Narratively this thing is held together with tape, but it’s mostly wonderful, and it more than sets the Anderson template. Owen Wilson - funny guy. Luke Wilson - also funny.
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The Darjeeling Limited 2007
Bottle Rocket remade in India with a dash if Eat, Pray, Love. Hard to make a case that this isn’t WA’s weakest, the melancholy here is the most affected and charmless of any of his films. Not without its goofy pleasures though…
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Fantastic Mr. Fox 2009
Runs out of juice after an hour, but a what a unique, eccentric endeavour, a modern studio movie that looks like something made in 1960s Hungary.
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Moonrise Kingdom 2012
Gets better on each new watch. The juvenile sincerity of Sam and Suzy’s wild, obsessive love is an element I think that’s missing from a lot of WA’s later movies. I also love Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward’s rough-edged, slightly stilted and self-conscious performances, that always emphasise that they’re minors pretending to be adults. And fun game to play is just look at Tilda Swinton when she’s on screen, even when other actors are reading lines. There is no doubt that she’s one of the greatest screen actors of all time.
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Beau Is Afraid 2023
Cinematic putrefied shark meat. Yes, you can eat it, but why would you? And if you do, likely you'll only want to once.
I was compelled by the film, but rarely did it satisfy. Not a lot actually happens when you boil it all down, and there are gigantic chunks of it that you could slice out (the entire Nathan Lane/Amy Ryan sequence, the entire woodland sequence, etc) and it wouldn't make any essential difference to the film's depressingly simple…
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Rushmore 1998
I know, I know that mileage very much varies when it comes to the films of Wesley Anderson, but for me Rushmore (still) sits a considerable distance ahead of the pack. The "whys" of all that are not so interesting tbh, and if you've seen his movies you can probably guess…
But… I caught up with this for the first time in probably about 15 years. prior to which I was watching it at least a couple of times a…
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Bohemian Rhapsody 2018
Decided to wait until I was suffering the ill-effects of norovirus before catching up with this one. It's very face-palmy print-the-legend stuff. Lots of petty score-settling. And none of the band seem to age over 20 years. It's the kind of film you'd expect to see in a concession called The Queen Experience at a Queen-themed theme park. I did find the fact that Freddie told the band about his AIDS just before Live Aid quite moving, even if it actually happened that way or not. It's a hamtastic performance from Rami, but not an unlikable one. You can't say he didn't thow himself into it…
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