The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

I fell off the Wes Anderson Wagon years back. I loathed “Moonrise Kingdom,” having OD’d on his hipster bullshit. Now comes “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” and I’m back on board. Maybe because this WWII-ish (that is, everything here is fictional and with faux names) flick is pure caper, a 1940s-type adventure that plays like Tin-Tin for adults, but with a sharp political edge on violence and the act of needing a passport to travel our great world. But it never preaches. It’s a raunchy, clever comedy. Ralph Fiennes (seriously funny and edgy) is Gustave, the manager of the hotel of the title who obsesses every whim of his rich guests and happily screws old ladies. When one (Tilda Swinton in makeup) croaks, Gustave gets the blame. I won’t dish another word. Watch the story jump three hoops via flashbacks and rocket forward, with the required Bill Murray cameo, Willem Dafoe as a scar-faced killer, and a prison break better than the “Shawshank Redemption.” Anderson thankfully is no longer out to impress us with just how far out he can make a French movie reference, but is having pure, high fun. And it works. A-

The Innkeepers (2011)

“The Innkeepers” harkens back to old-school horror, the slow, slow, slow drop into the macabre and death, the full-on the lingering question that settles over the viewer hours later: “Did I see what happen actually happen?” We’re inside an on old New England inn with a history of mishaps, deaths, and renovations, but time has not been kind. The place faces shuttering. Two employees (Pat Healy and Sara Paxton) are on duty, and both are wink-wink ghost hunters. They’re there to make some cash, but mostly get ghosts on tape. The tenants are few and odd, including an actress (Kelly McGillis of “Witness”). Slowly, ever so slowly, writer/director Ti West sinks us into the story of these, um college slackers with clichés of spooky stories, a dark and dank basement, slamming doors, midnight mirages, and  a suicide upstairs, plus locked doors and creaky stairs. He keeps on sinking us downward, these old tricks spun jokingly, nastily, anew until we are as frazzled as the heroes locked up with the desire of horror maybe trumping anything real. A tiny budget, mostly unknown actors, and a simple plot go a long way. B+