Sunday, March 9, 2008

Our Kinda Kinks


Writer/director Wes Anderson constructs his movies like one of Joseph Cornell’s exquisite dioramas—delicately put together, rife with meaning and vividness, overflowing with symbolism and artistry, yet somehow still extremely inscrutable. I’m an Anderson guy, and although this, The Darjeeling Limited (Fox, 2007, 91 minutes, $29.99), his latest effort just seeing light as a DVD, is a touch uneven, yet it still remains a charming and soulful offering, overflowing with visual bric-a-brac, cinematic artifice, and a baker’s dozen of trademark moments of low key intensity. With in an overlaying tale of familial dysfunction, a couple of Kink songs, Anjelica Huston and Bill Murray, and the nose-bonded actors playing unlikely siblings (Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman) and the film (like all of Anderson’s whimsical efforts) casts a dreamy spell.

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