The Grand Budapest Hotel - Review Thread

Well, as a middle-class white male who studied Liberal Arts in college, I can attest that his reach is a little bit wider than you're giving it credit for.

From Letterboxd

Grand Budapest Hotel is a Wes Anderson movie through and through. As always, from the opening shots you see the color schemes, chapter titles and stills with characters staring straight into your eyes through the camera. That’s fine by me considering how Wes Anderson even at his weakest delivers on a creative level that few mainstream movies attain (or really even try to). Fortunately this is not the case with Grand Budapest Hotel as Anderson delivers one of his best and most creative movies. While Anderson has given us some enjoyable movies the past few years such as the underrated Fantastic Mr. Fox and the overrated Moonrise Kingdom, Grand Budapest Hotel is one that sits toward the top of his filmography.

The film creatively tells the story of a little girl reading the story of a writer who was told a story by a man (F. Murray Abraham) who is the owner of the Grand Budapest Hotel, a luxurious escape long past its prime. He tells of his time as a new Lobby Boy who is the apprentice of Gustave H., the concierge. Gustave spends his time diligently attending to the guests while also attending to the ‘needs’ of older, wealthy females. After one passes away she leaves a priceless painting to Gustave, much to the chagrin of her dastardly family. Setups, murder, mayhem and adventure ensue before leading back to the climax at the Grand Budapest Hotel.

Grand Budapest Hotel is one of Wes Anderson’s best movies and is easily one of the best movies of the year. It’s equally funny and engaging and keeps moving throughout. As always, it’s great seeing Wes Anderson deliver again.

Any crime committed by the Academy this year won't compare to Inside Llewyn Davis and Oscar Isaac not getting nominated. That was a disgrace.

The Oscars are an industry award. They're the equivalent of a High School election. Most of the bad decisions are rooted in personal conflicts among the voters. This year, however, the Academy Awards have no balls and imagination. Even if Birdman and Boyhood are your favorite movies of all-time and you're thrilled to see them win stuff, everything else is so... cliche. It's like going to a party where only two guests are interesting. Why are the Oscars so scared to take risks, even in a shit year? The Grand Budapest Hotel, a movie that most people had already forgotten about, is not the way to spice up this year's ceremony. Guardians of the Galaxy, flawed or not, got people into theaters. Gone Girl and Nightcrawler are "dark horse" contenders, but they should be the main rival's to Birdman and Boyhood. Chef has gone missing-in-action even though it's one of the biggest Indie's of 2014. Chris Rock's Top Five got the boot when Selma showed up. I guess you can't have too many Black movies. The Babadook. Inherent Vice. Snowpiercer. The list goes on and on. Point is, there are so many options besides the bland stuff that's being championed. And if The Grand Budapest Hotel is the most "outside the box" they can come up with, then yes, I lost faith.

The love for Birdman and Boyhood aren't surprising. Birdman is a show business story and Boyhood has a great filmmaking backstory. So even the top contenders this year didn't take too much effort to single out.

Chef went missing because it's a mediocrity, Top Five got the boot around the time they saw the Cedric the Entertainer scene, The Babadook barely got a theatrical release stateside, Inherent Vice looks weird and is probably only going to be liked by dedicated cinephilles, and Snowpiercer is really overrated.  Believe me, I want the Academy to make some more daring choices as well and will be rolling my eyes when The Imitation Game gets its inevitable nominations, but there are more daring ways to do it than nominating whatever happens to be the highest grossing movie in a given year.   

Inherent Vice only looks weird if you've never read Thomas Pynchon.

Just some dude.

That isn't my point. It's his most accessible and probably most tame novel to date.

I'm not yet ruling that out.

Nah, both movies are very enjoyable.