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Films of Wes Anderson

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I loved The Grand Budapest Hotel! It was just what I needed today.

 

I think Wes Anderson's colorful visuals and colorful people complemented the story much more than in most of his other movies. As can be expected from a Wes Anderson film, parts of The Grand Budapest Hotel were quite melancholy and sad, but fortunately (for me) it never reaches The Royal Tenenbaums level of sadness.

 

What a beautiful beautiful thing. Definitely in my Top 2 list of Wes Anderson movies.

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I also loved The Grand Budapest Hotel! I talked my friends here in Ohio (with whom I have not regularly Hanged for many years at this point) into seeing it with me, and they all hated it. I forgot they aren't the kind of people who like... movies. I'll probably go see the new Captain America with them, and we'll all be able to enjoy that together, unlike Grand Budapest. But man I thought it was great. The only other Wes Anderson film I've seen is The Life Aquatic, which also is maybe one of my favorite movies, and I distinctly remember all of my friends hating it back when it came out.

 

I'm currently watching The Blues Brothers. I love this movie. Afterward, I'm going to watch Blues Brothers 2000, which by all accounts I've heard is terrible, and which I've only seen bits and pieces of on TV. But the soundtrack, I must've listened to hundreds of times. I've got to see what makes it bad. I don't have a choice! So this'll be fun.

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Definitely watch The Royal Tenenbaums as soon as possible.

 

The only other Wes Anderson film I've seen is The Life Aquatic, which also is maybe one of my favorite movies, and I distinctly remember all of my friends hating it back when it came out.

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I watched Rushmore, mostly to see if I enjoy Wes Anderson films enough to give Grand Budapest Hotel a go. Turns out I do! I liked it a lot. (I'd already seen Fantastic Mr. Fox, which I also enjoyed, but that might be because of Roald Dahl.)

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I loved The Grand Budapest Hotel! It was just what I needed today.

 

I think Wes Anderson's colorful visuals and colorful people complemented the story much more than in most of his other movies. As can be expected from a Wes Anderson film, parts of The Grand Budapest Hotel were quite melancholy and sad, but fortunately (for me) it never reaches The Royal Tenenbaums level of sadness.

 

What a beautiful beautiful thing. Definitely in my Top 2 list of Wes Anderson movies.

Budapest is by far the Anderson film that has the most depressing, horrendously gruesome shit going down. The presentation does a lot to disguise it, but man I came out of that film with some sever cognitive dissonance at having laughed and been entertained so much.

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Haha, absolutely. The very casual mentioning of police brutality and fascism makes for a fascinating contrast to that soft pink Mendl's world of design.

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Budapest is by far the Anderson film that has the most depressing, horrendously gruesome shit going down. The presentation does a lot to disguise it, but man I came out of that film with some sever cognitive dissonance at having laughed and been entertained so much.

 

Yeah, that might be true. But damn that Needle in the Hay scene in The Royal Tenenbaums was rough.

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I liked the movie, but I would probably have liked it more if it had stayed contained to wacky stuff in the hotel and Fiennes' character. The movie has a lot of stuff that could have been cut easily. For me, personally, it would have been better without the prison plotline, a lot of the chases and especially the crossed keys thing. Because of all this it lost momentum after the half-way point IMO.

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Nooooo..  :sad: Oh, man.. I would be the saddest if the film didn't have 

 

The

Society

of the

Crossed

Keys

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I liked the movie, but I would probably have liked it more if it had stayed contained to wacky stuff in the hotel and Fiennes' character. The movie has a lot of stuff that could have been cut easily. For me, personally, it would have been better without the prison plotline, a lot of the chases and especially the crossed keys thing. Because of all this it lost momentum after the half-way point IMO.

This is all the stuff I liked about the movie. I didn't really care about any of the characters in particular, but I liked the stuff that happened so I enjoyed the movie because it was basically just a fun ride.

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Well, obviously you two are wrong and I'm right, but I wouldn't condescend to you by backing that up with anything.

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I think if it had stayed in the hotel it probably wouldn't have had a plot. It reminded me immediately of The Big Lebowski (except that I liked Grand Budapest much, much more) in that it felt like a caper film primarily involving people who had no business being in a caper film.

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I think a good movie could be made just in the hotel, but I don't think Wes Anderson would do it. It also would mean no Edward Norton. Maybe Noah Baumbach could have done it, in my brain he's a more restrained Wes Anderson who focuses more on the characters than the wacky antics. Maybe restrained isn't the right word, focused?

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If it had stayed in the hotel, I think it would've start to drag a little. On the other hand, the movie would be forced to actually develop the characters during the story (they're somewhat caricatural now). In any regard, it would be a totally different film.

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It would probably not be a Wes Anderson film either; he tends to trade in caricatures.

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It would probably not be a Wes Anderson film either; he tends to trade in caricatures.

Yeah, this is what I was trying to get at.

I'm a little surprised to see just how much people seemed to like this relative to other Wes Anderson films. I enjoyed it a lot, but I would personally put Life Aquatic, Moonrise Kingdom, and Fantastic Mr. Fox if I were to rank them, so I'm curious if this is because of how much you liked Grand Budapest or if you didn't like stuff in his other movies. I actually don't really have a feel at all for how much people generally like Mr. Fox. I love it, but I'm biased because I love anything with the Cloon-dog.

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I enjoyed the hell out of Fantastic Mr. Fox and chalked it up to Roald Dahl being a massive part of my childhood.

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I don't know a lot of people who don't like Fantastic Mr. Fox. It's pretty... fantastic. (And I agree with your Anderson top list.)

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I just saw Grand Budapest Hotel and this is going to seem really dumb for me to say, but as much as I enjoyed it, which is saying something for yet another movie steeped in Wes Anderson's obsessive love of visual symmetry, I would have enjoyed it even more if it had taken place somewhere real. I mean, it was obviously Liechtenstein by way of every other country in Europe east of the Rhine and north of the Danube, but you get what I mean. Only in this twee land of pure imagination, safe from the actual shit going down in Europe during the thirties, can someone who is revealed to be the emotional core of the movie die offscreen from a ridiculous-sounding fictional disease. That probably encapsulates every problem I've ever had with Wes Anderson's scripts.

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Yesterday I watched The Royal Tenenbaums and now I only need to see Bottle Rocket to complete my Wes Anderson bingo card. It's an interesting thing, since TRT was the movie that, at least in my eyes, propelled Anderson to his current status as an auteur filmmaker of note. It's the first of his modern day styled movies, and yet watching it now it felt like the half-way point. You can easily see the stylistic and narrative choices from his later work, but it's still a lot more 'generically' cinematic, whilst at the same time lacking some of the cohesiveness of, say, The Life Aquatic (that followed up this film).

 

The Royal Tenenbaums meanders a bit more in its plot, and some of the stuff stuck out in a slightly off way. Danny Glover doesn't seem like a good fit for the Wes Anderson universe, and Owen Wilson's character wasn't fleshed out in a satisfying way. That's not to say I didn't like it! But in my head I had worked this movie up to be one of Anderson's best, while I now view it as a springboard for favorites like The Life Aquatic and The Grand Budapest.

 

 

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I think Bottle Rocket is very restrained compared to his later films, I think, but I like it a lot! My favourite is Rushmore because of the characters, although I do like the more stylish Moonlight Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Life Aquatic quite a lot as well.

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On 12-12-2016 at 10:31 AM, Roderick said:

Yesterday I watched The Royal Tenenbaums and now I only need to see Bottle Rocket to complete my Wes Anderson bingo card. It's an interesting thing, since TRT was the movie that, at least in my eyes, propelled Anderson to his current status as an auteur filmmaker of note. It's the first of his modern day styled movies, and yet watching it now it felt like the half-way point. You can easily see the stylistic and narrative choices from his later work, but it's still a lot more 'generically' cinematic, whilst at the same time lacking some of the cohesiveness of, say, The Life Aquatic (that followed up this film).

 

The Royal Tenenbaums meanders a bit more in its plot, and some of the stuff stuck out in a slightly off way. Danny Glover doesn't seem like a good fit for the Wes Anderson universe, and Owen Wilson's character wasn't fleshed out in a satisfying way. That's not to say I didn't like it! But in my head I had worked this movie up to be one of Anderson's best, while I now view it as a springboard for favorites like The Life Aquatic and The Grand Budapest.

 

 

TRT is by far my least favourite of his films. It's, as you say, just so incohesive and pointless, without much of the charm that makes that sort of thing bearable in his other works that do it.

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On 14/12/2016 at 2:59 PM, osmosisch said:

TRT is by far my least favourite of his films. It's, as you say, just so incohesive and pointless, without much of the charm that makes that sort of thing bearable in his other works that do it.

 

TRT is my favourite of Wes Anderson's films. The things that people are pointing out as being incoherent or not fleshed out enough are the things I love about that film. Tenebaums feels like a film that exists in a world where narratives started before the film began and continue after it is over. People are introduced that don't have a lot of relevance but they exist because the world exists.

 

I also find the strength of everyone's relationship with Gene Hackman that tells the most important parts of the film. The story about his buddy taking him to the hospital after he got stabbed, exemplifies everyone's feelings towards Tenebaum.

 

As for weakest - Darjeeling whatever it was called, and Bottle Rocket are my least favourite.

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Of note here is of course that the person that stabbed Royal was that same buddy that afterwards took him to the hospital. O, no doubt that Royal is an amazing character, as are some of the other cast. I think with Wes Anderson, your personal preference in the kind of stories and tones that you like inform a lot of which one you'll like most. The Life Aquatic was a direct hit for me because it mixed David Bowie, Jacques Cousteau and Bill Murray into a cocktail seemingly tailormade.

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