Rushmore

The king of Rushmore prep school is put on academic probation.

IMDb [7.7/10]

Rottentomatoes [87% | 76%]

Rushmore is the second film from writer/director Wes Anderson, also written by Owen Wilson, following the duo’s first release Bottle Rocket [review] in 1996, although the script for Rushmore was done long before the release of Bottle Rocket. It is the first Anderson film that Bill Murray [Groundhog Day, Ghostbusters] was cast in, and Murray has gone on to be cast in every Anderson film since then. Murray actually liked the script and wanted to be in the film so much that he would do it for free. He also paid for a $75,000 helicopter scene that Disney shot down. It is also the feature film debut for actor Jason Schwartzman, who was one of 1800 teenagers who auditioned for the part. He showed up to the audition in a private school jacket and a Rushmore patch that made himself. [source]

Rushmore is about a 15 year old private school student named Max Fischer [Jason Schwartzman] who is struggling to keep his grades up while partaking, leading, and founding countless extracurricular activities. He befriends a local industrialist named Herman Blume [Bill Murray], and falls in love with the new elementary school teacher Ms. Cross, played by Olivia Williams [An Education, The Sixth Sense]. When he is expelled from school, forced to attend a public school, and Mr. Blume becomes attracted to Ms. Cross, Max must find resolution.

Wes Anderson uses a lot of personal touches in this film, something he has come to do in all of his films. He used his own school in Texas, St. John’s School, as the location for Rushmore, and another school on the same block as St. John’s for the set of the Grover Cleaveland public school. Co-writer, Owen Wilson was also expelled from private school in the 10th grade, just like Max Fischer.

The character Max Fischer is one that I find universally relatable. Whether it’s his passion and joy for any one of his activities, his struggling with school or friendship or love, or his trying to be a “better” person than he actually is, he holds a lot of qualities that most of us probably had or have, and it feels satisfying to see both him, Mr. Blume, and Ms. Cross grow both by themselves and with each other. And the culmination of it all with the ending supposed-to-be grade-school play is a spectacular way to go out.

Wilson and Anderson said that Rushmore was their attempt at a “slightly heightened reality, like a Roald Dahl children’s book”, and this film is just that. Even outside the private school and into the public one, the kids put on a high level Max Fischer play. The comedy is achieved without sarcasm or jokes, but instead withing the normalcy of these people’s whimsical world. Within the three characters’ troubled lives you find a lot of heart and both childish behavior and maturation.

My Rating

 3/4 – A wistful comedy about an aspiring play-write/everything that everyone can find a little of themselves in and can learn and mature with.

Bottle Rocket

Focusing on a trio of friends and their elaborate plan to pull off a simple robbery and go on the run.

IMDb [7.1/10]

RottenTomatoes [80% | 56%]

Bottle Rocket has a lot of cool history behind it, so before getting into the actual film, I’ll write a little about that.

At the University of Texas in the late eighties and early nineties, a philosophy major and aspiring film-maker named Wes Anderson [Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Royal Tenenbaums] enrolled in a play writing class. In this class, he met a classmate named Owen Wilson [Midnight in Paris, Wedding Crashers]. These two became friends and roommates, and started writing their own short film called Bottle Rocket. With no acting experience, Owen and his brother Luke Wilson [Old School, Idiocracy] filled the roles in the short film. After a good reception at festivals, Anderson and Wilson were introduced to James Brooks, who helped them get financial backing to make a feature length version of the film. Brooks insisted that major work be done on the script so he had Anderson and Owen Wilson flown to Los Angeles and set up in an office on $100 a day. Wilson tried to exchange his plane ticket for a bus ticket, hoping to pocket the cash instead. Brooks was nervous about the way Anderson and Wilson handled the rewrite process as they never took any notes during meetings. Even with financial backing, they couldn’t get the big name actors that they initially wanted, so Owen and Luke both took part in the first feature length films of their career. After the movie bombed at the box office, Owen seriously considered joining the Marines, convinced that acting held no future for him.

It really was a joy for me to initially read all about Anderson and the Wilson’s and how they all started their career together. Owen and Wes went on to co-write Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, and then Owen’s acting career is probably the reason why he didn’t write with Anderson anymore, as after The Royal Tenenbaums in 2001, his roles became hugely popular.

In Bottle Rocket, Luke Wilson plays Anthony, who is leaving a voluntary mental hospital after a mental breakdown. His close friend Dignan [Owen Wilson], is there to break him out, and continues to inform Anthony of their plans to perform heists and robberies and how to live for the next 25 years, including a big hit with Dignan’s former boss Mr. Henry, played by James Caan [The Godfather, Elf]. The two rob a library with the help of their friend Bob, played by Robert Musgrave, and hit the road. When they stop to stay at a motel, Anthony meets and falls in love with a maid named Inez [Lumi Cavazos]. When they finally hook up with Mr. Henry, the ensuing escapade turns out to be far from what anyone expected.

It is in Bottle Rocket that you can see from the start some of Anderson’s trademark directing qualities and actions: the slow motion ending shot, The Rolling Stones songs, and things like panning, hand-held, underwater, and stationary shots with characters moving in and out of them. He uses all of these in all of his films, never straying from what he knows, despite this first film doing terribly at the box office. Anderson also worked with cinematographer Robert Yeoman and compost Mark Mothersbaugh in Bottle Rocket, who have worked with him on nearly every other project he has done.

As cool as it is to see the starting points of Wes Anderson, Owen Wilson, and Luke Wilson, all with personalities that they would never stray from and eventually become world famous for, Bottle Rocket is definitely a little messy. The actual plot is something of a sub-plot in the actual scope of the film, and you’re not really left with much in the end.

My Rating

 2/4 – Bottle Rocket is a good starting point for three major Hollywood careers, and a fun project made by three young friends after college. However the little fun moments don’t add up to that good of a film.

Safe House

A young CIA agent is tasked with looking after a fugitive in a safe house. But when the safe house is attacked, he finds himself on the run with his charge.

IMDb [7.0/10]

RottenTomatoes [54% | 56%]

I’m pretty sure that if you put Denzel Washington [Training Day, American Gangster] and Ryan Reynolds [Buried, Green Lantern] together in a project, you’ve got appeal from pretty much every age and sex, especially the ladies. I’m not sure if a crime/thriller/mystery/action film is the best way to use that viewer appeal, but regardless, I think a lot of people would want to see this movie for that fact alone.

Matt Weston [Reynolds] is the CIA equivalent of a night-watch security officer. He doesn’t usually see much action, and he is close to being able to leave the job and move away with his girlfriend. But all of that changes when he is surprised by a call from his boss informing him of a high profile target coming in to his facility. Tobin Frost [Washington] is a former CIA agent who is infamous for both his incredible interrogation and his betrayal of the CIA, selling information about the organization. When Frost’s enemies come knocking at the safe house’s door, it is up to Weston to keep the target, and himself, alive.

Denzel Washington is a top tier actor, and watching him work is always a treat, even if the movie itself isn’t very good. Playing a mysterious bad guy, as he does in this film, is particularly fun, for he has a creepy calm yet intense tone. Ryan Reynolds is a different story. While I doubt he will ever earn an award or nomination for his acting abilities, he is no doubt an entertaining actor who has an enjoyable track record of films. It is certainly an interesting leading duo.

This is another project all about the actors, which you get several of during the first half of the year. Director Daniel Espinosa and writer David Guggenheim [not to be confused with Davis Guggenheim, producer and director of many tv shows, movies, and documentaries] are both rookies trying to show off what they’ve got, and they’ve got some okay ability shown off in this film. Nothing noteworthy, either good or bad. There are plenty of holes you can pick in the plot, and there isn’t much mystery for a movie that has been assigned that label.

My Rating

 2/4 – Safe House is exactly what you saw in its previews, and is carried by its cast.

Man on a Ledge

As a police psychologist works to talk down an ex-con who is threatening to jump from a Manhattan hotel rooftop, something bigger is in the works.

IMDb [6.6/10]

RottenTomatoes [31% | 19%]

In 2002, the film Phone Booth came out, and as a 12 year old kid the movie was really interesting to me. A film based around a single person who is in one spot for the entire movie. I thought it was a good movie, and that main concept of a single person in a single place has intrigued me since. Man on a Ledge is another thriller with the same kind of idea, a man on a ledge. I hope the movie is more thrilling and thought out than the movie title.

Sam Worthington [Avatar, Terminator Salvation] plays Nick Cassidy, a former cop and an escaped convict who rents a hotel room, eats a nice breakfast, and then climbs out onto the ledge of the building, where he is quickly seen by a pedestrian and police and media arrive on the scene in minutes. When the police make contact, he asks specifically for Lydia Mercer, a police psychologist who had a suicide victim jump to his death off of the Brooklyn bridge just a month ago, played by Elizabeth Banks [40 Year Old Virgin, The Hunger Games]. Soon after the incident starts, you find out that Nick has an earpiece in, and his brother Joey, played by Jamie Bell [Billy Elliot, Jumper], is communicating with him from a building nearby, where Joey and his girlfriend are committing a crime while all eyes are Nick.

The movie is put together by writer Pablo Fenjives and director Asger Leth, two men who have never worked on the big screen. While they both have some background in their crafts, nothing has ever been wide released like Man on a Ledge was. Both men didn’t really take any risks with their work, with all aspects of directing being 100% standard, and the story not making any unexpected or complex twists or turns. It’s just a film put together for the entertainment of the masses, and it did an okay job. The cast is really recognizable, and they do a good job, which is the biggest component in entertaining the viewer.

My Rating

 2/4 – Man on a Ledge is about as unique and daring as it’s own title, but with its recognizable and able cast, it does manage to entertain.

Spotlight! Wes Anderson

Wes Anderson’s new film ‘Moonrise Kingdom’ comes to limited theaters on May 25th.

In most every form of art and creative production, you’ll find artists that have one specific style that they will stick to for every piece they do. In movie production, you have people like Michael Cera, who are typecast into playing the same style role in virtually every movie. But being an actor with the same style is much different than someone like a director or writer, who has full control over everything that happens in their films. Writer/director Wes Anderson has never strayed from his trademark style of wide angle anamorphic lens shots, hand-held pans in the middle of dialogue, Mark Mothersbaugh compositions and The Rolling Stones-like soundtracks, ‘Futura Bold’ typefont, big quirky families as the base of the story, and his casting of Bill Murray, Owen and Luke Wilson,  and Jason Schwartzman. These are all things that I have come to love and expect in his movies, and it is a real joy to sit through every one and be able to identify his unique and specific style of film making. If you were to ask me right now who my favorite film maker is, it would probably be Anderson.