ChrisThilk Blog

I was really excited to finally be seeing The Darjeeling Limited, the latest movie from director Wes Anderson. I’d loved the marketing campaign for the movie and was really intrigued by The Hotel Chevalier, the short that was released prior to the movie as a free download on iTunes that told a story that leads into the movie in an indirect way.

The movie tells the story of three brothers, played by Owen Wilson, Adrian Brody and Jason Schwartzman who wind up together on a train ride through India, a trip that’s been organized by Wilson’s character after three haven’t spoken for a year following the death of their father. What the motives are it’s not clear (at first) but he wants them to bond by going as a group to all sorts of spiritual places and doing things that would normally fall outside their comfort zone. His goal is revealed and, while it’s not something the other two (or the goal itself) are thrilled about the trip has accomplished its other purpose of bringing the brothers together.

The movie is a lot of fun, more fun than it really should be to be honest. While there’s a long, more depressing sequence about 2/3s of the way through the movie the rest keeps a bouncy pace that moves everyone along at a good clip and keeps the viewer engaged. I don’t think it reaches the same epic level as Anderson’s previous The Royal Tannenbaums (my personal favorite) but it’s still pretty darn good and is certainly a worthy entry in Anderson’s body of work.

On the DVD you have the option of watching the movie itself, the Hotel Chevalier short on its own, or Chevalier followed immediately by Darjeeling. It’s this last option that I’d most heartily recommend. When viewed as on body of work the story really is a lot stronger than Chevalier is on its own. And there are mentions of the events of Chevalier in Darjeeling, so it’s required viewing if you really want the background and know what the heck Schwartzman’s character is talking about and why…well…I won’t spoil that.

I’m grateful to Fox Searchlight for sending me a screener copy of the movie to review, allowing me to see one of the movies I was really looking forward to and wound up enjoying every bit as much as I thought I would.

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What an absolutely great movie.

King of California stars Michael Douglas as a man with some problems. So many, in fact that he???s spent the last couple years in a mental institution. When he???s released he rejoins his daughter, played by Evan Rachel Wood, and tries to once again make himself a part of her life.

But the way he chooses to do that is by enlisting her help (which she gives grudgingly) finding a Spanish treasure he???s convinced is buried somewhere in the area. That somewhere winds up being directly where there now stands a CostCo, something that doesn???t slow him down a bit.

The movie is really about family and loving people for who they are and not who you might wish they were. Time and again Wood???s character finds herself unable, for whatever reason, to control the actions of her father. Sometimes that???s because he???s already done whatever it is he was going to do and sometimes it???s because she can???t bear to see him disappointed and defeated. So she goes along for the ride.

Douglas gives a wonderful, wide-eyed performance that very carefully never slips into caricature. He maintains a frantic energy throughout, always completely selling the audience on his character???s motivations as not being driven by obsession but by the desire to not sit back and accept anything doesn???t want.

The filmmakers deserve special credit for making Wood???s character believable. She plays a 16 year old who???s been fooling various bureaucracies for years in the absence of both her father and mother, the latter of which split when she was very young. She???s simply a bright and capable young girl and not some sort of criminal mastermind. And there???s no clich??d scene with her trying to hide something from a social services worker or anything. Her self-reliance is simply explained and then never again addressed, leaving the audience to accept it for what it is without any more attention being drawn to it.

The movie flows very naturally, without a lot of the usual, tired mile markers that you see in similar movies that are made by people who don???t trust the audience quite as much. That makes it very fresh and new and ultimately very enjoyable.

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