The phrasing of it which I don't recall doesn't matter what matters is your sincerity

The question is what happened between The French Dispatch (2021, Wes Anderson), Asteroid City (2023, Anderson) and now? Some have described these films as too Wes Anderson. I didn’t find either immediately accessible the first time I saw them in the theater, but chalked that up to me needing more viewings, more time, to recognize and appreciate them. 

     But now I don’t think it’s that at all. I think they lack anything to make me emotionally invest in their characters or stories. This even led me to question as to whether all works of those whom I would call master filmmakers did in fact possess some capacity to deliver a meaningful emotional connection and without such, are the works themselves empty? Shallow? Ultimately meaningless? 

 

The Phoenician Scheme (2025, Wes Anderson) proves that the Golden Age Hollywood era perfected comedy. In terms of depictions of sex, violence, or postmodernism, Anderson confines his aesthetic by not employing any advances to come from the past 60 years or so. He isn’t doing anything new. He’s just doing it better than anyone else.

     On my second theatrical viewing of The Phoenician Scheme, in the final scene I realized where the feeling is. It’s not that (like in The French Dispatch and Asteroid City) it doesn’t generate a means to deliver significant feeling; rather, it’s that its two central characters repress their feelings, and so in turn must the narrative. It’s as though Anderson decided for a change (in his last 3 films) not to rely on easy, overly sentimental devices. And this time it worked. The Phoenician Scheme basically uses a twist on the Paper Moon dynamic. And the common link here is in both cases neither father nor daughter give an inch of emotional real estate, thus in the end allowing us to feel what our hearts know to be true, and in a most rewarding way in that we don’t see it on screen but recognize it for ourselves, like a profound secret. And isn’t that the highest cinema can strive for?

 

But stylistically, if Moonrise Kingdom (2012, Anderson) was the first Wes Anderson movie to matter, with its adherence to x and y axis camera moves, then The French Dispatch and Asteroid City added the z axis to the rigorous exacting staging of composition. And The Phoenician Scheme keeps in line with this tradition, adding a greater emphasis on 90° pans, and utilizing open framed gags.
     And a lot of violence. This is one of my favorite openings to a movie ever. The adrenaline inducing score punctuated with the bisected administrative secretary. And into the cockpit argument awoke me from my cinematic hibernation of recent years and got me to sit back up where we belong: on the edge of my seat. And as a sidenote, the funniest moment for me is the crash at the end, realizing that’s the same pilot. 

 

In closing, I think the casting of the great Benicio Del Toro channeling a millionaire heel from some on the tip of my brain Hollywood movie from the 1940s (Brian Donlevy?) opposite the unknown playing LEISL is timeless dynamite. And the motor of the plot with the bashable rivets soaring, along with bolts, spikes, and pulverized gravel, exploding the gap for the success of the sabotage plan is mere cosmetics to keep us entertained. The real scheme is getting to enjoy ZSA-ZSA KORDA time and time again dying, and coming back from death and Liesl figuring out (though little does she know it) her path in life is to be just like him. 
 

6/8/2025 AMC Phipps 14
6/19/2025 AMC Phipps 14
Atlanta, GA

The following film consists of: an Obituary, a brief Travel-Guide, and Three Feature Articles all from The French Dispatch (an American magazine published in Ennui, France).

Wes Anderson’s most recent movies are like the courtesan au chocolat from Mendl’s. Their instantly recognizable meticulously ornamental design exempts them from being sawed into. 

The formalism of The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014, Wes Anderson) and The French Dispatch (2021, Anderson), both visually and textually, is to be marveled at for having achieved the quality wherein the style of the work is what’s most discernably essential to its impact. 

     Visually, and beginning with Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009, Anderson), the camera is for the most part fixed, and predominately restricted to fluid movement along the x and y axes. Along the x axis this usually means dolly shots. And along the y, booming up. But the key thing here is that the camera remain fixed, so (to a lesser extent) pans are also a part of this visual language.

     In The French Dispatch, the travel-guide segment features compositions that showcase something more: movement choreography within the proscenium. Hitchcock once said something about Jaws being the moment Spielberg succeeded in “taking us out of the proscenium.” The French Dispatch delights in adhering to the proscenium in the strictest sense. This feeling of everything having been staged is intentional. The interplay between foreground, mid, and deep background, through its precision and execution can be observed when the empty static frame of the Ennui neighborhood’s drainage system is released first, in the shallow foreground, to be followed by bodies and actions decorating the subsequent space and time in the frame with deliberate exactitude. But there’s stuff that’s fun and spontaneously charming too, like the Owen Wilson character’s rides on his ten-speed. Again, strict dolly tracking shot with his bike noticeably artificial in its staging, fixed with the movement of the camera, precisely choreographed with the pratfall to punctuate the sequence. Or similarly when within the static frame he gets attacked behind an object in the midground and the empty bike moves perfectly along the x axis.

     Some of the visual techniques in The French Dispatch can be traced to Anderson’s earlier works, like the cutaway aircraft or ship hull first seen in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004, Anderson). Did he get that from Tout va bien (1972, Jean-Luc Godard)? But there is a growth observable to be seen in some newer devices as well. Tableaux shots are used more. Especially in the first story with the set piece depicting the ascendance of ROSENTHALER’S work—dolly track along x axis linking events occurring at distant places within the film’s diegesis together in the same space, like the bisected train compartments sequence set to “Play with Fire” from The Darjeeling Limited (2007, Anderson). Maybe the most noticeable introduction into Anderson’s lexicon of imagery is the addition of one or more of the same character inhabiting the same physical space simultaneously. Like when Rosenthaler is painting his self-portrait, and we see his crazy-eyed self in the midground, which he in the foreground paints. But also when NESCAFFIER is cooking and there is a tripling of himself in the next compartment.

 

Structurally, within the stories themselves the following aspects can be considered: 1.) In the travel guide, the writer is absent from the content of the article. 2.) In the first story, the writer’s article is narrated through a lecture she gives; her focus is on abstract art; she discusses the artist and the art (and his subject). 3.) In the second story the writer’s focus is a manifesto; she discusses ideas; she breaks the rule of journalistic neutrality and ultimately becomes the author of the manifesto itself. 4.) In the third story the writer recites the article as a guest on a 60s Dick Cavett type of tv program. What is the focus of his article? It’s the writing itself. He himself becomes a part of it; Nescaffier becomes a part of it; the warden and his son’s kidnapping become a part of it. And when the publisher tells him he left out the most important part, his reply is “I couldn’t agree less.”

     Long ago I thought of how Rushmore (1998, Anderson) felt like a play. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001, Anderson) felt like a novel. Yet now The French Dispatch not only feels like a magazine, but it’s structured as such. Its menagerie of creative individuals collectively portray the aesthetic contributions of those who enjoy stories (from publisher to patron to audience to connoisseur); and those who  tell stories (from stories about art to stories about ideas to stories encompassing the nuances of specialized essays).

 

10/30/2021 AMC Phipps Plaza 14

Atlanta, GA

DCP

Republic of Zubrowka

My biggest bias to overcome with Wes Anderson's films is the nagging reluctance I have to root for his brand of protagonists which I tend to deem lame white nerds. Don't get me wrong, I think Anderson is one of our brightest auteurs. While I prefer everything after The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004, Anderson), my favorite of his films, I only say that I respect his earlier work (not like). I hated Rushmore (1998, Anderson) even though many of my dear friends adored it. Rushmore for me was always problematic because I couldn't get past the big-headed (ego and cranial mass) manchild in a weird little schoolboy uniform with shorts like Angus from AC/DC used to wear (although in Max Fischer's case seemingly unironic), who treated everyone around him like shit basically.

Then I despised The Royal Tenenbaums (2001, Anderson) essentially because it felt like a failed tragedy on the grounds that all of those good looking rich white brats didn't generate any empathy from me whatsoever and I felt like the only one who wasn't engaging with these whiny pussies.

But The Life Aquatic found Anderson brilliantly mastering artifice. The sets were unashamedly fake in a fun way. The costumes were cartoon inspired. And the location work was exotic and gorgeous. Anderson blends real locations with miniatures all the time now. I love The Darjeeling Limited (2007) and Moonrise Kingdom (2012).

Bigger biases that awaited me for Anderson's latest include the aforementioned lame white nerd contempt but also add that of taking place in a hotel and centering on the bond between a young lobby boy and a middle-aged slightly effeminate single male concierge.

Seriously? People think hotels are cool? Thinking about hotels makes me psychosomatically sleepy. A bond between a man and a boy? Aww hell no.

But indeed Wes Anderson succeeds with his genuine knack and commitment to original storytelling in his latest film, The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014).

The film opens with a layered framing device. An unnamed girl in the present visits a statue of a writer from the Eighties who wrote a book about a hotel owner he met about 20 years prior whom he was told a story about a concierge that worked at the same hotel from '32 to around '38. Or, we're hearing a story of a man that inspired a man to tell another man who wrote it and a little girl read it. Why? Umm, I can't say exactly. Cause it's cool?

Right off we're introduced to M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes), the head concierge of the Grand Budapest. What ultimately separates this man from other of Anderson's lame white nerds is his proclivity for having sex with several different old dowagers who are all blond, self-absorbed, and rather like himself in these ways oddly. Kind of like Monsieur Verdoux (1947, Charles Chaplin), Gustave is a platform for rather black comedy, but Chaplin killed old ladies; and, Gustave is somewhat more disturbing because he actually may love and be turned on by his assortment of octogenarian lovers, even though he doesn't murder them. There's a great moment early in the film when Dmitri (Adrien Brody) exclaims in front of a crowded room: "...he sleeps with old women... and he probably fucks them!" And there's even what I take to be the first (partially) nude sex scene in a Wes Anderson film (?), a shot of Gustave getting a blow job from an elderly woman.

And as Gustave is introduced there is a music box effect on the score which accompanies him. I don't know, it sounds like children playing an xylophone.

Along with M. Gustave we are introduced to The Grand Budapest Hotel. A truly delight to behold, the miniatures of the edifice, surrounding snow-capped Alps, ascending ski lifts, and majestically perched Elk atop a peak are cleverly old fashioned and carefully chosen. The interiors are pink, purple, orange, and a golden champagne. The architecture is symmetrically foreboding.

The supporting cast is marvelous, but special mention should go to the antagonists Desgoffe und Taxis: Dmitri and Jopling (Willem Dafoe). Dmitri has that special brand of Anderson's trademark insolent arrogance. And Jopling is truly menacing and darkly hilarious with his crew cut, skull knuckles, missing front teeth, and leather trenchcoat (with snap flap where he keeps his pistol and liquor). Jopling is homicidal. Is this the first Wes Anderson movie with a homicide?

Another cute old-fashioned touch is Jopling's iris in device with accompanying organ swell as D.u.T. leitmotif. Then there's the baking of tools to escape prison into pastries as a means of smuggling them inside; the fake yet kinetic staging of the downhill sled chase; Jopling's demise with accompanying Wilhelm Scream.

The pacing of this movie is relentless and I commend Anderson for it. It's classic adventure which is rarely found nowadays.

Gustave's language is crafted extensively and is a real treat. Yes, the requisite flash and filigree are amusing, but his process of deduction, charm, and colorful expressions ("She was shaking like a shitting dog.") round out the finished work.

I wish I could go more into the cast and compliment the various international players, but instead I'll just close with saying how much I loved the scene where Jopling throws Deputy Kovacs' (Jeff Goldblum) cat out the window and Kovacs replies: "Did you just throw my cat out the window?" and the reactions of the female cousins, some of them claiming they don't think he did--mastery of comedic tone. And the moment Gustave acquires "Boy with Apple," saying: "I'll never part with it. I'll die with it above my bed. Actually we should sell it..."

But finally, a word on Grand Budapest Hotel's aspect ratio. The film was shot in 1.33:1, resembling a square--which in this case resembles exotic Hollywood films of the Golden Age. Gus Van Sant has shot a few films: Elephant (2003), Last Days (2005) and Paranoid Park (2007) he exhibited in this ratio, but it's been virtually obsolete when showing first run mainstream Hollywood films since the Fifties. I love it and wish other filmmakers would use it more often.

Congratulations to Anderson again. He won me over, this time, again.

--Dregs

New Penzance and the Original Path of the Old Chickchaw Migration

I'm late to being a fan of Wes Anderson's films. I still don't think he's earned the right to try to be dark. The success of Moonrise Kingdom arises out of its bright telling of the classic hero journey.

The compositions in the Bishop family home are brilliant. The dolly tracks are flat and recall the golden age of studio production. (Dolly tracks occur continually throughout Moonrise Kingdom and are similar to each other--always wide lens + same speed + flat background.) The compositions in Moonrise Kingdom are not flat in the sense of being dull; but, this descriptive language seems potentially ineffective or flawed because flat can also be used to describe dull images, which is also subjective, and I cannot say I found a single shot in this movie to be dull. The shots are flat in the sense that objects are usually seen from the frontal perspective, not showing receding lines, or, lines imagined to trail away along the z axis. But, something about the way Anderson's used this technique since The Royal Tennenbaums gives me an impression of showing audiences what's inside his prized toybox. The images are so organinzed, clean, and also like a collection of toys, somehow representative of a chance to use a plastic vehicle to imagine you were somewhere safe and full of creative possibilities like Richard Scarry's Busytown. The opening scene in the house builds a pattern: the dolly tracks, like instruments in an orchesta, are joined by pans. The pans are also brilliant. Then finally there's a crane up. The crane/camera boom up totally reminds me of the one in 7th Heaven (1927, Frank Borzage) and makes me wonder why I can't think of anyone other than David Fincher or Gaspar Noé who indulge so assuredly in floating through walls like Max Ophüls or Stanley Kubrick used to. The command of symmetry and fluid camerawork are all I can think to say, but I wish I could say more about the simplicity's boldness. The art direction is as bold as a box of primary Krayolas. Bob Balaban's a ton of fun as the narrator of the nature films--I wish I could see more of him (not really, but that's my way of saying he's a great character. Maybe I should say I found his brief sketches lively and stylized in the right way, re-creating all of the fun associated with old 60s forgotten innocence illustrations of Norman Rockwell type adventures--the kind that are more fun to look at than actually partake in). And I find the shot reverse shot classically refined because even if it's not the typical repetition between two actors, it's what I'd like to think of as an economy of setups. Anderson to me is like a post card designer--he gets it all in one frame.

The first half of the movie totally sucked me in. I was even caught up wondering about the missing boy myself. That's one of my favorite narrative devices in Moonrise Kingdom: I was thrilled when I realized, "wait, this is a movie, even though everyone is looking for the missing Khaki Scout, I'm in the audience and get to see where he is and what he's up to even though no one else on screen can." Okay that might sound moronic, but I really don't try to predict movies and that was a delight when it hit me.

At forty five minutes, I had to look at my watch.

As I had thought, the midpoint was timed perfectly. In three act structure, the midpoint is said to occur halfway in a screenplay and mark a "point of no return" for the protagonist(s).

So if the first half of the film was all adventure and romace, the second half is the same, but with obstacles. And it worked. Personally, I like movies with unsympathetic heroes like (TV's) Kenny Powers from Eastbound and Down or Mavis in Young Adult (2011, Jason Reitman), and that may be why I never liked Anderson's ensembles until recently. I felt like he used to have flawed characters, but he was just too coy about obviously thinking they had an inner nobility after all. That's like cowardice to me: if you're gonna show some dark side, don't be afraid to make 'em bleed. But Moonrise Kingdom gets away with this because it's about children. There's a scene of violence in the film that Anderson, fittingly for him, refrains from showing the graphic imagery. Like Kubrick in A Clockwork Orange, Anderson places a couple of still images of a pair of scissors to replace an offscreen scene where Suzy stabs a boy--in the Kubrick film there's that bludgeoning of the Cat Lady where he inserts the still image of the laughing clown mouth.

I discovered the music of Benjamin Britten watching Beau travail (1999, Claire Denis) where the Billy Budd opera serves as backdrop for Denis's restaging of her own nautical adventure. The Britten tunes in Moonrise Kingdom are similarly regal in their grandeur and give the movie an even greater sense of the drama building like an approaching hurricane.

Usually I don't buy movies that are too obvious about indulging my fantasies. This is an exception to that. Yeah, the weirdo who nobody likes and who does whatever he wants somehow finds true love with a really cool girl and is able to defeat a gang of thugs when he has to and can deal with his problems by running away from them, sure. But, it's a nice placebo to take every once in a while. You know, to feel for a little while like life's really like that.

In closing, I've always found something hilarious about the one movie I can ever remember with a premise involving a boat cop. I've always thought that was ridiculously boring. A boat cop? Seriously? Well that movie was Striking Distance (1993, Rowdy Herrington) and as you know doubt'll remember, starred Bruce Willis. I won't even comment about why I am so crazy about how much I think this is genius, but I do.

Bruce Willis plays a boat cop in Moonrise Kingdom.

--Dregs