The Somerville News Blog

I Heart Huckabees – really?

by A. Beatty McDonald

David O Russell’s “I Heart Huckabees” isn’t much of a movie.  It is more a meandering monologue disguised as discourse between a group of misfits trying to gain insight into the true nature of things. 

Celluville: Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

by A. Beatty McDonald

Wes Anderson’s latest film, “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,” continues Anderson’s frenetic style and exploration of redemption, maturation, and aging. 

            The film opens at a screening of Zissou’s latest documentary, “Adventure Number 12.  ‘The Jaguar Shark’ (Part One)”.  Steve Zissou, an obvious Cousteau knock-off underplayed beautifully by Bill Murray, is an oceanographer in a rut.  He has been veering off course for a decade and losing his loved ones on the way.  Anderson’s narrative trick is subtle; the documentary is shown to the crowd and introduces the film’s main characters and the crew of Zissou’s boat, The Belafonte;  there is Eleanor (Anjelica Huston), Zissou’s wife and sextant in business,  Klaus Daimler (Willem Dafoe), the starved-for-Steve’s-attention engineer,  Pele des Santos (Seu Jorge), the ship’s safety expert and film’s minstrel whose renditions of David Bowie’s songs in Portuguese serve as beautiful segues, and Esteban du Plantier (Seymour Cassel), Zissou’s partner and best friend whose death by the jaguar shark brings the documentary to an end.