Tag bill murray

Quick Review : St. Vincent (2014)

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IMDB Score – 7.4
Rotten Tomatoes – 76%

Directed By – Theodore Melfi
Starring – Bill Murray, Jaeden Lieberher, Melissa McCarthy, Naomi Watts, Chris O’Dowd, Kimberly Quinn, and Terrence Howard

A young boy whose parents have just divorced finds an unlikely friend and mentor in the misanthropic, bawdy, hedonistic war veteran who lives next door.

There are very few things in life that instill a complete sense of tranquility whenever they’re present. A nice roaring fire on a cold night, a juicy burger and a tall cold beer, a nap during a rainstorm…and Bill Murray.

I love Bill Murray. I know everybody generally loves Bill Murray but I ignore them all and just savor the fact that this man is still making me laugh in movies. Ever since I heard him explain to the mayor of New York that Walter Peck had no dick in Ghostbusters, sarcasm has been a friend. Sometimes it doesn’t go over as well as when Bill uses it. I’ve been in some awkward situations in public situations where my sarcasm has been laid down too strong and prompts me to explain how I’m not really a jerk. Bill never has to do that though. He’s Bill Murray. He’ll always be Bill Murray and nobody else will ever be Bill Murray. That doesn’t make sense. I don’t care.

St. Vincent, a film that I obviously wanted to see ended up being a sweet, cute, very funny film that didn’t do anything special in terms of story of style, but just raked in the smiles from the on screen cast. It reminded me a lot of Chef earlier this year where we have a young actor playing opposite of a more known actor and letting the story kind of run in the background. Sometimes you really just need a relaxing comedy that doesn’t take itself too seriously and that’s what we have here. Don’t get me wrong, there are some emotional scenes in the film that landed as being sincere. The film tackles divorce and Alzheimer’s pretty seriously but the film never drops into it too long before coming back with a laugh.

Bill Murray was obviously awesome. There was a scene that was in the trailer so I don’t mind talking about it here, involving Bill sitting in a lawn chair while Oliver (Lieberher) mows his dirt. McCarthy asks him if he’s drinking alcohol and we get this long Bill Murray stare and response of “I honesty don’t remember”. I died. I had seen the scene in the trailer but honestly it’s so funny that it surprised me when it happened. Bill turns on and off a Brooklyn accent for the duration of the film and REALLY did a phenomenal job at the end of the film. I won’t say what happens, but I’ll just say it was really a perfect interpretation of what people really go through after such an event. Speaking of accents, Naomi Watts may have done one of the worst accents in the history of film. Her character is Russian and her attempt at the accent is just laughable. She sounds like if Niko Belic and Yakov Smirnoff decided to be a lady. It was horrible. Chris O’Dowd is amazing. I could have watched the scenes with him in the classroom for two hours. The cast was great.

The film was delightful while not being a special snowflake. Does that make sense? It’s like comfort food. Mashed potatoes aren’t special but sometimes they’re the perfect thing. Also, Bill Murray.

3.5/5



Short Film Review : 12:01 P.M. (1990)

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Directed By – Jonathan Heap
Starring – Kurtwood Smith and Laura Harrington
Academy Award Nominee for Live Action Short Film

A man is stuck living his life in the same 59 minute time frame. He tries various methods of finding out why, eventually consulting a physicist.

So I recently viewed some short films from this years Tribeca Film Festival. I decided not to write about them due to the fact that they are hard to find and it would be easier to post the actual movie on here so that readers can view the film themselves before or after reading what I have to say. Unfortunately there weren’t many films I could find that had a full viewing that I could post on here, so I decided to find some other films to write about. I stumbled across “12:01” and gave it a shot. It was nominated for an Oscar and also features a sci-fi plot. That coupled with Kurtwood Smith, who may or may not have stuck his foot up someones ass, and I had all the reasons in the world to watch it.

I have to get the obvious over with first. This is a lot like Groundhog Day. Actually, it almost is Groundhog Day. The only real difference is that instead of an entire day that gets repeated, Mr. Forman gets to relive the same hour over and over again, beginning at 12:01 P.M. Now, considering it’s less than a half hour long and is available for your viewing pleasure RIGHT ABOVE, I’m going to talk about the film a bit more in depth. So please, watch the film and then continue reading.

So, back to Mr. Forman. He has a different name in the film but I’m going to refer to him as Mr. Forman throughout this thing so get used to it. Mr. Forman is not Bill Murray. There really isn’t any comedy involved in this entire short film. He is distraught. First of all the universe decides to be the biggest asshole it can be and not only makes him the only person who remembers what happens after the hour restarts, but also leaves him in the middle of a goddamn intersection twenty minutes away from where he works. He starts out by going to the park and by the time he ends up anywhere near a phone the whole hour has almost gone by. Not to mention he has probably the worst secretary on the planet. Did you watch the film yet? Holy shit. How annoying is that woman? I literally screamed when he called her a bitch. I was like, “TAKE THAT BITCH! YOU TELL HER RED!” Groundhog day had Bill Murray carving ice sculptures and learning piano and french poetry and stuffing his face with cake. Now, I loved seeing this. Groundhog Day is one of my favorite comedies ever. However, we didn’t get a lot of “Why the fuck is this happening to me?” moments which is the main theme in “12:01”. I mean, we got some montage of Bill throwing himself off a clocktower and taking a bubble bath with Mr. Toaster, but other than that it was a romantic comedy, and a superb one at that.

No, this is more serious. The man is pretty much having a nervous breakdown throughout the entire film. He is desperate to not live forever and he is willing to die trying. The film played like an episode of The Twilight Zone more towards the end as Mr. Forman has started to give up on finding a cure and starts behaving erratically, hence verbally shoving his foot up that cows ass. There are some nice moments, like his conversation with the too lovely to be a human being Delores in the park. Seriously, that woman shoudl have been the first sign that the universe is fucked up. She was nicer than Jesus.

The film ended as it began, with Red Forman staring at traffic as another hour begins. The dude can’t even kill himself. What he thought was a chance at a recurring divinity is really a cruel joke played by the universe. It’s a deep and bleak short film but the kind of short films/stories I love. It almost reminded me of “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson; not in subject matter, but in straight forward bleakness. It’s a great little film.

4.5/5



Film Review : The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

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IMDB Score – 8.4
Rotten Tomato Score – 91%
Currently #159 on IMDB’s Top 250

Directed By – Wes Anderson
Starring – Ralph Fiennes, F. Murray Abraham, Mathieu Amalric, Adrian Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray, Harvey Keitel, Jude Law, Edward Norton, Saoirse Ronan, Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman, Léa Seydoux, Tom Wilkinson, Owen Wilso, and Tony Revolori

The adventures of Gustave H, a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars, and Zero Moustafa, the lobby boy who becomes his most trusted friend.

There is only one word I can think of to describe Wes Anderson’s latest film. That word is “delightful”.

There has not, to this day, been a Wes Anderson film I did not love. Every single one of them is special in my eyes. Had I known absolutely nothing about this film, I still would have had no doubt in my mind that it was directed by Wes Anderson. He has a style all his own and that has been copied by almost nobody. There’s something about that kind of niche that I just find enchanting. Enchanting could also describe this film, which stars more of my favorite people then I think any other film I’ve seen. I mean, look at that list of people who contribute to this film. It’s an indie film fan’s dream come true. I’m going to spoil something a little bit. Some of those names have such little screen time that I’d be surprised if they spent a full day on set, but the whole picture is empty without them. Everything about the film enchanted me. There are rarely times where I have a smile on my face throughout an entire film, and Wes Anderson has done this to me multiple times, this just being the latest.

In one of his more complex stories he has brought to the screen, the film takes place, during many time periods, in and around The Grand Budapest Hotel, located in a fictitious Polish town during times of war. During these time periods we are introduced to two characters whose friendship is the reason this story is being told. M. Gustave, played as perfect as anybody could play any character by Ralph Fiennes, and his protege lobby boy Zero, played at an old age by F. Murray Abraham and at a young one by a breakout actor named Tony Revolori, are the centerpieces of an intricate yet vastly profound story. M. Gustave has just inherited a small fortune from one of his hotel guests whom he has developed a relationship with and the immediate family of said guest is trying to get rid of him for their own greedy ways. Like always, I don’t want to give away much of the plot but that is pretty much the gist of the film and you’re going to have to find out the rest for yourself.

When “Moonrise Kingdom” came out last year, I thought to myself that one one Wes Anderson was going to cease being able to bring us fantastic cinema. I guess this is just some innate idea that at some point people start to decline but Anderson is proving that wrong by giving us some of his best work as his career continues to move forward. There is n doubt in my mind that he’s going to be making incredible movies until he dies of old age. This latest one is something special, but certainly has some of his traditional trademark qualities. One of the things I love about his work is how symmetrical every one of his shots are. There is a fluid way he moves the camera into the perfect position where we have an actor centered in front of the screen with nearly identical lines surrounding him. Perhaps it’s my OCD leaking through my eyes. I just can’t gt enough of it. He also utilizes the shots from a distance that he has been using since Fantastic Mr. Fox. We see some characters off scurrying along the base of the shot while behind them is a huge scene of mountains or buildings, obviously made of cardboard and paper, but nevertheless whimsical and charming. The wit in this film is also rampant. There were countless times I literally burst out laughing, mostly from either Ralph Fiennes or Adrian Brody saying something insane. The film, which is rated R, uses the perfect time and place to insert either bad language, or in some cases hilarious and crude nudity. It was a riot, and while I didn’t see the movie with a lot of people, the humor was felt all around. Everybody was laughing. It’s a hilarious film.

With such a talented cast, you can’t let everybody have a huge amount of screen time. There just isn’t enough time in the world. Everybody was pretty perfect though. Tilda Swinton was literally unrecognizable as an 84 year old woman. Willem Dafoe was a cold, evil man that almost seemed to turn into a vampire at one point in the film. Jeff Goldblum handled most of the legal dialogue with a diction that only the voice of Jeff Goldblum could make funny. Edward Norton gave the best laughs with the least amount said. His first appearance in the film had my dying and he hadn’t even said a word yet. Harvey Keitel as a bald, muscle flexing prisoner with prison tattoos and Adrien Brody with his short bursts of hilarious anger could not have been better used. I just loved every single aspect of this film. Every single character has their own quirks and humor no matter how long they were on screen.

Overall, I can’t say enough good things. Ralph Fiennes stoles every single scene he was in and he was in a damn lot of them. That’s how good he was. When “Moonrise Kingdom” came out, I knew that it was going to be in my top five of the year regardless of what else got released because of how unique and funny it was and I honestly enjoyed this a lot more. I’ll try to get out to see another viewing, maybe with some friends, but this is most certainly going to be one of my favorites of the year and is already inching it’s way up the ladder of favorite Wes Anderson films the more I think about it. I seriously can not wait to see it again and look forward to everything Wes Anderson will give me in the future.

5/5





The Grand Budapest Hotel Trailer

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Well as if there were any doubt whatsoever, Wes Anderson’s new film is indeed a Wes Anderson film. I never get tired of his work and after Moonrise Kingdom I can only attest to him getting better. I love the fact that he’s using a new actor for his protagonist and Ralph Fiennes was a wonderful choice. Everybody has a mustache and Tilda Swinton was unrecognizable. I can’t wait.