Spring 2014 #3: The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) - Wes Anderson

Last night I watched the youngest movie on my list, The Royal Tenenbaums, which is also my first Wes Anderson film! The film was basically exactly how I imagined a Wes Anderson film being, based on how other film majors talk about him and how the trailers convey the tone of the films. It’s quirky, fun, and filled with dark humor in a way that makes it feel like a vividly colorful picture book.

The story follows a family of child geniuses who grew up and lost their way in their world. The oldest child is Chas Tenenbaum, played by Ben Stiller. Chas is a child prodigy in the business world who now raises his two sons because his wife died in a plane crash. Then there’s Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow), a gifted playwright who is now married to a character played by Bill Murray. Their relationship is hilarious in that she is basically a grown-up Wednesday Addams and he is kind of like an intellectual Santa Claus.

The joke about Margot is that every character works to constantly remind her that she was adopted, unlike her brothers. It’s sad and funny at the same time.

The final brother is played by Luke Wilson, named Richie. He was a tennis pro until he choked at a match and retired. Owen Wilson, who also co-wrote the screenplay (if you’re ever wondering how Owen Wilson managed to get an Oscar nomination, it’s this), plays the family friend Eli Cash.

The film follows the three children as they move back in with their mom, played by the amazing Anjelica Huston. Their estranged dad also comes back, claiming to have stomach cancer in order to get back on good terms with the family he abandoned decades ago. He’s probably the funniest character, because his way of trying to interact with both his children and his grandchildren shows just how bad of a parent he actually was.

Anjelica is great because she credits herself with being the reason behind her children’s genius, and no has to cope with the fact that all of her children became antisocial and just generally messed up.

But Wes Anderson (and Owen Wilson I guess) have concocted a quirky story full of entertaining family dynamics. It’s like watching one of those Christmas movies where the family all comes together, except these characters are even more dysfunctional (and much less cliché). 

I found that the film lost a bit of direction towards the ending, because the setup is actually so funny that the ending just can’t hold up. Both Wilson brothers are in love with Margot (even though one of them is her “brother”), and she constantly ignores the fact that she’s married.

But just the general tone and character relationships are worth viewing, and I will make sure that this is not my last Wes Anderson film.

Iron Man 3 (2013) - Shane Black

As my summer movie list becomes longer than the number of days in summer, I start to wonder how Phineas and Ferb get everything done. But yesterday I did manage to see both Iron Man 3 and Star Trek Into Darkness, and I loved both of them. 

I know. And honestly, I had high hopes. Iron Man 2 was… forgettable, and Marvel/Disney had a lot to live up to in this post-Avengers period of their superhero films. Seeing as this was the first one since Avengers, they set the film up with a sort of existential crisis that Tony Stark is having after going through the vortex. At points it was heavy handed but in general it gave the emotional depth the film needed to keep from being boring and uninvolved. And I want to give a huge amount of credit for the film’s success to Robert Downey Jr. 

We just love Tony Stark. He’s egotistical, superficial, but dangerously intelligent and very loving towards Pepper. His cynicism and sarcastic quips make him hilarious to watch and lift the story beyond just another superhero film. And in one summer with almost five superhero films (Iron Man 3, Thor 2, Man of Steel, Wolverine, technically Percy Jackson 2…), each movie needs to do everything in its power to stand out. 

And Iron Man 3 definitely had its clichéd superhero movie moments, but it did them with an originality that I think comes form Tony Stark’s “I don’t really know what I’m doing but I actually have a plan” kind of attitude. He always seems to be outnumbered, or outsmarted, but then suddenly he’ll whip out 40 plus Iron Man suits that run without human bodies and can fight as a little army for him.

And you can’t help but geek out a little when all of the suits are revealed. Because you realize that no one can beat Tony Stark, he’s just TOO good. I just did this in the theater at this scene.

The film is told as a story, where Tony Stark reflects on his mistake he made in 1999, when he didn’t join up with a (mad)scientist who wanted to genetically engineer super humans that could regenerate their bodies after injuries. The plot is familiar (X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Captain America, Star Trek Into Darkness), but Iron Man 3 made it complicated, it made it confusing. And it certainly tested Tony Stark in a way that I think the other two movies failed to. In Iron Man 1, he has to build the suit to survive, and then has to fight an even bigger version of the suit. In Iron Man 2… (to Wikipedia!) Iron Man has to figure out how to find Vanka and eventually has to fight a bunch of drones before fighting Vanka in his own arc-powered suit. But this one didn’t involve a villain getting his hands on an Iron Man suit, but a villain that almost took Stark down with terrorism and going for what matters, Pepper Potts.

Not only did Stark have serious PTSD, but it also went into the subplot of how Tony Stark saw himself, as just a filling for the Iron Man suit, or as a man simply wearing a suit of armor. This movie is about Tony Stark understanding who he is and where Iron Man plays into that being, which is what makes the ending so perfect. The film is exciting, hilarious, and this review isn’t doing it justice at all. Everyone should go see it.