So I just watched Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs and
as expected it was fantastic. Fun fact
if you ignore the spelling of the title this film sounds like
I love dogs and
considering how much thought goes into Wes Anderson's
film's I wouldn't be surprised if that
were intentional. Pretty much every film he's
made in the past 10 years has been amazing.
Now this is Wes Anderson's second
stop motion animated film with the
first being Fantastic Mr.Fox
and I honestly can't decide which one of
these I like more. It's almost strange
comparing them because they both have very
different goals and very different tones
like sure Isle of Dogs just like
any other Wes Anderson film has plenty of
playful quirks and good humor
found throughout but it was also
surprisingly serious especially when being compared to
Fantastic Mr.Fox. Fantastic Mr.Fox
could easily be considered a family film even
if it isn't specifically geared towards children but Isle
of Dogs is just flat out not a kids movie if the PG-13 rating doesn't give it away already you'll
realize quickly into the film that this is not really a
kids movie and that actually makes it pretty
fucking special the movie is never intentionally explicit
for shock value. But it doesn't dampen itself out of
fear for being inaccessible to younger audiences.
When this film teases an aspect like
death It's something you believe can actually
happen in the film. The film as a whole remains playful
at heart but there are some very morbid and
dramatic elements at play here. The dialogue is very
fun and well written the casting worked very
well for each of the characters and above all else
the presentation is just masterful
It's abundantly clear that Wes Anderson is a filmmaker that
never stops trying to improve himself
the lighting the character design the scenery and
the animation itself is noticeably improved from
Fantastic Mr.Fox. There's just so much love and
care that goes into the presentation of this film there is a
wealth of detail and complicated sets and backgrounds
that often only wind up
being used for a single shot and this winds up
helping create the illusion that the world is much
bigger than what we see on screen. I don't know if I can even
think of a stop motion animated
film that had more impressive scenery
than this one each movement of the camera and every
character is just so perfectly planned
out and that sushi making sequence is just so impressive and fun to watch the film's score fits very
well and added a lot of energy to the film without
feeling overbearing. It's very
difficult to think of anything about this movie that wasn't done exceptionally well
There was one detail in the beginning that I thought was a bit of a
plot hole that they actually cleared up later in the film
I guess my only real criticism is just a bit of a personal
preference much of the film was spoken in Japanese and didn't
have subtitles and during those scenes
where they weren't being
translated by English speaking characters there was never
any point where you couldn't get the gist of what was going on
but with the shear quantity of untranslated Japanese
words I kind of wish that there were subtitles you know obviously
It's a film that I love and I guess I would just love to
experience every bit of it I can whenever those scenes took place
I wound up wondering if perhaps there was some sort of clever
or funny joke taking place that I'm not able to understand
I don't know hopefully there's some sort of extra option
on the Blu-ray or something the films story
as a whole was a little simplistic i guess it wasn't really
all that special or out there but the reason
why it doesn't really hurt the film is because of how everything is
presented. I find myself caring much less about the
specific sequence of events and more about how
those sequence of events are presented and as I've already
explained the presentation is well above
and beyond the best majority of films out there
it is unfortunate that there are some people
that are unable to appreciate film as an art form rather
than a political mouthpiece I guess
but for everybody that values the art
of filmmaking this is the movie for you and I'm
giving this one a 9/10