Wes Anderson
- 2010
Wes Anderson adapts Patrice Leconte's 2006 French feature My Best Friend with this Universal Pictures/Imagine Entertainment co-production. Anderson provides the script, which focuses on a surly antiques dealer who enlists the help of a sweet cab driver to teach him how to make friends in order to win a bet. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide
A wily fox uses his formidable cunning to outsmart three feeble-minded farmers who resort to extreme tactics to protect their chickens in director Wes Anderson's animated adaptation of the popular Roald Dahl children's book. George Clooney supplies the voice for Mr. Fox, with Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, and Jason Schwartzman rounding out the rest of the cast. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- George Clooney, Bill Murray, (more)
Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited stars Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, and Adrien Brody as three brothers who, at the insistence of the oldest, take a train ride through India together in order to strengthen their bond. Even though the vacation goes wrong in ways they do not anticipate, the strangeness of their setting and some revealing honesty produces some surprising changes between them all. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, (more)
Two boys learn the hard way about how a marriage falls apart in this independent comedy drama. Bernard (Jeff Daniels) is a novelist whose career has gone into a slow decline as he spends more time teaching and less time writing. His wife, Joan (Laura Linney), meanwhile, has recently begun publishing her own work to widespread acclaim, which only increases the growing tension between them. One day, Bernard and Joan's two sons -- 16-year-old Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and 12-year-old Frank (Owen Kline) -- are told that their parents are separating, with Bernard renting a house on the other side of their Park Slope, Brooklyn, neighborhood. As the parents set up a schedule for spending time with their children, Walt and Jesse can hardly imagine that things could get more combative between their folks, but they do, as Joan begins dating Ivan (William Baldwin), Frank's tennis instructor, and Bernard starts sharing the house with Lili (Anna Paquin), one of his students. Meanwhile, the two boys begin taking sides in the battle between their parents, with Walt taking after his father and Frank siding with his mom. Based on writer/director Noah Baumbach's own childhood experiences with his parents' divorce, The Squid and the Whale won prizes for writing and direction at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney, (more)
- 2004
- R
- AddThe Life Aquatic With Steve Zissouto QueueAddThe Life Aquatic With Steve Zissouto top of Queue
The first effort from director Wes Anderson since his critically beloved The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou finds the filmmaker re-teaming with a number of familiar faces, including Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Anjelica Huston, and Seymour Cassel. Murray plays Steve Zissou, an eccentric and renowned oceanographer who has decided to seek out and enact mortal revenge on a shark that ate one of the men on his team. Along for the ride is Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson), a young man who has joined Zissou's crew after showing up claiming to be the seaman's long-lost son and Zissou's co-producer (and estranged wife), Eleanor Angelica Huston. As the expedition ensues, the two bond and Plimpton falls for a female journalist (Cate Blanchett) who is writing a piece on Zissou. The crew meets a host of obstacles on their journey, including pirates, kidnapping, and bankruptcy. Adding a flair of whimsy to the film's aesthetic, the sea creatures and underwater scenes in the film have been created using stop-motion animation under the direction of Henry Selick, the man behind The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach. The ensemble cast also includes Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Michael Gambon, Noah Taylor, and Bud Cort. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, (more)
Director Wes Anderson and his longtime friend and writing partner Owen Wilson follow up Bottle Rocket (1996) and Rushmore (1998) with this similarly offbeat comedy about a dysfunctional family reunion. Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) was a successful attorney who had three children with his wife Etheline (Anjelica Huston), an archaeologist. Each of the Tenenbaum kids was a precocious genius: Chas (Ben Stiller) made a killing as a child investor. Richie (Luke Wilson) was a junior tennis champ and three-time U.S. Nationals winner. The adopted Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) was a playwright who won a 50,000-dollar Braverman Grant in the ninth grade. When Royal abruptly left his family, however, it was the beginning of two decades of betrayal and failure that would scar the Tenenbaums for life. Their past resentments are bitterly held against Royal when he suddenly reappears, claiming to have six weeks to live and a desire to reconnect with his family. Typically, Royal's story is a sham, but his presence and sincere desire for absolution soon have a profound effect on the Tenenbaums, who are each dealing with thwarted desires and relationships. Among them are Richie's lifelong love for Margot, who's unhappily married to Raleigh St.Clair (Bill Murray) and Etheline's eccentric engagement to Henry Sherman (Danny Glover), who wishes to marry her. The Royal Tenenbaums also co-stars Owen Wilson and features narration provided by Alec Baldwin. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, (more)
After the highly acclaimed independent film Bottle Rocket, director Wes Anderson followed up with a quirky Touchstone Studios film entitled Rushmore. Written by Anderson and friend Owen Wilson (an actor in Armageddon and Anaconda), they created the story of Max Fischer, a highly eccentric 15-year-old boy who attends the tenth grade at Rushmore Academy. Played by Jason Schwartzman (Talia Shire's son and Francis Ford Coppola's nephew), Max is a poor student with big dreams and a love of extracurricular activities. Max is editor of the school newspaper and yearbook, president of the chess, astronomy, French, and German clubs, captain of the fencing team, and director of the school play. Max is also a compulsive liar, telling everyone that his barber father (Seymour Cassel) is really a brain surgeon. Suddenly Max falls in love with Miss Cross (Olivia Williams), a first-grade teacher at the school. He also makes a new friend in business tycoon Mr. Blume (Bill Murray), an eccentric millionaire who also loves Miss Cross. The love triangle heats up as Max refuses to believe that his age has anything to do with Miss Cross refusing his romantic advances. Also Max's scheme to erect an aquarium on the school baseball diamond gets him booted out of Rushmore Academy. As his life crumbles around him, he is forced to grow up and accept the consequences of his actions and his lies. He throws himself more into his extracurricular activities, hoping to redeem himself by staging the most ambitious school play ever attempted. ~ Arthur Borman, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, (more)
A bright, optimistic caper comedy from first-time director Wes Anderson, Bottle Rocket focuses on a group of young Texans aspiring to become master thieves. Their leader is Dignan (Owen C. Wilson, who also co-wrote the screenplay), an upbeat if naive charmer who convinces his friends Anthony (Wilson's brother Luke Wilson) and Bob Mapplethorpe (Robert Musgrave) to enter the crime business. After their first heist, a bizarrely-executed robbery of a local bookstore, the trio goes on the lam, taking up residence in a border hotel where Anthony falls in love with a maid played by Lumi Cavazos. When the three buddies decide that they need to return to the real world, they hook up with a master con-man (James Caan) who sends them on a daring -- if ill-concieved -- mission. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, (more)
