THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL: The Film Babble Blog Review

Now playing at an indie art house near you:

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL
(Dir. Wes Anderson, 2014)

The world of Wes Anderson just got a lot wackier with his newest work, a screwball romp set in a fictional European country in the 1930s, ostensibly inspired by the writings of Austrian writer Stefan Zweig.

Ralph Fiennes, in a role that thankfully made me forget his creepy turn as Charles Dickens earlier this year in THE INVISIBLE WOMAN, stars as M. Gustave, the charming concierge of the Grand Budapest Hotel in the Republic of Zubrowka as World War II approaches.

One of the hotel's newest employees, a Lobby Boy (Tony Revolori) named Zero, gets swept up in Fienne's farcical adventures involving the death of the wealthy Madame D (Tilda Swinton), with a valuable painting entitled "Boy With Apple" being left to the concierge in her will.

Swinton's family led by returning Anderson player Adrien Brody (sporting a Salvador-Dalí-esque mustache) as her son objects to Fiennes getting the priceless piece of art, and the family's dead-eyed hired hitman (Willem Dafoe) goes after our two plucky protagonists.

The tale is told as a story within a story by F. Murray Abraham as the older Zero in the 1960s to Jude Law credited only as "Young Writer." It's actually a story within a story within a story as the entire narrative by way of Law's later memoirs is being read in the present day by a teenage girl (Jella Niemann).

Anderson and cinematographer Robert Yeoman present each time frame in a different aspect ratio to reflect which film format was in use when the sequence is set. I.e. the '30s scenes that dominate the movie are seen in what's known as the "Academy ratio," an almost square-shaped frame. The later day '60s scenes are shot in widescreen, and the more modern material material is in conventional “flat” (1.85:1) format.

This whole process is so Wes Anderson-y. So is the eye-catching color scheme, the jaunty score by Alexandre Desplat (since it's mostly set in the '30s, there are no obscure Kinks songs on the soundtrack), and, of course, the cast full of Anderson regulars.

Jason Schwartzman, Jeff Goodblum, Edward Norton, Owen Wilson, and the great Bill Murray all don magnificent mustaches and join in. Even though none of them are really given much to do except just to be there, they're all nice to see as they briskly go by.

Along with Law and Abraham, and new to the Anderson stable is Saoirse Ronan as Zero's love interest (shades of the kids in love in Anderson's previous project MOONRISE KINGDOM), Tom Wilkinson as the older version of Law's character, and a bald Harvey Keitel as one of Fienne's fellow prison inmates who helps him escape.

It's a funny coincidence (to me at least), that this and MUPPETS MOST WANTED, also releasing in the area today, have elaborate prison break sequences.

Anyway, THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL is maybe the most fun film of Anderson's oeuvre. It has a witty playfulness to match its picturesque beauty - gotta love the miniture models, matte paintings, and dioramic backgrounds that largely make up the scenery.

It's not going to convert those who find Anderson's work to be twee, too quirky for its own good, or pretentious, but those as in love with his style as he is, will find it to be a very filling feast.

That it's a film made for Wes Anderson fans by the biggest Wes Anderson fan of them all, Wes Anderson, doesn't get in the way of the infectious whimsy one bit.

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Hey, I Finally Saw Neil Jordan’s THE GOOD THIEF!

Okay, so Neil Jordan’s THE GOOD THIEF, a 2002 heist thriller starring Nick Nolte, isn’t a classic, or even a movie that anyone’s ever made me feel guilty for having never seen, but it’s a movie that I’ve meant to get around to since its release 12 years ago, and was glad to see it available for streaming on Netflix Instant.

THE GOOD THIEF premiered in September of 2002 at the Toronto International Film Festival, just days before Nolte was arrested for drunk driving in Malibu. That is mostly remembered by folks by way of the infamous “mug shot,” which can still be seen as junk fodder on late night talk shows and internet memes.

The disheveled look of Nolte in that photo, wild hair and Hawaiian-shirt and all, was at odds with his well put together appearance in THE GOOD THIEF, Jordan’s 11th film as writer/director. Don’t get me wrong, the character Nolte portrays, Bob Montagnet, is a very rough at the edges guy who shoots heroin between intense smoky gambling sessions along the French Riviera, but the film wants to get across that he’s still got it going on - a young woman (Russian actress Nutsa Kukhianidze) says of seeing Nolte shirtless: “You look pretty good for a man your age.” Nolte replies: “What age is that?” Kukhianidze: “Stone age.”

Nolte’s self proclaimed “junkie gambler” is recruited by to mastermind a heist of a Monte Carlo casino, but they’re not after money, their score is a collection of original paintings from the Impressionist era worth more millions than what’s in the safe. The new Japanese owners hang convincing forgeries on the wall of their casino, while the real ones are stored in a nearby underground vault.

Nolte’s plan involves his appearance distracting the security at the casino – all eyes are on him thinking he’ll rob the place – while his crew is stealing the paintings. “It’s like those paintings,” Nolte explains, “we’ve got a real heist and a fake.”

The film gets pretty flashy; more than one critic called it “stylish,” but underneath the freeze frames (sometimes in slow motion) and carefully staged shots, there’s an odd sense of humor at play. Of the members of his crew, there’s Julien Maurel as a trans-sexual muscleman, a dapper pair of identical twins (Mark and Michael Polish), and Serbian actor Emir Kusturica as security system genius/rock guitarist, all coming together to be the rag tag comic relief throughout the caper.

There’s also an uncredited cameo by Ralph Fiennes as a slimey yet suave art dealer but that doesn’t amount to much so let’s move on.

More than once, Leonard Cohen croons on the soundtrack, himself seemingly obsessed with gambling: “The ponies run, the girls are young, The odds are there to beat. You win a while, and then it's done…your little winning streak” (from “A Thousand Kisses Deep” from Cohen’s 2001 album 10 New Songs).

It’s a fitting dark little song that does its thing here. As does Nolte who glides into the film’s climax in a fine Italian suit with his hair slicked back. “To the limit, let’s get some chips,” Nolte says with confidence as he enters the heavily lit gambling palace as the proceedings get more and more heated.

THE GOOD THIEF is one of those gambling movies that goes against the oft quoted line that “the house always wins.” In other words, ultimately it’s a fantasy film. It wants you to root for an aging down and out gambler to have one last chance at a big score – and look great doing it.

It’s only a notch above being just a watchable time waster, but with Nolte playing his hand perfectly - I especially like his mini-speeches on art, religion, and rock ‘n roll - it’s a pleasing late night find on Netflix Instant. It seems like Nolte has been laying low lately - he hasn't had any major film roles, and the HBO show Luck, in which he co-starred with Dustin Hoffman, was sadly cancelled after one season because of the death of three horses. Here's hoping he'll get another film like this one to dominate, he's too often part of ensembles.

It's a shame that that damn DUI photo is better known than this film from the same year, but then Nolte might not have gotten the great juicy self-parodying part in Ben Stiller's 2008 modern comedy classic TROPIC THUNDER without it, so there's that.

THE GOOD THIEF was based on Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1956 French gangster thriller BOB LE FLAMBEUR, which is available as part of the Criterion Collection. I’ll get to that one day too.

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Ralph Fiennes' Wispy THE INVISIBLE WOMAN Doesn't Do Dickens Justice

Now playing in the Triangle at the Raleigh Grande in Raleigh and the Chelsea Theatre in Chapel Hill:
 
THE INVISIBLE WOMAN 
(Dir. Ralph Fiennes, 2013) 

In Ralph Fiennes’ follow-up to his directorial debut, the little seen but acclaimed 2011 Shakespeare adaptation CORIOLANUS, the English actor casts himself as literary legend Charles Dickens in this star-crossed Victorian era love story.

Fiennes’ film, adapted by Abi Morgan (THE IRON LADY) from Claire Tomalin’s 1991 bio “The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens,” is an artsy attempt to shed light on the young actress who Dickens left his wife of 22 years for in 1858.

The story is told through the eyes of Nelly Ternan, portrayed by Felicity Jones, who captured many critics’ hearts in Drake Doremus’ 2011 college romance drama LIKE CRAZY.

In 1885, 15 years after Dickens’ death, Jones’ Ternan is the wife of a stuffy British school headmaster (Tom Burke) directing students in a production of one of Dicken’s plays.

This causes her to reminiscence, in cinematic flashback form, about when she was an 18-year old aspiring actress who became the object of Dicken’s affections three decades earlier.

That was when Ternan was part of an acting family with her mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) and two sisters (Perdita Weeks and Amanda Hale). Fiennes’ Dickens has been estranged for some time from his indifferent overweight spouse (Joanna Scanlan keeping poise in an especially especially unflattering role) as we see them walking on egg shells around each other as they sleep in separtate chambers.

When noticing that Ternan is harboring a crush, Mrs. Dickens dismissingly tells her that her husband’s work is merely “designed to be entertainment.” Ternan affectionately counters: “Surely it’s more than that – it changes us.”

We see what a superstar Dickens was when he’s mobbed when recognized at a racetrack (mostly by middle aged men, mind you), but when he dissolves his marriage in order to be with Ternan there is only the mildest talk of a scandal; no real damage appears to be done to Dickens’ reputation.

Cinematographer Tom Hardy gives the film a lush look, and Michael O’Connor’s immaculate costume designs definitely deserve the Oscar nomination (the film’s only nod) it got last week, but the romance between Fiennes and Jones is severely lacking.

Jones, who Hardy’s camera appears to adore in a series of soft focus close-ups, too quickly goes from being smitten with the man behind such works as “Great Expectations,” “A Christmas Carol,” and “David Copperfield,” to seming like she’d rather be anywhere else. This is especially notable in their awkward sex scene.

Seemingly out of respect, Fiennes does what he can to make Dickens more charming than creepy, but the end result is a dull detachment to the character. We never get the feeling that Dickens was madly in love with this woman; in fact the impression is that he’s just slightly happier to be with somebody younger and prettier than his wife of two decades.

Maybe the absence of chemistry can be attributed to Fiennes and Jones having played father and daughter in Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s CEMETARY JUNCTION in 2010. That may have gotten in the way of them putting their all into the May-December love story conventions here.

It is also a waste that Scott Thomas, who also acted previously with Fiennes in the Oscar winning Best Picture THE ENGLISH PATIENT (1996), doesn’t have much to do as Jones’ mother. One scene even has Scott Thomas asleep on a couch while the leads are making moony-eyes at each other.

While its well acted and shot, THE INVISIBLE WOMAN is too wispy a film to be engaging.  When first telling the world about Dickens’ mistress, Tomalin wrote of Ternan as having been “someone who almost wasn’t there,” someone “who vanished into thin air.” This all too restrained and uninspired costume drama most likely will have the same fate.

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