Author Archives: Matt

The Grand Budapest Hotel 2

Lots of directors are said to have their signature styles but Wes Anderson may be the only director in Hollywood that no one seems to even dare try to copy. The colours, the music, the low–key performances, and the sense of timing in his movies are uniquely his.

The Grand Budapest Hotel has everything we’ve come to expect from a Wes Anderson movie. I’ve seen it four times and the more I see it the higher I rank it in relation to his other films. Despite some of its more poetic moments, TGBH isn’t quite as bittersweet as The Royal Tenenbaums or Moonrise Kingdom (my two favourites) but it makes up for that with some of the most outrageous comedy we’ve ever seen from him. It also boasts his biggest cast yet of both new faces and at least ten familiar ones from other Anderson films.

There were so many great cameos and there wasn’t nearly enough time to give everyone the attention that they deserved. Before the movie even really gets going, we are introduced to the Grand Budapest Hotel in 1968 where it’s already past its prime through the point of view of a young writer played by Jude Law.

“What few guests we were had quickly come to recognize each other by sight as the only living souls residing in the vast establishment. Although I do not believe any acquaintance among our number had proceeded beyond the brief nods we exchanged as we passed in the palm court, in the Arabian baths, and onboard the colonnade funicular. We were a very reserved group it seemed and, without exception, solitary”.

Before long, we are introduced to Zero as an old man played by F. Murray Abraham and he tells the story of how he came to own the hotel, bringing us to the 1930s where the rest of the film is set. As much as I loved the rest of the movie, part of me wished that we got to hang around longer in the run-down 1968 version of the Grand Budapest Hotel, which I think would have made a great setting for a movie of its own. Maybe a murder mystery? Or a love story?

I’m just putting it out there to the universe that we get to see the first ever Wes Anderson sequel starring Law, Abraham, and Jason Schwartzman as the lazy mustached concierge. Maybe even past Wes Anderson characters like Steve Zissou from Life Aquatic or the family from Moonrise Kingdom can come stay at the hotel.

It probably won’t happen but I can dream. If you’re out there, Wes Anderson, please make Return to the Grand Budapest Hotel.

Three Assholes Talk A Most Violent Year

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Matt: For a movie called A Most Violent Year, there wasn’t much actual violence with at least two people exiting the Coliseum last night calling it simply “slow”. Did A Most Violent Year hold your attention?

Jay: Yes, actually, it did. I agree that it was “slow” but I kind of liked the control of the pacing. It was very deliberate, which helped build the tension. I also agree that A Most Violent Year was neither terribly violent nor actually a year (the script keeps reminding us, actually, of a strict 30-day countdown, but I suppose “A Pretty Shitty Month” is a less compelling title).

Matt: I actually like A Pretty Shitty Month! The film is set in statistically one of the most violent years in New York’s history. I was born in 1981 and had no idea until now that I was born in A Most Violent Year.

Jay: The scenes of NYC were unrecognizable to me (and I assume to us) – subways filled with graffiti, garbage overflowing onto the streets – and the movie was shot in a really hazy palette of colour. There was snow, obviously, but also just this bleakness, like everything was beige or maybe sepia is a better word. How did that grittiness add to your understanding of the movie?

Sean: I think the bleakness helped set the tone for the movie. There was no real happy ending other than Abel is a bigger player and maybe as a result he could bribe the DA into giving him a better deal.

Matt: Time and place is everything. This is a very different New York than the one that we know, the one that people talk about from the early 80s. Abel’s world is a dangerous one and director J. C. Chandor immerses us in it. He doesn’t have to show much violence. The mood he creates reminds us of the danger.

Jay: Abel is certainly guilty of fraud and tax evasion, among other charges. Does his refusal to pick up a weapon make him a “good” man?

Sean: No, his choice not to use guns does not redeem him. He seemed to like to think he was better than his peers because of it but he was not a good guy.

Matt: I went into A Most Violent Year expecting a gangster film. What I got was almost an anti-gangster film with Abel doing almost anything to avoid becoming a gangster. He prides himself up until the end on walking a righteous path. Is he as morally superior as he would seem to like to believe? Is he more interested in avoiding the appearance of wrongdoing than he is actual wrongdoing?

Jay: I don’t think he kids himself that it was righteous, just “the most right”, and picking the most right of two wrongs doesn’t exactly equal righteous. He seems to have some interior moral code that he’s following, but mobsters often do have exactly that, a strict code, but one that’s just terribly skewed toward their own ends. Abel aspires to be more of a white-collar criminal rather than a gangster, but that’s just semantics. He doesn’t want to pull the trigger himself, but he doesn’t seem above putting out a hit on someone. He’s all about growing his business, and he seems willing to do that by any means necessary. He’s chasing after the American dream, so appearances do matter. I also think he’s smart; he’s not against committing crimes, and he’s definitely not innocent, but he thinks about consequences.

Jessica Chastain plays a wife who seems to challenge her husband to push his moral compass to the limit in order to “support the family.” Can you relate to these characters? Is there ever a time when, as a husband, you’ve felt that pressure?

Sean: I could not relate to either of the characters. I feel a drive to succeed but not to compromise my values in doing that, and I want to do well for my wife but don’t feel I am pressured to attain anything specific by her in order to support our family.

Jay: Really? Then I think you’ve misunderstood some things…

Matt: Uh-oh. So…. Is she the devil on her husband’s shoulder or is their dynamic more complicated than that?

Jay: You know, that’s a really smart question and I couldn’t have put it so well myself. Clearly she’s a little less scrupulous, but she’s also a little less smart. Not to say that she’s dumb. This may be 1981 but she’s no housewife. She’s ambitious and cut-throat and has her own ideas about how to provide for her family. She basically accuses him of being a coward so I’m surprised their marriage isn’t rockier. Ultimately I think he needs her, she’s the one who pushes him to greater heights, she’s partly what motivates him but she’s also what forces him into situations that make him uncomfortable. But as he says early on, “When it feels scary to jump that is exactly when you jump, otherwise you end up staying at the same place your whole life.

Matt: When the Oscar nominations were announced earlier this month, the list of Best Supporting Actress nominees were mostly identical to that of the Golden Globes with Jessica Chastain being replaced by Laura Dern. Should she have been included? According to IMDB, she’s received 18 nominations for her performance while the excellent Oscar Isaac has 3. Why do you think he hasn’t gotten more attention?

Jay: I’m not terribly upset she was left out, but I can’t say that Laura Dern was more worthy. I don’t have a particular appreciation for Jessica Chastain, but there were a couple of scenes that were show-stopping. Plus, anyone who can act through the 80s bangs and the big gaudy earrings and still be noticed has to be doing something right.

As for Oscar Isaac, it is a bit of a mystery. I remember when I first started seeing previews for this film in theatres, it took me a while to place Chastain. The shoulder pads were distracting, I guess, not to mention the press-on nails, and I had to go through a rolodex of actresses in my mind before I got to her name and it clicked. Him I recognized right away, but in the movie he seemed way more transformed. Maybe it’s because the last big movie I saw (and loved) him in was Inside Llewyn Davis, and the difference is astonishing. He comports himself like a don, like his empire is vast and his future assured. We know that’s not necessarily the case, but there’s never a hair out of place or a stray piece of lint on his ubiquitous camel coat. Appearances clearly mean a lot to this man; he wants to make it clear he’s risen above his station. And I believe it. I believed his pride, his hubris, his sense of “right.” So I don’t know why he hasn’t been singled out, although considering the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, maybe I have an idea why.
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They Came Together

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Okay…. Whaaatttt???

A lot of funny people came together to make an all-out spoof of Hollywood date movies and, mostly because of the cast, it works better than it really deserves to.

I can’t decide if they weren’t trying hard enough or if they were trying way too hard but the jokes are constant and usually way too obvious, with rom com cliches being called attention to as directly as possible. (The waiter literally has a pole up his ass). There’s a lot here that really doesn’t work. Some jokes go on way too long practically daring you to yell at the screen. But at the rate that they’re spitting out jokes and gags, some are bound to stick and the ones that did had me laughing through the ones that didn’t.

Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler play the two leads and they’re likeability go a long way in selling some pretty lazy writing, a lot of which would probably not make it past dress on an average week at Saturday Night Live. Bill Hader, Ellie Kemper, Ed Helms, Jason Mantzoukas, Cobie Smulders, and New York City are just the tip of the iceberg in a supporting cast that should really know better. Too many funny people worked on this movie for it not to be funnier and I’m almost embarassed that I laughed at all.

I blame Jay a little. I watched it with her and when she laughs I laugh. Don’t watch it alone.

Begin Again

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Jay watched and reviewed this movie awhile ago and I can’t say that mine would look much different than hers so I won’t bother with a full review of Begin Again, director John Carney’s somewhat disappointing attempt to relive the magic of Once. All I’ll say is that Keira Knightley and Mark Ruffalo do their best to replicate the improvised feel of Once but it really would have worked better with less recognizable faces.

What I do want to comment on is the recent Oscar nomination for Gregg Alexander and Danielle Brisebois’ original song Lost Stars. The music really is the best part of the movie. Even when the songs don’t leave a lasting impression the way those in Once did, Carney films the recording sessions in a way that makes you want to pick up a guitar and jam with them. Carney has always been good at capturing the evolutions of songs as their written and continue to change each time that they’re played.

There are a lot of songs written for Begin Again and I’m not sure Lost Stars stood out for me. It is one of the better examples though of a song evolving over time with Adam Levine’s hilariously over-produced butchering of it alone making the song worthy of recognition.

It can’t win though. I had mostly forgotten about the song almost as quickly as I had forgotten about the movie itself and, when being forced to compete with a movie with the emotional impact of Selma and a song with the emotional impact of Glory, there’s really no contest.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

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I liked but didn’t love Guardians of the Galaxy. Having complained in the review that I posted yesterday that I found it sometimes hard to follow, I starteed to worry that I was becoming a bit of a wet blanket. In hopes of repairing my image of being no fun at all, I am prepared to go all in in my support of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

I didn’t even like the first Captain American all that much. In fairness, I suspect I might have nodded off at one point. As far as I can remember, a scrawny Chris Evans gets an injection of something to become supersoldier Chris Evans so he can go overseas and fight with the Allies in World War II. In the sequel, Captain America isn’t just super strong but has been cryogenically frozen so he can fight for SHIELD in Marvel’s version of the present.

It’s this fish out of water story that makes Winter Soldier such an improvement. And it’s not just played for laughs. Sure, there’s the usual confusion over the internet and modern music. But what does the iconic war hero Captain America think of how America fights its wars now? I won’t go so far as to call Winter Soldier The Thinking Man’s Superhero Movie or anything like that but like, Iron Man, it takes just enough from real life to make the world that Cap is trying to save more relatable than usual. In fact, this is probably the best Iron Manless Avengers movie so far.

The first half or so of The Winter Soldier almost feels like a thriller, with the action getting bigger and bigger until it becomes unmistakably Marvel. The action scenes are a step above most of the other movies in the Avengers series, although I did wish that the directors wouldn’t cut away so fast sometimes so we could see what’s going on. Chris Evans, who I thought was so boring in both the first Captain America and in The Avengers, has a lot more to work with this timepulls it off. Or maybe I have just started thinking of Evans differently after having seen and loved last year’s Snowpiercer. Anthony Mackie is a great addition as somebody named Falcon. And Samuel L. Jackson, in his sixth appearance as Nick Fury, finally has something to do. Early scenes where he clashes with Captain America over modern warfare are a big part of what makes it feel like something important is happening and it was refreshing to finally start to get an idea of who Fury is.

If you don’t think you’ll like Captain America: The Winter Soldier, I didn’t think I would either. Check it out. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Guardians of the Galaxy

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Nominated for Visual Effects and Makeup and Hairstyling Oscars, Guardians of the Galaxy was the third highest grossing movie of 2014. So, when I talk about GOTG, I’m going to assume you know what movie I’m talking about and won’t waste any of your time describing the plot. Which is just fine with me because I’m not sure I followed it all.

I don’t watch these kinds of movies all that often- ones where I am introduced to multiple alien races so I’m not used to having to keep track of sci-fi mythologies. This one felt particularly complicated to me and I found it especially hard to keep Thanos and Ronan straight. By the end, I was surprised by how little that wound up mattering. I got it without really getting it.

The five Guardians of the Galaxy are easy enough to tell apart: Christ Pratt, a green woman, a grey guy, a raccoon, and a tree. These five were a blast to watch especially when they were all together. They were different enough from each other- in looks, in personality, in worldview, in fighting styles- that their unlikely alliance was almost always funny to watch. Their banter helped give me engaged through chase scenes that I found otherwise hard to follow and made me forget problems- mainly that I wasn’t always clear what was at stake here- that would have been unforgivable had the movie insisted on being taken more seriously.

The fact that director James Gunn was having so much fun with these characters helped make the necessary plot-advancing scenes so much less dull than, say, The Avengers. In fact, give me these characters over The Avengers any day. This whole project had so much more life and creativity than 2012’s Avengers film and I am as excited for a GOTG sequel as I am indifferent to this summer’s Avengers: Age of Ultron.

On a final note, I’ve rooted for Chris Pratt ever since I started watching Parks and Recreation and I thought his charm in this was a big part of what made this film work. But is it just me or does Star-Lord (well, his mom really) have terrible taste in music?

For another asshole’s opinion, read Sean’s review here.

Citizenfour

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Filmmaker Laura Poitras’ documentary on the scope of NSA wiretapping and surveillance worldwide is the first of the Oscar-nominated documentaries that I’ve had the chance to see. (Thanks Bytowne for making it available). Poitras was already working on the film when she lucked out and got an encrypted e-mail from the mysterious Citizen Four, who we all know by his real name Edward Snowden. Snowden met with Poitras and journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill secretly in a hotel room in Hong Kong where he provided them with proof of the extent to which the NSA had been spying on its own citizens. Poitras’ footage of thiese meetings take up a large part of the film’s running time.

If you’re unfamiliar with Snowden or his revelations, this is definately a movie worth seeing. And if you have taken the time to follow this story as it happened, you probably care enough to wan to see this movie given that it gives you the rare opportunity to watch history as it happens. So, in short, it’s a movie I’d recommend for anyone.

“I’m not the story!” Snowden repeatedly insists. It’s hard to tell if Snowden’s desire to focus on the message instead of the messenger is admirable or self-serving (I’m leaning towards admirable). Either way, Poitras often ignores this and wisely puts the focus on Snowden and the parts where she does are the best parts of Citizenfour. These scenes offer a rare chance to get to see a little bit of who he is. We’re with him when he gets e-mails from his girlfriend about agents showing up at her door. We’re even with him as he prepares to come forward, watching him as he fixes his hair and kills time in his hotel room. He keeps saying that he’ knows and accepts that there will be consequences but his body language can’t lie. We can see that he’s scared.

Being at the right place at the right time is a big part of what makes a documentary and, by that standard, Citizenfour is a great documentary. Poitras was fortunate enough to have Snowden come to her and let her film him as he broke one of the biggest and most important news stories of 2013. It’s worth mentioning also that she was taking on some level of risk herself just by being involved.

I’m not so sure that Citizenfour is a great movie though. There’s not enough footage of Snowden to fill a full-length documentary and Poitras spends a lot of time scrambling to fill the rest. There are a lot of establishing shots, lots of text on the screen, and a few too many shots of Snowden sitting in his room watching tv. It feels like a missed opportunity, especially given that Americans are divided on whether Edward Snowden is a hero or a traitor. Poitras is leaning towards hero, maybe a little too heavily. She’s not wrong and documentaries certainly aren’t obligated to tell every side of the story. All I’m saying is, since Poitras had so much time to fill, maybe she could have filled some of it by asking him some questions.

For more on Citizenfour, read Jay’s discussion here.

Gone Girl

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Gone Girl is director David Fincher’s most successful film to date and most people are familiar with it and, if you’re not, the less you know the better so I will skip the usual plot summary.

Despite Golden Globe nominations for best actress, screenplay, director, and original score, only actress Rosamund Pike walked away with a shot at an Oscar. Her best actress nomination makes sense, especially this year where the pool of strong female lead performances seems more shallow than it was over the last few years. We get to know Amazing Amy mostly through flashbacks and Pike’s eyes and haunting narration suggest she’s got secrets and we really want to find out what happened to her.

The fact that Gone Girl works so well though has a lot to do with Ben Affleck, who plays Amy’s husband. The press has picked on Ben almost as much as they did his Gone Girl character. It’s probably partly because he’s made more than his share of shitty movies. He also has this way about him though. He’s a charming enough guy but often can’t seem to help seeming insincere. Maybe it’s his, as Amy puts it, “villainous chin”. Or maybe it’s just hard to seem sincere under a media microscope, where your every gesture is examined for signs of insincerity. Either way, he knows what it’s like to be bullied by the press and he seems to draw on that experience to deliver probably his best performance so far. Ben’s public life serves Gone Girl just as well as Michael Keaton’s did Birdman. Even that famous smugness of his works. His character’s a nice guy but we’re not always sure we believe him, as much as we’d like to. The way Affleck and Pike play it, we’re never quite sure what the truth is.

For another asshole’s point of view, click here.

Inherent Vice is finally playing in Ottawa!

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I couldn’t wait to see this. I thoroughly enjoyed Thomas Pynchon’s beautifully written but always entertaining novel and couldn’t wait to see what the always unpredictable writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson was going to do with it. PTA hasn’t been very accessible lately with almost painfully slow and light on dialogue movies like There Will Be Blood and The Master. I have watched and rewatched those movies and think they’re great but will still always prefer his more exciting earlier work (Boogie Nights, Magnolia). Inherent Vice, about an almost constantly stoned hippie private eye working a hopelessly confusing case, seemed like it might be a bit of a return to form.

Although probably much more engaging to mainstream audiences, Inherent Vice still has more in common with The Master than it does, say, Boogie Nights. It gets our attention immediately with missing ex-girlfriends, frameups, murders, and an ominous message Beware the Golden Fang! It gets more and more demanding as it goes on however, as Doc gets more and more information through a fog of marijuana smoke and it becomes tougher and tougher to tell the reality from the hallucinations.

The mystery held my attention even as I started to lose my way. The cast of interested parties and suspects started to become unmanageable for me and, although all the bizarre supporting characters are well-cast and usually compelling, I lost track of them all at a certain point and even now couldn’t tell you how they all fit in. In fact, I am pretty sure it doesn’t all fit together.

What’s most impressive about Inherent Vice is that I barely noticed how lost I was while I was watching it and it was only when jay asked me afterwards “So, what did happen to Mickey Wolfmann?” that I realized that I didn’t really know. I just enjoyed watching Doc (Joaquin Phoenix) trying to keep it all straight. The story is really about Doc, a hippie in 1970 when hippies were a dying breed. Its a great character for Joaquin, who plays him as niave in an increasingly cynical world and as surprisingly sharp sometimes, despite being bumbling and as lost as we are most of the time. The situations he finds himself get increasingly absurd and hysterical but there’s always a dark and foreboding tone- sometimes in the background, sometimes front and center- that is made even trippier when seen through Doc’s stoned confusion.

As a whodunnit, Inherent Vice doesn’t make a lot of sense and doesn’t answer the question it raises clearly enough for most people’s taste. For fans of Paul Thomas Anderson, though, it moves his career in a new and interesting direction and I can’t wait to see how he’s going to try to follow this.