Bill Murray

The Jungle Book

Director: Jon Favreau (2016)

I’m the world’s foremost fan of Disney’s 1967 animated classic, so I had my claws out ready to savage this glossy remake.

But I was disarmed from my first footstep into this spectacular jungle, a terrifically realised mix of live action and state of the art CGI.

The astonishingly lifelike landscape are computer generated by the team who made sci-fi epic Avatar (2009). The animals are from The Lord Of The Rings (2001) WETA Workshop.

Next year’s Visual FX Oscar must surely be in the bag.

This warm hearted, fleet footed, big budget beast is a hybrid spliced from Rudyard Kipling’s novels, Uncle Walt’s original film and his company’s latter day smash The Lion King (1994).

It’s an exciting, funny and touching adventure, though perhaps too scary for the very little ones. Likeable characters are killed, though we never see the blood.

A confident and charming Neel Sethi plays resourceful man cub Mowgli, the only actor on screen.

Mowgli bravely chooses to leave his home and save his family from Shere Khan the tiger.

Idris Elba is tremendous as the clever and vicious villain. He’s blind in one eye and myopic in his pursuit of his prey.

Mowgli sets off to the man village accompanied by Bagheera the panther and Baloo the Bear.

Respectively played by Ben Kingsley and Bill Murray, the pair are enjoyably wise, brave and comic.

En route they encounter angry elephants, seductive snakes, stinging bees and aggressive monkeys.

As a representative of a now endangered species, from a 21st century perspective Shere Kahn almost qualifies as the good guy.

He’s a prophet of doom whose violent fate proves the accuracy of his apocalyptic predictions concerning the dangers to the jungle from the unfettered technology of man.

The script can’t bring itself to embrace the scar faced usurper despite being more far-seeing and independent minded to the allegiance pledging wolf pack. To a British ear the wolves behaviour is eerily fascistic.

Apocalypse is hinted at again in the Brando-esque introduction of the enormous King Louie, not an Orang utan but an outsized outspan Gigantopithecus. He commands an army from the ruins of a long dead civilisation.

Christopher Walken is an inspired and deranged casting choice and delivers a performance to match.

Scarlett Johansson and Lupita Nyong’o have small roles with the former’s husk put to effective use.

When Mowgli learns of the death of a loved one, he decides to return and confront his mortal enemy.

The soundtrack includes the fabulous songs The Bare Necessities and I Wan’na Be like You.

So follow the jungle drums down to the cinema for a swinging good time.

★★★★☆

 

 

 

 

 

Rock The Kasbah

Director: Barry Levinson (2016)

A TV singing contestant tries to win hearts and minds in this confused and incompetent comedy.

It seems to have been began as a satire on American military abroad, retooled as a feel good celebration of the rise of Afghani feminism and sold as a wacky Bill Murray adventure.

Director Levinson has form with this sort of material. He directed Robin Williams’ energetic and mawkish turn as a wartime DJ in Good Morning Vietnam (1987). He’s also helmed the great satire Wag The Dog (1997).

Rock The Kasbah isn’t laugh out funny but amiable, well intentioned and has some enjoyable performances.

Murray stars as untrustworthy has-been rock manager Richie Lanz.

Offering flashes of his signature cynical charm,  the former Ghostbusters star is always watchable, even if a patchy script relies too heavily on his ad libbing.

Israeli actress Leem Lubany does as well as anyone could in the central if limited role of  Salima, a young singer risking dishonour and death by challenging the traditional role of women in a male dominated society.

Kate Hudson brings a sexy savvy to the thankless role of hooker turned business partner and lover of Richie.

And Danny McBride and Scott Caan are a likeable double act as black market munitions salesmen.

Playing a mercenary called Bombay  Brian, Bruce Willis seems to be there just to play with guns and seems to have wandered in from another movie.

Desperate to pay the bills, Richie takes his only client Ronnie – played by a Zooey Deschanel – on a tour of Afghanistan.

Suffering pre-gig nerves, Ronnie abandons Richie in Kabul, taking his passport and money with her.

While selling ammunition to friendly penniless tribesmen in a bid to raise the cash to get home, Richie  he discovers the beautiful Salima singing in a cave.

Richie signs her up and enters her into Afghanistan’s version of American Idol.

Rock The Kasbah is so clumsily constructed even its title is geographically inaccurate. And disappointingly the anthemic Clash song from which it presumably takes its name is never played.

★★☆☆☆

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Director: Wes Anderson (2014)

Let Ralph Fiennes lead you through the lobby for a romp around the rooms of this funny and sweet comic caper.

With typically deft and deliberate sweeps of his camera, director Anderson sculpts a sweet trifle and by virtue of keeping the screen-time of his regular actors Bill Murray and Owen Wilson to an absolute minimum, he’s created his best and funniest confection yet.

In the fictional middle-European country of Zubrowka, The Writer (Jude Law) is staying in the once opulent but now rundown hotel where he meets the aged Zero Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham).

The Writer is regaled with the tale of how as young man, Zero came under the tutelage of the now legendary hotelier Gustave H (Fiennes) and so eventually became the owner of the establishment.

Known more for his intensity of his dramatic performances, uber-thesp Fiennes shows his flair for comic charm as Gustave H – a velvet-tongued concierge and romantic adventurer with a fondness for seducing the blonde, rich, vulnerable old ladies who frequented his hotel.

We see Gustave parade through the lobby issuing a multitude of instruction, insistent on respecting the correct manner in which everything must be done. Perpetually purple-clad and poetry quoting, even his perfume is called Panache.

Young Zero is played by Tony Revolori, he and Fiennes make an unlikely but lovely double act with Gustave showering his protege with advice, not least concerning the pastry girl (an excellent Saoirse Ronan) Zero has fallen is love with.

Gustave is bequeathed a very valuable painting, Boy with Apple by Madame D (Tilda Swinton). Her family whom hoped to inherit it are outraged.

Doors are opened, windows peered through and corridors ran down as Gustave and Zero are pursued by a villainous leather-clad investigator J.G. Jopling (Willem Dafoe).

What follows is unexpected violence, an alpine chase, punch ups, murders, an interrupted game of cards, a secret society of concierges and a most unfortunate cat.

Like the hotel of the title this immaculate pink and white wedding cake of a creation is textured, rich and slightly nutty – though it may be something of an acquired taste.

 ★★★★☆