The last time I wrote about a Wes Anderson film was for The Grand Budapest Hotel when I said that his films are essentially cartoons for adults. This is doubly true for Isle of Dogs. It features Anderson’s usual regulars plus one or two new names like Bryan Cranston all in service of a film that is well made and delightful but amounts to nothing more than pure entertainment.
Once again we’re going at this from the opposite direction, having first seen and liked Frances Ha and only now going back to the film that first made director Noah Baumbach famous. Baumbach’s frequent collaborator Greta Gerwig is absent for this one but there are plenty of other recognizable faces even if you might not be able to name some of them.
This is an older Taiwanese anthology film from our usual cinephile friend. As a collection of four short films, each made by a different director and cast of performers, it would be pretty unremarkable, except that one of the directors is Edward Yang and a couple of the stories feature highly recognizable stars, a very young Sylvia Chang and child actress Shi An Ni.
We’ve watched a few films by director Wim Wenders but this one is arguably his most celebrated work so it’s about time we got around to it. This film has a loudly American, specifically Texan, look with its shots of the desert landscapes, rolling highways and dusty towns but its essence feels very European. Indeed it was by French and German companies and apparently Wenders has an entire series of road trip films made in this manner.
Since I started watching films more seriously, there is a temptation to eagerly latch on to anything exotic and treat it as if it were an artistic work. I read about this on Broken Forum, noted that it was shown the the Cannes Film Festival and has a suitably high Rotten Tomatoes. I knew nothing else about it other than that it was about dogs but it seemed like a respectably artistic film. Of course, the truth is that just because it was made in what is to us exotic Hungary doesn’t automatically mean that it’s good.
Going back to the well of classic Hollywood films, here is one that was directed by Elia Kazan and stars Marlon Brando. We’ve already watched the earlier A Streetcar Named Desire that the two also worked on and loved it so I was hoping for more of that magic. Though ostensibly about mobsters who have taken over a union of dock workers, this film can also be read as Kazan’s response to his critics over his willingness to cooperate with the House Committee on Un-American Activities to root out suspected Communists in Hollywood.
This one is another Chinese film that has garnered a fair share of plaudits and its the debut film of its director Zhou Ziyang. Interestingly, it is set in the city of Ordos in Inner Mongolia, the same city that some years ago was paraded about in the Western press for being a prime example of China’s overbuilding spree, resulting in empty streets and buildings. I’ve read however that since that enough people have since moved to make it, if not exactly a thriving city, at least a real one.