Once again, Doctor Red has very kindly allowed me to write a guest review for his excellent anipal movie blog. And the movie I bring you today is the latest from director Wes Anderson- you may know him from such films as The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, Moonrise Kingdom and (my personal favourite) The Darjeeling Limited.
One of the things I love about his movies are the attention to detail- every piece of furnishing, every colour on the screen (including beautiful clothing), the font used in the opening and closing credits, even the fictional books used as props within the film, are designed with meticulous detail. From this perspective, every movie of his is a joy to watch.
And I will say this now: in this reviewer’s own humble opinion this is by far and away his best work to date- it even surpasses The Darjeeling Limited.
The two central characters, Gustave H and Zero Mustafa, are played by Ralph Fiennes and newcomer Tony Revolori. I’m not usually a huge fan of Fiennes, but he was absolutely amazing in this (he plays a legendary concierge in a Eastern European Grand Hotel in the 1930s). In fact, there are so many famous actors in this movie that it almost distracts you from the story when the next one pops up and you say “Ooh, that’s such and such!” These are all actors who have appeared in previous Anderson films- there is even a blink and you’ll miss it cameo from a VERY famous Hollywood star who previously appeared in his flawed movie version of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox (I won’t spoil it by saying who).
And now the important bit of the review- the noms. Today, I chose to bypass the usually nachos with radioactive cheese and buckets of Coke Zero and popcorn that are the usual cinema fare, and smuggled in an Espresso Frapuccino and Cheese and Marmite panini from Starbucks. Well, I say smuggle in. I didn’t bother hiding them as it’s not technically against cinema rules to bring outside food in. I still remember the day i dropped my lovely Tesco prawn mayo sandwich on the floor whilst watching The Wolverine- gutted I was. Utterly gutted.
PLEASE PLEASE WATCH THIS MOVIE.
Score: 6 pigeons out of 5.
