Negatives * The plot moves a bit slowly at points.
* Too much sentimentality at points.
Positives
* That deadpan Wes Anderson humor is great.
* All actors are good, but especially Bill Murray and Edward Norton are great at delivering the deadpan Wes Anderson humor
* I'm not much of a cinema expert, so I can't talk about this in great depth, but it's obvious that Wes Anderson views every frame as a piece of art. And it shows in his shot composition.
* Related to the above point, my friend the Cinephile once told me that Wes Anderson is heavily influenced by Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, who also was obsessed with creating symmetry in all of his shots. So, the Japanese setting for this movie is appropriate, and works beautifully.
Other Notes
* I know this is only of interest to me, but... Back when I lived in Japan, and was obsessed with Japanese oldies, I had "Tokyo Shoeshine Boy" in my music collection. (This is the song that is playing in the background in the izakaya scene.)
Rating: 7 out of 10. (In the past I've given 10 out of 10 to Wes Anderson film The Grand Budapest Hotel. But I didn't enjoy this one quite as much. It loses a couple of points for the slow moving plot, and the sentimentality. But... the funny parts were really funny. (I love that deadpan humor). So 7 out of 10.
The Review
Admittedly not everyone likes Wes Anderson's quirky humor, but I'm generally a fan. And I found this movie to be his best yet. It was laugh out loud funny in several parts. It had an interesting plot (lots of moving pieces, and it really kept you guessing as to where the story was headed) great characters, and lots of famous actors. Also I loved the bizarre set-up of the movie (the flashback within a flashback within a flashback). And unlike some of Wes Anderson's previous movies, it never dragged or got bogged down in sentimentality.
Rating 10 out of 10 Stars. (Assuming you're a Wes Anderson fan, this is the best movie he's given us yet.)
My friend the Cinephile
recommended this movie highly, and invited me over to watch it. Although since
I generally like Wes Anderson, I probably would have gotten around to watching
this movie on my own sooner or later.
The Review
People seem
to love or hate Wes Anderson, but I’m a fan. Generally speaking about his
movies, I love his quirky sense of humor, and his deadpan directing. However I often don’t like the sentimentality
and pacing of his movies (again, speaking generally).
This movie,
however, was just about perfect. It had
sentimentality without dragging the movie down, decent pacing, and tons of that
classic Wes Anderson quirky deadpan humor.
Other Things I Would
Talk About if I Wasn’t Limiting Myself to 100 Words
* As we watched this film, my Cinephile friend pointed out
to me numerous subtle points about the craft of the film.
Links
My previous reviews of Wes Anderson films: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou andFantastic Mr. Fox. (Also, since my
Cinephile friend claims that much of MoonriseKingdom
is a tribute to Badlands, here is a
link to my review of Badlands.)
I saw this movie based off of my friend Brett's recommendation.
Brett had apparently gone into this movie with his younger nieces and nephews expecting your standard animated children's film, and had been pleasantly surprised to discover it was full of Wes Anderson's quirky sense of humor.
Like Brett, I too consider myself a Wes Anderson fan. I haven't seen everything the man has done, but I have enjoyed "Rushmore", "The Royal Tenebaums," and "The Life Aquatic."
(Although I did write in my review of "The Life Aquatic":
This wasn't as true with "Fantastic Mr. Fox." Perhaps because at 87 minutes it's shorter than any of the other Wes Anderson movies I've seen so far. And perhaps because, as a children's movie, the plot and pacing is kept a little tighter. But there were a few moments when I was squirming in my seat slightly. That last scene at the end, for example, seemed to go on for just a few beats too long.
And yet, as with the other Wes Anderson films I've seen, I always walk away chuckling. Sure they may have some slow moments, but I always walk away remembering the funny parts.
And the Wes Anderson humor grows on me. There are bits that the more I think about it, the funny they seem to be, so that I usually find the movie much funnier two days afterwards than I did when I was actually watching it. (I don't know if everyone reacts that way to Wes Anderson films, or if it's just me.) Like for example, the newspaper column Mr. Fox writes, and which he complains that his friends don't read. Or Mr. Fox making a recording of his chicken stealing plans for his records. Or pretty much any of Bill Murray's lines.
(Incidentally, Bill Murray became one of my favorite actors after I started seeing him in Wes Anderson films. Before Wes Anderson, I had been largely indifferent to Bill Murray, but Wes Anderson really knows how to make full use of Murray's dry humor. I hope the two of them continue to have many more collaborations in the future.)
Aside from the story about animals, and aside from the animation, there seems to be very little to mark this as a children's movie. Wes Anderson's unique brand of humor doesn't seem to be made any easier for the children to grasp. You would think that the studio would have inserted a lot more obvious punchlines or slapstick humor or something to make this movie more marketable for children, but, astonishingly, they resisted that temptation.
Actually the one concession that Wes Anderson seems to have made for the children's market is that all the cuss words are replaced by the word "cuss." As in "He's a cuss of a lot bigger?" or "What the cuss are you talking about?", et cetera.
This becomes a bit of humor in and off itself with the word "cuss" popping up in all sorts of situations.
It's the usual Wes Anderson ironic humor, of course, but if you like that thing it's on full display here.
(It's also a brilliant satire on the American tendency to assign moral values to phonemic utterances. When you substitute one semantically meaningless word for another semantically meaningless word, does that make it less morally bad? It obviously confused the MPAA ratings board. They ended up settling on giving this film a PG rating for what they called "slang humor.")
My only big complaint is that I wish they would have gotten younger voice actors to play the parts of the adolscents in this film. Their voices I think come off as sounding way too adult, and it takes me out of the film a bit. Other than that, a brilliantly done film.
I know I just got done saying I wasn’t going to see any movies this time around. But I’ve let a few slip in. I’ve done my best to limit myself only to movies I really wanted to see, instead of just using the VCR as a way to pass time. (I don’t have my own TV, so until now I haven’t been able to see these movies on my own).
Also there were a couple times when I used movies as a way to entertain, like when I spent the afternoon with the model, or when Shoko wanted to watch a video together. And then there were just a few guilty pleasures that snuck in. Anyway, here are my brief thoughts on what I’ve seen so far.
Movies I really wanted to See
1. Team America
American movies are really big in Japan, but comedy doesn’t always translate as well as “Harry Potter”, so this was a hard movie to track down. It never got a big theatrical release, and was hidden in the back of the local video store.
This movie had come highly recommended from a number of people I respect. So I was very disappointed in it. As political satire, I thought this movie was very weak. Instead of intelligent political commentary, it was political humor in the “Saturday Night Live” tradition, where slapstick humor and cheap jokes are supposed to pass for satire.The film slashes at both sides, the premise being that the right is more concerned about kicking ass than they are about seriously solving the world’s problems. And that outspoken film actors on the left don’t know what they’re talking about, and have no business in politics. Both of these are rather simple concepts that are flogged endlessly for the duration of the film.
2. Bananas (Woody Allen)
I once read that the success of “The Simpsons” was its ability to mix highbrow humor with lowbrow humor. If that’s true, Woody Allen seems to have mastered this formula decades before. He's lost his touch a little bit now, but his old movies are genius.
This 1971 film is a satire on Latin American revolutions, American television coverage of those revolutions, and the involvement of the CIA and FBI. There are all sorts of cultural references thrown in, from Bobby Seale’s being bound and gagged at his own trial, to the infamous baby carriage scene from “The Battleship Potemkin”. Mixed in with this is just a lot of silly humor. My favorite part was when Woody Allen was acting as his own lawyer, and called himself as a witness. He asks himself questions, and then runs back into the witness stand to answer, and then runs back to the lawyer’s platform to argue with himself.
And yet amid all the sillyness, a lot of good points get made. Like when Ms. America is asked if Mr. Mellish (Woody Allen's Character) is a traitor to his country, she answers: "I think Mr. Mellish is a traitor to this country because his views are different from the views of the president and others of his kind. Differences of opinion should be tolerated but not when they're too different. Then he becomes a subversive mother." I think this still describes the views of many on the right.
I know I’m always talking about how old movies are better, and in that sense I’ve become a bit of an old codger before my time. But I challenge anyone to watch “Team America” and “Bananas” back to back, and then think about how far political satire has fallen.
3. The Life of Emile Zola
Although having just said, this is an example of an old movie that is clearly showing its age. In some ways I guess movies are improving, and comparing old and new biopics is a good way to see that. Old biopics have a need to white wash their subjects, get ride of all subtlety, and have sappy sugary sweet Hollywood endings.
Also the subject of Emile Zola’s life is too vast for this movie, and the rough cuts and jumps show. The Dreyfus affair alone would have easily been enough for a whole movie. If this movie would ever be remade, maybe it should focus on just this one episode, just as “Capote” only focused on one episode in Capote’s life.
4. The Assassination of Richard Nixon
I find myself in agreement with a review of this movie I once read. All the themes in it, the isolation of modern life, and idea of a man to prove his existence by assassinating a political figure, have already been done, and done better, in “Taxi Driver” (by Calvin’s own Paul Schrader). Of course “The Assassination of Richard Nixon” has the advantage of being a true story, and that adds to the interest, but that only gets you so far.
5. Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
I think this was a project that was doomed to failure from its inception. It’s impossible to capture Douglas Adam’s dry wit on the big screen. Everyone gets full marks for trying, but I think we all knew the film could never live up to the books.
6. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
This is another movie I’ve wanted to see for a long time (I think Phil had some thoughts on it a while back), but I had difficulty tracking down in Japan.
I enjoyed this the most of all the Wes Anderson films I’ve seen so far, and I think this was mainly because Bill Murray was finally put in the spotlight instead of a supporting character (like he was in “Rushmore” and “The Royal Tenebaums”). Bill Murray and Wes Anderson seem to bring out the best in each other.
Like all Wes Anderson films, however, this has a tendency to go on for a little bit too long, and get bogged down in the middle. I had the same criticism of “Rushmore” and “Royal Tenebaums”
7. The Lady Killers
I know this movie got a lot of bad reviews, but I enjoyed it. Tom Hanks was a bit over the top at times, but it was still a really funny movie
Movies I watched for entertaining purposes
1. A Series of Unfortunate Events
Eeh, not bad, but not great either
2. Chicago I like musicals, but musicals aren’t made to be watched, they’re made to be re-watched. The first time you watch a musical it’s incredibly frustrating to be caught up in the plot, and then to have the story be stopped every 5 minutes for another song.
Guilty Pleasures
1. Dodge ball
During my last few weeks at the elementary school I taught the kids how to play American Style Dodgeball. Dodgeball is very popular in Japan (apparently the game originated in Asia), but the rules are a lot different. If you catch the ball, nothing happens. No one gets out, no one gets back in. So there’s no incentive to throw carefully. In my opinion that really spoils a lot of the game. Also, if someone gets tagged out, they don’t have to sit down and wait to get back in. Instead they simply move to the outskirts of the enemy side, and they can try and get the other team out from there.
Of course no one likes to sit out, but I think part of the suspense of the game is the fear of getting out and having to just sit down and watch. Call me culturally biased, but I much prefer American Style.
