Wes Anderson's THE ISLE OF DOGS (2018): Movie Review

There are few working directors whose entire filmography is so uniquely stylized that the man or woman behind the camera becomes a genre onto themselves and Wes Anderson is perhaps the most grandiose example of that fact. His last three films; The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), Moonrise Kingdom (2012), & The Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) have each been masterful productions of Wes Anderson and his latest film, The Isle of Dogs (2018), is no exception. Like The Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Isle of Dogs is a work of stop-motion animation that fits so snuggly in Wes Anderson’s unique brand of visual storytelling. The film’s plot is relatively simple but by no means is it any less layered or complex than any of this other screenplays. And if you hadn’t guessed already, it looks incredible from start to finish. Wes Anderson has become one those directors audiences either love or hate so for those who already love ’his work you’ve probably already seen the movie or are planning on seeing it already. But if that's the case then just let me say this I think this may be an (if not the) perfect Wes Anderson film. At least that’s what I’m telling myself in preemptive justification while I catch two-three more screenings in theaters whilst I can.

Much like Wes Anderson’s last animated extravaganza, The Isle of Dogstakes place in the dystopian story-book fantasy city of Megasaki; a fictional metropolis in the not-so-distant future of Japan. Here the duplicitous Mayor Kobayashi issues an immediate deportation of all inner city canines to an island of trash and despair where survival is as vital as it is brutal. The island is invaded, however, by twelve-year-old Atari Kobayashi (voiced by Koyu Rankin) in a hijacked airplane in search of his banished best friend Spots. Upon landing on Trash Island Atari befriends a pack of “scary indestructible alpha dogs” who are all good boys at heart (same as all dogs, really) voiced by Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Bob Balaban, Bill Murray, & Jeff Goldblum respectably. The pack agrees to help the little pilot, and from there the plot bisects into two parallel narratives; one following Atari and the dogs on a hero’s journey rescue mission which is presented wonderfully with enough action and emotional moments that you’ll forget at times that your getting worked up over literal puppets. The second follows an American foreign exchange student Tracy Walker (Greta Gerwig) using her wits and persistence as a junior sleuth in search of the truth behind Mayor Kobayashi’s deplorable decree. Both stories intersect in the third act that brings everything and everyone together in a satisfying conglomerate of a conclusion that feels as earned as it is whimsically sweet. Tonally it has everything you’d expect from Wes at this point by structurally this is one his most imaginative and “out there” tales that audiences of all ages should be able to find immense joy and entertainment.

And speaking of value, if this film’s total artistic worth could be converted into coins, it’d have its own vault at Gringotts that would be guarded 24/7 by a legendary hydra with seven heads of Bill Murray. Anyway, film positives; the editing/cinematography is silky-smooth in that typical flat-composition style that Wes Anderson adores so much and lo and behold, it translates flawlessly into animation. Though I’ve only had one screening of this beautiful, beautiful film, I was utterly blown away by the sheer craftsmanship that went into this production. Everything from sets to the lighting to the way in which each dog puppet acts and moves like a real animal is an absolute joy to bear witness. And when you take into consideration that it took Wes’s team four years to complete the animation process with roughly 3 seconds of usable footage taken for every 10-12 hour day, it makes every minute detail feel that much more magnificent. As I’ve mentioned before, the story is genuinely brilliant despite being relatively simple. None of its messages or reveals are overly complicated, but that’s all due to Anderson’s ability to plant vital information to the plot early on but disguising them as his own brand of quirky comedy. This may also be the most emotional Wes Anderson film (for me). Wes Anderson has always made his movies to be reflective of profound and troubled emotional truths but choices to have his characters give this information honestly and drolly, a trait which as now become sinuous with Wes’s “style.” I suppose one could argue that this dissonance of speaking openly in such an emotionally detached way is stylistic for the sake of being stylistic but in this film, only the dogs ever talk in such a way. Everyone other human character speaks with very prominent emotion, which helps when the bulk of one’s human cast members primarily speak in non-subtitled Japanese, but it also drives home the predicament of the dogs themselves. It makes sense why man’s best friend would talk like, well, a Wes Anderson character because of the situation in which the film has put them in. This makes the emotional connection snap almost instantly as you feel the pain these good boys feel when they engage in Steinbeckian dialogues about their favorite foods and old owners. And finally I’d like to gush briefly about a sequence of scenes that caught my attention; each was shot with a long take of some action without dialogue or music. Each scene was an impressive display of art and animation on their own, but upon reflection, I found that they not only looked cool but were integral to the plot. What’s more is that I found myself playing out these scenes in my head as if they were a kind of visual haiku and it worked. This may indeed just be me projecting greater artistic significance to a few isolated scenes that I liked but seeing as how this film incorporated trunk loads of uniquely Japanese customs (including haiku poems) I wouldn’t be surprised if he did something like that on purpose. This is after all the same guy who bought an actual 1958 British minesweeper ship for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou; I wouldn’t put anything past the guy.

As a Wes Anderson fan, it’s hard to compare his newest film to the others in his repertoire. I didn’t have as much fun as I did with Fantastic Mister Fox. Nor I wasn’t charmed like I was at the end of The Grand Budapest Hotel. And I certainly didn’t fall in love as I did for Moonrise Kingdom, but out of all my favorite Wes Anderson films, I don’t think I was ever as impressed as I was for The Isle of Dogs. If you were to judge this film solely on the merits of being a movie you’d still have one humdinger of a picture; with heaps and HEAPS of Wes Anderson whimsy frosted on for flavoring. Wes Anderson has been noted as being a “connoisseur of life,” and one can see that in his films as each picture is saturated with things Wes finds interesting. The Isle of Dogs is Anderson’s homage and a love letter to all things Japanese from art, music, movies, theatre, food, stories, and more. While that’s to be expected from a Wes Anderson movie taking place in Japan what’s most impressive is his ability to craft a story that not only fits so perfectly in its world it stands on its own four legs as a brilliant and emotionally rich story that can only be described as beautiful. This is one of those movies that progressively gets better and better the more you think about it, and I’m sure the same can be said for repetitive viewings. The Isle of Dogs is currently playing at the Varsity theatre in downtown Davis, so be sure to catch as many screenings while you still can.

READY PLAYER ONE (2018): Movie Review

I’ll be honest; I wasn’t looking forward to seeing Ready Player One, the newest courtesan to Hollywood grandmaster Steven Spielberg’s harem of family-friendly adventure fantasy films, up on the big screen. No, I haven’t anything against the man for the vast majorityof his features are nothing short of fantastic (with exceptions to Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and 1941), I simply just wasn’t all that jazzed up for Ready Player One’s premise. I still haven’t read the novel by Ernest Cline, but from what I gathered from the marketing and trailers it seemed like yet another cinematic hero’s journey structured as a Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory-esque wish-fulfillment fantasy with all the sweets replaced by video game/retro pop-culture icons. Now while that all sounds chaotically amazeballs on paper I was still somewhat skeptical of how the whole picture would turn out; and you know what? I had a total blast! Once again Spielberg has proven himself as the crown king of whimsically potent visual storytelling and has produced a cinematic adventure that’s so remarkably fluid and fun that I still feel silly for doubting him in the first place.

Ready Player One takes place in the not-so-distant future of 2045 where virtual reality has not only been perfected but has also become the single most potent global economy as everyone on the planet would rather escape reality than have to deal with it face on. So yeah, just replace the “internet” with the “oasis,” and you have a two and a half hour long family-friendly black mirror episode complete with cybernetic Orwellian labor camps and giant Anime robots. As the film kicks off we were given a brief “history” of the Oasis’s construction and creator, James Halliday played by Mark Rylance, whose death reveals an “Easter egg” that will bestow a vast fortune and complete control of the Oasis to whoever finds it first. From there the plot follows the basic structure of any video game adventure in which our main characters must go through challenges, riddles, and tribulations against the cartoonishly evil forces of corporate CEO who want the egg for their evil corporate plan to add micro transactions to the Oasis. Regrettably, this is the weakest aspect of the film, but it’s hard to blame the filmmakers for making a said decision in the first place. The film is an adventure fantasy for the whole family, after all and a proper one at that. Spielberg understands that flow and pacing are tantamount to the adventure, especially when considering that it’s being told through the visual medium of film. Ready Player One’s story may have all the layered complexity of a simpleton bashing a couple of bricks together but that way the audience can focus on the visuals carrying the narrative.

Now while Ready Player One’s central conflict/story is cliched and predictable, just about everything else in the film is utterly dazzling. The visuals alone would be worthy of appraisal, but Spielberg isn’t the sort of director to throw up expertly rendered globs of CGI characters on the screen and leave it at that. Oh no, he takes full advantage of the fact that the majority of this movie takes place entirely in a computer-generated environment where the “camera” can do and follow whatever Spielberg wants, and often to significant effect. There are many eye-catching sequences that are so fluid that it’s nothing less than magical to behold. It should surprise no one at this point that Spielberg would prioritize unusual long takes of action sequences (both for live action and CGI), but here it feels like he’s truly in his element and the result is a film that I found stupefying engaging. The acting performances were solid, though nothing stood out to me as anything inordinately memorable. Though upon reflection Mark Rylance did impress me as the socially awkward Halliday, who at times was so vocally awarded that I forgot Rylance was an actual actor and not just some weird extra you might find on Tim and Eric. The film’s action scenes are ridiculously over the top and cartoonish but so simultaneously imaginative in its design and free-flowing motion that I was never bored. I was also pleasantly surprised at the amount of character development within the film, granted most of it’s given to Rylance and the other three main characters in considerably smaller bits but it’s there, and I remembered it so that counts for something. And finally, Ready Player One has one of, if not the best homages to horror in a non-horror film.

As you might imagine, Ready Player One is still a flawed film, as is the case for most wish fulfillment fantasy-adventures. I’ve already touched on the film’s unoriginal story/ethos though I wouldn’t at all be surprised if that was the whole point of a fiction comprised of trunkloads of other creator’s intellectuals property. Occasionally the dialogue would incite a mental groan whenever a character pointed out the name of an onscreen pop culture cameo or divulged into “we have to say this specific thing because it’s convent to the plot-line.” And it wouldn’t be a family friendly Spielberg movie without a few metric-tons cheesy cinematic catharsis dumped on us as the film wraps up but unless your explosively lactose intolerant, it’s not all that annoying. What is, however, is Ben Mendelsohn’s performance as the evil CEO Sorrento whose so villainous I was almost disappointed when his virtual self didn’t resemble a twelve-foot tall Dick Dastardly with a mustache made out of mini-Mussolini. Other than that, there’s not much else wrong with Ready Player One unless you’re of the sort who absolutely cannot stand a movie with a story structure ripped straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon.

Ready Player One is exactly the kind of movie you should expect from Spielberg. Now that I’ve thought about it I can’t help but be reminded of The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, the 2011 animated film directed by Spielberg. Both movies are terrific adventure spectacles and adequately showcase their director’s visual prestige but Ready Player One does it better. That may be because Ready Player One’s ethos is a bit more in line with Spielberg’s, which is centered around high adventure and an appreciation for the pop culture of one’s youth. Granted, the film may suffer from it’s simple good vs. evil dynamic but for whatever reason, it works in the long haul.  Spielberg’s success as a filmmaker has been built on his sincere ability to mix childlike wonderment with the complex fetes of cinematography and editing and Ready Player One fits that mold flawlessly. The plot’s simple but never holds the audience in contempt, and the result is an experience that so unabashedly fun that you almost forget that movies don’t have to sacrifice visual intricacies for the sake of entertainment. Ready Player One is one of the most enjoyable works of cinema I’ve seen in the theatre in a long time that’s purely attributed to Spielberg’s illustrious shooting style, and creative team. If you’re gunning for a fun weekend adventure movie thrill ride then you should at least see the one that’s exceptionally well made.