The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

4/5

Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel is like many of Wes Anderson's other movies: delightful and magical if you like his style, banal and irritating if you don't. The plot follows a hotel concierge (Fiennes) who teams up with a lobby boy (Revolori) to prove his innocence after being framed for murder. The plotting is surprisingly intricate for a Wes Anderson movie, but is also somehow easy to follow at the same time.

What I like about Anderson's earlier movies is his ability to seamlessly switch between comedy and tragedy at the drop of a hat. Luckily, that opposition is still here, albeit in a less profound and less immediate form. Anderson superimposes an overall levity onto the relentless march of impending war, switching between the two moods from time to time, but The Grand Budapest Hotel focuses predominantly on the darker side of life.

Anderson has an undeniable visual style and he doesn't disappoint here. There's a reason this movie won the Oscar for best makeup and costume. He dresses his locales and his characters precisely and pristinely. The characters themselves (and the performances that underlie them) are not particularly deep or textured, but they are distinct and charming and unforgettable. They are brought to life by appealing, fast-paced storytelling and an irresistible, uncontainable magnetism. For Wes Anderson fans, The Grand Budapest Hotel is near-perfect filmmaking.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2278388/

Skyfall (2012)

3/5

Skyfall, the 23rd Bond film since its creation 50 years ago, is certainly the most beautiful Bond film I've ever seen. And it's a prototypical Bond movie in many ways--filled with dry wit, exotic locales, and evil villains--but it's set in the new "hero as human" era of superhero movies that started with The Dark Knight. I'm certainly not an expert in the franchise, but my experience has always been of James Bond as a suave, debonair, practically invincible spy. Ever since the refresh with Casino Royale, we've seen him tortured and shot and just about beaten to death. This new bastardization of Bond is of an action hero who relies on brute force instead of gadgets, luck instead of planning. The 007 franchise has turned into a predictable summer blockbuster with a little star power and name recognition thrown in, but it's lost what made it special.

On top of all that, the movie itself is pretty mediocre, even with Sam Mendes at the helm. I will give it credit for having phenomenal cinematography (thanks to the incomparable Roger Deakins) and set pieces. But Mendes did not do enough to make it special again. Q and his gadgets came back, but in the most piddling, imbecilic way possible. The pacing suffered from an extra 30 minutes of explosions tacked on at the end. The plot is absolutely laughable. Granted, the plots have always been laughable, but that was part of their charm. Now they're preposterous in a realistic world instead of a dream world, which makes the inconsistencies and plot holes all the more embarrassing.

This is a plea to the producers: Stop this nonsense. Bond is not an action series; it's a spy series. Stop turning it into every other movie and bring it back to its roots. Update it without destroying it. Bond is more than what we're seeing here.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1074638/

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)

3/5

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is a fitting end to a rather bland film series. I'm sure the books are much more interesting (even the Wikipedia articles are far more interesting), but the movie versions just don't do it for me. They feel like simplified, truncated versions of something that might actually be good. They're made for people who have read the book; everyone else is cheated of truly experiencing the magic of the series. Nothing about these movies is thought out in a cinematic fashion, nothing is added or changed to make it fit better in movie form. It's a simple translation to a different format and that's exactly what it feels like.

That being said, the movie is fairly entertaining and enjoyable to watch. It's not a bad movie by any means. It's predictable with an appropriate amount of action to spice up the boring dialogue and plot, but being so predictable makes the whole thing advance at a laborious pace. You know what's going to happen next and you're just waiting for it to happen. Special effects were pretty crappy, acting was acceptable, and cinematography was stale. It's nice to see a finale to the series, but I think they probably should've just stuck with the written word. Obviously the fans will watch this movie no matter what I say, but nothing has changed with this movie to turn a newcomer into a fan.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1201607/

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010)

3/5

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 is an all right movie, just like its predecessor. It is exceedingly and unnecessarily confusing for people who haven't read the books, even if you have struggled to keep up with the movies. (I have not even done that, as I just now realized that I have never seen the third, fourth, or fifth movie.) Unlike its predecessor, however, there is finally some content and plot progression. Even though the plot is mind-numbing, it piqued my interest enough for me to read up on characters' backstories on Wikipedia for a good 1-2 hours after the movie. Perhaps one reason I found the plot to be so lackluster is that I've seen it all before--only better--in a little fantasy series entitled The Lord of the Rings. Harry Potter seems to have borrowed so extensively from that franchise, in fact, that it also picked up the same plodding pace and heavy atmosphere.

The movie has more than its fair share of flaws. The mood seemed to jump from terrifying horror to child-like comedy at the drop of a hat. It felt as if a bunch of different people gave their input for each scene and the director didn't bother trying to unite it all into a coherent whole. The visual appearance of the film also suffered from poor directing choices. The action sequences were nothing more than poor special effects experiments. And during those CGI fiascoes, it was usually impossible to tell what was going on thanks to unnecessarily rapid cutting and equally unnecessarily close shots. And, for better or worse, this film is so much more "mature" (i.e., bleak and dismal) compared to the early Harry Potter films. All in all, I was appropriately planted to my seat while watching the movie, but mostly because it made me want to find out about all the good stuff that didn't make it into the movie. As for the film itself, I can only recommend it to people who are already die-hard Harry Potter fans.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0926084/

The Hurt Locker (2008)

4/5

Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker is a superb, engrossing, taut film. Jeremy Renner plays Sergeant William James. A soldier in Iraq, his job is to defuse bombs, whether they're boobytrapped under the ground or strapped to innocent Iraqis. If you've never seen a movie about defusing bombs, it's probably the most intense plot device you can imagine (except maybe Russian roulette). And you will be gripping the armrests throughout every scene involving said plot device. But that is not the whole movie; it is more than a simple anxiety-filled film. There is a phenomenal amount of emotion in this heart-felt character study of a man who is addicted to putting his life on the line, a man unsure of his ability to save lives, and a man scared of death who hides it by yelling. The acting was exceptional, giving fully developed characters complexity and humanity. For a few minutes, I actually forgot I was watching a movie with actors--I thought I saw soldiers in Iraq afraid for their lives.

Technically, there is much to like about the film. The cinematography is flat-out perfect. The use of rapid zooms, 16mm film cameras, and slow motion provide a realism and tension that work together effortlessly and seamlessly. The editing was brilliant, extending the uncertainty to its breaking point, but never past it. Unfortunately, there were also several unnecessary scenes. And the film felt a bit long. This is in large part due to the lack of a story arc; we are left at the mercy of the director as to how many vignettes are told before the film ends. Still, this is a film well worth watching and comes highly recommended by me.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0887912/

The Reader (2008)

2/5

The Reader is, if nothing else, an intriguing movie; it follows the relationship between Michael Berg (David Kross and Ralph Fiennes) and Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet), starting from their first torrid love affair when he was 15 and she 33 and ending some 30-40 years later. The film is a romance, I suppose, with elements of the legal drama thrown in to make it more exciting. But it is a romance fraught with confusion and misunderstanding, by both those participating as well as us audience members watching. Many of the characters' actions and motiviations appear hidden, vague, or unknown by even the writer. To me, it was all too illogical to be believable. (Not illogical in the way that love can make people act irrationally, but illogical in the way that the character's mere existence is a baffling conundrum.)

To its credit, the movie has some compelling performances. All three main actors were stellar. And I found myself attracted to the idea of one man's entire life being defined and destroyed by a single adolescent summer. It is the writing and the directing that I have trouble accepting. The screenwriter merely combined hackneyed ideas like concentration camps and suicide that he thought might produce melodrama instead of filling the script with realistic characters or creative concepts. The director chose to include gratuitous nudity in the hopes of appearing artistic instead of using it tastefully and tactfully for emotional impact or some other legitimate purpose. The Reader is one of those movies that I feel caters to an audience that likes to feel smart for "understanding" it, but is in reality a movie that cannot stand on its own merits. Perhaps those people do get something out of it, but I think they're putting in most of what they're getting out. I for one got very little out of it.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0976051/

In Bruges (2008)

4/5

Martin McDonagh's wonderfully-crafted In Bruges centers around hitmen Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson in Bruges following the former's botched first job. Ralph Fiennes plays their foul-mouthed boss, who has to go to Bruges himself when their second job there is botched. He also delivers a phenomenal line after he finds out they failed. The movie is, for the most part, a comedy. There is a bit of action too, and some tension, along with emotion and drama, but to say it is anything other than a comedy is difficult. But it's the great kind of character-driven comedy that delivers a complete appreciation of its inhabitants, their strengths and weaknesses, their steadfast morals and inescapable failures--all while laughing.

Visually, it was a real treat to watch. The cinematography, editing, and music were all exceptional. The plot progressed naturally and switched between moods effortlessly. The writing was exemplary, the acting even better. You truly get a sense of who these people are and miss them at the end. I did, however, find the accents extremely difficult to understand, and we had to turn on subtitles half an hour in. While it destroyed the punchline for a couple jokes, it also revealed quite a few more. While I liked the dialogue, I found the script on the whole a bit simplistic. The ending was a bit predictable and a bit of a let-down for me. It's not that everything was tied up in the end, it's that they added coincidence to tie it up so cleanly. All in all, I had a great time watching it. I highly recommend it.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780536/