I recently took time to revisit the works of Wes Anderson, from his tentative first outing Bottle Rocket to last year's entertainingly peculiar paean to the early days of the space race, Asteroid City — and everything in between.
And I swear I wrote a lengthy post, ranking his films, etc. But I can't find it anywhere. Maybe it's in a mislabeled file someplace. Maybe I only thought I wrote it. Maybe I just laid it all out for the dog on one of our long morning walks (as I am wont to do) and then forgot to type it up.
Well, if I did, the dog's not giving it up and my brain has already dumped that part of my memory to make room for Thursday night trivia.
Suffice it to say, after initially dismissing it during its run twenty-plus years ago, I now feel that Anderson's 2001 film The Royal Tenenbaums is worthy of nominations for picture, actor, director and supporting actress. Anderson is a quirky director — "twee" is the word most often associated with his work — and it takes time and the right frame of mind to get used to him.
I've acquired the taste.
The Royal Tenenbaums, a comedy that plays like a lost chapter from J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey, explores one of Anderson's favorite themes — family dysfunction. Gene Hackman is a charming con man who would like to reconnect with his brilliant but thoroughly screwed up kids (Luke Wilson, Ben Stiller and Gwyneth Paltrow) — because he's dying? Because he loves and misses them? Or because he's broke and just got thrown out of his apartment?
Well, as we've spent the last decade or so learning to our chagrin, truth is at best flexible and very much in the eye of the beholder.
The first time around, I found it all insufferably wacky but on second viewing, it felt more like one of those classic 1930s screwball comedies with an undercurrent of melancholy running through it — very much like My Man Godfrey, say, filmed in bright primary colors instead of glorious black-and-white.
In fact, I'll bet you could swap out William Powell for Gene Hackman and get just as big a kick out of both movies ... just thinking out loud here in the Monkey house.
Also stars Anjelica Huston, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray, Danny Glover and Seymour Cassel.
My favorite Wes Anderson film is still The Grand Budapest Hotel (read my review here) but I'd also recommend The Royal Tenenbaums, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, Isle of Dogs, The French Dispatch (if you like old New Yorker magazine articles) and the aforementioned Asteroid City.
On the whole, whimsical, gentle, amusing.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. Best animated feature winners are noted with an @. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
It's not that the film expects me to root for an empty-headed sociopath like Alex (Malcolm McDowell) or that I object to the film's muddled message — that in a free society, individual liberty should trump collective responsibility even when the individual in question is cheerfully guilty of rape and murder — it's the film's slack narrative pace. Somehow Stanley Kubrick has stuffed three hours of boredom into a two hour package. I never fail to check my watch, something you should never feel the need to do when watching a movie.
And this from a guy who thinks 2001: A Space Odyssey — a virtually silent film that moves so slowly, it practically runs in reverse — is one of the most exciting movies ever made.
As Roger Ebert wrote in panning A Clockwork Orange during its original run, the film commits an "unforgivable, artistic sin. It is just plain talky and boring. You know there's something wrong with a movie when the last third feels like the last half."
But maybe that's just him and me.
Instead, I voted for The Last Picture Show, a modern Western based on Larry McMurty's novel about teenagers coming of age in a small Texas town on the raggedy edge of nowhere. Nothing muddled about its message: You can either waste your life trying to live up to a myth that wasn't worth living in the first place or you can learn how to be a human being — but you can't do both so make up your mind before it's too late.
Far and away director Peter Bogdanovich's best work. Stars Jeff Bridges, Ellen Burstyn, Eileen Brennan, Cybill Shepherd, Timothy Bottoms. Features Oscar-winning turns by Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman. Great movie, highly recommended.
Finally, I also want to mention the Academy's choice for best picture, The French Connection. It's the story of Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman), a deeply-flawed cop obsessed with nailing a dapper French importer of high-grade heroin (played, thanks to a famous casting blunder, by Fernando Rey, a Spanish actor who spoke no French).
It's a good movie and boasts Hackman's most iconic performance, but if you haven't seen it (or haven't seen it lately), I strongly urge you to skip the version of it currently streaming within U.S. borders. The film's owner, Disney, is only showing a censored copy (even on the Criterion Channel!) excising a scene establishing Popeye's undeniable racism.
I don't know whether Disney's decision was driven by left-wing censors who want past works of art to reflect modern sensibilities; or by right-wing censors who want to stamp out any hint that Black Lives Matter might just have a point. Either way, they remind me of those (no doubt, apocryphal) Victorian prigs who put pantaloons on piano legs for fear that the instrument's shapely curves might inspire lustful habits.
I suggest you get thee hither to your local library and check out an old-school Blu-ray or even older school DVD. If your town still has a library, that is. The Puritans are everywhere — and they're coming for you!
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
"That's Typing" Tuesday, in which I share unpolished, unpublished writings from my vast store of unpolished, unpublished writings. On Tuesdays.
From my notes on the 1995 submarine thriller, Crimson Tide:
There's a telling moment early in Crimson Tide—Gene Hackman as the submarine skipper is standing on the conning tower with the last minute replacement for his executive officer (Denzel Washington). As they sail out of port, they smoke cigars and watch the sunset, a long moment of silence.
At last Hackman says, "Bravo, Hunter."
"Sir?"
"You knew to shut up and enjoy the view. Most eggheads want to talk it away. Your stock just went up a couple of points."
Which is true enough—as the man said, "Be here now." Yet, ironically, it's Hackman who is talking away the moment, and therein lies the scene's subtlety. He's no "egghead," but he is a bully, and he can't stand the notion that anyone could experience anything differently than he would. So he attempts to browbeat Washington even in this, a cigar and a sunset. Establish the pecking order right off the bat. He might just as well challenge his first officer to a pissing contest right there on the conning tower of the sub.
Washington neither backs down nor responds to the bait. He's inside himself where his sense of who he is resides. Just where it should be.
In fact, watching the movie again I was struck by just how much Hackman does talk. The man simply cannot shut up—about anything. Which makes him not only a bully, but an insecure bully at that, a dangerous enough phenomenon even when he isn't packing nuclear heat ...
Named for Katie-Bar-The-Door, the Katies are "alternate Oscars"—who should have been nominated, who should have won—but really they're just an excuse to write a history of the movies from the Silent Era to the present day.
To see a list of nominees and winners by decade, as well as links to my essays about them, click the highlighted links:
Remember: There are no wrong answers, only movies you haven't seen yet.
The Silent Oscars
And don't forget to check out the Silent Oscars—my year-by-year choices for best picture, director and all four acting categories for the pre-Oscar years, 1902-1927.
Look at me—Joe College, with a touch of arthritis. Are my eyes really brown? Uh, no, they're green. Would we have the nerve to dive into the icy water and save a person from drowning? That's a key question. I, of course, can't swim, so I never have to face it. Say, haven't you anything better to do than to keep popping in here early every morning and asking a lot of fool questions?
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