The problem with Wes Anderson as is with his youth pal Noah Baumbach (and P. T. A. Anderson) is that they rarely leave their comfort zone with their subsequent movies turning into a replica of their previous masterpieces.
Great acting talents (Hanks, Johansson, Amalric, Cumberbatch) are wasted in the remaking of his well-beaten tropes. Cumberbatch is especially pathetic in his faux beard, obviously designed haphazardly for him not to look, well, like Benedict Cumberbatch.
Continuing my tradition of dual reviews I enter two decently rated thrillers: Accountant-2 and Fight or Flight. Accountant-2 -- bright characters, especially the brother of the protagonist, and believable villains. Also fair dose of ambivalence. Fight or Flight -- none of the above.
Both movies deliberately end in the way to propose a sequel.
A wonderful and boring movie. I went to see it thinking that it will be a new "March of the Penguins" but nobody is marches. There is no storyline, only an endless search for one kind of moths, the tiger moths. Their settlement with elevation must indicate how the local biome reacts on rising temperatures.
This years' animation shorts are a revenge for incomparable Flow. Only one, an Iranian cartoon, "In the Shadow of the Cypress" (cypress is nowhere to be found) has some semblance of meaning. Two Dutch cartoons are in the running. The only distinction in both is p. joke.
Physics Nobelist Hans Bethe once noticed that what is left of the development of human culture is science only. He observed that most what literature could say about human condition was already said between the Bible, Homer and Shakespeare. And philosophy -- beginning with the Greeks and ending with Kant, with only science, which is currently unfinished.
Truly, all the human stories are so well treaded that Hollywood resuscitated Cinderella story in 1990 with only hint of sex and in 2024 with a full blown intercourse. Parts and parcels of the Odyssey were filmed by Coen brothers and, this year, by some unknown Latvian as the "Flow". Does it portend the end?
Absolutely stunning animation with animal anthropomorphism added only to the degree it makes the storyline moving forward. Dogs are not very anthropomorphic, which suggests that the director is a partisan of cats.
Tis more a filmed theatrical play than a movie. It seems to be a new specialty. And the storyline is pretty predictable. But what a constellation of talents! Incomparable Ralph Fiennes in the role of a born-again atheist and tough manager of the College of the Cardinals is supported by John Lithgow, fifty years in the field, and still running, as well as Isabella Rossellini and Stanley Tucci.
