edward norton

REVIEW: Isle of Dogs

/ Chris Luckett / Leave a comment

Image: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Chris Luckett

There are three cinematic masters in today’s reigning generation of directors, who each rarely ever fail to produce masterpiece after masterpiece. Along with Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan, Wes Anderson is one of those elite few who seem to just churn out brilliance without having to even try.

When the idiosyncratic director of Rushmore tackled stop-motion animation with 2009’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, he found his truest calling. In the wake of his Oscar-nominated Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson has now returned to the same arena of animation and it’s a masterpiece even when stacked against his best.

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CORE STORY: Warner Bros. finally reveals the mystery behind Collateral Beauty

/ Chris Luckett / Leave a comment
Photo: Getty Images

Photo: Getty Images

Chris Luckett

Ever since Collateral Beauty was announced last year, it’s plot has been kept under tight wraps.

A month ago, star Will Smith told Entertainment Weekly, “It was one of those [times] where you get a screenplay and you are in by page 10.” Beyond that, though, he wouldn’t go into details about the plot, which he said would “be tough to promote.”

This morning, Warner Bros. released the first trailer for Collateral Beauty, finally spilling the beans on the central mystery of the hopeful holiday movie.

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REVIEW: Sausage Party

/ Chris Luckett / Leave a comment
Image: Columbia Pictures

Image: Columbia Pictures

Chris Luckett

There hasn’t been as obscenely ribald an animated comedy as Sausage Party to hit theatres since South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, which is fitting. As South Park’s creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have demonstrated first hand for nearly two decades, the easiest way to get people to accept subversive intelligence and bold truths is to bury them under obscenities, innuendoes, and fart jokes.

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REVIEW: The Grand Budapest Hotel

/ Chris Luckett
Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Chris Luckett

Wes Anderson is the most visually distinctive film director since Stanley Kubrick. Other than his first film, the six that followed — Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Moonrise Kingdom — all looked similarly idiosyncratic to the point of being immediately identifiable, even just by a still frame, as “Andersonian.” His eighth feature, The Grand Budapest Hotel, is at once a typical Wes Anderson movie and also something much more.

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