Hey! We Saw More Movies!

 The spoilers have been kept to a minimum

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Jonny Prophet and I love Wes Anderson movies.

I seriously wanted to end the review right there as some sort of strange homage to Anderson's offbeat and quirky films. The Grand Budapest Hotel continues that writing and filmmaking style. Jonny and I both think the movie was great, but its a hard sell to those who've never seen a Wes Anderson film.

Jonny and I both say that his films are never to be hyped to people. If you like his films, you know what to expect. However, to those who are unfamiliar, it can be a tough sell. Wes Anderson films are like looking at a wholesome Norman Rockwell painting and noticing a sad clown inexplicably in the background. They're like if Hallmark cards had Mad magazine fold-ins. The films are hard to explain, but have a truly unique feel to them. When I first saw the trailer to The Grand Budapest Hotel, even before they told me it was a Wes Anderson film, I knew. It's this unmistakable style of dead pan humor, rich environments and settings, and slightly off-kilter characters built upon a story full of very serious themes buried deep within the absurd.

The Grand Budapest Hotel was set in a very fictional Europe on the cusp of a very familiar war. With a backdrop of political unrest, troop occupations and changing allegiances, the story is told through the eyes of Zero, a young "Lobby Boy" as he shadows the luxurious hotel's concierge Gustave. The two get caught up in a misadventure after Gustave inherits a valuable rare painting from an elderly friend, only to be accused of her murder and hunted down by her ruthless, greedy children.

As with all Wes Anderson films, The Grand Budapest Hotel features a dazzling array of actors, many of whom are veterans to his films. Gustave is played by Ralph Fiennes and features F. Murray Abraham, Jude Law, Jason Schwartzman, Saoirse Ronan, Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, Adrian Brody, Ed Norton. Jeff Goldblum and the list goes on and on. Actors must really like working with Anderson.

I will say that this film is the darkest I have ever seen of the man's films, effectively making The Grand Budapest Hotel a dark comedy of sorts. There is some fairly graphic violence (fingers get chopped off), shoot outs, nudity, a group analogous to Nazis and some pretty somber themes such as Zero's back-story of his entire family having been executed by occupying forces in the previous big war. At the same time, the quirky funny charm is still present throughout such as a birthmark in the shape of Mexico on a young woman's face or a pick-axe shaped cake so ornately decorated that the prison guard can't bring himself to destroy it's beauty to check for the escape tool that was almost certainly baked inside.

Wes Anderson movies aren't for everyone, but I would suggest giving The Grand Budapest Hotel a shot. If nothing else, it's a film unlike any other you will see this year.

Jonny's Contribution - Why can't Wes Anderson do remakes of other movies? I want to see Wes Anderson's versions of Star Trek, Batman, The X-Men and Harry Potter!  Why the hell does McG get so much work? He's sucks! I guarantee Wes Anderson's version of Charlie's Angels would be amazing! Stop giving McG money to make movies! Look what he did to the Terminator franchise! Wes Anderson probably would have made some amazing movie where a Commodore 64 with the voice of Bill Murray tries to take over the world with Pong! I want that movie!  

Come on, look at how great Star Wars would have been if Wes Anderson directed it! 

Muppets Most Wanted

The previous Muppet movie may have been better, but I don't think Most Wanted was too far off the mark. I actually think the songs in this one may be better than in its predecessor, and that is saying something considering Bret McKenzie won an Oscar for Best Original Song! (By the way, Flight of the Conchords fans should be delighted that McKenzie returned and Jermaine Clemente in Most Wanted as the head prisoner in the Siberian Gulag!) There was an impressive array of celebrity cameos that read more like a line-up of SNL hosts from over a decade.

Muppets Most Wanted had a descent plot built on the classic 'look alike bad guy switches places with the good guy' routine. One complaint, however, was that the majority of the story centered on Ricky Gervais, Kermit and his doppelganger Constantine. Most of the Muppets were relegated to background appearances or, if lucky, a line or two. It seemed almost forced to give the last movie's newcomer, Walter, a role at all. His purpose was to repeatedly notice that something was off about Kermit and honestly, any of those plushy bastards could have done that! I will concede that many of the Muppets are really only good for one-note jokes, but beloved characters like Gonzo and Fozzie really didn't seem like they were given time to shine.

The movie itself was funny. It was full of the wacky humor you'd expoect from the Muppets, like Dr. Honeydew's "bomb attracting suit" with, of course, his ill-fated assistant Beaker wearing the contraption or the gang traveling by train in reverse from Los Angeles to Berlin. (Take a moment to think about that.) But compared to previous Muppet films, it seems like a lot more time was spent on human characters than puppets.

Jason Segel's script walked a fine line of having too much human involvement in the story, but where his movie kept a good balance, I think Muppets Most Wanted went a little too far in celebrity screen time. Beyond that complaint, however, it was a funny and enjoyable movie which I will probably own at some point.

Jonny's Contribution - I agree with the Swedish Chef. The sequel should have been an existential black and white foreign art film exploring the depths of human despair and religious ideology.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

I find it interesting how Marvel keeps upping the ante on quality superhero movies; they did it with Iron Man, again with The Avengers and now with Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I mainly just have good things to say about the movie. It perfectly balanced a political thriller with a superhero movie, had some amazing action sequences and some very suspenseful moments, making for a pretty unique superhero movie.

For those who have not seen the movie and don't want to be spoiled, the basic plot is that our hero Steve Rogers AKA Captain America gets caught in the middle of a secret coup inside S.H.I.E.L.D., which is America's semi-clandestine super defense force. Nobody knows who they can trust. Those looking to take over S.H.I.E.L.D. have also employed a super assassin known as The Winter Soldier, a mysterious man who seems a match for Steve Rogers and may have a connection to his past.

Please take note makers of Man of Steel 2 and the Amazing Spider-man 2, this is how you fit a bunch of new and important characters into a movie without it becoming a jumbled mess. In addition to already established characters, Cap 2 introduced Falcon, Sharon "Agent 13" Carter, Arnim Zola (in his post-human form), Batroc, Agent Sitwell (though he was already on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), Brock "Crossbones" Rumlow and  the Winter Soldier. Also in the credit scene Baron Strucker, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were all introduced, although I'm not sure I count the three of them as they were not part of the plot. I will concede that Emily VanCamp's role as Sharon Carter was pretty small, which I point out because she is an up and coming name, but I'm sure she will have a much larger role as Steve Roger's love interest in the third movie. For the most part, they writers did a great job of balancing screen time for all the characters while not diverting from the suspenseful plot.

The only complaint I have is about how the good guys were supposed to go about stopping the baddies. There was this whole satellite triangulation with the three helicarriers that would have allowed the villains to start wiping out "problematic" people to create their interpretation of world peace. But if the good guys could swap out some computer chips in the main computer hub of the helicarriers, they could override the commands. I never like those sort of "easy fix" solutions. No, breaking into an enemy controlled flying fortress isn't exactly easy, but I mean more for wrapping up the plot. Why would these computer chips be so assessable on a super weaponized flying aircraft carrier? Surely S.H.I.E.L.D. is smart enough to figure out that they have enemies and giving them an opening, much like an exhaust port for the Death Star, is just asking for trouble. And it's so easy to operate that a guy who was literally thawed out of ice a year or two ago and had never seen a computer until only recently can swap out the chips?  It just doesn't add up.

However, the climax wasn't so much about swapping chips. It was S.H.I.E.L.D. imploding with agent versus agent, nobody knowing who they could trust. It was Captain America confronting the Winter Soldier. It was about what changes are to come in Marvel's cinematic universe in the aftermath of this movie. Considering all that, and how well it was executed, my gripes don't carry that much weight against how good Captain America 2 was. I highly recommend it. 

Jonny's Contribution -I really liked this movie, but can you imagine how much better it would have been with Paul Newman as Captain America? He could have fought Robert Redford! It would have been awesome! What does this Chris Evans guy got that Paul Newman hasn't?

A pulse?

Too soon, man. Too soon.