Posts Tagged ‘Jason Schwartzman’

Asteroid City

Director: Wes Anderson

Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton, Willem Dafoe, Adrien Brody, Jeffrey Wright, Bryan Cranston, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Steve Park, Hong Chau, Rupert Friend, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Margot Robbie, Tony Revolori, Jake Ryan, Jeff Goldblum, Grace Edwards, Sophia Lillis, Bob Balaban

Running Time: 1 hour and 44 minutes

Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Celestial flirtations abound in director Wes Anderson’s latest fluorescent theatrical film, Asteroid City featuring a blossoming cast headlined by two excellent performances by Jason Schwartzman and Oscar nominee Scarlett Johansson (Jojo Rabbit, Marriage Story) as theatre actors Augie Steenbeck and the glamorous Midge Campbell who find themselves acting in the eccentric playwright Conrad Earp wonderfully played with deadpan flamboyance by Oscar nominee Edward Norton (Primal Fear, American History X, Birdman)’s new play Asteroid City set in a one horse town in Arizona in 1955 complete without a candy coloured diner and a nuclear testing site.

Asteroid City has a population of 69.

Visually and aesthetically, Asteroid City is beautiful to watch as a film, like a trippy popup book with fabulous colours and eccentric characters from singing cowboys and random socialites, from military personnel to perilous children who comprise the space cadets of the town.

At a random event celebrating the arrival of an asteroid in a desert, the entire town is gathered and listening to an articulate speech by General Grif Gibson played by Jeffrey Wright (No Time To Die) when out of nowhere a cheeky alien arrives in a garish green UFO and unexpectedly steals the asteroid while the town looks on in horror and curiosity.

Luckily Augie who is a reluctant father of four children, a son named Woodrow wonderfully played by Jake Ryan and triplet daughters known collectively by their grandfather as The Witches, managed to photograph the alien. Then the military step in and quarantine the town, a suitable jibe by screenwriter Wes Anderson at the weird lockdown restrictions imposed by Governments across the world during the Covid19 pandemic in 2020.

Despite the ensemble cast, it is really Jason Schwartzman and Scarlett Johansson’s film as they both shine in a complex self-reflexive narrative which takes inspiration from American playwright Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town. Jason Schwartzman who played King Louis XVI opposite Kirsten Dunst in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette and is soon to star in his uncle Francis Ford Coppola’s new film Megalopolis, really shines as a talented stage actor and part time homosexual Augie Steenbeck in a role which is equally quirky and subversive.

Asteroid City is a highly theatrical comically absurd film serving as a dazzling critique on the bizarre nature of events in 2020 and cleverly presents the concept of The West as a construct to be interchanged and taken down again, much like a cardboard city. Notable turns in the film go to Tom Hanks as Grandfather Stanley Zak, Oscar winner Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton) as Dr Hickenlooper and Oscar nominee Bryan Cranston (Trumbo) as The Host.

Take yourself on a journey and see the visually splendid Asteroid City, which is not perfect as a film, but it is enchanting in a celestial way and will find a cult following everywhere much like the Space Cadets that follow the Milky Way. With impressive set designs, Asteroid City should win an Oscar for Production Design in the 2024 Academy Awards.

Not as brilliant as The Grand Budapest Hotel, but Asteroid City gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10, a quirky self-reflexive play about a city that doesn’t exist and an alien that possibly does.

Wes Anderson outdoes himself with a script and a bizarre film which received a 6 minute standing ovation at the film’s glittering premiere at the 2023 Festival de Cannes.

Big Eyes

Director: Tim Burton

Cast: Amy Adams, Christoph Waltz, Danny Huston, Jason Schwartzman, Terence Stamp, Krysten Ritter, Jon Polito

Golden Globe winner Amy Adams (American Hustle) gives a sterling and nuanced performance as the American artist Margaret Keane in director Tim Burton’s 1960’s San Francisco set drama Big Eyes.

Whilst Margaret Keane was more commercial and was certainly not in the same vein of other celebrated female artists like Frida Kahlo or Georgia O’Keefe, her rise to fame as the painter of the Big Eyes series is certainly extraordinary and filled with intrigue. In a chauvinist society of the late 1950’s it was unheard of for a woman to leave her husband, and this is what the brave Margaret Keane does leaving upstate California for the more liberal art community of San Francisco with her young daughter Jane in tow, the true inspiration for her Big Eyes series.

In San Francisco Margaret becomes enchanted with the smooth talking Walter Keane, a budding artist but a commercial realtor by trade. Walter Keane, claiming to have spent some time in Paris, is wonderfully if slightly overplayed by Austrian actor and Oscar winner Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained, Inglourious Basterds). After a quick marriage, Walter soon recognizes the commercial potential of his wife Margaret’s art, which mainly consisted of paintings using oils and mixed media of women, children and animal with unusually big eyes.

After an initial showing of the works in a San Francisco nightclub, Walter Keane claims that he is the artist of these works and when commercial success strikes thanks to the purchasing of several painting by the heir to the Olivetti fortune, Walter Keane soon opens his own gallery, simply called the Keane Gallery where the posters of the paintings sell more than the actual art itself.

Before Andy Warhol, Keane was the pioneer of pop art and although the works weren’t particularly imaginative, there was something inspiring and commercially viable about the big eyes paintings.

However the plot twist to Burton’s film Big Eyes, is Margaret Keane’s desperate bid for freedom from her deranged husband after she discovers that Walter was not the artist he claimed to be. Margaret Keane with daughter in tow flees to Honolulu in Hawaii and then after a sort of spiritual rebirth whereby she ironically becomes a Jehovah’s Witness, she claims that she was the original artist of the Big Eyes series on Hawaii radio much to the horror of the American art world. The rest as they say is artistic legal history.

As a film about art, Big Eyes does not match up to similar films such as the brilliant Pollock, Frida or even the late Robert Altman’s film Vincent and Theo, but as a story about the crazy commercialization of art over any form of visual integrity, Big Eyes is a fascinating cinematic adventure, more so because its true.

Amy Adams is mesmerizing as the tortured and vulnerable Margaret Keane, and makes this real life story as bizarre as it really occurred, believable and informative. Watch out for priceless cameos by Jason Schwartzman (Marie Antoinette, The Grand Budapest Hotel) as a snobby art dealer, Terence Stamp (Valkyrie; Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) as senior New York Times art critic John Canaday and Danny Huston (Hitchcock, Birth) as San Francisco journalist Dan Nolan who initially befriends the charismatic yet crazy Walter Keane.

Big Eyes is recommended viewing for students of Pop Art, lovers of films about artists and for those that appreciate an informative tale of a really extraordinary woman, Margaret Keane –http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Keane who despite the age she lived in eventually become famous in her own right.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Director: Wes Anderson

Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Jude Law, F. Murray Abraham, Harvey Keitel, Willem Dafoe, Adrien Brody, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray, Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton

Moonrise Kingdom director Wes Anderson assembles a hugely talented ensemble cast led by the irresistable Ralph fiennes as Gustave H.  a suave Concierge at The Grand Budapest Hotel who gets embroiled in a whimsical art theft after his benefactor dies mysteriously and her evil son Dimitri played by Adrien Brody pursues the eloquent and flamboyant Gustave in a fictitious republic of  Zubrowka representative of a modern day Yugoslavia or even The Czech Republic, but emblematic of a crumbling decadent and ravaged Eastern Europe.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is a wonderful plot, inventive, hilarious, witty and beautifully orchestrated matched by a superb ensemble cast the likes of which haven’t been seen on screen for years including Oscar nominees F. Murray Abraham (Amadeus), Harvey Keitel (Bugsy), Willem Dafoe (Shadow of a Vampire), Bill Murray (Lost in Translation), Edward Norton (Primal Fear), Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton), Saoirse Ronan (Atonement) and Jude Law (The Talented Mr Ripley) – all consummate character actors and brilliant performers in the own right.

Each perfectly constructed shot in the Grand Budapest Hotel is a pastiche of old European movies and landscapes reminiscent of a time between the wars when civility was still in fashion. When Old European Hotels were lavish and comfortable establishments with Bell Boys, Lift Operators, Chefs and naturally charming yet slimy Concierges adding to the intrigue of its elegance. When Hotels were places to spend a week, when time was plentiful and guests came to languish in the extraordinary facilities of these beautifully decadent Hotels which populated the ski slopes and small towns of Austria, Germany, Italy and Switzerland.

Even though, the fictional country,  Zubrowka is representative of a mixture of Eastern European countries which all suffered under the Nazi’s and then under the Communists, the institutional history of such a charming hotel remained the centre of a town’s attraction, where legends of its fabled guests were passed down over the decades. The Grand Budapest Hotel reflects an era when Art Nouveau reigned supreme especially in the 1930’s. This comedy set in 1932, featuring a complicated and whimsical if not absolutely witty plot is deftly handled by screenwriter Anderson who makes sure each of his cast members whether on screen for a second or for several scenes delivers a perfect performance.

The cast also includes Lea Seydoux, Mathieu Amalric, Owen Wilson and Tilda Swinton. Inspired by the works of 20th century Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, The Grand Budapest Hotel is expertly crafted, dazzlingly assembled and wonderfully executed. A real treat of a film which will sure to delight audiences for years to come  much like the Hotel whose guests found its hidden charms suitably enchanting. Highly recommended viewing and a winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2014 Berlin Film Festival, The Grand Budapest Hotel is marvelous, whimsical, witty and comical with an underlying menace attached to the action, making the comedy almost tragic in its relevance.