The Grand Budapest Hotel

{4.5/5} “Did he just throw my cat out the window?”

An author visits the Grand Budapest Hotel in 1968 and stumbles upon Moustafa, the owner of the hotel. Moustafa proceeds to tell him the story of how he became the owner. It starts in 1932 when he became the lobby boy, taken under the wing of the legendary concierge Monsieur Gustave. Gustave had many lady friends who stayed at the hotel. When one of them died and left him a priceless painting in her will, he discovered that the woman had been murdered — and he was under arrest.

The Grand Budapest Hotel was released in 2014.

The hotel is located in a fictional Eastern European state — and the movie was filmed in Germany.

Like other Wes Anderson movies, it’s very funny.

It’s about life at a grand hotel and (years later) a not-so-grand one. It’s about what happens when one is falsely imprisoned, and what happens when war comes to one’s country.

The playful music is by Alexandre Desplat (Moonrise Kingdom).

Ralph Fiennes (Skyfall) plays Gustave and F. Murray Abraham (Star Trek: Insurrection) plays Moustafa.

Willem Dafoe (Spider-Man) plays Ivan and Jeff Goldblum (Jurassic Park) plays Deputy Kovacs. Saoirse Ronan (How I Live Now) plays Agatha and Jude Law (Side Effects) plays the author. Several other well-known actors have small parts.

The movie was directed by Wes Anderson (Bottle Rocket). I’ve now seen all of Anderson’s movies — he’s one of my favourite directors.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 21st, 2014 at 9:05 pm and is filed under Reviews of movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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