the life aquatic …
…with Steve Zissou
Hey, remember when I said I was going to start doing movie reviews in here? Yeah, finally.
I’ve actually got a list of, oh, FIFTEEN. We just watched this last night so it seems like a good place to, ummm, start. Or hey, I’ll just do this one and wait a few more months and have a list of eighty five!
So, anyhow, I give The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou an “A”. I really liked it. It was just exactly my kind of movie – odd, funny, rambling, and strangely filmed. It was very reminiscent of The Royal Tenenbaums, with its peculiar characters and tangled-up relationships and general offbeat air, which makes sense as Wes Anderson did both movies. (I keep wanting to call Wes Anderson Wes Craven, but happily they are not at all the same person.) So if you weren’t a big fan of The Royal Tenenbaums, you might want to skip this.
It’s about a oceanographer and documentary filmmaker (Bill Murray) whose most recent documentary featured his best friend being eaten by something that may have been a rare jaguar shark. His popularity has been plummeting even before this, and a rival researcher who is his nemesis (Jeff Goldblum) keeps getting all the grant money. So he sets off to make another documentary about getting finding and getting revenge on the shark. Owen Wilson shows up as his (maybe) long lost son, Angelica Houston is his bitter wife (and Jeff Goldblum’s ex-wife), Willem Dafoe is a peculiar German crewmember, Cate Blanchett is a pregnant journalist who comes along to write a cover story on him.
There is also all sorts of cool surreal sealife, a rustbucket ship that inside is like a luxury spa (lots of fun cut-away shots going from room to room to room to room), a guy who spends most of the movie playing the guitar and singing David Bowie songs in Portuguese, and an attack by Filipino pirates who make off with the guy who is supposed to keep an eye on their finances.
It’s that kind of movie. I’d watch it again right now.
Sounds like a good one … I will be on the lookout for it.
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We recently just watched…The Pacifier (not too bad, predictable but cute) Lemony Snicket, a Series of Unfortunate Events (this one depressed me, and it shouldn’t have) the Spongebob Squarepants movie (so ok, I’m a big kid, besides I like spongebob!) and Van Helsing (I think I liked it better than the critics did, but then I like that sort of movie too) Can you tell I had kids picking out movies
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Wow! I didn’t get this from the previews. Thanks. I was so surprised to see Bill Murray in Charlie’s Angels! The edited scene where he is alone in his cell seems almost as if it belonged in another movie.
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we saw it. It was really odd. I couldn’t tell if I liked it. Probably I need to see it again. It had the flavor of the amazing Tannibaums
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i enjoyed the Royal Tannenbaums..seen it a few times, so i will be on the look-out for this one. saw the baby…soooo much hair, really cute. i only have a picture of her in my e mail, and darn if i can post it for all to see on here.
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I loved The Royal Tenebaums, so I’ll have to check this out. I saw that Henry Darger doc the other day on POV, the one you wrote about. I’d seen exhibits of his work before, but it was so interesting to me from a psychological point of view why he had penises on the little girls. I loved learning about his desolate childhood; no wonder he lived in a world of his own!
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Sounds like my kind of film!
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