Jurassic Park

On paper, this should not be my kind of film. It falls into the adventure category, it was made for the masses, it features dinosaurs and it is from the 1990's (read: dated, but not in a cool 1970's way). Yes, it took me until today to watch it...because I wasn't really interested before. But this is one of those films that everybody has to see at some point, I guess.

And...

It is awesome!

This seriously kept me on the edge of my seat and had me watch with open mouth, especially during the very first dinosaur attack, when the car with the kids inside gets pushed around.

Now, as this is a Steven Spielberg film, it is of course obvious that all the characters we care about will make it out alive. Even that knowledge that not let me become ambivalent about what I was watching. It is just exciting the entire time. I guess that is all one can ask from an adventure blockbuster.

With a big name director come some big name actors. Sam Neill (who was huge at the time), Jeff Goldblum (always a good choice), Laura Dern, the late Richard Attenborough and a chain smoking Samuel L. Jackson.

Why, oh why did I wait so long to watch this?

9/10

Death Wish

After his wife and daughter get attacked in his New York apartment, which leaves his wife dead and his daughter in a catatonic state, Paul Kersey takes it upon himself to rid the city of muggers. In general. He does not try to find the trio of bad guys that actually mugged, hurt and killed his own family. In fact, we never find out whatever happens to them, nor do they ever by accident run into him during their daily muggings and get offed as a consequence. For all we know, they get away with it.

Kersey becomes a fast hero in the crime infested city and gets named the vigilante. The police are slowly edging in on him, but not only do people that get to see his face not want to identify him (on accounts of him saving them), the police commissioner himself is not to keen on catching him. Since he went on his crime fighting spree, muggings have gone way down. The main investigator, who by this time has figured out that Kersey is the man he is looking for, is instructed to 'scare him off'. He isn't supposed to actually catch him but simply make him stop doing what he is doing.

When his reckless going after bad guys, that appear to only ever arm themselves with knife and therefore stand no chance against the vigilante's gun, catches up with him on a much more personal level - he chances upon the one bad guy that actually has a gun - and leaves him in the hospital, injured, the investigating officer visits him and suggest he get out of New York. Permanently.

Kersey heads this advice and moves to....Chicago! Sure, no crimes happening there at all.

Charles Bronson is as wooden as can be, with barely a move of a face muscle. But this is what one expects from the guy, I guess. Along the film, some familiar faces pop up in very, very small roles - Jeff Goldblum (in his first ever feature film as Freak #1, one of the original assailants), Olympia Dukakis (an unnamed cop working the precinct responsible for the case), and Christopher Guest (as a young police officer, who comes upon the scene of the last shooting that leaves Kersey injured).

4/10

The Grand Budapest Hotel

I wholeheartedly embrace Wes Anderson's weirdness in films. If you don't appreciate the garishness of the colors and the awkwardness of dialogue you will not like this film.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is only the backdrop to a story of false accusations of murder, jail break and a strong bond between concierges of world-renowned hotels across Europe. When an elderly woman (played impeccably by the wonderful and wonderfully weird Tilda Swinton) dies and leaves the priced painting Boy with Apple (which depicts, yes, a boy holding an apple) to M. Gustave, concierge to the Grand Budapest, her family frames him for her murder. With help from a whole array of weird characters, Gustave escapes from prison and is proven innocent.

It is colorful. It is ridiculous. It is awesome.

And everyone is in it. Everyone. Ralph Fiennes, the aforementioned Tilda Swinton, Adrian Brody (sporting a fantastic hairdo), F. Murray Abraham, Mathieu Amalric, Jude Law, Harvey Keitel, Jeff Goldblum, Saoirse Ronan, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Willem Dafoe, Tom Wilkinson, Owen Wilson, Karl Markovics. Also, several cameos.

Then, of course, there is the utterly unknown Tony Revolori, as Gustave's constant companion and protege, who more than holds his own around the onslaught of brilliant actors.

The story may be contrived, complicated and told in fitful, hurried, overloaded dialogue, but this is everything we have come to expect (and love) from Wes Anderson, who has always stuck to his guns. Finally, people seem to get it on a much, much bigger scale.

8/10