Steve-Zi
You know you're venturing into uncharted waters when in the first five minutes of a movie a bizarre Brazilian guy with a named Pelé dos Santos starts strumming the chords to Space Oddity on his guitar and singing the lyrics in Portuguese...
If someone were to ask me to summarize the plot of "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou", I honestly wouldn't know what to tell you. "It's about a father being reunited with his long-lost son," I could say, or "It's about an oceanographer's quest for revenge, searching for the elusive jaguar-shark that ate his friend and colleague Esteban," or even "It's about a reporter trying to write a story about the man whose photo hung on her wall as a little girl." Any one of those things is true, but yet any single one of those fails to capture the whole experience that was "The Life Aquatic".
I really disliked "The Royal Tenenbaums". I'm not sure why, exactly, but I do remember that it was incredibly slow, not particularly funny, and I just didn't care about the characters (if you ask Liz I think she'd answer the same thing, but also mentioning how much she detests Gwyneth Paltrow [kind of like my absolute hatred of both Kirsten Dunst and Tobey Maguire, which explains why, despite reading Spiderman comics religiously as a kid, I have yet to see either of those films]). I wasn't sure what to expect going into the theater last night, but having seen the trailer for "Life Aquatic" I was optimistic, since it promised to be much better...
The misgivings I had about "Tenenbaums" were not present in "Life Aquatic", and I found it to be a very refreshing movie with good pacing, great (and wacky) characters and a frickin' awesome soundtrack. David Bowie, the Stooges, Paco de Lucía, some original compositions and Pelé dos Santos (who is a real Brazilian musician named Seu Jorge, that I now highly recommend, based on his performance in the film). The soundtrack is a very worthy successor to the soundtrack for "Rushmore", that I really enjoyed despite never having seen the movie (I'd say something about "The Royal Tenenbaums" soundtrack, but I can't really remember it).
Bill Murray's performance as Captain Steve Zissou is awesome, and I really hope he gets another Oscar nod and an actual Oscar win for this one (I love him in any role, from "Caddyshack" to "Groundhog Day" to "The Razor's Edge" to "Lost in Translation"). I'll keep my fingers crossed...
The rest of the cast is also great: Owen Wilson as Steve Zissou's probable son, Cate Blanchett as the reporter doing the story on Zissou, Anjelica Huston as Zissou's estranged wife, Jeff Goldblum as the arch-nemesis, Willem Defoe as the "Intelligent. Organized. German." first-mate, and so on... After seeing this movie I think I'll definitely go see Wes Anderson's movies from now on, and I guess I'll have to give "Tenenbaums" another chance, and check out "Rushmore" as well.
I highly recommend the movie, and everyone should trek up to the Loew's on Broadway and 69th to see it, since it's currently only playing in limited release and it's the only screen in the city that's showing it (get your tickets in advance on Fandango.com [they have this cool thing where you print out your receipt, that has a barcode, and you take that directly to the person who rips your tickets, and they scan it and hand you your tickets right there, with no lines or waiting for a ticket machine!], since they're always sold-out).
If someone were to ask me to summarize the plot of "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou", I honestly wouldn't know what to tell you. "It's about a father being reunited with his long-lost son," I could say, or "It's about an oceanographer's quest for revenge, searching for the elusive jaguar-shark that ate his friend and colleague Esteban," or even "It's about a reporter trying to write a story about the man whose photo hung on her wall as a little girl." Any one of those things is true, but yet any single one of those fails to capture the whole experience that was "The Life Aquatic".
I really disliked "The Royal Tenenbaums". I'm not sure why, exactly, but I do remember that it was incredibly slow, not particularly funny, and I just didn't care about the characters (if you ask Liz I think she'd answer the same thing, but also mentioning how much she detests Gwyneth Paltrow [kind of like my absolute hatred of both Kirsten Dunst and Tobey Maguire, which explains why, despite reading Spiderman comics religiously as a kid, I have yet to see either of those films]). I wasn't sure what to expect going into the theater last night, but having seen the trailer for "Life Aquatic" I was optimistic, since it promised to be much better...
The misgivings I had about "Tenenbaums" were not present in "Life Aquatic", and I found it to be a very refreshing movie with good pacing, great (and wacky) characters and a frickin' awesome soundtrack. David Bowie, the Stooges, Paco de Lucía, some original compositions and Pelé dos Santos (who is a real Brazilian musician named Seu Jorge, that I now highly recommend, based on his performance in the film). The soundtrack is a very worthy successor to the soundtrack for "Rushmore", that I really enjoyed despite never having seen the movie (I'd say something about "The Royal Tenenbaums" soundtrack, but I can't really remember it).
Bill Murray's performance as Captain Steve Zissou is awesome, and I really hope he gets another Oscar nod and an actual Oscar win for this one (I love him in any role, from "Caddyshack" to "Groundhog Day" to "The Razor's Edge" to "Lost in Translation"). I'll keep my fingers crossed...
The rest of the cast is also great: Owen Wilson as Steve Zissou's probable son, Cate Blanchett as the reporter doing the story on Zissou, Anjelica Huston as Zissou's estranged wife, Jeff Goldblum as the arch-nemesis, Willem Defoe as the "Intelligent. Organized. German." first-mate, and so on... After seeing this movie I think I'll definitely go see Wes Anderson's movies from now on, and I guess I'll have to give "Tenenbaums" another chance, and check out "Rushmore" as well.
I highly recommend the movie, and everyone should trek up to the Loew's on Broadway and 69th to see it, since it's currently only playing in limited release and it's the only screen in the city that's showing it (get your tickets in advance on Fandango.com [they have this cool thing where you print out your receipt, that has a barcode, and you take that directly to the person who rips your tickets, and they scan it and hand you your tickets right there, with no lines or waiting for a ticket machine!], since they're always sold-out).
posted by Luis at 11:28 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home