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Grand Budapest Hotel


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Anderson is a real treasure.  I could have watched this one with the sound off or the dialogue in Chinese and still enjoyed it just for the visual awesomeness.  

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Pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed this one more than Moonrise Kingdom. For those that have seen it: what did you think of WA's use of the aspect ratio? On paper it sounded gimmicky, but I thought it worked really well. 

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Pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed this one more than Moonrise Kingdom. For those that have seen it: what did you think of WA's use of the aspect ratio? On paper it sounded gimmicky, but I thought it worked really well. 

 

everything about that movie, from a visual perspective, worked for me.  Just amazing.  Can't imagine how much work went into bringing out all those images.  the shots inside Madame D's mansion are fantastic.  same with the whole sequence of the escape and on-the-run shots.

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I was really hoping everyone would go see this movie over the weekend and then talk about how fantastic it is.

 

But I dont care for WA films.

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Oh my God, I saw it as soon as it opened here on Friday night. It was jaw-droppingly amazing!! I'm a big fan of Wes Anderson's movies generally, but this one really takes the cake. I've got to go see it again just to take in all the visuals, but what really surprised me was how outright funny it was! Some of it was what you'd expect--sly, arch humor that not everyone's going to laugh at--but some of it was downright hilarious. This is a movie that really deserves to be seen in a theater, or at least a really excellent home theater, and it definitely can be enjoyed more than once.

 

Are there really lobby boys in hotels? Or was that all part of the wonderful world of Wes Anderson?

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I saw it.  First quarter of the film I thought it was almost exhaustingly ornate.  Anderson's perfectionist set design has reached occasionally distracting heights.  Maybe it was sensory adaptation, or the story picking up, but the last half of the film it gave me a grin that would not go away.  There were some really sharp sight gags that had me chuckling while the theater sat silent (maybe they didn't get it).  Think of the wittiest Marx Brothers moments and then line them up one after another.

 

I have a friend who criticizes Anderson for having an endless run of films that have a problematic father figure.  He credits this as being Anderson's first half-step away; instead there is an older buddy theme.  The father figure thing never bothered me (although I see his point).  There has always been enough difference between Royal, the brothers' shared damage from the departed father in Darjeeling, and Bill Murray as an emasculated midlife-crisis lawyer looking for his daughter.

 

Grand Budapest seems to push character quirks to slightly more global purpose for Anderson.  The theme is all about how a dark political cloud preceding WWII puts the upper crust and working class alike in difficult new positions.  It's actually a fantastic companion piece for Miyazaki's swan song The WInd Rises (which you should also see), in that it has more subtle echos of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain.  Both films are endlessly gorgeous, and while Budapest focuses on a fictionalized eastern Europe, and A WInd Rises sets in Japan, one tells the tale through mad cap capers and the other through a bitter-sweet, poetic animation.

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I don't either. I would, I think, if not for the frequent presence of the awful (and awfully annoying) actor Owen Wilson.

 

Its his teeth that freak me out.

 

However, I did like him in Bottlerocket.

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I'm going tonight and it's kind of ridiculous how much I'm looking forward to it.  I love everything Wes Anderson has done.  Some more than others.

I actually just made plans to see it tonight for the second time. No, you're not looking forward to it too much. It IS that good.
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yep.

 

Trying to convince the wife to see it so I can go see it again.  Although this time I won't eat a bucket of popcorn and a package of milk duds by myself and make myself ill.  

 

maybe.

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