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rohming wrote:That's an awful lot of white dudes.

Jeff wrote:Yahoo Movies has a new clip.

rohming wrote:That's an awful lot of white dudes.

I know, right? Central Europe. 1920s. What are the odds?

mfunk9786 wrote:My god, "It's his most Wes Anderson film yet" has officially become the laziest thought in all of film criticism

The Grand Budapest Hotel is the film with which Wes Anderson finally answers his critics, and the message could not be clearer or more immaculately embossed in Futura on an insert shot of the most delicate stationary: “Go fuck yourselves.” Anderson has been contemporary American cinema’s most hostile aesthete for well over a decade, and ever since 2003’s The Life Aquatic made it obvious that the filmmaker has exactly zero interest in apologizing for his affectations, each of his subsequent projects has been met with the kind of ecclesiastical rapture and blind derision typically reserved for racist politicians and superhero movie casting.

Tim Robey, [i]The Telegraph[/i] wrote:Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel is opening the Berlin Film Festival, and it’s the most intensely pleasurable curtain-raiser in recent history, if not ever. Compared with the grimy liqueur that often gets chosen, it’s like a magnum of house champagne. You might get light-headed on the pure fun of it, which unleashes fresh waves of fun-within-fun at every point where you worry it could dry up.

Eric Kohn, [i]Indiewire[/i] wrote:While it has many familiar ingredients — from the atmosphere to the ensemble of Anderson regulars in nearly every role — in its allegiance to Anderson's vision, everything about "The Grand Budapest Hotel" is a welcome dose of originality...

Despite the relentless charm factor, Anderson's whimsical expressivity is not devoid of greater significance. A comedic allegory for wartime relationships, "The Grand Budapest Hotel" explores the tragedies of socioeconomic collapse in the wake of Communist uprising and fascist threats without giving the conflicts a name.

Guy Lodge, [i]HitFix[/i] wrote:At no point in its fleet runtime does anyone break into an actual dance routine -- and honestly, someone probably should -- yet the average Busby Berkeley musical barely contains as much regimented choreography as Wes Anderson's dizzy, chintzy and improbably touching "The Grand Budapest Hotel." Cast members don't walk; they glide, skip and occasionally pop into the frame as if released by a lever. The camera doesn't pan or track; it whirls and soars. The mise-en-scene is pulled into shape via an intricate operation of cogs and pulleys -- some of them visible. All moving parts -- cars, trains, bobsleds, even actors -- run like artisan-built clockwork toys.

What I'm saying, I suppose, is that this is Anderson's busiest, even fussiest, film -- in a filmography that has never wanted for clutter or garnish. Hell, it might be more animated even than "Fantastic Mr. Fox." This should be bad news, at least for this viewer: Anderson's wondrously worked worlds can feel as airless and affected as they are artful, and the potential in this project for twee rigidity is off the scale. Why, then, am I simultaneously so tickled and moved by "The Grand Budapest Hotel?"

Todd McCarthy, [i]The Hollywood Reporter[/i] wrote:With an attention to design detail that now has perhaps morphed from a preoccupation into a mania, this is as densely aestheticized an experience as has come from a quasi-mainstream American filmmaker in many a moon. In a very appealing if outre way, its sensibility and concerns are very much those of an earlier, more elegant era, meaning that the film's deepest intentions will fly far over the heads of most modern filmgoers...

Anderson's style can as easily be praised for being formal, rigorous and precise as it can be criticized for seeming artificial, fastidious and fussy; especially here, applied to a tale set in Ruritanian Europe of 80 years ago rather than the United States, his approach may well seem off-putting and weird to the general public.

But more discerning viewers will perhaps respond to the underlying air of melancholy and regret for the passing of a time marked by certain social niceties, subtler sophistication in relations between the sexes and an appreciation for the art of living, concerns the writer-director no doubt values in the work of the great Austrian writer of a century ago, Stefan Zweig, whose inspiration Anderson credits onscreen as a prime instigation for this project. Such an influence is a rare thing for a younger American filmmaker to fall under, let alone make use of in his work, and only a minority will respond to it. But it's very much there.

Gregory Ellwood, [i]HitFix[/i] wrote:It's taken five weeks, but 2014 finally has a great movie on its hands...Simply, Anderson's latest is an example of an auteur at the peak of his cinematic powers.

To be completely honest, if this had been released in late November or December of 2013, this pundit is convinced it would have made the Best Picture field. It's accomplished, entertaining, funny, has a subtle serious undertone to it and features an incredible acting ensemble including a "give this man a Best Actor nomination" turn by Ralph Fiennes.

Jessica Kiang, [i]The Playlist[/i] wrote:[D]espite the madcappery, this is probably Anderson’s most melancholic film. M Gustav is referred to as a man out of time, even in his own time; he is dainty, elegant, he is suave (if also unexpectedly profane—all the character’s notes are hit absolutely perfectly by Fiennes, who is perhaps the film’s revelation). Gustav is a representative of a "dying breed of civility in a time of encroaching barbarity," and he is the hero not because he is the man of the hour or even of the decade, but because, as the older Zero lovingly recounts, “he sustained the illusion with a marvelous grace”—and it’s hard not to think of Anderson himself in these terms. This, coupled with the film’s meditations on aging and the simple, sad truth that time passes and people die and cherished worlds decay, is where we get to, leaving behind the Lubitschian hijinks of earlier. It is a gear shift downward, and if it can't help but feel deflating overall, there is still something sweet in the film’s sadness. Anderson may make you crave, the way he clearly does, the kind of world in which preternaturally gifted pastry chefs turn every cake into a work of art, or fussy concierges have a secret society populated entirely by the best practitioners of their profession. It is indeed a strange thing to feel a little sad at the absence of something that you never had, but where on earth in the real world might we ever encounter such craft, such dedication to beauty, such attention to detail? Perhaps nowhere, except in a Wes Anderson movie.

Mark Adams, [i]ScreenDaily[/i] wrote:A warmly whimsical and deftly magical tale of love, robbery, murder and comedy mishaps all set against the fantastical backdrop of an imaginary central European region, Wes Anderson’s beautiful and thoroughly enjoyable The Grand Budapest Hotel sees the director deliver his best film.

Justin Chang, [i]Variety[/i] wrote:One of the more frequent accusations leveled at Wes Anderson — that he’s a filmmaker who favors style over substance — will ring even hollower than usual after “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” a captivating 1930s-set caper whose innumerable surface pleasures might just seduce you into overlooking its sly intelligence and depth of feeling. As intricately layered as a Dobos torte and nearly as rich, this twisty tale of murder, theft, conspiracy and unlikely friendship finds its maker in an unusually ambitious and expansive mood — still arranging his characters in detail-perfect dioramas, to be sure, but with a bracing awareness of the fascism, war and decay about to encroach upon their lovingly hand-crafted world. The result is no musty nostalgia trip but rather a vibrant and imaginative evocation of a bygone era, with a brilliant lead performance from Ralph Fiennes that lends Anderson’s latest exercise in artifice a genuine soul.

Nico Hines, [i]The Daily Beast[/i] wrote:This might just be Wes Anderson’s best film; it’s certainly his most thrilling. The cult director has bolstered the whimsical humor and trademark character studies with a raucous crime caper in The Grand Budapest Hotel, and it’s a riot...

It is fast-paced and funny, but it’s also a compelling exploration of storytelling. As the narrative unfolds through a series of flashbacks, we see the way great stories are passed through the generations while the physical world fades and crumbles...

The conceit allows Anderson to muse on the question of storytelling—and movie-making—which he previously delved into with the campfire stories read aloud in Moonrise Kingdom. Come for the exploration of narrative form—stay for the hilarious romp.

Dave Calhoun, [i]Time Out[/i] wrote:While other filmmakers get their hands dirty in kitchen sinks, Wes Anderson surely slips his into luxury cashmere mittens. His films overflow with intricate detail and make no pretence of existing in a world other than their own, just-about-earthbound parallel universe. So the five-star premises of his energetic new comedy ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ – a wedding-cake-like, pastel-coloured establishment situated somewhere in 1930s Mitteleuropa and peopled by eccentrics and lunatics – feel like business as usual. What’s different, though, is that the film’s shaggy-dog, sort-of-whodunit yarn offers laughs and energy that make this Anderson’s most fun film since ‘Rushmore’.

Jeff wrote:NY and LA only on March 7; most other major North American markets on March 14.

Jeff wrote:NY and LA only on March 7; most other major North American markets on March 14.

FrauBlucher wrote:

Jeff wrote:NY and LA only on March 7; most other major North American markets on March 14.

Sorry to see where it's playing in NYC. I thought for sure it would open at the theaters geared towards independent/art house films like the Anglelika or Sunshine, and not the two big Cineplex theaters in which it is opening (Union Square and Lincoln Square. There shopping malls of Movies, blagh).

FrauBlucher wrote:

Jeff wrote:NY and LA only on March 7; most other major North American markets on March 14.

Sorry to see where it's playing in NYC. I thought for sure it would open at the theaters geared towards independent/art house films like the Anglelika or Sunshine, and not the two big Cineplex theaters in which it is opening (Union Square and Lincoln Square. There shopping malls of Movies, blagh).