For the week of April 27th, the Criterion Collection is offering their features-laden upgrade of Wes Anderson's masterful The Grand Budapest Hotel. In conveying the adventures of internationally renowned hotel concierge Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes, in an immensely charming, fleet performance) and his faithful lobby boy Zero (newcomer Tony Revolori) as they stumble through one madcap intrigue after another, Anderson turns the film in on itself. Narratively, it begins in the present, then burrows back to the 1980s through the visage of a respected writer (Tom Wilkinson), then uses his recollections to go back even further to the 1960s, where his younger self (Jude Law) listens rapt as a mysterious socialite (F. Murray Abraham) tells the pre-WWII story of Gustave and Zero. But figuratively, this twisting, inward-looking structure also reflects the myriad of ways Anderson is examining his own career. Almost every beat has its origin from another film: the friendship between an eccentric older man and his lonely young ward (Rushmore); their bumbling attempts to abscond with a priceless work of art (Bottle Rocket); a winsome story of young love between Zero and Saoirse Ronan's baker (Moonrise Kingdom); and all wrapped in the same melancholic tones that made The Royal Tenenbaums so resonant. There are even key scenes set on a train (The Darjeeling Limited), a Willem Dafoe villain that looks like the live-action version of his stop-motion rat from Fantastic Mr. Fox, and scenes of comic violence that play like the evolution of the pirate attacks in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. All that, plus a supporting cast loaded with familiar faces from the Wes Anderson Players, some of whom only pop up for a minute or two (Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Jeff Goldblum, Tilda Swinton, and Harvey Keitel play relatively central roles, but the efforts from Jason Schwartzman, Wally Wolodarsky, Owen Wilson, Bob Balaban, and – of course – Bill Murray amount to blink-and-you-might-miss-'em cameos). This should come off as too arch for its own good – fit for Anderson super-fans and no one else, maybe – but even as he's doubling back in on himself, Anderson never loses sight of a clear emotional through-line. Despite all the fun and comedy (and on a gag-for-gag basis, The Grand Budapest Hotel might be Anderson's most entertaining movie – it's practically a live-action cartoon), all the fanciful mayhem exists on top of genuine stakes. It isn't an accident that the film unfolds just before World War II, and that foreshadowing of tragedy to come makes Gustave's attempts at preserving some kind of decorum and propriety all the more heroic: he's trying, in his own small way, to push back the tide before it overwhelms everyone. And that's the broken heart behind The Grand Budapest Hotel, and the mission statement for all of Anderson's pictures. Yes, things may look silly, and art-directed to an inch of their lives, and existing on an alternate plane from reality, but given how brutal and scary the real world can be, isn't the fantasy better?
In his Blu-ray review, Svet Atanasov wrote that "I have to state the obvious: This release was created for fans of Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel. It is sourced from the same 2K master that Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment used to produce the first high-definition release of the film in 2014, but offers a diverse mix of old and new bonus features, the majority of which are exclusive. So, if you are one of those fans, these bonus features are what should make the release attractive to you."
Sony is releasing a host of catalog titles that form an unofficial collection: the "Cable TV Classics: 1987 through 1998." I'm not even that big a fan of Just One of the Guys, My Girl, My Girl 2 or Radio Flyer, but these aired so many times - and I watched so much TV - that I absorbed so much of them through osmosis. I suspect a lot of readers may share the same experience. Of the bunch, Just One of the Guys is the least ambitious. Yes, it's a thinly veiled updating of Twelfth Night, but it does so through the prism of '80s teen comedies: fearing that she won't be taken seriously as an aspiring journalist, a teenager (Joyce Hyser) infiltrates the boy's club of news media by pretending to be a guy. The story is dated as hell, and it lards itself up with teen-movie clichés: there's a pivotal scene at Prom, of course, and Hyser has a spunky kid brother (Billy Jacoby) acting as comic relief. Heck, even Billy Zabka shows up to play - you guessed it! - the biggest jerkwad at school. But Hyser is very charming, and if nothing else, the movie has one of the least gratuitous topless shots I've ever seen in a movie of its ilk. By comparison, My Girl has a lot more on its mind - it's screenwriter Laurice Elehwany's semi-autobiographical account of growing up in the 1970s - yet it still coasts along on the same kind of glib, sitcom-adjacent charm that powers Just One of the Guys. That's not necessarily a criticism. This is still a very entertaining sit with a star performance from Anna Chlumsky. She's since reinvented herself as a profane supporting ace on shows like Veep, but she's magnetic here. It's one of the most iconic child performances of the last forty years. Ironically, the film casts her opposite her big child-star rival, Macaulay Culkin, who - without going too deeply into spoilers - is responsible for how scarring My Girl's third act was for many folks my age. Let's just say that Home Alone fans will be (lightly) shocked. That said, whatever darkness My Girl carries can't hold a candle to Richard Donner's Radio Flyer, which might be the single most unsettling children's movie of the '90s. It's all about expectation versus reality. The trailers sold this one as a sweet fantasy about two brothers (Elijah Wood and Joe Mazzello) coming of age and playing with their (possibly magical) Radio Flyer wagon. In actuality, this is friggin' This Boy's Life for preteens. Most of the movie finds Wood and Mazzello trying to disappear into fantasy in order to escape the violent depredations of their alcoholic stepfather (Adam Baldwin). The abuse in this film remains hard to watch; even the Tom Hanks-starring bookends can't soften how frightening Radio Flyer is. Still, I think I prefer that unsettling quality to the bland, underwhelming My Girl 2. Its predecessor didn't have many rough edges but made the most out of the ones it had. This one sands away anything interesting. The worst offender? Replacing Culkin is Last Action Hero's boring Austin O'Brien. Pass.