Movie a Day Blog is a latecomer to the Wes Anderson fanatics’ club. While I enjoyed BOTTLE ROCKET (1996), his debut feature, I was not a particular fan of THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (2001) or THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISOU (2004) -- Anderson’s sensibility was a bit too twee for me, preciousness valued for its own sake rather than dramatic or comedic impact.

    But ever since THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX (2009) and MOONRISE KINGDOM (2012), in my mind Anderson is on a roll, becoming one of the best writer-directors working who can bring his sensibility intact to the big screen without compromising his artistic goals. Anderson’s hot streak continues with THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL (2014), perhaps his most ambitious story in setting and scope.

    The film, which doesn’t really have a classic narrative plot, is more of an adventure story for the ultimate hotel concierge, played with relish by Ralph Fiennes, and his protege, a largely silent and unsmiling Zero the Lobby Boy played by Tony Revolori. They are ostensibly on a search for another legendary concierge, played by Mathieu Almaric, between World War I and II, with all the European social upheavals demonstrated by the rapid aging of a legendary hotel in Anderson’s made-up country of Zubrovka.

    There are countless small jokes, puns, visual humor and celebrity casting that make GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL one of Anderson’s most personable viewing experiences, and it’s great fun spotting Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Edward Norton, Saorise Rowan and an almost unrecognizable Tilda Swinton in a plethora of cameos of various shapes and sizes.

    What propels a Wes Anderson movie forward is this accumulation of period detail, character tics and traits, a sense of visual wonderment and top-notch production values that make the worlds he creates so inviting and participatory.

    If you’re looking for a plot with international intrigue, or a character study that lets us really understand our protagonists’ actions, you have wandered into the wrong movie theater. THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL is really another Anderson tribute to the magic of moviemaking, a tradition that goes directly back to French magician-turned-director Georges Melies, in creating an entire universe that is uniquely its own.

    Anderson will never make a film like any other director because he’s incapable of doing so. His aesthetic is both his rationale and his limitation, but I’ll take a Wes Anderson jaunt like GRAND BUDAPEST before any number of Marvel comic hero movies. One genre is about imagination and the other is just excess.