Oh Old Baggage...

Hotel Chevalier(dir. Wes Anderson)[3rd rewatch]
It was a surprise to find this attached to Darjeeling. On this viewing, I ended up liking the use of slow-motion near the end more. Natalie Portman leaning on the dresser or whatever still doesn't make sense to me other than to allow the audience to ogle her ass in slow-mo. The dialogue still doesn't feel right to me. I still consider it his weakest work, but it's still good.
*** out of ****

The Darjeeling Limited(dir. Wes Anderson)
I understand the backlash lately towards Wes Anderson and this movie to an extent, but if you're a fan of the director as I am, you'll quickly realize that he hasn't lost his touch quite yet. He's actually quite experimental in a playful way in this with the beginning bit with Bill Murray that will surely frustrate fans of Bill that didn't know that his presence would amount to about 3 minutes of screen time and his use of zooms. This and The Life Aquatic show that Owen Wilson was most likely the genius behind the previous scripts, but the material for this film isn't too bad. The humor started to grow stale as the film went along since aside from it's bits with cough medicine and painkillers, it was fairly lame and unfunny, but then all of a sudden the funniest line in any of his films occurs("Look at these assholes.") quickly followed by one of his most tragic scenes, which is subsequently followed by a sequence marked by an almost sacred tranquility that Owen Wilson's character, Francis, would yearn for. This is when the film hits it's peak and what might be Anderson's artistic peak as well. The film slowly starts to decline after that. It doesn't quite hit the low that preceded it, but it's still a noticeable drop in quality. The end's overly literal use of getting rid of old baggage is slightly on the dumb side. As the narrative concludes, you'll be surprised at how anticlimactic the ending is given that was one of his strongest departments in his previous films. It's probably his weakest feature-length effort, but it's hard not to recommend it. It did, indeed, need more Bill Murray, though.
*** out of ****