Bill Murray takes Kabul by storm as a loser music agent

The latest Bill Murray vehicle is directed by Barry Levinson, the Baltimore director of offbeat dramedies like Diner, Good Morning Vietnam, Rain Man, The Natural, Wag the Dog, and now Rock the Kasbah.

A lot like Jon Hamm in Million Dollar Arm (which was OK, but which I failed to review here) going to another country to find a superstar baseball player, Murray goes to Afghanistan as a music agent who finds an amazing singer in a land where singing as a woman can end very badly. Being a Bill-Murray-style wisecracker isn't such a great idea either, but he talks his female singer's way onto the country's version of American Idol. Based on a true story, she becomes the first woman ever on the show and sings English, versions of Cat Stevens's "Wild World" and "Peace Train" that, respectively, stun and captivate the country.

Bruce Willis, Kate Hudson, Zooey Deschanel, and Danny McBride have supporting roles but really don't leave much of an impression. It's Murray who remains captivating throughout, even if he isn't always working with the best material.

And while he's always highly watchable, there are also a smattering of hilarious moments, like when a soldier walks into a room to find Murray tied up wearing a diaper and says, "I ain't never seen anything like this. Murray responds, "Well, it's wartime son." Or when he sings Blind Faith's "Can't Find My Way Home" in the shower, or "Smoke on the Water" in front of unimpressed locals. Or his conversations with his disco-loving, Madonna-obsessed Kabul cab driver.

The critics didn't like Rock the Kasbah, but for anyone who loves Bill Murray like I do, there's really no reason to skip this perfectly enjoyable minor tale.

***1/2 out of ***** stars

Clearance Sale: A Raft of Movies (Plus a Book) From the Past Few Months Gets Reviewed Here

I've seen a hodgepodge of movies lately. I'm not sure that any of them warrant their own blog posts at the moment so this compilation to help me remember what I've seen lately will have to do.

And as a side note, a book I recently skimmed was Arcadia by Lauren Groff. I was excited by this one because of all the praise it received, and I'm a sucker for anything about cults (see my articles on The Polyphonic Spree, the movie Martha Marcy May Marlene,  the Children of God-inspired band Girls, Charles Manson, and more. But this was flowery prose that had me bored 20 pages in, at which point I decided to read the starts and ends of chapters and a summary online. It's about a kid named Bit who is born into a cult at a place called Arcadia, which holds its members together in the beginning by some sort of vegan concept. Along the way, Bit grows to like the place less and less and it ends with technology and burnouts taking the place over. Criticize me for not deeply absorbing this whole book, but life is too short.
1.5 out of 5 stars.

Now transitioning to the movies but keeping in line with the blandness of Arcadia, Blended was the worst of the batch. The Wedding Singer was a true comedy classic and possibly Adam Sandler's best movie. He and Drew Barrymore killed it with chemistry. And they teamed up on 50 First Dates to nearly equal effect. But this mess of bad African stereotypes is so bad that I couldn't take my eyes off it. Like a nightmare Brady Bunch, it takes forever for the two stars to fall in love. Most jokes fall flat, but all the kids and the occasional moment that lands save this from being one of the worst movies of all time. It's so dumb, and it seems like a product of the Radical Right in that it's potty-talk free and kind of racist, but you know what, I ended up guiltily liking it.
2.5 out of 5 stars

J. Edgar
It's hard to go wrong with a fictional biopic in which the lead character is played by Leonardo DiCaprio. The focus on this one is mostly about his closet homosexuality that mostly expresses itself in asexuality.
3 out of 5 stars

Bill Murray's HBO Christmas Special
This hour-long special highlights Murray's most endearing traits, basically expanding his SNL lounge singer, laid-back, and kinda drunk-seeming guy. Highlights include a duet with Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley, George Clooney popping out here and there from behind Christmas trees, Phoenix's catchy Beach Boys cover, and of course Paul Schaeffer's piano playing throughout.
3 out of 5 stars

John Dent
I'm not a big action-adventure guy, but I like Keanu Reeves a lot and this is a pretty perfect role for him, as a tortured assassin.
3 out of 5 stars

Deliverance
Burt Reynolds' brightest moment. And one of the best films ever (in fact, #15 on my list).
5 out of 5 stars

Happy Valley
This story about Jerry Sandusky and the corrupt Penn State football program is almost too sadly pathetic to truly recommend, but this story is told really well.
3.5 out of 5 stars

The Big Lebowsky
Some movies you just have to see again and again to like more each time (#13 on my all-time best list).
5 out of 5 stars

Glen Campbell - I'll Be Me
In the moments when it's not looking a little to uncomfortably like a reality TV family story or a little bit too much of an advertisement for fixing Alzheimer's, CNN's Glen Campbell documentary is good, down-home entertainment. And Campbell himself is such a great guy. His music, further, just makes any time spent at all with the country legend a joy.
4 out of 5 stars

Rapture, Blister, Burn is the Most Fun I've Had With Feminism

To those who have seen the Roundhouse Theater in Bethesda's current production of Rapture, Blister, Burn, it should be no surprise that writer Gina Gionfriddo has written TV episodes of House of Cards, Cold Case, and Law & Order.

This is one of the snappiest plays around, featuring exceptional comic timing from all five actors, who deliver the most fun I've ever had with feminism.

The play, which ends this weekend, offers a compellingly told crash course in feminism, mainly featuring Betty Friedan and Phyllis Schlafly. Michelle Six's Catherine has returned from her feminist-studies book-speaking circuit to visit college pals Gwen (Beth Hylton) and Don (Tim Getman), whose marriage has grown unexciting.

At first, it seems Don, played by Getman with a mix of Homer Simpson and Bill Murray, will surely have an affair with babysitter Avery (Maggie Erwin), but that is not who he has an affair with at all. He gets tossed between his wife and Catherine like a rag doll. This is a nice touch, putting the lone man in the downtrodden and abused position previously and traditionally held by women.

Sticking around, Catherine offers a class that is only attended by Gwen and Avery. Because of the low turn-out, she decides to hold it at the home of her mother (Helen Hedman), who provides the martinis to juice up the hilarious inter-generational conversations relating horror movies, porn, internet dating, and much more to feminism.

By the end, the older generation is "hooking up" and the younger generation is longing for a balanced career and family life.

This is a brilliant play, and playwrights would be wise to follow Gionfriddo's style of mixing well-told historical background with deeply explored and empathic fictional characters.

***** out of ***** stars

Advice: Check In to The Grand Budapest Hotel

In 2012, I ranked my favorite 6 Wes Anderson-directed movies, and it presented an argument for the quirkmeister being one of the world's very finest.

Rushmore, Moonrise Kingdom, The Royal Tennenbaums, Bottle Rocket, and The Darjeeling Limited, in that order.

Now, along comes The Grand Budapest Hotel, which is deserving of its Academy nomination for best movie, but that may only be because the out-of-touch Academy voters have been so woefully behind on recognizing him. Fantastic Mr. Fox and Moonrise Kingdom, his last two, were nominated for best animated film and best screenplay respectively. But there was nothing before that.

The Grand Budapest Hotel falls in at #6 for me, not quite as good as Darjeeling, but quite a bit better than his arguable misstep The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

The cinematography alone makes it worth watching. Shot on locating entirely in Germany, there are also model-scale shots of the hotel, which add to many frames looking like great art pieces.

Jude Law plays a young author who stumbles into an interview of the elderly owner of the hotel, played by F. Murray Abraham. The movie is mostly a flashback to when the owner, named Zero, was just beginning a job as the "lobby boy" at the hotel. He is taken under the wing of Monsieur Gustave, who is played with brilliant nastiness, pompousness, and a desire for very old women by Ralph Fiennes (certainly among his finest moments, which is saying a lot).

When a royal old woman, played by Tilda Swinton, leaves Gustave a valuable painting named "Boy with Apple" in her will, her son (Adrien Brody) is enraged, setting off a Keystone Cops-like chase. Gustave and Zero get arrested and are sent to prison, where they plan an escape with Harvey Keitel, but then must avoid Adrien Brody's hitman, played by Willem Dafoe, which they do with a little help from a mafia of hotel owners seemingly led by Bill Murray.

Gustave and Zero make it through these adventures, and the movie then reveals how they came to their eventual demises, with the benefit that Jude Law's story of the wild history of this hotel's employees does indeed live on.

**** out of ***** stars

Top 6 Wes Anderson Movies

Writer and director Wes Anderson is only a year older than me and he's already created seven films. So maybe I haven't accomplished as much, but at least I've seen six of those seven movies.

I just watched Moonrise Kingdom. It's about a young "khaki scout" and a supposedly troubled girl who fall in love amidst their shared passion for adventure. Those adventures repeatedly take them away from their families, who are constantly trying to get them back. The movie only slightly drags during the ending chase scene, but is otherwise pretty flawless and very funny.

The girl's parents are lacking-in-passion lawyers (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand). His scout master is Edward Norton and the policeman on the runaway case is Bruce Willis.

Needless to say, all these adults turn in hilarious and classic performances. The two kids (breakout stars Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward) are mesmerizing and every bit the oddballs that Max Fischer was in Anderson's finest film, Rushmore. Jason Schwartzman, who played Fischer, is also excellent as an oddball scout leader who has the power to unlawfully marry the two runaway lead characters in Moonrise Kingdom.

This movie receives ****1/2 out of ***** stars and places itself in a dead tie with The Royal Tenenbaums for the director's second-best movie.

1. Rushmore
2. Moonrise Kingdom (tie)
2. The Royal Tenenbaums (tie)
4. Bottle Rocket
5. The Darjeeling Limited
6. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

And I still need to see Fantastic Mr. Fox. It will truly need to be fantastic to break into those top four movies, some of the best ever.

Do you agree with this ranking?