Wes Anderson’s latest film, Fantastic Mr. Fox, is an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic novel of the same name. Dahl’s novels, which have helped usher many a disgruntled kid through childhood, don’t condescend to the young, but there’s an element of whimsy that makes readers want to live in his world. Wes Anderson’s movies, on the other hand, can be hit-or-miss for most people, though if you’ve read the past few weeks for me, you know that they’re hits with me. His films tend toward the pretentious, with hints of the war of mid-life crisis and he uses a broad cast of actors repeatedly in his movies. Understated line delivery, artfully composed shots, and a focus on dysfunction alienate some viewers while drawing ardent fans from the other end of the spectrum. Nonetheless, the combination of Dahl and Anderson proves a winner in this film, with Dahl’s fanciful novel providing a great backdrop for Anderson’s regimented directorial style. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’
Tag: Owen Wilson
MasterChugs Theater: ‘The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou’
On the face of it, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, is an adventure tale about a Jacques Cousteau-on-the-skids-type who decides to pull an Ahab on the shark that ate his buddy. But mostly, like all Wes Anderson movies, it’s about being 11 1/2 sometime around the late ’70s, an age-era axis favored by Anderson and at least partly attributable to his current age of 35.
But Anderson doesn’t make nostalgic movies, exactly. He makes movies about the way nostalgia works on people — which is different. All of his characters have longed for something weirdly ineffable, like the present, or the adult lives they imagined as kids. Oceanographer, documentarian and hubristic tragic hero Steve Zissou longs for all of the above—plus a legacy; a son-figure; the reporter who has come to write a profile on him; a puff piece to get his career back on track; some money; a little consideration; a little understanding and revenge on a shark. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou’
MasterChugs Theater: ‘Rushmore’
I’m going to let you in on a secret, an answer to a question that is heard more and more frequently these days: Why do the tastes of film critics and the filmgoing audience differ so much? After all, something so critically lambasted as Armageddon can end up as the top grosser of the year, while something like A Simple Plan can garner glowing reviews and still face an uphill climb to profitability. Of course, exceptions like Titanic happen as well, but usually the critics’ judgment is unrelated to popular appeal.
The answer is the dreaded predictability of most films in this day and age. An average viewer, who goes to the movies once a month or even less frequently might face a standard specimen of any of Hollywood’s standard genres (romantic comedy, action, special effects extravaganza) rarely enough that the redundancy of these films goes unnoticed. For an average film critic, even one as lackadaisical as your faithful servant, watching more than a movie per week can get really boring really fast especially if these movies feel like they were all xeroxed off When Harry Met Sally, Die Hard, or Jurassic Park, all movies that weren’t marvels of originality to begin with.
That’s why the arrival of something like Rushmore feels like a proverbial breath or make it blast of fresh air. Rushmore is an offbeat comedy, an offbeat buddy film, an offbeat romance, and an offbeat revenge story. Or none of these things. Mix up some wildly varying comic elements, combine them with some of most deliciously deadpan acting in recent memory, add highly imaginative and inventive usage of the widescreen format, and get Rushmore, which is just about the least conventional and yet solidly enjoyable movie to come out in the past decade. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Rushmore’
MasterChugs Theater: ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’
The seductive, glamorous, and exquisitely fragile Glass family of J.D. Salinger’s invention might well live down the street from the fairy-tale clan that represents the soul of a fragile but bountiful New York City in Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums. Reminiscent of Salinger’s Manhattanites, the Tenenbaums are privileged natives in a landscape that doesn’t exist, and perhaps never existed, but seduces with the possibility of having existed once in a cozier, more Christmas-y past.
We all have our personal quirks and family issues that sometimes make us say, “How can anyone else’s family be as goofy as mine?” But then along come movies bringing us dysfunctional families like Moonstruck, Ordinary People and The Royal Tenenbaums that make our personal lives seem like an episode right out of The Waltons. And make no mistake about it-the Tenenbaum family definitely has issues. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’