Thursday, July 15, 2010

Bottle Rocket

Wes Anderson, 1995 (8.4*)

This is a fine debut for director Anderson (Life Aquatic, Rushmore, Royal Tenenbaums, Darjeeling Unlimited), and is also the debut of the Wilson brothers, Owen Wilson and Luke Wilson - in addition, Owen co-wrote this screenplay with Anderson. This quirky comedy pokes fun at all the heist films where small crime gangs are put together to plan and execute the perfect heist. This gang is all buddies going nowhere, and one even tells the leader (Owen) that he can't go do a crime because "my wife won't let me".

This also becomes a road film, as the gang goes 'on the lam' at one point, getting stuck at a desert motel in nowhere USA. In a way, the story is really going nowhere, but like life, most of the experience is gained from the journey, not the outcome. Same here - if you don't expect a lot from this small indie film, you may be more open to its small pleasures. Owen Wilson is appropriately dopey here, Luke is appropriately more romantic and serious, so they make a nice team. There is much argument on the forums at IMDB, if this is Anderson's best. I may side with Fantastic Mr. Fox (review to follow) just because of it's originality, but this is certainly a worthy debut effort, better than most.

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These are the individual film reviews of what I'm considering the best 1000 dvds available, whether they are films, miniseries, or live concerts. Rather than rush out all 1000 at once, I'm doing them over time to allow inclusion of new releases - in fact, 2008 has the most of any year so far, 30 titles in all; that was a very good year for films, one of the best ever.



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