The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, 2014)

Wes Anderson’s latest, The Grand Budapest Hotel, has bowed to reviews that link the occasionally staggering scale of its production design to the director’s meticulously ordered stop-motion film, The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Certainly the two stand as the most thoroughly crafted works in the oeuvre of a man whose trademark is his fussy attention to detail; in The Grand Budapest Hotel, hotel lobbies, prisons, even Alpine monasteries are created in such lavishly minute precision that the logistics of each impeccably straightened sign, every spotless carpet threaten to divert all attention away from the narrative at hand. In execution, however, the film belongs more with its immediate predecessor, Moonrise Kingdom, as both an unmistakable continuation of its maker’s singular style and an increasingly sophisticated breakdown of it.

From a narrative standpoint, no Wes Anderson film has ever been this convoluted. Typically, the director’s films spend more time merely introducing the characters and their strictly regimented habits than they do detailing what those people get up to. That is not to say that there is not conflict or drive in Anderson’s movies, but that said conflict typically arises from the intrusion of reality and lived, experienced wisdom upon the myopic headspace of stunted wunderkinder, a forceful denial and eventual acceptance of how ignorant these self-perceived geniuses truly are. But The Grand Budapest Hotel is the first of Anderson’s films in which the outside sources of awakening do not come as a natural course of maturation but from the direct imposition of actively hostile forces. Set primarily during WWII, the film presents a series of nested narratives involving characters whose pluck, intelligence and wit is slowly revealed to be utterly inadequate a defense against forces hellbent on eradicating the old way of things. Anderson routinely presents a sense of style and fashion far removed from the present; The Grand Budapest Hotel hones in on the last moment such modes were considered contemporary and proper before being violently stomped out.

Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson, 2012)

Incorporating many elements of Wes Anderson's previous films, Moonrise Kingdom might be seen, even approvingly, as the director going through the motions. It has the childhood focus of Rushmore, the dollhouse intricacy of The Royal Tenenbaums, the paradoxical criminal innocence of Bottle Rocket, the outdoor adventurousness of The Darjeeling Limited, even the documentarian angle of The Life Aquatic. To be sure, Anderson's latest instantly betrays its maker, the camera tracking and panning through an ornate, rigidly compartmentalized island home and its aloof, eerily formal child inhabitants. Set on the fictional New England island of New Penzance, this house and its surrounding locale suggest one of the director's most arch removes from the world around him, a self-contained universe of stunted genius and vague but overwhelming regret.

But these same shots also display a rough quality not even evident in the director's first film. Shot on 16mm, Moonrise Kingdom's thick grain serves two main purposes. First, it aesthetically matches the film's retro 1965 setting, casting Anderson's usual world of bright, sunny yellows in dimmer, fossilizing amber and making the buildings, which look like a model village from a contemporary train set built 1:1 scale, seem lived in and worn. Second, it adds a primal, visceral edge wholly foreign to Anderson's canon, a reflection of the emotional immediacy he attains with the movie's tale of young love in open opposition to the calcified bitterness that defines so many of Anderson's frustrated, self-imprisoning characters.

The Darjeeling Limited (& Hotel Chevalier)

In his video essay for the film, critic Matt Zoller Seitz calls The Darjeeling Limited "Wes Anderson's 2001." It is an apt description: like Kubrick's space odyssey, Anderson's spiritual journey not only displays but summarizes all his themes, styles and motifs. Furthermore, much of Anderson's movie visually recollects Kubrick's magnum opus, particularly in its use of wide-lens framing of confined areas, epic composition that makes characters small and meaningless within the sets than contain them. However, that space is a double-edged sword, as the lens is so wide that it captures the edges of the sets: in pulling back to minimize the power of the individual, the camera also sets down the dimensions of the rooms and corridors. These areas are big enough to dwarf a person, yet because we can see their ends, we know they cannot support free-roaming human life.


All of Anderson's films operate in this mode, of course, but this is the first one to think of the world outside luxurious but lived-in hotel rooms and train cabins. The compartmentalized, ultra-detailed set design that makes all of his films resemble immaculate dollhouses is suddenly thrown against the real world. What's more, it's a world opposite to his Western, privileged settings. The Darjeeling Limited, and its short-film prologue, Hotel Chevalier, represent Anderson's first attempt to take his theatrical and literary characters off the stage and page and into something grander. Unsurprisingly, where previous films owed stylistic ties to theatre (Rushmore) and literature (The Royal Tenenbaums), The Darjeeling Limited must directly invoke the cinema, and not in the "movie about movies" manner of The Life Aquatic.

The Limits of Control

Allow me to start this review by simply jumping to the lede, if you don't like Jim Jarmusch or have not watched enough of his films to base an opinion on him, do not watch The Limits of Control. Possibly the most "pretentious" film the minimalistic auteur has ever made, it alienated the critical community upon release and makes the rest of his work look mainstream in comparison.

Happily, I am a Jim Jarmusch fan, though that doesn't make this film any less daunting. I'm no stranger to his hip, stark irony, but with The Limits of Control Jarmusch strips film down to its barest elements, a literal take on the title of Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera. A deadpan mixture of Le Samouraï and Waiting For Godot, The Limits of Control represents the apex of just how Jarmsuch-y Jarmsuch can be: if he takes anything else out of the cinematic equation he'd just be a guy on street corners yelling about being on-screen.

Limits follows an unnamed assassin known as the Lone Man (Issach de Bankolé), an appropriately stoic fellow who looks like a freshly chiseled statue. Over the course of two hours, he wonders Spain from café to café, intercepting instructions from couriers that lead only to yet more couriers. Like Godot, the film is concerned less with an expected action than the expectation itself.

Each of the characters Lone Man meets has a distinct quirk, their names -- Guitar (John Hurt), Mexican (Gael Garcia Bernal) -- matching the bare structure of the film. Numerous visual and spoken references to cinema are made, from the film's broad appropriation of Antonioni's sense of ennui to a spoken reference to Aki Kaurismäki by Guitar and a discussion with a platinum-blond Tilda Swinton about Rita Hayworth's own dye-job in The Lady from Shanghai. Lone Man spends much of his free time in art galleries, and Schubert's name is floated about at times. Jarmusch mocks the spy/hitman convention of the required female sexuality by casting a woman (Pax de la Huerta) in the role of Nude; see if you can guess what her particular trait is.

The Limits of Control goes nowhere and it doesn't get there with any speed, yet, in its own quiet way, it's as much a celebration of the cinema as Quentin Tarantino's slice of movie revelry Inglourious Basterds. More so, even, as Jarmusch's open consideration of other media such as painterly art and classical movement and its existential and scientific philosophizing brings him closer to the more sophisticated and well-read Godard (Jonathan Rosenbaum once wrote of Tarantino and Godard that weighing the two was "like comparing a combined museum, library, film archive, record shop, and department store with a jukebox, a video-rental outlet, and an issue of TV Guide," a statement I find harsh but not exactly indefensible). Jarmusch seems to be having just as much fun as Tarantino did, and, like the B-movie-obsessed auteur's Jewish revenge tale, there's more here than meets the eye.

Not that it isn't entirely pleasant to sit back and let the eyes have a field day, however. Jarmusch made some visually striking works with Robby Müller, but his cinematographer here is the great Christopher Doyle, one of the finest in the business today. You may know him from his work with Wong Kar-wai (if you don't, rectify this immediately), and I'm amazed to say that his work here not only rivals his contributions to Wong's canon but exceeds it in places. He captures in minute details the wonder's of de Bankolé's magnificent face and captures the streets of Spain with breathtakingly simple beauty. Occasionally, he lets the sunlight bleed into the frame, creating an impressionistic wash of colors. Don't expect anything from this film to come up during awards season, but the only other film that can compete with Doyle's work is Alexis Zabe's poetic photography for Silent Light.

The closest the film comes to action occurs in the closest thing it has to a climax, when Lone Man meets American (Bill Murray), a foul-mouthed man who lambastes everything that came up in discussion over the course of the film, dismissing them as bohemian distractions. Murray is clearly channeling Dick Cheney, which makes his appearance in a random bunker all the funnier. His presence adds a political aspect to the film, though I'm damned if I know what it is other than a vague commentary on perceived American superiority and a conservative disregard for the beauty of the world (his bunker isn't quite ascetic with its extra furniture, but it's amusing that the only discernible wall "decoration" is a fire extinguisher).

The Limits of Control repeats phrases and scenes with minor variations, to the point that it's easy to doze off in its repetition and come back to the film later and feel that nothing's changed; however, its cross between the hitman genre and a vignette style should give fans of Ghost Dog and Coffee and Cigarettes (or really any of the director's early work) a tether to the Jarmusch they know and love. The DVD comes with the typical pullquotes, and the blurbs calling it a "stylish and sexy thriller" that "shimmers with heat and suspense" are about as funny as anything in the actual movie. I cannot definitively say what it's about or even what I think it's about, but I also don't entirely care. Sure, this movie is so narrow in its appeal that I feel I not only need to wear a beret while watching the film but find a way to hook that beret on cigarettes; but if I genuinely loved this film, will gladly watch it again soon to figure out more of the puzzle and find it almost as immediately arresting as the best of Jarmusch's work, am I really pretentious?

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Wes Anderson is one of a handful of interesting, unique directors working in America today whose work is marginalized by that most useless of criticisms: that he is a "style over substance" filmmaker. I don't know when bringing something visual to the most visually stimulating of all media became something worthy of derision but, while sometimes the phrase is used appropriately, those who casually toss it out at any film that dares look interesting should be forced to sit through a Dogme 95 marathon so they can appreciate what aesthetic means to a film's enjoyment and how fucking terrible movies are without it. Having said that, I'm far from the world's biggest Wes Anderson fan, having previously loved on The Royal Tenenbaums and found the rest of his oeuvre, even Rushmore, to be excellent in places and spotty in others. His last two features, the soulless Life Aquatic and the on-the-nose Darjeeling Limited, were neither outright bad, but for all of Life Aquatic's insanity and Darjeeling's back-to-basics vibrancy, I found little in either worth remembering; neither was an exercise in style over substance, but the substance communicated through their styles held no interest for me.

It is with some trepidation, then, that I admit how much I enjoyed his latest work, Fantastic Mr. Fox, as it might seem that I'm choosing a simple kid's film over his more complex works. Well, yes, this is a kid's film, as straightforward as entries in the genre must be, but it also delves into the key theme of Anderson's corpus: a dysfunctional, emotionally distant family and the extent its members will go to for each other. He does not so much gut Roald Dahl's story as stuff every crevice with his own sensibilities, stretching Dahl's whimsical story into a post-ironic bit of family fun, appealing to your 5-year-old and your embittered hipster teenager.

His Mr. Fox (voiced by George Clooney) is an egotistical chicken thief, so full of himself that he even acknowledges it at one point. His wife Felicity (Meryl Streep), forces him to give up his trade when the two narrowly escape death in one engagement and she reveals her pregnancy. 12 fox-years later, Mr. Fox writes opinion columns for the local paper that no one reads and has an uneasy relationship with his son Ash (Jason Schwartzman), a barely held-together wad of fur and rage. Fox hates his gray flannel suit existence and longs for the fire of his youth, so he moves his family out of the ground and into a tree, ostensibly for the freedom of sunshine but in reality for the new home's proximity to three farms owned by Boggis, Bunce and Bean and their irresistible products within.

The world that Anderson and his animators created for Mr. Fox and the other characters to roam has a pop-up book quality, evidently something artificial yet something you want to reach out and feel anyway. When the camera moves, it typically does so sideways, moving through rooms and layers in the inventive underground world of the animals as if scanning the panels of a comic book. Each of these areas, and the characters who inhabit them, bursts with Anderson's visual acumen: overwhelmingly bright colors, right-angle arrangements, symmetry. Anderson is a director both praised and criticized for his meticulous compositions, so what better medium for him to explore than stop-motion animation, the most involving method of building and photographing a world from scratch?

I'm tip-toeing around discussing the film as, pound for pound, this is the funniest picture in Anderson's canon. It's always tricky when a filmmaker or actor moves from working primarily in the R-rated field to children's entertainment -- how cringeworthy it is when the subject of "making the kids proud of me" raises its serpentine head in interviews -- but Anderson tackles the shift with extra cheek; how many PG films (PG only because some of the characters, as they must in an Anderson movie, smoke) not only broach the subject of existentialism but say the word aloud? The director also replaces every possible swear word with the word "cuss," and I suspect that he wrote the script without children in mind and censored himself later, because the word is bandied about quite often, including as a part of combinations such as "clustercuss." I'd like to see this method used on TV instead of the annoying and useless bleeping that grates the ears.

The Darjeeling Limited had its moments of character insight, but Fantastic Mr. Fox gets Anderson back on firm emotional ground. Mr. Fox's ennui is deeply felt (and his comments on the non-readership of his column is a subtle commentary, perhaps, on our own failing papers), and the caustic relationship between Ash, who projects his insecurities and self-loathing outward, and essentially everyone else is as revealing of his inner concerns as it is blisteringly funny. His exchanges with cousin Kristofferson in particular are ripe for comedy, as Kristofferson is everything that Ash isn't: athletic, handsome and, it seems, well-liked by Mr. Fox. These meaty lead performances are bolstered by a manic cast of supporters voiced by the likes of Anderson alumni Owen Wilson and Bill Murray, all of whom find that usual balance between the goofier aspects of the directors characters and their reserved, ultra-dry style.

However, a few items stuck in my craw after leaving the theater, and I still can't get over some of Anderson's choices after sleeping on my thoughts. Mr. Fox, Ash, Kristofferson, the opossum Kylie, they're all so much fun; so why are all the female characters uptight and as flat as Anderson's storybook compositions? I understand that the director is evoking a bit of a '50s suburban feel with the layouts of the animals' houses, but why did he feel the need to port over the vision of the domesticated housewife as well? Felicity knows that her husband resumed thieving upon moving near the farms, she only offers a few words of stern caution to try to stop him. When Mr. Fox places the entire community in peril by angering the farmers, Felicity only gets to run through one of those "Oh, I love you but you can be so silly sometimes!" harsh speeches that isn't so harsh. Speaking of the farmers: why are all the humans voiced by British and Irish actors when all of the animals are voiced by American ones? Yes, the composition of the farms brings to mind the English countryside where Dahl set the story, but there's no explanation for the clear difference. Perhaps it's a further distinction between animals and humans, but considering that the two groups can understand and converse with one another, it just seems like a lazy excuse for Anderson to use some actors he liked. And I don't even know what the hell Willem Dafoe thought he was doing as an evil rat who sounds as though he came from New Orleans, though I admit I liked his mix of zaniness and menace.

Nevertheless, Fantastic Mr. Fox is a terrific return to form for Anderson, lacking the depth of his best work but making up for it with his first film to allow you to sit back and enjoy the visuals without having to worry about the story's complexity whacking you in the head every five minutes. And when I said that this was as much for the kids as the indie crowd, I meant it: yes, no child will catch the extended reference to The Third Man of a sequence in sewers, and they'll likely not catch the potential nod to Toy Story in the form of a milk (or apple, as the case may be) crate prison. But they'll have as much fun with its irreverence as adults, perhaps more so -- I was turned on to Monty Python at 10 and my parents still don't see its appeal, and they grew up in the proper time period for it. Anderson's humor may be smug, but he derives laughs directly from how smug the characters are, and nobody can spot a phony and laugh at him like a child.

1989 Rewind: Ghostbusters II

I'm just going to go ahead and say it: I like Ghostbusters II. Yes, it's so derivative of the first, unbelievably superior film that I didn't even bother writing a review for that one since I'd re-cover too much ground, but that just goes to show that the first was so good even a shameless retread is worth watching.

Even though I like the film, I must recognize that the first 10 minutes border on the insulting. It's not like Ghostbusters established much of a mythos -- though it did spawn a beloved cult cartoon -- but Ramis devotes the early parts of the film to shamelessly expositional dialogue to explain all of the stuff that happened in the interim between films. I don't believe that a comedy film shouldn't have plot, but why on Earth must we sit through hearing about Dana's (Sigourney Weaver) break-up with Peter, her marriage to that musician dude and their divorce, not to mention how the Ghostbusters are somehow now kaput despite a hero's welcome at the end of the last film? And don't even get me started on Ray (Dan Aykroyd) and Winston (Ernie Hudson) showing up at a kid's birthday party for some desperately needed cash only to dance to the actual Ghostbusters theme song.

Its plot, though clearly strung together to allow for bits and witticisms, actually works. It takes some contrived steps to make the Ghostbusters the underdogs again -- the city of New York served them with a restraining order from catching ghosts after all the collateral damage they caused last time -- but it lets them essentially stick to all of the character traits the actors hammered out so well the first film. Now they must contend with a mysterious slime filling the tunnels and a painting containing the soul of a 17th century tyrant seeking to become corporeal again by possessing Dana's baby.

Really though, Ghostbusters II, like the previous film, is all about the cast. Hudson gets the fewest lines, but his presence is necessary to give this group a working man feel as opposed to a group of nerdy, irresponsible scientists. Ramis and Aykroyd throw this off a bit by telling one too many nerd jokes, which go beyond the cheeky, literate humor of the first and into hoping that the audience will laugh at that which they do not understand. Nevertheless, they have enough peevish delight in them to give the characters a certain endearing dopey quality. Rick Moranis, who nearly stole the show the first time, has a bigger part and manages to add some dimensions to his bashful fool. When he tosses out a line like "Well, I used to have a roommate, but my mom moved to Florida" without a shred of irony, you know you've struck gold.

Of course, it's Murray, who crystallized everything that would make him BILL MURRAY in the first film, who carries the film as he scores hit after hit as the drier-than-the-Sahara Peter Venkman. He broke up with Dana because of commitment issues, but you get the feeling he did it just so he could keep chasing her. Every single word that flies from his lips has that glorious and utterly inimitable combination of an abyss of cynicism and a boyish gleam. There's a reason why his collaborations with Ramis remain so rewarding: they were the perfect fit. When Egon investigates Dana's apartment and clinically says, "I'd like to run some gynecological exams on the mother," no one on Earth but Murray could deliver Peter's response, "Who wouldn't?" and make it even funnier than it is on paper.

As with the previous film, Ghostbusters II climaxes with an over-the-top effect that's as hysterical as it is thrilling. The Statue of Liberty gag would be seen as absurd and narrative-killing in any other feature, but how exactly do you jump the shark on a franchise that previously featured a giant, killer marshmallow? I find myself laughing almost continuously through the scene, and the overly action-y showdown at the end does little to detract from the laughs.

Despite great scenes like this and assured acting from the returning cast, Ghostbusters II still suffers from stale rewrites and some dialogue that's just too straight-faced for its own good. Peter MacNicol also grates as the skittish foreign servant of Vigo, while Kurt Fuller's mayoral assistant reeks too strongly of the EPA agent from the previous film. Having said all that, I still enjoy the film. Where Ghostbusters is a stone-cold classic, this sequel is more of a rainy day movie to lazily pop in when you finish the first film and want just a bit more Venkman. And who out there doesn't want more Venkman?

Lost in Translation

Lost in Translation is a film that will no doubt alienate many viewers in today's world. This will place me firmly in the "arty elitist" category for a moment, but it seems obvious to me that a society that will attend Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen to the tune of $200 million in five days won't care for a film as simplistic and poignant as this -- OK, OK, it did only rake in $42 million its second weekend, which is deeply satisfying even if it is $42 million too much. There are those who might dismiss it as boring, pseudo-intellectual tripe but Sofia Coppola made, well, not a masterpiece, but an engrossing experience.

Her film seems to draw its inspiration from Linklater's Before Sunrise, that masterpiece of underplayed romance. It's a high bar to set for yourself, and Coppola doesn't measure up, but Lost in Translation moves in a different direction that makes it unique. Both films chart a romance between two star-crossed lovers against the backdrop of a foreign country. Coppola, however, bases her film in loneliness and alienation, where people are kept apart by more than fate.

Also unlike Linklater, Coppola takes advantage of her background: Japan is as integral to the story as Bob and Charlotte, even if it is a two-dimensional creation. It serves to further the themes expressed in its title: not only are Bob and Charlotte separated by age, they interact with others through a language barrier.

Bill Murray is playing against type as fading star Bob Harris, to great effect. Normally the merciless wit ripping apart every straight man who stands in his way, Murray is instead the put-upon one in Japan. He's there to film a whiskey commercial, and the director speaks to him in long, impassioned sentences. The translator tells Bob, "He said to turn toward the camera." "Is that all he said?" Bob doesn't let it get him down, though he is visibly upset that they give him iced tea and not the actual whiskey to drink. His marriage is cold and lifeless, and upon reaching his hotel he discovers that he forgot his son's birthday.

Charlotte's (Scarlett Johansson) marriage isn't doing so hot, either. She's in the country with her photographer husband (Giovanni Ribisi), who's following celebrities on their press tours. He keeps long hours, and whenever the starlet Kelly (Anna Faris) shows up, he suddenly gets uncomfortable in front of his wife. Charlotte, recently graduated from Yale with a degree in philosophy, is trapped in the ennui of a failed marriage transparent to everyone but the husband who desperately tries to maintain the image.

Bob and Charlotte stay at the same hotel, and they meet and eventually keep each other company in their down time. A friendship forms as they amble around Tokyo, through video arcades and karaoke bars slowly building to that moment of inevitable romance and...nothing. Coppola crafts true sexual tension in this film, the kind that doesn't just string us along until the end to give us that kiss and the swell of music. There's friction and walls between them, even before Bob has a moment of weakness with another woman.

These moments feel even more arduous under Coppola's piercing lens. Her fast-moving shots through Tokyo are thrilling, but it's when she plants the camera down to focus on this couple that the film becomes transcendent. These static shots convey the sense of depression and aimlessness that envelops them, and music only plays when they seem to break themselves out of their funks for a moment. That judicious use of movement, editing and non-diegetic sound makes Lost in Translation feel "realer" somehow than most movies, certainly in the bloated, fantastical realm of cinematic romance.

There are some who claim that Coppola paints a racist caricature of Japan in the film, and it's not hard to see why at first. The Japanese TV company sends Bob the "Premium Fantasy" masseuse, but her broken English only confuses and ultimately turns him off. Later, he appears on a talk show with "the Johnny Carson of Japan," who is a complete oddball who plays like every stereotype of weird Japanese TV rolled into one. Those characters border on the offensive, but I think that, for the most part, Coppola wished to stress the alienation of the film. When Murray stands a foot taller than anyone else in an elevator, it is not a joke about the height of Asians but a reminder that, as an American movie star in Japan, he cannot blend in. That nobody seems to speak English does not suggest that no one in the country knows the language -- though this film could have been about an Asian couple in America and no one would have reacted to a country full of people who can only speak English -- but that there are barriers between us all.

I saw a brief snippet of a review somewhere that called this a "deep movie for shallow people." I don't think it's trying to say much at all; its brilliance lies in its simplicity. This is nothing more than a frank portrayal of a human connection, one unrequited due to a mutual, reluctant acknowledgement of their differences. The final shot is already famous, and rightly so; in a film about the little moments we fail to pick up on, the details that separate us, we do not hear Bob's parting words to Charlotte, and I feel almost invasive for wondering what they might be. Moments like that make Lost in Translation a triumph despite its occasional over-reliance on stereotypes and its misleading philosophical discussions. This is nothing more than a simple story, beautifully told, and I couldn't be much happier with the final product.

Stripes

Year One left such a bad taste in my mouth that when I got back to my apartment I gathered what few Ramis DVDs I had and popped them in the ol' player to have a sort of unofficial wake. Most of my stuff was at my house and not college, but I at least had Stripes and the Ghostbusters films, so I made do. Before now, I'd only seen Stripes once (well, technically twice, as I watched both versions), so I figured not only might I fight back the memory of Ramis' latest dud but I might also spot some new stuff.

I watched the original theatrical version of Stripes, and thank God I did, because even this truncated edition is overlong and unfocused. Don't get me wrong: Stripes is an excellent comedy and the first film that allowed Bill Murray to really start honing that dryly cynical character that would become his staple. It just needed a better editor.

Murray plays John Winger, a taxi driver who gets a pink slip after terrorizing a rude upper-class woman by mishandling her bags and driving like a madman. Before the day is over, his car is repossessed and his girlfriend dump him. His friend, Russell Ziskey (Ramis), isn't doing much better: he tries to teach ESL classes but doesn't know the first thing about teaching immigrants. Winger decides he needs to turn his life around, but he can't do it without help, so he convinces Ziskey to enlist in the Army with him.

What follows is, in its own devilish way, the comedic version of Full Metal Jacket, made a good six years before that film. Winger and Ziskey head off to basic training where they meet a cast of characters played by such scene-stealers as John Candy and Judge Reinhold. Sgt. 1st Class Hulka (Warren Oates) does all the usual spirit-breaking and head-shaving, but where Pvt. Joker in Kubrick's opus quickly fell into line, Winger proves a deadpan thorn in the sergeant's side.

Murray owns these boot camp scenes; he sports an innocent but conniving smirk as he gently yet incessantly challenges the sergeant's command. Backed by Ramis' writing, his Winger gets laughs for the simple fact that he manages to remain just one step ahead of the authorities in a vocation that doesn't allow for much slacking, to say the least. There's an uneasy admiration between the two warring factions, as Winger at last has a worthy foe and can take any punishment the sarge can dish out.

Ramis, Candy, John Laroquette and the others are no slouches themselves; Candy is his usual affable dope, while Laroquette plays the officious prig with relish (clearly serving as a military transplant of Niedermeyer from Animal House). Ramis plays a marvelous straight man to Murray's Winger, looking ever exhausted by his friend's antics even as he continuously acts as an enabler just to see what his bud will do next.

As with Full Metal Jacket, the film takes an abrupt turn when the soldiers leave basic and receive their first missions. Where Full Metal Jacket suddenly switched from dark comedy to its thematic arc, however, Stripes goes from broad comedy to, well, I'm not quite sure. The men are transferred to Europe where they are placed in charge of the "Urban Assault Vehicle," a sort of tank disguised as an RV. Winger and Ziskey snag their MP girlfriends (P.J. Soles and Sean Young) and head into Soviet territory. And it all dovetails from there.

In part, the complete devolution into chaos was to be expected. It's certainly a hallmark of Ramis' early scripts, and they proved to be wildly hysterical in such gems as Animal House and Caddyshack. But the problem here is that they're actually squaring off against Soviets, not the authority that keeps them down. Stripes is meant to be a continuation of Animal House and its light-hearted post-Nixon rebellion against the stagnant and corrupt American institutions, a mockery of the absurdity of authority having the audacity to tell us what's right when they are so wrong. But there's nothing funny in the film's climax; it's simply action. And it ends with Winger and Ziskey accepted as heroes and welcomed into the machine instead of breaking free of it.

For that reason, Stripes is perhaps most remembered as the bridge between Ramis' early, brilliant but ill-focused sense of chaotic misanthropy and the more restrained, heartfelt writer-director who would eventually come up with something as refined as Groundhog Day. He wouldn't find the right balance between action and comedy until his subsequent film, Ghostbusters, which also put his drier side on full display. Nevertheless, Stripes is a great film for its first 2/3, and it belongs on the shelves of any comedy fan, particularly someone who likes Bill Murray.

Rushmore

There's an undeniable joy to Rushmore, which seems even stranger when you consider what a bleak portrait it ultimately paints. This is a standard theme of Wes Anderson's work of course, but his other films do not give off such a false sense of hope. Anderson also deals with wunderkinds who never seem to live up to their potential, and Max Fischer is ground zero for such characters. Yet for all the film's innate charm, Rushmore never manages to bring its many conflicting ideals together into a satisfying whole, and remains more a passably fun rainy day film than the classic some make it out to be.

Jason Schwartzman plays Max, a 15-year old in his final year at the prestigious Rushmore Academy. Fischer is either a member or the founder of every extracurricular activity on campus, but his grades are slipping. I assume this is a new development, since we know his age and, last time I checked, 15 is not quite the normal age of graduation, meaning he skipped a few grades. Eventually his grades slide so much that his headmaster (played by Brian Cox) tells him that he'll fail unless something changes.

Soon afterwards, Max sits in the school chapel to listen to a guest speaker, Herman Blume (Bill Murray), and becomes inspired by Blume's frank advice. Then, he meets the new first grade teacher, Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams), and develops an immediate crush. Cross recently lost her husband, and Max brings up the subject of his deceased mother. "I guess we both have dead people in our families."

This simple line says more about the character than just about the rest of the film. Max, clearly a gifted child, suddenly starts flunking all of his classes and slyly inquires about staying on for "a postgraduate year" of high school. When Blume remarks that Max seems to "have it all figured out," Max replies with a smile, "I think you just gotta find something you love to do, and then do it for the rest of your life." For Max, he says, it's Rushmore. But it's really his childhood. Max sees Ms. Cross as an object of desire, yes, but he simply wants a woman in his life.

Of course, Cross can see that Max is obsessed, and even if she didn't, he makes it painfully clear in an amusing dinner scene, and lets him down. Meanwhile, Blume tries to mediate between the two, but ultimately falls for Cross and the two begin an affair. Blume naturally falls for Cross because he's a essentially the future version of Max, while Cross falls for Blume because she actually has a lot in common with the lad, and Blume represents a more age-appropriate version of Max.

Here's where the film loses focus. Anderson, always so whimsical, crafts an absolutely nonsensical subplot involving this love triangle, in which Max's young friend Dirk actually stops Blume's car to chastise the old man for betraying his friend (Max), Max destroys Blume's marriage in vengeance, and Blume runs over Max's bike in reprisal. In a movie that wasn't making such a serious point about an unwillingness or even an incapacity to grow up this might have been a gay romp; here, however, it seems as out of place as the original ending to Dr. Strangelove.

Anderson and writing partner Owen Wilson introduce a number of side-stories and styles, but the chief tone of the film is a regressive one. Max moves predominantly to the left in the film, signalling a desire to avoid the future; he wants to go back to a time when his mom was alive and things seemed right. Even when Max isn't moving, he tends to rest to the left of the frame. He constantly attempts to assert a sense of dominance, yet always places himself in the subordinate position. Blume, who slightly resents Max because he sees so much of himself in the boy and it only magnifies his regret, also moves regressively, perhaps in a futile attempt to go back to his childhood and change things. For him, the younger Cross brings him closer to that goal. Meanwhile, Cross clearly (and understandably) continues to mourn her husband, yet she barely moves at all. She's at a crossroads in life, unable to move backwards because she knows the pain that such movements really bring, yet she cannot move forward out of guilt.

At some point, Anderson must bring all the disparate elements together, and frankly he can't. After the conflict between the characters reaches a head, everyone finally can move forward in their lives, yet for some reason Anderson leaves us with a hint of ambiguity regarding Max's relationship with Rosemary. Some of the more absurd moments are simply left by the wayside, though I don't know how Anderson could have tied them in. The final scene at the wrap party demonstrates Anderson's skill, but it nevertheless feels hollow.

I read Ebert's review long ago, where he rightly pointed out that the Max Fischer we get will grow up to be Benjamin Braddock, the protagonist of the dated comedy The Graduate, but Anderson and Wilson could have easily turned him into a future Charles Foster Kane. That's why the film never really rises above its various scenes to make a great film; it so clearly should be a more serious affair, but loses itself in farce. Nevertheless, it is funny enough to warrant repeat viewings, and I'd rank it the second finest of the director's work after The Royal Tenenbaums, but Rushmore remains more a dizzying collection of occasionally fun and occasionally deep scenes designed to show off Anderson's obvious love of the nouvelle vague rather than tell a story.


[side note- As much as I criticize the film for not taking its material more seriously, the Criterion extra of Max's company performing Armageddon is maybe the funniest two minute clip ever.]