Somewhere Alongside the Moonrise: The Grand Budapest Hotel

I still think Moonrise Kingdom should have been nominated for Best Picture.

Wes Anderson's 2012 nostalgic comedy was one of many casualties that Oscar season, which also saw Kathryn Bigelow and Ben Affleck (whose Argo took Best Picture) miss out on Best Director nominations. That year was... kind of a mess. It's almost as if people are ignoring little gems like this while overindulging on and celebrating David O. Russell and his admittedly good - but by no means groundbreaking or original - fare. Not that Anderson, the Texan director whose movies seem to run on whimsy and charm, is lacking in public attention. Though he's had a few bombs, Anderson has reached that point in his career where not only does the mere mention of his name elicit squeals of glee from fanboys and fangirls, but his films have also proven good, quirky and unique enough to draw in more mainstream audiences. And Moonrise Kingdom is one of his most inclusive, with all the nuttiness of Rushmore but more approachable at the same time.

Ralph Fiennes: one less great actor who hasn't worked with Anderson.

So can The Grand Budapest Hotel capitalize on that and become Wes Anderson's greatest work yet? Well, yes and no. Budapest is arguably one of Anderson's most artistic efforts, as his distinct style is all over the German locations and sets in which the film was shot. Whether it's opulently-colored models, creative camera techniques or unique character models, Anderson is at his glee-inducing best. His story of a legendary hotel concierge (Ralph Fiennes) falsely accused of murder and on the run from the law with his loyal lobby boy Zero (newcomer Tony Revolori) would make for a great thriller, if the screenplay (also written by Anderson) wasn't content to throw every humorous anecdote and amusing situation along the way to lighten the mood. The fact that Fiennes can talk about sleeping with older women in the same nonchalant tone in which he tells of the violent passing of a fellow prison escapee proves that he belongs in this director's pantheon of recurring performers, many of whom make their presences known.

I even liked Jude Law in this! Truly this Anderson is sacred!

And it's a great cast that the director has assembled here. Though there are a few returning actors that could have done more (no more than a small cameo for Bill Murray?), The Grand Budapest Hotel is surprisingly built upon its new talent, with the Anderson regulars filling out the smaller support roles. Fortunately, that new talent is headlined by Fiennes, who is simply put on of the best actors working today. Revolori also impresses, and the two make for an excellent pair, as the younger actor's innocent and eminently loyal sidekick plays beautifully against Fiennes' haughty, confident and charismatic leading man. And the cast is littered with excellence, Saoirse Ronan as Zero's dutiful but independent fiance to Tilda Swinton as a wealthy hotel patron, to Adrien Brody as her inheritance-seeking son to Willem DaFoe as his thinly-veiled violent sociopath of a lackey. Returning actors Edward Norton and Jeff Goldblum also find their marks as a police inspector and a by-the-book lawyer, respectively.

No, really, there's a funny story in here.

Budapest also carries an extra dose of the zaniness that makes Wes Anderson more than just a standard filmmaker, from his use of four distinct narrators (F. Murray Abraham, Jude Law, Tom Wilkinson, and yes, I'm including the girl with the book at the beginning) to the Mexico-shaped birthmark on one character's face to having a man named "Monsieur Chuck" (Owen Wilson) to the beautiful cakes designed so that the prison would not want to disturb them looking for concealed escape tools. The atmosphere that the director creates never feels stale, and while there are times that a scene feels a tad overlong, it's a rare occurrence, and usually is made up for by the kind of irreverent humor and witty dialogue that feels reminiscent of the golden age of spoken comedy.

That's a lot of flattened cakes.

Unfortunately, The Grand Budapest Hotel is SO MUCH like a Wes Anderson comedy that.... it never really takes that next step you might have been expecting after the magic that was Moonrise Kingdom. Much like how Django Unchained was Tarantino's sideways step from Inglorious Basterds, Budapest just doesn't feel that different from Moonrise, not in locale or story (which are obviously differing) but in tone and pacing. The humor is the same, and the character archetypes just FEEL as though they've got Anderson's hands all over them. Keep in mind, that's not a bad thing. I mentioned before how the story would make for a great thriller, and another director would have done just that. By subverting that story and combining it with his style of moviemaking, however, Anderson makes something undeniably, indelibly his. And like the excellent Django, that identifiabe voice is what makes The Grand Budapest Hotel the wonderful experience that it is.

Nope, nothing suspicious going on here!

And while that means that The Grand Budapest Hotel ultimately appeals a little more to diehard Anderson fans than the average moviegoing audience, it's still one of the best movies released so far in 2014. You never know where the story will go next, and it makes for an excellent quirky, lo-fi option if you're already tired out from the big-budget tentpoles films that are starting to make their way into theaters. If you haven't already gone out of your way to see this, now is the best time to make it happen. Just don't expect anything truly groundbreaking - by Anderson's standards, anyway - and you'll enjoy your time at the movies very, very much.

Twilight Fatigue

Ready to have your mind blown? I actually kinda liked a movie based on a Stephenie Meyer book.

No, really!

Naturally, it wasn't any of the absurd Twilight movies - for which I hold nothing but disinterest in at best and contempt for at worst - but Meyer's sci-fi story The Host that actually shows the upper limit of her imagination. Released in 2008 as the first of a proposed trilogy, the basis for the story - an alien invasion in which not only our world but our minds are invaded by alien consciousnesses - makes for a much more interesting tale than sparkly vampires and idiotic love triangles. I've always been a sucker for post-apocalyptic tales, and while The Host doesn't have the nuclear fallout or crumbling infrastructure of such stories, its human element was what I was looking most forward to when I visited the theater that day.

You won't look human for long...

Saoirse Ronan plays Melanie Stryder, one of the last human beings left on planet Earth. In the future, we have been invaded by an alien race known as "Souls", parasites that invade the minds of people and wipe clean the human identity, replacing it with their own while they live out the lives of our bodies. The only indication that they're no longer us are the bright blue eyes that make them easily recognizable to others. While surviving the initial invasion alongside her little brother, Melanie is soon captured and implanted with a Soul that calls itself "Wanderer". Wanderer is tasked with retrieving memories related to a human resistance that continues to fight back. But fueled by thoughts of her family and loved ones, Melanie manages to maintain her sense of identity and forces Wanderer to escape and try to find the other humans before the Souls can.

Guess which one is ombrophobic!

There's one part I left out of the above plot description, and that's the complex love story that Meyer ineffectively plugged into the story as Melanie's primary goal (over, you know, survival). Before Melanie was captured, she met a young named Jared (Max Irons) and the pair started up a relationship that was rudely interrupted by the whole "alien embryo" thing. When she (as Wanderer) rejoins the humans, not only is she immediately rejected by Jared (who doesn't realize that she is still in her own body) but is approached by another young man, Ian (Jake Abel), who grows attached to Wanderer's personality. Yes, it's another love triangle, although taking the disparate personalities into effect it's more like a love Fermat's Last Theorum. As a narrative tool it's silly and ridiculous and completely ham-handed in its implementation.

First she's being hunted by Nazis, now she's hunting humans.

Thankfully, romance is not Melanie/Wanderer's only motivation. Director and screenwriter Andrew Niccol has worked on his fair share of science fiction (Gattaca, S1m0ne and In Time), and it shows in the rest of The Host's story, which takes a wonderful sci-fi concept and clearly understands the difference between human drama and dramatics. While some things might never get explained (just how did a species of benevolent space caterpillars invade our planet anyway?), Niccol does the smart thing by focusing not on the invasion but of the aliens who struggle to identify with this new species that they have subjugated. The universe the movie opens up has more potential than many sci-fi flicks in recent memory, and is one of the bigger spectacles in a film that doesn't really spend its money on extensive production design. The sets that are in place might be low-tech, but do a good job of creating both modern and tribal worlds for the planet's two factions.

Why didn't the aliens just develop contact lenses?

The acting isn't bad either, though its at times brought down a notch by weak dialogue and mediocre scenes. The trio of Ronan, Irons and Abel are all solid presences, and the talented Ronan is at her best when conversing between her two very different mindsets. They might at times be hilarious, but while others see that as unintentional, I see it as a conscious rise in the levity in an otherwise dour tale. Humor notwithstanding, there are talented actors among the cast, with John Hurt, Frances Fisher and Diane Kruger lending their veteran talents. I firmly believe that without these people, The Host's performances would damn it to infamy on the level of Atlas Shrugged.

Like most women, she's of two minds about EVERYTHING.

As long as you can forgive or otherwise ignore the ill-conceived romance story and the fact that it comes from the same author as Twilight, there's a lot to like about The Host. It's got a decent story, good acting, and doesn't embarrass itself in the visuals department either, thanks to Niccol's eye behind the camera. It's by no means a must-see, but it does represent a decent standby in a year when there really haven't BEEN many must-sees thus far. I feel like I say this a lot right now (and hopefully that will change soon), but as long as your expectations are low, there's no reason not to enjoy this straightforward release. If you still aren't sure it's worth a trip to the movies, it definitely WILL be a fair rental option in just a few months.

The Song of Hanna

Okay, let's get this superlative out of the way first; Hanna is the best movie I've seen this year, standing tall at #1 for 2011. When I first saw the trailer for this title in December, I wasn't sure how I would feel about the action-packed thriller, only that it felt far different from any other film I was familiar with. The trailer was exciting, engaging, and flush with talented performers, including Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett and rising star Saoirse Ronan. Music by electronica group The Chemical Brothers was also promoted, but I had a hard time believing the soundtrack could be as good as Daft Punk's work on Tron: Legacy. Helped by the fact that this past weekend was one for uninteresting new releases (including Arthur, Your Highness, and Blind Side wannabe Soul Surfer), plus an invite to see the midnight show by The Opinioness (who probably has her own review up and running by the time you read this), it was an easy choice to see Hanna over all the others. I'm very happy to have made that choice, as even a sleep-deprived evening couldn't take away the fact that director Joe Miller expertly put together an amazing film; that I get to write to you all about it is icing on the cake.

Yes, I'll just be getting our of your way now, thanks

Hanna (Ronan) lives in the wastes near the Arctic Circle with her father, Erik Heller (Bana). There, Erik has raised her to be a ruthless assassin, with the ultimate goal that of killing corrupt CIA handler Marissa Wiegler (Blanchett). Kept from the civilized world her entire life and all alone on her mission, Hanna goes on a journey of self-discovery while hunting down Wiegler en route to meeting up with her father again some day in the future. Meanwhile, Wiegler has her own team of lowlifes tracking down Hanna and Erik, as both are castoffs from her past wrongs, and has brought it upon herself to silence them forever.

The question remains: do the curtains match the drapes?

You'd be completely justified in assuming Hanna to be an ultra-violent mix of action, suspense and vigorous blood-letting, but what you might not expect is for the story to become funny. Not funny "hmm", I mean funny as in gut-busting laughs that will keep you smiling for hours. The film does take a more humorous tone when Hanna, on the run from a government holding facility, meets up with a vacationing family of tourists and ends up hitching a ride. Between the frank honesty and sometimes-bickering of the parents (Olivia Williams and Jason Flemyng), the motor-mouthed brilliance of daughter and Hanna's budding friend Sophie (Jessica Barden) and Hanna's own trouble with social interaction (meeting Sophie for the first time, she repeats her own cover story from verbatim to hilarious effect), the whole series of sequences makes for some of the best parts of the film. It doesn't however stray from its often violent story - in fact, these humorous bits are often interspersed by sudden and shuddering acts - and so this act doesn't feel nearly as separate from the main story as it would in similar titles. In fact, it makes for a welcome respite and something new, and the humor's unpredictability means that you never see it coming, like some kind of pint-sized assassin.

Years later, Bana would recollect stints like The Time Traveler's Wife and join AA

Earlier I compared The Chemical Brothers to Daft Punk as longstanding electronic music groups turning in movie soundtracks. That comparison was perhaps a bit short-sighted, as while Daft Punk's electronic organs were ever present and almost essential to the immersion felt in Tron, The Chemical Brothers employed a far more subtle air in their work. Not only is their usual brand of synthesizer music amazing in its utility, but the group did an amazing job in creating music from whatever could be found, often mixing it into the background noise. Music connoisseurs will be more than happy closing their eyes and simply listening to the soothing and melodic sounds from everyday objects used to set up scenes, sequences and moods. Since Hanna has lacked music in her upbringing but always been curious about it, as a character she's experiencing all these strange acoustics with an ear just learning to hear on a whole other level. It does wonders to deepen our connection to her and develop the character even more than the script already does.

Oh, disembodied heads, you so crazy!

And the characters presented here are no cliched heaps of flawed humanity, either. In fact, the film excels in making even small characters lovable and engaging, and you especially feel for them when bad things happen. Ronan continues her climb to stardom over the bodies of those who oppose her; her Hanna is the perfect blend of violent sociopath and curious sixteen-year-old girl, shocking enough to be scary but emotionally raw enough to illicit sympathy from the audience. She's simply outstanding in the role, and at only seventeen years of age, we can expect even more amazing performances from her in the future. Bana missed his shot at being a legitimate Hollywood star about two Hulk movies ago, but also excels here in both an acting and physical role as Hanna's father and the man who made her the killing machine that she is. It's shame Bana makes poor choices in his films; he'll probably never get as popular in the States as he became in his native Australia for Chopper. Still, Hanna presents the idea that he might excel if he pursues the Liam Neeson route of action/thriller films, as he makes the most of Erik Heller as he can, sometimes overshadowing Ronan's own accomplishments in the process. I was afraid Blanchett would be little more than a heavy accent, but she more than acquits herself and makes a compelling villain as well. The film does oversimplify her evilness a bit by suggesting that she is that way for choosing her career over family (or vice versa), but that's really the only problem I have, and that certainly isn't Blanchett's fault. Her gooey southern accent, casual cruelty and a propensity for firearms combine to make Marissa Wiegler a dangerous individual to trifle with. Tom Hollander also does a good job as Wiegler's goon, a bleach-blond German psychopath who likes to make his victims suffer. I also have to give special credit to Jessica Barden for providing the film's funniest moments, even if her character was easily the least-developed of the bunch.

One tough lady

Some of Hanna's fight scenes were a little off, but only in those of the film's namesake and I assume only because it was a bit harder to make it convincing for the young woman to take out opponents twice her size. In fact, Bana has a much better scene halfway through that is so flawless that it lends itself to that argument. That's only a small nuisence, however; as I already stated, Hanna is just too good to avoid. Do yourself a favor, ignore those other films you haven't gotten around to seeing for now. Those still waiting to see truly great films like Win Win, The Adjustment Bureau, and Jane Eyre can put it off a bit longer, so demanding is Hanna's execution. This film grabs your attention and doesn't let go, and while it might not be remembered as the best movie of 2011, I can't imagine a world where it doesn't make my final Top 10 at year's end.