Thursday 10 December 2015

Thursday Movie Picks: Movies Set in a Hotel




Don't forget to check out what Wandering Through the Shelves picked, the blog that started Thursday Movie Picks. 

The Grand Budapest Hotel
The most successful and most popular of Wes Anderson's films, which is a bigger scale than his previous films to Fantastic Mr Fox. Anderson's films are full of quirk and delight but the amazing attention to detail and the how each character is well sculpted, even the smallest of roles, are what make his films amazing. I expect this film to appear on other lists, its just so brilliant. With obvious imfluences from older movies and European films too, a collections characters are brought together in one way or another to the named famed hotel. Gustave H. concierge of the hotel along with his junior lobby boy, Zero, become embroiled in a murder plot, a will and a missing painting. It's just pure brilliance.

What's Up Doc?
This film is has one of the best car chases and it happens to be in San Francisco so you can imagine the landscape. The whole film starts with 4 indentical bags, which causes confusion and mayhem with a little help from Judy (Barbara Streisand) who is taken with music researcher, Howard (Ryan O'Neal). Each person owning a bag is staying the hotel for different reasons. One is involved in a jewellr theft, the other is involved with spies and the other two belong to Judy and Howard. I couldn't stop laughing when I saw it and every time since.

A Night in Casablanca
One of the later Marx Brothers' films, not as brilliant as 'Day at the Races' or my favourite 'A Night at the Opera' but it has some funny moments, a scene involving a cupboard is great as well as most of Groucho's lines. Set in a hotel in, yes, Casablanca, where a Nazi criminal who keep murdering the hotel managers to get to the gold hidden within the hotel. Groucho plays the next the manager who is unaware of the murders. Chico owns the Yellow Camel Company, a taxi service with camels, and Harpo is ever silent buddy, they all team together to get to the bottom of the murders.