, of a sweet, intelligent boy who can't express himself because of his stammer. Rather improbably, the school's star debater picks him to join the debating team. Our hero is thus forced to find his voice.

What I love about ROCKET SCIENCE is that the director doesn't make it a conventional triumphing-over-adversity movie. There's no magical denouement where our hero takes to the stage and, thanks to some little trick, becomes the most articulate and eloquent debater in the state. But he does find his voice in another sense: he becomes confident - active rather than passive - and while still puzzled about life and love ("it shouldn't be rocket science"), more engaged with it.

ROCKET SCIENCE played Sundance 2007, where Jeffrey Blitz won the Directing (Drama) Award. It went on limited release in the UK and US last autumn. It is now available on DVD.

Crimes Against Cinema: The Ten Most Piss-Poor Movies of 2007 OR Why Danny Dyer Should Be Tried as a Serial Offender

Piss-poor cinema is typically lazy, formulaic, badly produced and lacking in ambition or artistic integrity. In previous years, the chief aggressors were studio hacks pumping out weak franchises aimed squarely at the lowest common denominator. But in recent years, we've seen the co-option of the American independent cinema movement, with a certain style of "Sundance" movie feeling as jaded and derivative as the studio fodder it seeks to replace. Hands up all those sick of quirky characters, faux-naif camera-work and self-conscious music choices. So this year's Worst Of List eschews the usual commercial crap that harbours no ambition of greatness. Instead, we focus on movies that really were trying to be good but failed.

My first two picks are both low-budget British erotic revenge thrillers that reach for profundity but stumble into cheap exploitation. Both also star Cockney geezer Danny Dyer in performances that demonstrate his limited range. The first offender is STRAIGHTHEADS - in which a women is brutally raped by a couple of slack-jawed yokels in deepest darkest Worcestershire (from the look of it.) She turns into a psycho-killer and exacts a revenge that will be familiar to readers of Marlowe's Edward II. The second movie is called THE GREAT ECSTASY OF ROBERT CARMICHAEL. In this flick, a young man desensitised by popular culture and political violence brutally rapes and kills a random middle-class woman. We know this is meant to be a "serious" movie about "issues" because the psycho-teen rapist listens to classical music, just like Alex in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. The problem is that neither film has the intellectual gravity of ORANGE or STRAW DOGS. As a result, they just feel like crass exploitation flicks.

The third film in this year's list is yet another low-budget British revenge film featuring Danny Dyer! The only slight difference with OUTLAW is that the pscho-revenge-killings are not prompted by rape. But everything else is depressingly familiar: from the incredible dialogue to the insufficient character delineation to the weak performances. Grim.

As we move away from the low-budget revenge thriller, you might think we'd be leaving territory besmirched by the inappropriately smirking face of cinema's equivalent of Victor Willis. You'd be wrong. Still, in fairness to Dyer, his typically one-note performance was by far not the worst thing about low-budget British comedy THE ALL TOGETHER. He was trumped by the arid wasteland where Comedy Used To Live.

Speaking of which, the fifth item on the list is, you guessed it, a low-budget British flick called MAGICIANS. I'm not sure how it happened but this flick took two of the funniest guys on British TV - Mitchell and Webb - and put them in a feature length film that was almost entirely devoid of laughs. There's a PhD for some poor film student in working out what goes wrong when TV comedians fail on the big screen.

Venturing outside of the UK, we had plenty of examples of formulaic American movies in the faux-naif genre. YEAR OF THE DOG is a case in point. Quirky characters up the wazoo; a cast-list stuffed with darlings of independent cinema; this film has Sundance ooozing from its pores. It's also faintly patronising toward its characters, unfunny and unable to engage its audiences in it protagonist's emotional crisis. These directors need to realise that if quirk is not balanced with genuine comedy, it's just irritating. Moreover, it's a barrier to the audience relating to the protagonist.

The seventh movie on the list proves that the Spirit of Sundance is infecting cinema as far away as New Zealand, and that Mitchell and Webb are not the only successful TV comedians to suffer an embarassingly laugh-free transition to the big screen. In EAGLE VERSUS SHARK, Jemaine Clement of the hysterically funny duo Flight of the Conchords plays a quirky geek who pisses off his long-suffering quirky geek girlfriend. Then he fights a disabled guy, which is quite funny. Then the movie ends. Weak beyond belief.

The eighth movie on my list is THE DARJEELING LIMITED. Wes Anderson is the director who can most clearly take credit for inventing the Sundance style, despite the fact that he actually makes studio films. But as his characters have become more wealthy and his reputation has become more august, his films have delivered diminishing returns. Where we had genuine emotions and love-able characters in BOTTLE ROCKET, we now have ever-more flowery production design and ever-more vacuous characters and thinner plots. I don't care about the characters in THE DARJEELING LIMITED. They are as indulged as this film is indulgent. I despair of Wes Anderson.

The ninth movie on my list is a genuine all-out fiasco called ANGEL. It's a French-produced melo-drama set in Edwardian Britian called Based on a sappy sub-Mills and Boon novel by Liz Taylor, the movie is about a wilful authoress who manipulates everyone around her. Director Francois Ozon will no doubt argue that the over-acting, absurd dialogue, fantastical costumes and sets, are all intentional. But a pastiche is interesting for only so long, and this film certainly does not sustain our interest. I only hope that talented actress Romola Garai's reputation survives.

Note that, despite their failure, I still have more respect for these nine movies than piss-poor studio films that don't even try to do anything different. A noble failure is better than a mediocre, banal auto-flick. Having said that, I can't help mention a string of uninspired shameless cash-ins from our friends in the West - namely HOSTEL PART II, HANNIBAL RISING, BECAUSE I SAID SO, GOAL 2 LIVING THE DREAM or the most piss-poor studio films of the year: PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END and SPIDERMAN 3. Of all these movies, PIRATES 3 must take the biscuit as the example par excellence of all the traits that characterise flabby, over-busy franchise films. Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, I give you: Ikea Knightley's and Orloondo Bland's* wooden central performances; a plot so convoluted you could catch fish in it; the indulgence of Johnny Depp's ego; the inability of the screen-writers to stick the rules of the fantasy genre that they set up in the first film; the reliance on running and shouting rather than genuine chemistry between the romantic leads or genuine tension in the adventure story plot. *TM BBC Radio 5 Live, Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode on film.

THE DARJEELING LIMITED should take its own advice

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself. It's highly unattractive."

I was non-plussed by THE DARJEELING LIMITED when I watched it at the London Film Festival. Because I had previously enjoyed many of Wes Anderson's films, I thought maybe my non-reaction was due to cinematic overload in the preceeding fortnight. So I decided to give the flick another shot after a suitably relaxing Thansgiving break had put me into a more receptive mood. Sadly, even after a second viewing, I have to report that Wes Anderson is, to my mind, a director offering diminishing returns.

His new movie, THE DARJEELING LIMITED, treads familiar ground. So much so that THE ONION spoofed his style brilliantly last month. The production design consists of interiors over-stuffed with meaningful objets and the characters wear tailor-made suits and carry bespoke luggage. We are in the ranks of the over-privileged and self-indulgent. The camera draws attention to itself by switching between static symmetric framing; sudden changes of focus; and the jarring use of slo-mo (usually to a vintage Kinks sound-track.) There is an absent father figure and a beloved but somehow distant mother. There are siblings who are struggling to deal with each other and their parents. There is a troubled boy, played by a Wilson brother, who attempts suicide.

In previous, better films, Wes Anderson used this set-up to create characters that were memorable and love-able. He brilliantly articulated the dynamics of family relationships but also provided light relief throught witty banter and improbable situations. His movies have always looked deliberately designed but pre LIFE AQUATIC, they also had heart.

THE DARJEELING LIMITED is, by contrast, a deeply boring, unengaging and alienating experience. Three self-obsessed, self-pitying brothers cross Rajasthan by train, feigning interest in spiritual enlightenment but skating on the surface of things. Anderson doesn't so much satirise the dumb, luxury-lined tourist as simply present him for our consideration. As a result, where we should have laughed at, and with, our protagonists, we find ourselves bored by their emotional ugliness. Surely, it must be possible to make a movie about superficial people on a dull journey that is not of itself superficial and dull?

As dull as this movie is, it might have been forgiveable were it not for one serious mis-step. This centres on Wes Anderson's use of a tragic event as a deus ex machina. His exploitation of an Indian tragedy to facilitate a change in the American protagonists is woefully exploitative, in that he never pays any attention to the impact of this event on the Indian characters. They are merely authentic background details. And this brings me to a wider inconsistency in the piece. For much of this movie, Anderson implicitly criticises superficial tourists who do not engage with the places they travel in and, specifically in the case of India, see it as a means to their own spiritual enlightenment rather than a worthy subject of study in itself. But, on the other hand, Anderson is guilty of exactly the things he is criticises. India is no more than a facilitator that is lightly skated over.

Finally, Anderson's sheer lack of humility is infuriating. Given how generally tedious, emotionally dry and morally vacuous this movie is - how completely unengaged with India - Anderson's musical nod to Satyajit Ray appears presumptuous in the extreme.

THE DARJEELING LIMITED played Venice and London 2007. It opened in Canada and the US earlier this year and is currently on release in the UK, Brazil, Denmark, Sweden, Australia and Norway. It opens in December in Denmark, Sweden, Australia and Norway and in January in Germany, Singapore, Italy, Spain, Russia and Iceland. It opens in Estonia, Turkey and the Netherlands in February and in Japan, Argentina and France in March. It opens in Finland in April 2008.

New Wes Anderson Film Features Deadpan Delivery, Meticulous Art Direction, Characters With Father Issues

LOS ANGELES—Fans who attended a sneak preview Monday of critically acclaimed director Wes Anderson's newest project, THE DARJEELING LIMITED, were surprised to learn that the film features a deadpan comedic tone, highly stylized production design, and a plot centering around unresolved family issues. "What will he think of next?" audience member Michael Cauley said. "And who could have foreseen the elaborately crafted '60s-era aesthetic, melancholy subtext, and quirky nomenclature—to say nothing of the unexpected curveball of casting Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, and Bill Murray?" In a recent review, New York Times film critic A.O. Scott also expressed surprise at the film's cutting-edge soundtrack, which features a Rolling Stones song and three different tracks by the Kinks.

Copyright: The Onion 2007

THE SQUID AND THE WHALE - if Wes Anderson and Woody Allen made a movie...

I really like THE SQUID AND THE WHALE. Despite the somewhat hammy ending, to my mind, writer/director Noah Baumbach has delivered a charming, often hillarious, often painful movie. Despite the similarity in feel to a Wes Anderson or even certain types of Woody Allen movie, the subject matter of the film feels really fresh and interesting. There have been films about flawed people with fractious relationships before, but rarely one that explores with such honesty, authenticty and good humour the impact of divorce on young kids, and how learning that our parents can be wrong is the first step in growing up. Every member of the cast turns in a great performance, from Jeff Daniels as the narcissistic, judgmental academic father to Owen Kline as the absurdly cool, cute but messed up kid brother. Anna Paquin is always fantastic, but I also liked Hailey Feiffer as the elder son's girlfriend. When he says something cruel to her, you can feel her teenage heart breaking. All in all, this film wears its indie heart on its sleeve, but, with the exception of the final few minutes, is never pretentious or manipulative. And as an added bonus, the movie is set in the mid-80s so there is plenty of opportunity to get nostalgic about Jimmy Connors, skinny black jeans and Short Circuit. I still have a smile on my face thinking about it and I can't ask for more than that.

THE SQUID AND THE WHALE premiered at Sundance 2005 where Noah Baumbach won the Best Director and Best Screenplay awards. It opens in the UK on April 7th 2006, in Germany on May 11th and in France on May 31st.

THE WENDELL BAKER STORY - sweet comedy from three of the four Wilson brothers

THE WENDELL BAKER STORY is a rare find - a comedy that is both sweet and subversive. It is well acted, laugh-out loud funny, sweet without making you want to use a sick-bag and "feel good" in the good sense of the phrase.

Wendell Baker makes a living selling fake drivers licenses from a mobile home to illegal Mexican workers in Texas. When he gets out of jail he takes up a job at a retirement home where he makes friends with the residents, has to deal with a mean head nurse, and tries to get back his ex-girlfriend.

The movie has a super cast. Eva Mendes (Will Smith's squeeze in HITCH) is the woman Wendell tries to win back. The residents of the nursing home include Kris Kristoffersen ("The Blade Trilogy") and Harry Dean Stanton ("Paris, Texas"). One of the funniest scenes in the movie centres on Harry Dean Stanton, who is 80 years of age, chatting up two young chicks in a grocery store.

The movie is written by and stars Luke Wilson, perhaps most famous to multiplex movie-goers as the boyfriend, Emmett, in the "Legally Blonde" films. But when not earning the proverbial phat cash from autopilot "cute boyfriend" roles, Luke Wilson is part of the quirky comedy troupe headed by Wes Anderson, who directed "Bottle Rocket", "Rushmore", The Royal Tenenbaums and "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou". The movie also stars Luke's brother Owen and Seymour Cassell, who are also Wes Anderson regulars.

I think that THE WENDELL BAKER STORY's cast has mis-led some viewers into expecting it to be like a Wes Anderson movie. But they should remember that it is OWEN, not LUKE, Wilson who collaborates with Anderson on his screenplays. This is a very different movie. Less visually indulgent, less blackly funny, and more of a straightforward romantic comedy. Luke and Andrew Wilson (another brother and the director of the movie) should be judged on their own efforts, and while THE WENDELL BAKER STORY is not going to revolutionise the movie industry, it does make us laugh.

I don't know of any release dates for this movie, but it is doing the Festival circuit so keep an eye out...I suspect it may end up (undeservedly) in "straight to video" hell.

Overlooked DVD of the month - GARDEN STATE

GARDEN STATE is certainly not an overlooked movie if you ask anyone on the festival circuit. In fact, it was one of the most hyped movies of 2004. However, as it received a fairly limited release in the UK, I am taking this opportunity to big it up in advance of its DVD release next week. The movie is a pretty sweet, wistful romantic comedy starring and directed by Zach Braff, of SCRUBS fame. It also features Natalie Portman as his love interest, Bilbo Baggins as his dad and Peter Sarsgaard as his best friend.

The movie is worth watching for a number of reasons. First, it manages to create a wonderfully hopeful yet lamenting tone. This is because it balances some fairly dark material - medication, death, resolving family conflict - with the standard rom-com fare. It features a character called Andrew Largeman, played by Zach Braff, who is hitting that painful part of life when you realise that you are no longer in that cool post-college phase, where you still have stuff at your parent's house and can get away with goofy behaviour. He is now an adult. It's time to work out whether he is being correctly medicated and actually engage with life. These revolutionary thoughts are triggered by his decision to go back to Jersey for his mum's funeral, and the ensuing confrontation with his domineering father. This being a fairly conventional romantic-comedy, Largeman "meets cute" a resoundingly cheerful chick with lots of kooky eccentric Indie-movie habits, and she facilitates his return to real life.

The sound-track of the film is also central to creating the tragi-comic feel of the movie and has become almost more famous and admired than the movie itself. It showcases a bunch of indie bands like Remy Zero and The Shins, while revisiting cult classics like Nick Drake. Which brings to me to my closing point. GARDEN STATE is a neat film and you should be sure to check it out. I really liked it, but I don't think it is The Great White Hope that some have made it out to be. Indeed, it is fairly derivative of movies by Wes Anderson and often-times feels a little self-indulgent. Sometimes you just want to press the fast-forward button, and the final scene is just pure schmaltz and undercuts the earlier edgier tone of the movie. Moreover, the whole issue of taking/addiction to/mis-use of prescription drugs is treated in a fairly off-hand manner. For all these reasons, I don't need to see it again, but I do listen to the soundtrack all the time. And for that, I am happy to have seen the movie.

GARDEN STATE showed at Sundance and London 2004 and was released in the UK last December. It is released on DVD next week.

I HEART HUCKABEES collapses under the weight of its own eccentricity

I HEART HUCKABEES is a movie with so much chutzpah that you desperately want to like it, but in the end it collapses under the weight of so many kooky characters; so many superficial nods to philosophy. The sad truth is that no matter how many individually eccentric characters you throw up, no matter how many suitably indie cuts from Jon Brion you put on the sound-track, a movie has to be more that a kaleidoscope of cool. While HUCKABEES has something like a narrative arc, and some rather witty scenes, at times the whole thing just teeters over the edge of control into full on absurdity and brings the viewer out of the picture. But, in these sadly conventional times, I'd rather have a movie fail for attempting too much than retreading mediocre hits of the past.

Some of the complexity will be hinted at by my attempt at a summary of the characters involved. A young earnest man called Albert (Jason Schwartzman) spends his time campaigning against environmental damage by a Walmart-like chain of supermarkets called Huckabees. Afflicted by angst, he hires a couple of existential detectives (Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman.) What this means is that they believe that everything is inter-connected and fundamentally okay: they just need to spy on Albert's every move in order to find out the root source of his angst. Much of it lies in his interminable fight against Huckabees, personified in its ueber-smooth PR man, Brad (Jude Law), and his Barbie-doll squeeze, Dawn (Naomi Watts). However, life is not so green on the other side of the fence: Dawn is disillusioned with her brighter-than-bright image, and consequently making life hard for Brad. In the midst of all this we have a troubled fire-fighter (Mark Wahlberg) who wanders round in his dressing gown convinced that the world is going to hell on a high wind thanks to its addiction to oil. Tommy subscribes to an alternate philosophy proposed by a formidable French philosopher played by Isabelle Huppert, which is, shall we see more Herzogian. Life is cruel: get used to it.

I cannot really summarise the plot. Such as it is, it consists in these wildly eccentric characters interacting in a series of scenes that are alternately funny, funny yet strange or just plain strange. And then the whole thing sort of collapses under the weight of myriad ideas. There are wondrous moments: the conflict between Jason Schwartzman's Albert and Jude Law's Brad is hysterical, and perfectly cast. There is something maliciously enjoyable in seeing someone who appears to be as suave as Jude Law undergoing a complete breakdown. Mark Wahlberg and Naomi Watts display real comic talent - superb timing and deadpan delivery. But what can have attracted an actress of the calibre of Isabelle Huppert to such a role? I mean, seriously, how does one go from The Piano Teacher to I Heart Huckabees unless you are sending yourself up? Similarly, I have seen Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin funnier.

On balance I feel that in the case of HUCKABEES, sheer ridiculousness isn't enough to make the kind of film you want to see again, or tell your friends to see. It seems to combine one part Charlie Kauffman insanity with one part Wes Anderson eccentricity, shake them both together and put the results on screen without much disicpline or order applied. Perhaps this is the philosophical point of the movie? Either way, it doesn't leave much for the humble audience member to cling on to.

I HEART HUCKABEES played Toronto and London 2004 and is released on DVD today.

THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS - the perfect tragicomedy

With the recent release of the deeply disappointing Wes Anderson movie, THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU, I am taking this opportunity to re-examine Anderson’s earlier movies, starting with what I consider to be the best of all, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS. As with THE LIFE AQUATIC, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS is a movie full of eccentric, larger-than-life characters living in a richly-imagined world one degree more whacky than our own. Whether or not you like this film will depend on how far you buy into, and are charmed by, this tragi-comic heightened reality. For my part, I found the family, and therefore the film, utterly winning.

The family is headed by a long absent father named Royal Tenenbaum. He is played by Gene Hackman, who looks like he is having a whale of a time on screen for the first time in years. Royal is a corrupt lawyer who has been ostracised by his family for the past decade, but is seeking reconciliation by any means necessary. In this, he is aided and abetted by his sidekicks, Pagoda and Dusty, the bell-hop at the seedy hotel he has made his home - a classic understated and hilarious cameo performance by Seymour Cassel. In his absence, the family has been headed by Royal’s wife, Etheline, played by Angelica Huston. Etheline is written as a wonderful mother, ever-concerned with her children’s welfare; decent but not credulous. She is seeing an accountant played by Danny Glover - another good, earnest man. The love scenes between the two combine sweetness and comedy in a manner that recent British mockumentary, CONFETTI, entirely failed to pull off. Meanwhile, the children are all having emotional breakdowns. Richie (Luke Wilson) is a failed tennis pro in love with an unattainable woman; Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) is in a loveless marriage and has failed to live up to her early promise as a writer; Chas (Ben Stiller) is in mourning for his wife and is paranoid about the safety of his twin sons, Uzi and Ari. In the mix we also have Ritchie’s oleaginous childhood friend Eli Cash (Owen Wilson), a wildly popular but talentless writer with a drug problem who has long wanted to be a Tenenbaum, and Bill Murray as Margot’s husband. Will it come as any surprise to regular filmgoers to discover that Bill Murray’s character is a melancholy and world-weary middle-aged man?

As can be seen from these short character descriptions, the Royal Tenenbaums is about a bunch of troubled people, who are drawn back to the family in search of solace – whether or not they were part of the family in the first place. As each character comes to terms with awkward reality, the tone of the movie alternates between tragedy and comedy with such ease as to make this a master-class for screen-writers. Both the tragic and comic scenes are elevated to perfect pitch and the film puts, to my mind, not a foot wrong. Of course, as with all Wes Anderson movies, the production design and sound-track are also out-standing. The attention to detail is staggering - from whimsically designed wallpaper, to the book covers of the novels that the characters write, to the brand of beaten-up old taxis that roam the streets of this re-imagined New York. Meanwhile, the sound-track features mournful songs from Nico, Dylan, Elliott Smith, The Stones, Nick Drake and Lou Reed. However, unlike THE LIFE AQUATIC, the rich design never seems self-indulgent. Where LIFE AQUATIC dragged, so that all the audience had to do was look at the beautiful sets, the foreground action of TENENBAUMS always has us rapt. The cute incidental background details are just that. It is this delicate balance between fascinating foreground action and the hints of a fully developed world behind it that makes TENENBAUMS one of my favourite movies.

THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS is out on DVD.

THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU may be the most disappointing movie of 2005

THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU may well be, for me, the most disappointing movie of 2005. This is because it is made by a director, Wes Anderson, whose previous films I have loved without reservation. Given that THE LIFE AQUATIC stars many of the same actors, covers many of the same themes, and lives in the same eccentric, richly-designed world, what went wrong? To cut a long story short, I think "sameness" is the problem. First, there is a problem when we see the same actors portray variations on the same character time and time again. In the case of THE LIFE AQUATIC the key culprit is Bill Murray. In the second half of his career he seems to be perfecting the role of world-weary, painfully self-aware, benumbed wanderer. Granted he is once again fantastic in this movie, but oh my goodness, the whole routine does seem a little tired. It was breathtaking in RUSHMORE, subtley different but still compelling in ROYAL TENENBAUMS, but by the time we have seen LOST IN TRANSLATION and the forthcoming BROKEN FLOWERS... well you get the picture. Ditto seeing Owen Wilson once again as the innocent-idiot; Angelica Huston as the wise-put-upon wife; and let us not forget the obligatory Indian guy. It just seems like Wes Anderson has his zone of comfort as far as characters are concerned.

Similarly, the thematic material is well-worn - disappointed sons and reluctant fathers; super-fan outsiders who desperately want to be part of the Cool group; relationships between the sexes that are fraught with misunderstandings - love triangles and love squares; the difficulty of dreamers to deal with the real world of hard cash; and the difficulty of dreamers to continue to believe in themselves when all around them doubt The Plan. We've been here before. Indeed, we've been here ever since BOTTLE ROCKET.

Moreover, all those incidental but important features of a movie that make up the tone of the picture - production design, sound-track - have taken over the asylum. It used to be that you were compelled to watch a Wes Anderson movie two or three times just to take in the richness of the set design and remember just what that cool track was. But now, the cute little details of set design are all there is. I so wanted to be interested in Steve Zissou 's (for which read Jacques Cousteau's) journey to hunt down the mythic jaguar shark and avenge the death of his partner Esteban. I so wanted to be fascinated by the relationship between Steve and his long-lost son, Ned. But somehow, every time the movie threatened to give us a bit of character development we got another scene with a cute red bobble hat, or crew-member Pele dos Santos (Seu Jorge) singing a David Bowie song. For, in the final analysis, this movie is a triumph of style, tone and mood over the substance that is the narrative arc and character development.

What I guess it all comes down to is that the movie just isn't as funny as TENENBAUMS. Perhaps this is because Anderson's usual writing partner, Owen Wilson, has been replaced by Noah Baumbach? Or perhaps it just signals that what was once magical and fascinating and amusing has now become stale. I tend toward the latter.

THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU opened in the US last fall, and opens in the UK today. It opens in France on March 9th 2005, and in Austrian and Germany on March 17th.