Actually, Murray isn't in one of my favorite Wes Anderson Films, Bottle Rocket.

True, true, I address that more so to it just being his earliest work, and he hadn't developed the "lore" of actors and their archetypes in his films as of yet. Not discounting it in any way, I just wouldn't chalk it up as "proper" Wes Anderson, if that makes sense... but that's just getting pedantic.

This stylized world was at its most stylized in The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Absolutely. This film is totally the zenith for him stylistically, his mise en scène is impeccable, everything you've ever seen before, but better.

I think the concern surrounding Adrien Brody's role are understandable, but one thing I always take in to account when I am watching a film by someone I trust (and someone as meticulous as WA) is just that, that I trust them. Adrian Brody did a very good job with what he was given (a sophisticated-looking brute hell bent on expressing his basal emotions at every turn) and serves as a stand-in for the depravity hiding under the covers of the uber-civil aesthetics of fascism. I have more to say and want to be more tangential in a later post, but I don't think this is without merit or done wantonly. Also watching him smash an Egon Scheile painting like a child was fucking hilarious.

As for Schwartzman, that dude is such a one-trick pony and that fits well for what WA does with him, but he just annoys me every time he's onscreen now.