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Hot Takes on "Isle of Dogs"

3/26/2018

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​Isle of Dogs, the ninth and newest effort from the other (other) filmmaking Anderson, is his most humane film in some years. Since Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Wes Anderson’s films have done something worse than spiral—they’ve remained static. Each increasingly consumed by his well-documented quirks, in the Anderson-verse the auteur comes before the art. Isle of Dogs is hardly a break from any of the above, but stop motion animation pumps something sanguine into his little manicured world.
 
The premise is incredibly thrifty. Framed by a legend about a boy samurai who defends dogs against the cat loving Kobayashi clan, we quickly jump to a now dystopian Megasaki City. An industrial, polluted hellscape, renewed anti-dog hysteria is at fever pitch. Dogs have been relocated to Trash Island, and young Atari goes on a quest to rescue his dog Spots. The narrative remains tightly wrapped around this concept as it runs the length of its lean 101 minutes. And along the way, there are some conspiratorial notes, cautious friendships, and valuable lessons learned.
 
Where this is all good and well, I’m really just here for the takes. And does any director give us more molehills to refashion into mountains than Wesley Wales Anderson? BRING ME ALL THE SPICY TAKES!
 
Cats/Cat People are Lame
People on world’s worst website, Twitter.com, are pissed about what they describe as the film’s, “anti-cat sentiment.” But if a hot take falls in the truth forest, is it just a fact? Yes, where Anderson seems like a human cat in a corduroy jacket, homie is a dog person. And therein lies Isle of Dogs’ easy hook: dogs are good and cute and smart and the best. And goodness, every time their little dog eyes well with tears? Effing bawling.
 
So much of the film’s kindness is lived through our titular dogs. Where their interactions are stilted and emotionally distant—Anderson’s love language—the characterization fits the mind of a mutt. Kind in a perfunctory way, loyal as almost genetic predisposition, their sincerity is a welcome, warm infusion into Isle of Dogs. And where this film does trade in the cat versus dog versus their insane human companions cliche, the story is useful as a meditation on entrenched power. Where it comes from, the motivations behind, and this power as a profound corrupting force. The cats and dogs could have just as easily been swapped, but through this age old polarity Isle of Dogs asks s a more covert question: Why are there even sides?

​All the same, dogs rule.
 
Wes Anderson Made the Same Movie...Again
If this is the axe, let me be your Tormach PSG 612 surface grinder. In a 2012 interview with Terry Gross, Anderson offered the following, “I have a way of filming things and staging them and designing sets. There were times when I thought I should change my approach, but in fact, this is what I like to do. It's sort of like my handwriting as a movie director. And somewhere along the way, I think I've made the decision: I'm going to write in my own handwriting.” This strange creative ambition has somehow enabled and stifled his oeuvre all at once, and Isle of Dogs does not break the spell.
 
This film is more successful than previous forays into his universe for several reasons. One, there are more voices in the room. With credited writers including Anderson as well as Jason Schwartzman, Kunichi Nomura, and Roman Coppola (with whom he has previously collaborated), the overall tone feels more varied. Also, as bizarre as this may be, perhaps non-humans are a better vessel for Anderson’s mannerisms. Arrested development and singular motivations suit dogs, teenagers, and myopic politicians.
 
But we’re here for torrid takes, and Anderson making the same film again and again is hardly even balmy. So my fire ass take? Wes Anderson should make a bad movie. Isle of Dogs is good, very likable, but let’s feeeeeeeel something. Splurge the creative capital accrued over twenty years! Make an out-of-the-comfort-zone fever dream of a project. Make it sweaty and haggard and insane. For lest we forget, another Anderson had the guts to redraw his creative boundaries, and he emerged as the finest filmmaker of a generation.
 
Cultural Appropriation
Now to the takery core for some truly molten POVs. L.A. Times critic Justin Chang wrote an excellent review of Isle of Dogs. Paired with his praise, he asks some relevant questions about the film’s treatment of Japan as a place, people, and culture. Two of his critiques are resonant above the rest. One is the use of language. Dogs speak in English, and all others speak in their native tongue with no subtitles. Chang asserts the approach makes the Japanese characters foreigners in their own city. The other, our pro-dog resistance leader is played by a young white American woman who repeatedly pushes back against stereotypical Japanese timidity.
 
This conversation is frustrating but necessary. As Chang took the dialogue to social media, he offered there was nothing malicious about Anderson’s portrayal, but the dastardly trick of harmful representation is passing itself of as something benign. In the end, Chang’s argument delves into culture being used as a prop on no terms of its own. Anderson would likely make an impassioned defense citing hours of research, diligence to cultural aesthetic, time spent worshiping the heroes of Japanese cinema, but a narrow ledge separates tribute and fetishization.
 
“So, a white person can never make a movie about Japan?” one million anime avatars on Twitter cry out at once. No, instead it’s a call for artists and admirers of any culture to create space where they recognize their position as the outsider. A space to learn and to have their best held notions upended and to be surprised by a culture they believe to know. Anderson failed to create that space. Yes, the problem of xenophobia and some current politics color Isle of Dogs. As such, this comes off as more a problem of Anderson’s unyielding vision than it is willful appropriation, but any effort to gloss over this point makes for a nearsighted evaluation of the film. 

This does not, for me, destroy the experience. In an effort to be a more empathic observer of art, it’s part of the conversation, but several other facets elevate Isle of Dogs to Anderson's most successful film in years. It may read as a cop out, but perhaps the searing takeaway from this film—whether in regard to cats, dogs, cinematic monotony, or cultural appropriation—is that nuance may be the most provocative take of all.

—Monte Monreal

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Tomb Raider: As Cold as the Crypt

3/16/2018

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There are few qualities more dispiriting in a major motion picture than no sense of fun, but to describe the new Tomb Raider in a word: it’s joyless. Bereft of personality or identity, this movie doesn’t even distinguish itself enough to be a straight ahead bad movie. Stiff, chilly, unimaginative, it’s hard to grasp just how this milled out to something so aggressively average. But as yet another disastrous video game film shuffles across the national cinema stage I can’t help but continue to wonder, who is this for?

Tomb Raider seemingly had lots of good things going for it. With a widely recognized gaming franchise to lend some cache and a cast of bonafides like Alicia Vikander, Walton Goggins, and McNulty, how did this end up as such colorless gruel? Even gruel feels too hearty and nourishing to use as a descriptor. Cellulose maybe? Anyway, the fate of this film is sealed for a few pretty inescapable reasons. 

The story beats are so perfunctory, the characters so gossamer thin, it is damn near impossible to coax energy, much less excitement, out of any film element. The twists are like slight veers, the climax is hollow, and even the set pieces—the bread and butter of this kind of picture—are downright languid. From a talent standpoint, it’s hard to imagine, but this film manages to cast a pallor over Vikander’s endless, irrepressible charm. McNulty is practically in absentia. I mean, how are you not gonna at least give Goggins some scenery to gnaw on? Isn’t that what you’re paying for?

From the comfort of my armchair, it seems as though handing in a likeable romp would have been a breeze, but somehow Tomb Raider is just tired. The sets, the extras, the score, all lumbering across 122 uninspired minutes. Not brave enough to be pulpy, not smart enough to be taken seriously, this movie has no sense of self. It’s all so vacuous, I’m not even mad. I’m weirdly in awe. Did no one want to fight for this movie? Was there simply an insurmountable lousy script at the core? Is it mired in thousands of references to the game I just don’t get? I’ll never know, but the final product is fit to be rolled out on a gurney. And these no goodniks even have the audacity to setup a sequel! Lord, grant me the hubris.

Who are these movies for? Bruh, for true, I do not know. The first game installment came out in 1996 and birthed two films with Angelina Jolie released in 2001 and 2003. Where these did yield some financial success, I don’t recall anyone just loving them, lost on both critics and fans. Over the ensuing years, the Jolie helmed Tomb Raiderfilm never took on cult status, nor cracked the regular orbit of Sunday afternoon cable television filler. So, again, who is this for? I know you can roll out the nostalgia trough and people will choke down even the paltriest fare, but who was clamoring for this film? I have to know! 

If there was anything this film accomplished, it made me appreciate Wrinkle in Time more? So, I was supposed to write a review for Wrinkle last week (downcast eye emoji). In the end, it turned out to be a 759-word screed against white supremacy. Nobody wants that, so it was relegated to the robust personal archive. Where Wrinkle in Time was a deeply (deeeeeeeeply) flawed vessel for its message, it swung big—a burden Tomb Raider wouldn't dare take on. 

Wrinkle put its big, stupid heart out there, and Tomb Raider is almost catatonic. But as of right now, that damnable Tomatoery has Tomb Raider scored higher. I won’t ascend the soapbox with tinfoil hat askance to explain the real reasons for this disparity, but my goodness... Our expectations and perceptions are utterly fuckered when a crappy, yet well-meaning film (with occasional transcendent moments) gets dogged for daring to try, while Tomb Raider gets a wider berth for its relentless pursuit of mediocrity.

So, in the spirit of the film I’m really going to phone in this concluding paragraph. Tomb Raider opens today and runs two hours and two minutes. I hope Alicia Vikander can skirt the wreckage and at least land a Marvel franchise. The end. 

—Monte Monreal

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