The Grand Budapest Hotel: Grandly chaotic

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: Rated R, for profanity, sexual candor and brief violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.21.14

This one’s hard to categorize.

On the one hand, and perhaps most visibly, Wes Anderson’s newest opus is a madcap farce populated by eccentric and oddly polite characters who hearken back to those found within West London’s famed Ealing Studios comedies, during the late 1940s and early ’50s.

With the police hot on their heels, M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes, left) and his faithful
junior lobby boy, Zero (Tony Revolori), frantically try to figure out where to hide a
priceless Renaissance painting that they have, ah, liberated.

On the other hand, it’s a droll send-up of Agatha Christie mysteries, with suspicious butlers, nosy maids and assorted other shady and avaricious characters, all of them anxious about the contents of a will that keeps throwing up codicils, riders, supplements, postscripts and assorted other appendices, possibly even superseded by the second copy of a second will.

On the third hand, it’s an affectionate ode to an era of more civilized behavior, when traveling strangers regaled each other with fascinating tall tales while enjoying a sumptuous meal; and when courting lovers exchanged passionate letters.

Then, too, there’s an affectionate nod to Inception, with its nested narratives.

And, last but certainly not least, however we choose to define this unapologetically zany melodrama, it most certainly could have come only from the eccentric imagination of director Wes Anderson ... and perhaps that’s the only explanation that matters.

Anderson’s films take place within a fanciful universe of his creation: one slightly off-center from our own, with occasionally familiar cultural landmarks that merely add to the gently bizarre atmosphere, laced with characters who deliver crucial soliloquies and peculiar non-sequitors with equal aplomb, and always with resolutely straight faces.

No character ever laughs at something said by another; at best, the speaker might get a raised eyebrow that Signifies A Great Deal.

In short, Anderson’s films are strange. Very strange, and definitely an acquired taste. I generally swing toward admiration, but not always; his previous outing, Moonrise Kingdom, is a thorough delight ... but I almost couldn’t make it through The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

This one falls somewhere in between, leaning more heavily toward the wacky delights of Moonrise Kingdom. Anderson has concocted the script with co-conspirator Hugo Guinness, claiming inspiration from pre-code 1930s Hollywood comedies and the stories and memoirs of Viennese author Stefan Zweig (!).

Avid film fans with a fondness for old-style filmmaking technique likely will have a ball. Mainstream viewers who casually wander into the theater will be convinced, after only 15 minutes, that the lunatics have taken over the asylum.

And, to be fair, they won’t be wrong.

Inside Llewyn Davis: Sour notes

Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rating: R, for profanity and sexual candor
By Derrick Bang 

To borrow shamelessly from a mordant holiday song, the only thing you’ll find inside Llewyn Davis is a heart that’s full of unwashed socks, and a soul that’s full of gunk. His brain is full of spiders; he’s as cuddly as a cactus and as charming as an eel.

He really is a heel.

Llewyn (Oscar Isaac, left) is undeniably talented, as he demonstrates when effortlessly
filling in for a session musician during the recording of a novelty tune in honor of
astronaut John Glenn. The song is penned by Llewyn's friend Jim (Justin
Timberlake, center), with a comic vocal assist from Al (Adam Driver)

None of which is the slightest bit amusing or entertaining, as was the case with the green-skinned Grinch. Llewyn Davis is simply a self-centered jerk: a struggling Greenwich Village folk singer attempting to make it in a business he neither understands nor admires, and who bitterly stomps on the feelings of anybody daft enough to extend a gesture of kindness.

We are, once again, spending nearly two hours in the presence of a thoroughly unlikable boor, and to no purpose. Llewyn doesn’t learn anything; neither does he mature or experience anything close to an epiphany. He has no spiritual side, and family ties are (ahem) mangled up in tangled-up knots.

He simply uses people without gratitude or a thought of compensation; the words “thanks” probably would choke him to death.

And yet all these personality failings aren’t the most irritating part of Inside Llewyn Davis. No, the biggest disappointment comes from the knowledge that this is a Joel and Ethan Coen film, and we wait in vain for any trace of the clever allegory, scathing character analysis or deliciously dark humor that has invigorated previous films such as Fargo and No Country for Old Men.

Solace comes there none. This new film is just a dreary slog.

The story follows Llewyn (Oscar Isaac) during what we can imagine is a typical few weeks in the winter of 1961/62, as he struggles to hustle up gigs while spending nights on the couches of the few people still willing to tolerate him. He’s a story-song purist: an angry young man determined to succeed on his own terms, and not yet aware that his brand of poetic, soul-baring angst is about to be buried beneath the hook-laden folk of Bob Dylan and the more melodic, listener-friendly music of (for example) Peter, Paul and Mary.

Not to mention the even more pernicious influence of bubble-gum pop songs.

As always is the case with a Coen brothers film, this one boasts a killer soundtrack. All the music is engaging and illuminating, not to mention a perfect depiction of the era. Isaac is persuasively credible behind a microphone, a guitar held in two capable hands; his music emerges from somewhere deep within, and for a brief moment we can imagine that he actually has something important to say.

Dead Man Down: The dish best served cold

Dead Man Down (2013) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rating: R, for profanity and considerable violence
By Derrick Bang

As I expected, David Fincher’s American remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo completely eclipsed Danish director Niels Arden Oplev’s vastly superior 2009 version in this country ... and let me note, as well, that Noomi Rapace’s Lisbeth Salander blew Rooney Mara right off the screen.

Victor (Colin Farrell) thinks that the scarred Beatrice (Noomi Rapace) merely wishes to
go on a date, to forget — for an evening — the despair that has lingered in the wake
of the car accident that left her with such a crippled self-image. In fact, though, Beatrice
has chosen Victor for a very specific reason ... as he's about to learn.

Imagine my delight, then, to see that Oplev and Rapace have reunited for the former’s American film debut, with a riveting crime thriller that offers more of the intense, claustrophobic character interactions that marked their first collaboration.

Dead Man Down also owes much of its narrative snap to a slick script from J.H. Wyman, a writer/director/producer best known for a pair of engaging TV shows: Fringe and the woefully under-appreciated Keen Eddie. Wyman has a knack for provocative concepts, and he certainly delivers that — and more — in this new film.

The setting is contemporary, the locale the seedier underbelly of any American metropolis (filming took place in Philadelphia). Dead Man Down hits the ground running, with a gaggle of hoods summoned by their boss, Alphonse (Terrence Howard). Somebody is playing a nasty game with Alphonse, sending cryptic messages that arrive on the corpses of his men.

The newest oblique missive sends Alphonse and his gang to the lair of a local drug kingpin (Andrew Stewart-Jones, vividly compelling), which prompts a confrontation that doesn’t go at all well; indeed, Alphonse survives solely due to the timely intervention of Victor (Colin Farrell).

This clash doesn’t sit well with regional boss Lon Gordon (Armand Assante), who feels that Alphonse has gotten seriously out of line. A price will need to be paid. Alphonse scarcely registers this warning, obsessed instead with what these damned notes might mean.

Victor hasn’t much of a life outside his duties as protective gunsel, although he has bonded with fellow hood Darcy (Dominic Cooper), an ambitious fellow looking to work his way up the gangland ladder. After hours, Victor eats makeshift meals in a minimally furnished, upper-level apartment in a complex that might be one scant step up from slum projects. He occasionally spots an attractive young woman on the balcony of a similar apartment in the adjacent tower.

This time, however, their eyes lock. She tentatively wiggles her fingers in an almost-wave. After a lengthy pause, he does the same.