Films Of The Week: Ralph Fiennes and Scottish actress Tilda Swinton star in The Grand Budapest Hotel by director Wes Anderson and Spike Jonze directs Beastie Boys Story, a live documentary about the New York rap act

Any way you cut it, then, it’s a classic, though a great place to start is with Ralph Fiennes, arguably delivering a career-best performance here as Gustave, the slick and eccentric concierge at the famous hotel of the title, located somewhere in an un-named Middle European country. Gustave’s story is told in a multi-layered series of flashbacks, starting with the recollections of a British novelist known only as the Author (Tom Wilkinson) who has written a book about him titled The Grand Budapest Hotel. It in turn was based on a story he heard as a much younger man from one Zero Mustafa (F Murray Abraham) during a visit to the hotel in 1968. Jude Law plays the Author in these sections and over dinner in a deserted dining room Zero tells him about how he started at the Grand Budapest as a teenage bellhop in 1932 and how he was given his position by Gustave, who became his friend and mentor. It’s Zero (played in the 1930s sections by Tony Revolori) who accompanies Gustave on the adventures which form the heart of the film – adventures which include a wealthy dowager (Tilda Swinton), her son (Adrien Brody), a disputed will, a stolen painting, a cartoonishly villainous hitman (Willem Dafoe), a lawyer (Jeff Goldblum), a girlfriend (Zero’s, played by Saoirse Ronan) and a gang of soft-hearted convicts led by Harvey Keitel. As if that wasn’t enough there are cameos from Wes Anderson regulars Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Edward Norton and Jason Schwartzman, as well as French actors Léa Seydoux and Mathieu Amalric.

With its stories-within-stories structure it’s a typically (and deliberately) complicated film, but it’s testament to Anderson’s skill as director and scriptwriter that he holds it all together over the course of 100 joyous minutes. Loosely based on two novels by early 20th century Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, it’s a real treat. And as proof of the purchase it has on the popular imagination, BBC Scotland’s A View From The Terrace recently paid its own homage in a segment shot at Arbroath FC’s Gayfield ground during a game against Airdrieonians and presented in the style of Grand Budapest Hotel, complete with inter-titles and a soundtrack by Vivaldi. Weird, but worth digging out after you’ve watched the real thing.

Beastie Boys Story, Apple TV

Now streaming

Eight years after the death from cancer of founding member Adam Yauch, the two remaining members of the infamous New York rap act come together to pay tribute to him and to tell the story of the band’s rise and demise. So far, so straightforward rock doc. But the film’s subtitle – A Spike Jonze Live Documentary – tells you there’s a lot more going on. So as Ad-Rock (Adam Horovitz) and Mike D (Mike Diamond) pace the stage of a packed New York theatre with a huge screen behind them, the puckish film-maker “directs” the visuals while occasionally interjecting from behind his mixing desk somewhere to apologise for muffing his cues. Only not really, because that whole close-to-falling-apart shtick is Jonze’s preferred modus operandi and you could say it’s been the guiding principal in the three decade career of his great friends the Beastie Boys.

Beastie Boys afficionados might not learn that much that’s new and there’s a slightly revisionist feel to the way Horovitz in particular deals with the blatant sexism of the band’s early lyrics and stage shows. Still, a mea culpa’s a mea culpa, and as he says at one point, he’d rather be called a hypocrite than still be the d*** he once was. But there’s a wealth of the wonderful footage shot by the band themselves and the story of their founding in New York, their signing to rap label Def Jam, their globe-trotting antics and the re-building of their sound and reputation in the sunshine of Los Angeles through the 1990s is told with self-deprecating humour and a goofy sort of charm. It’s powerfully emotional, too, as in the closing section Horovitz is moved to tears as he remembers the last gig the band played together and pays tribute to the memory of Yauch.