Is “The Phoenician Scheme” Wes Anderson's Most Emotional Film? | Hacker News Reader

Is “The Phoenician Scheme” Wes Anderson's Most Emotional Film?

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I am looking forward to seeing this, as while I really enjoy the aesthetic of Anderson, I increasingly wish someone would push him out of his comfort zone. His films are the same thing repeated in different circumstances with different characters.

Maybe he isn’t interested in doing anything other than what he’s doing, and at some level that’s all the justification he needs. He doesn’t owe anyone anything. But I do think the cinematic world as a whole would benefit from him experimenting a little more, trying a novel format, and so on.

>His films are the same thing repeated in different circumstances with different characters.

I am not sure what you mean, Asteroid City with its complex structure utilizing metafiction to explore things mostly removed from the characters and the story does not have much in common with The Royal Tenenbaums other than aesthetic with its fairly simple and direct use of character to explore the individual and family. Do you want him to make a superhero or action movie or something?

When you go see an Anderson film, you have a pretty solid idea of what you’re going to get. The mood, character development, cinematography, quirkiness, and pretty much everything else is largely the same across his films. I think this is obvious (?) to most people. Yes, there are individual differences between films, but I don’t think my opinion is an uncommon one.

There are more genres than action and superhero. A whole world of cinema, in fact. So it would be great if Anderson took his formidable skills and tried something new. A selfish request from a viewer, sure, but I just never feel like he’s trying to improve as a filmmaker and is merely doing what is comfortable to him.

Just to add to your sentiment, I agree with you. The setup of his films became so similar to each other in many ways, same quirky (slightly insane) characters, same pastel colors, same textures. All subjective of course, but I found his later movies soulless and hard to watch.

>The mood, character development, cinematography, quirkiness

Other than character development those are all part of the aesthetic and in his last two he mostly extended that aesthetic directly to the characters, dropped the essentially realistic relatable characters and turned them into caricatures who don't really develop; devices of the story and theme instead of what drives the story and develops theme. I would say he was doing things uncomfortable for him with The French Dispatch, which is why he did not quite pull off the meta aspect. I think his interests are in improving on story and narrative and exploring what can be done with them within the medium and his aesthetic is a means to those ends, a way to push things out of the normal perspectives and give him more room to do things like make highly metafictional films without going all out experimental.

I am perfectly aware there are other genres.

Same for Nolan's movies.

I liked that in Oppenheimer, even though the plot of the movie was a similar sort of high stakes mystery heist movie, instead of the macguffin being a random piece of metal like it was in tenet, its the literal atom bomb. For that reason I enjoyed it more than some of his other movies.

I would enjoy a Wes Anderson movie that just moved the whole aesthetic over to something new. It can still be a Wes Anderson movie but just different in one important new dimension.

The Dark Knight Rises also had an atom bomb. Nolan has a thing for nuclear detonations.

also, timers. What absolutely killed Nolan for me was when someone pointed out that he's virtually unable to create tension without a literal timer, be that bombs, watches, countdowns, what have you. Ever single damn movie. There's even a tick-tock sound from Nolan's stopwatch in the soundtrack of Dunkirk.

For some reason, this made me think of the countdown timer in Galaxy Quest that counts down but stops before getting to zero because the ship's design is based on a TV show.

"Spoiler alert", I guess, if you've not seen Galaxy Quest in the quarter century since it was released.

Which, if you haven't, you absolutely should!

You can edit your comments. I didn't reply to your second one so you can delete it if you want.

It was sarcasm. 25 year old movies don't need spoiler alerts.

But also, in a meta way, it wasn't a spoiler anyway because countdowns never reach zero anyway.

Except in Oppenheimer he was like, I'll just do the actual atom bomb instead. I'm glad that he knows himself well enough that he went right to the source.

Agreed. He’s like those amazing musicians who keep using the same chords, instruments, arrangement, and lyrical content over and over.

What I wouldn’t give to see Anderson tackle something really novel (for him). A period-piece tragedy; a college road trip; a horror film.

There are many common factors to all of his films and not a lot of change in those common factors. Especially because many of them are rather unique to him the continued variation on the same artistic themes gets a bit tired.

Haven't seen Asteroid City, but metafiction and exploration of side-plots removed from the characters are absolutely present in Tenenbaums (presented as a book with chapters) and Grand Budapest Hotel. I guess to a lesser degree.

Sure, most people trivialise his "quirkiness" in annoying ways (there is depth and poetry in some of his movies that go beyond eye-pleasing symmetry) but the guy could take a risk or two, artistically speaking. His Fantastic Mr Fox was charming, and switching to animation is not at all easy for a live-action director!

Before The French Dispatch his use of meta was just a side effect of the style, it broke the fourth wall which you can call meta but it is sort of meaningless if all it does is break the forth wall. In the French Dispatch and Asteroid City he develops it and uses it towards theme, we can not fully understand them without taking in account the meta.

Honest Trailers - Every Wes Anderson Movie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trWLY6NrS2Q

The remark "Do you want him to make a superhero or action movie or something?" implies that any desire for Anderson to evolve beyond his current style stems from a limited understanding of cinema, rather than a genuine wish for artistic expansion. Imo this rhetorical question can be seen as an attempt to dismiss the critique by framing it as unsophisticated. I found it a little condescending.

You are making assumptions about my intent and my feelings regarding superhero and action movies. I am not sure I would call most of Anderson's output particularly sophisticated and absolutely would not write off entire genres as unsophisticated, many dramas offer nothing more than an emotional appeal and many action movies offer considerably more.

There was nothing rhetorical about my question.

It certainly didn't sound like it was an actual question.

Can't think of any real consequence to taking it at face value, so why assume the worst?

He definitely has a unique voice but I think he does challenge himself. Switching to stop motion certainly seems like a challenge. Admittedly he now has a stop motion style.

>But I do think the cinematic world as a whole would benefit from him experimenting a little more, trying a novel format, and so on.

But his format is novel in the entire world of cinema right now, even if it doesn't change from film to film. People go to see a Wes Anderson film for the same reason Marvel fans line up for the next blockbuster; you know what you are going to get, and you want more of it. He takes it to the extreme in this one, where it works entirely visually as an almost homage to the days of silent film. We would benefit greatly from more filmmakers (and studios willing to take them on) who have such a defined aesthetic vision and are able to develop it over such a long a period, rather than just mashing together whatever expectations a focus group might have, or going off on flights of fancy that have little artistic continuity.

For better or for worse, Anderson is very much an auteur [0], like Godard or Woody Allen. Almost certainly in a self-conscious way.

Complaining that Anderson movies feel like Anderson movies seems almost to miss the point: do we look at Picasso's works and complain about the consistent style he developed? The self-imposed constraints of his own style give him a framework to build his art from (it's often said that constraints foster creativity after all) and a particular craft to master.

Conversely, the form might always be an Anderson movie, but the function of each film can be quite different. By sticking with and mastering a particular aesthetic he frees himself to explore things besides aesthetic wildly. What does The Royal Tenenbaums have in common with, say, The Grand Budapest Hotel, besides Futura?

That said, I do feel like Asteroid City in particular was a stretch for him: there's nothing quite like "you can't wake up if you don't fall asleep" anywhere else in his filmography. It felt like along with the more extreme artifice came a more extreme intensity of feeling: to me it's a film that really came from a very anguished and grieving place. I haven't read the article or seen the new film yet, but based on the headline it sounds like this might be the overall direction his work is heading.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auteur

Both Picasso and Godard changed their style dramatically over their careers. I'm not familiar enough with Woody Allen's movies to comment on them.

These are good examples to show how being an auteur doesn't mean you need to stick to the same stereotypical aesthetic. Anderson is still pretty young, so maybe he is shifting in one direction or another. But as far as his work goes as of today, the range of stylistic choices is far, far less than what Picasso or Godard did in their careers.

I once walked into a room in a museum and felt proud for immediately spotting and identifying a Picasso. It was only a few minutes later that I realised that the entire room was Picassos, all in wildly varying styles, most of which I was completely unfamiliar with. Picasso had range.

The stylistic evolution of Picasso and Godard over time is undeniable, but I think it’s also worth considering that Anderson is working in a medium that isn’t just visual, but also narrative, thematic, sonic, and performative. His evolution as an artist is not truly represented by his shifts in color palettes, framing, or editing technique, but you can see it in the emotional territory he explores, the narrative structures he experiments with. While he stays within his own unique aesthetic framework, he is pushing against the boundaries within it.

Asteroid City, for example, is doing something genuinely different, not just in tone, but in structure, layering fiction and grief in a way that feels disorienting and profound. And while his style is often imitated or parodied, nobody else is actually making movies like his with that particular blend of rigor, melancholy, humor, formality, and precision. We should celebrate having a unique voice and perspective, he's a major part of the diversity of creation, he's way outside the boiled-down average the rest of the industry pushes towards.

It’s not that you’re completely wrong or anything here, but the simple counter example of other unique directors that also progressed / changed their style over time kind of disproves the idea that this is some inherent aspect of filmmaking.

And certainly I’m glad he’s making movies and I enjoy them (as I said in the initial comment.) That doesn’t mean I need to celebrate every single thing he does and refrain from film criticism.

I think your “simple counter” might be a bit reductive. Artistic evolution can take many forms, but it doesn’t have to take every form, not every distinctive filmmaker needs to reinvent every aspect of their art to demonstrate creative growth.

My point wasn’t that Anderson should be exempt from criticism, just that his growth may register differently because of the kind of storytelling he’s committed to. The evolution in his work often plays out less in surface-level aesthetics and more in structure, emotional depth, and thematic complexity. He clearly enjoys working within a consistent visual language, but that doesn’t mean he’s artistically “stuck”. Critique is always valid, and I think it’s also worth asking whether we’re tuned into the kinds of shifts that matter most in his particular creative vocabulary.

Perhaps the example of Woody Allen at the top is more apt.

The departure in style, theme, visual approach, and structural vision between early works like Sleeper or Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex and later films such as Match Point is dramatic. Then again, three decades separate those movies. Anderson still has time.

> Anderson still has time.

Yes, but time for what? I still resist the implication that Anderson is somehow “sitting still” artistically just because he maintains a consistent (and remarkable, and unique) aesthetic. When you engage with his work beyond the surface, there’s clear evolution in structure, tone, emotional depth, and thematic ambition. That doesn't mean everything he's done is a masterpiece, or that not liking it is somehow an invalid critique.

He may still evolve in more outwardly dramatic ways, but I think he has and continue to evolve already, just on his own terms, without compromising the visual language he clearly loves.

Anderson is also not dead yet so still creating.

Picasso didn't have evolution so much as total overhauls at several points. It seems much harder to do this kind of evolution/revolution in film simply because of the money involved.

As a film director with such a distinct style, which makes money, it would be pretty hard to go to your investors and say 'I want to do something totally different.' and secure enough money to make a film in the modern era. There are some directors who can self fund due to windfalls in the past. I mean thinking back on noted auteurs I can only think of a film or two that are outside of their style and most are either very early in their career when maybe they were doing a work for hire or very late in their career where they had enough gravitas to get the money to try something different that they had been sitting on for many years (David Lynch's Straight Story is a bit of an odd man out though, I'm not sure of the history of that particular film)

But for someone like picasso, he can just decide on even a whim to attempt to refine or invent another style, the market probably has some kind of pull but it seems like, to me, several orders of magnitude lower stakes.

It would be interesting to find out after some film auteurs' death that they actually had done several other films in a wildly different style under whatever the director's equivalent of a pen name is. Though keeping such a thing secret would be highly improbable (too many people involved in a modern film production).

He has put out 5 films in the last 7 years. Wes Anderson might just be a victim of his own productivity, his work could benefit from some scarcity.

Anderson nonetheless is still quite inventive and experimental in his films, he's always doing new things, and usually those new things are in the details, and of course, those new things tend to play into his trademark style. Asteroid City played like an excuse to play around with clever camera movements. Isle of Dogs did weird things where the image and sound were providing diverging narratives that would come back together.

Anderson's trademark style is annoying to me only when my interest in the characters and story is lacklustre, but for every Anderson film I'm not that into I know at least one person who loves it.

I think it would be unreasonable to expect him to reinvent his filmmaking style dramatically. There are other filmmakers out there making movies for those who've had their fill of quirky Wes Anderson flicks.

In case you haven’t seen it, “Wes Anderson Horror Trailer”: https://youtu.be/gfDIAZCwHQE?si=EzoCvqsY70AcZI4u

With Tenenbaums, Rushmore and maybe the Darjeeling Limited we had enough of the classic Anderson visual style for the films to have lovely atmosphere, but with the actors still being warm, lively and human enough to create real sympathy.

After those, his own movies have almost become caricatures of an Anderson film and the characters have become so much like clockwork that they might as well be set pieces themselves.

The one later exception I can think of, off the top of my head was Ralph Fiennes in Hotel Budapest. His character, and the actor himself in how he plays him, are just too zesty to stay wooden.

>After those, his own movies have almost become caricatures of an Anderson film and the characters have become so much like clockwork that they might as well be set pieces themselves.

I think this is a feature of his artistic refinement through the years; he's the last true visual storyteller in Hollywood. Actors don't really matter, scripts don't really matter - it's a treat for the eyes alone. Something really was lost in the transition from silent to "talkies" where the focus became entirely on plot and dialogue. If you go back and watch those films now, the very best of them had almost no dialogue or title cards. I'd liken what he is doing to something like Joyce in literature, where it's not even about the words, but their semantic structures alone. It seems that all visionary artists end up going in this direction, see Picasso in his later years of total abstraction, or Schoenberg's final works that completely abandoned tonality.

Check out Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal. First season has no dialogue.

Ralph Fiennes in Grand Budapest isn't just an exception. The performance, in my not so humble opinion, is quite possibly the most memorable and brilliant of any performance in a Wes Anderson movie. It is delightful.

That being said, I actually think his style of late has its place. At least he is trying something different in a time when most movies are so derivative and bum-numbingly boring that I rarely bother seeing a movie in a movie-theater. There is a rarity of interesting outliers in mainstream film today.

Outliers are good. They are not wayward miscreants that must be herded back into mediocrity lest we have to think.

It isn't like I'm a snob who only watches art films. I used to watch almost everything that hit the big screen, and I'd enjoy the whole range from hard-to-grasp, arty farty stuff most people think is boring/demanding/ugly/confusing to blatantly commercial nonsense ... that was nonetheless entertaining and fun. (I'd make my proto-hipster friends cringe with my love of B-movies). I had to empty my wallet of ticket stubs regularly so it wouldn't burst the seams.

IDK personally I don't think Grand Budapest feels wooden at all. The entire scene where Adrien Brody smashes the Egon Schiele-esque lesbian painting is one of the most hilarious things I've seen in a movie.

The actors being the most human-like in "Fantastic Mr. Fox" of all his films is pretty telling.

This is clearly intentional, whether you like it or not. My mileage varies depending on my mood. Fiennes is indeed grand in Budapest.

For me the casual violence in this movie really destroyed it - it’s not at all super prevalent throughout the film but there are some “gory” bits played for comedy that took me fully out of the whimsical coziness I expected from it. The comedy didn’t land either.

I miss Rushmore’s plain approach. Just enough quirk, sharp acting, and visuals that back the plot instead of hogging it. Newer Anderson films look like photo shoots: pretty, but the story drags. Same story dev teams hit when designers chase pixel-perfect screens and users still wait on real features.

Rushmore is my favorite Wes Anderson film. I think you nailed it. It was a great film that was “enhanced” by Wes Anderson’s style. Newer films seem to be primarily delivery vehicles of his style, with a hint of story and plot to move it along.

Were you in the shit? Yes, I was in the shit.

Absolutely agree. My favorites,in order of how often I have watched them:

Fantastic Mr. Fox Rushmore Royal Tenenbaums Life Aquatic

The rest, I don't really care for, nothing new, just flash, no substance, and have stopped watching his new movies.

Yes this. Tennenbaums and Zisou were still primarily narrative fiction which allowed the actors to really be the spotlight, which let the characters really come alive.

In Budapest, French and Asteroid it felt increasingly like the actors were too confined to fulfilling an aesthetic for them to come alive or for the actors to shine.

Apologies in advance for sounding controversially critical, I can't help but be reminded of AI art where its trying so hard to look a way that it stops being something you want to look at.

This is because the older films were co-written with Owen Wilson. Once they stopped collaborating, Anderson's later films are unbalanced - they have the whimsical aesthetic, but are too sweet without the bitter piercing wit and clarity of Wilson's writing to make them less cloying (IMHO).

I miss Owen Wilson.

He was going through some major depression and understandably pulled back from the industry. But he brought something very personable and authentic to comedy, and his absence has been palpable.

Many other comedians of the era were too slapstick and over the top for me. I still can't watch a Will Ferrell comedy with any interest.

Owen Wilson has been a fascinating character with a unique yet consistent approach.

Ferrell... Massive comedic turn off for me. He seems like the guy that jumps into a room, interrupts and yells out a joke out of context, then keeps repeating it louder and louder until some polite fake laughter occurs. I feel bad about being this negative about a fellow human being, but his comedic approach sets off a Bully vibe / response in me in anything I've seen him in except Stranger Than Fiction.

"The Landlord" is a short comedy masterpiece. He's so much better restrained as a straight man/foil than a lead clown. Zoolander, Anchorman.

I can't see anything by thay title and Owen wilson... Any links or detail? Thx!:-)

I never realized Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson were college roommates, and how much they'd collaborated together! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Wilson

Moonrise Kingdom was good too, it had something at its core, not just stylish visuals.

Bottle Rocket fits that bill for me.

Bottle Rocket is a charming film

Royal Tenenbaums & Rushmore have always been my favorite, the way they hit every single emotional chord without being overcooked, and with characters that are relatable.

I like Wes Anderson movies in general, but I was unable to finish Asteroid City at home. It felt emotionally monotone. I probably need to go back and rewatch it.

Hope this one is a bit more exciting.

Rushmore is my favorite. The yearbook montage is awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMyh6ptegko

The genius of Rushmore is inseparable from the collaboration with Owen Wilson and the autobiographical inspiration of their school days. Wes Anderson can never make another movie like it. His oeuvre since then is without charm for me.

I agree but I think there's lots of charm, it's just that charming gets old.

I feel that his movies post-mid-career have been trending more and more towards an emotional monotone. That's more of an issue IMHO than the predictable artistic approach that people tend to focus on.

I haven't seen The Phoenician Scheme, but if it changes that then it's a positive sign.

Rushmore was my favorite of his films until the release of Moonrise Kingdom.

Fun fact: Rushmore was shot in an era without social media. All my film nerd pals were aware of Anderson after Bottle Rocket, and were tacitly awaiting his next film, but its ultimate arrival was a surprise. Even MORE surprising (at least for us) was that it was shot right here in Houston -- recognizably, obviously Houston. (I'm sure the St John's community was aware... )

Its release also solved a puzzle for my friend E. and I dating from the winter of 97-98. We'd stopped for sushi at a middling but reasonably priced joint between our rental house the bar we were headed to, and after posting up at the corner of the sushi counter and ordering a bit, we noticed the guy at the far end of the bar. He had a sort of admiring entourage with him of 2-3 younger folks.

The guy looked familiar, but we couldn't place him. Finally:

"Wow, that guy looks like Bill Murray."

"Yeah, he really does, doesn't he?"

"I think that might actually BE Bill Murray."

"What the hell is he doing in Houston?"

"No idea. Is there a tournament at the River Oaks club?"

We ate. We left. We forgot about seeing him -- until we saw Rushmore the following fall.

(In the unlikely event someone reading this knows Houston: this was at the Miyako that used to be just north of 59 on the west side of Kirby, so close to River Oaks.)

I get that reaction, and Anderson’s style can definitely create a sense of emotional distance for some. Throughout this thread - and I want to jump in to so many comments - you can see it.

I found Asteroid City to be one of his most emotionally raw films. Beneath the precise framing and deadpan delivery that characterizes his work, the movie is wrestling with true grief, uncertainty, and the need to keep performing your role (in life, and in a metafiction sense, in the movie). This driving need is there even and perhaps especially when you don’t "understand the script", and when you feel isolated and other-ed.

The scene with Margot Robbie is the fulcrum of the entire movie, it’s brief, but devastating, and probably the most emotionally exposed Anderson has ever gotten. I think this scene is also in part in dialogue with the audience. If you ever do revisit it, I think there’s a lot simmering under the surface worth your time. But it's not my intention to try and convince someone to enjoy a movie that doesn't click for them.

Data point for you: Asteroid City is my favorite, I've watched it like eight times now? and I could barely get through Rushmore.

All the commenters in here complaining that new Wes doesn't have what old Wes had.. Maybe they're missing what new Wes is doing? The newer movies are full of emotion, they're not monotone at all.

I agree. While overall not my favorite, Asteroid City was definitely his most emotional impactful film for me.

Final scenes had me bawling.

This is what I needed to rewatch it with a fresh mind. Thanks for taking the time to say this!

He keeps pushing his actors to become more wooden and paper-doll like.

At some point he may use real wooden puppets like the 1960s TV series Thunderbirds, which looks very Wes Andersonesque: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLiH4xrCITI

Have you considered his actual films with actual puppets?

Archived link using a site I made to auto-redirect you to archives :) https://unbloq.us/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06...

Hey, good job!

Thanks! I hope it can be a good tool for people to reach for if they ever hit a paywall

Why not just post direct link to archive?

To share the service? https://unbloq.us/

Yeah pretty much, just hoping people might get some use out of my side project

Thank you for making the internet a better place these days <3

thank you! I love HN and really hope people here get some value from my thing!

normally I find getting to crawled version is a couple of steps, this takes you immediately is one thing I notice.

yeah, it's a pretty incremental change but it will find the latest archive of the link, and as long as it exists, you will be redirected to it. If there's no archive yet, it automatically puts you in the archive.today queue to get your page archived

you can just do this with archive.is/https://...

The article completely spoils the movie.

Isn’t that the point?

The movie's not even out yet. It's possible to talk about a movie without spoiling it.

It genuinely looks like an AI generated Wes Anderson film.

He needs to go to Siberia and relearn what made him great.

https://archive.ph/FkNc3

I loved it. I think it's better than the Tenenbaums, more emotional, more funny, more serious. Perfect from the start to the finish. Only Rushmore, the Fantastic Mr Fox and Moonrise Kingdom were better so far.

> ensemble cast

This being a Wes Anderson film, I expect at the very least an introductory chapter heading and title card for each character.

They might or might not have argued for two months about the individual fonts to pick for each card, before eventually settling on hiring a font designer (one per character).

Why does it feel like any film churned out by Hollywood is just mindless banter in between sex and explosions...haven't seen a movie in theaters since well before covid because it's really not worth it, waste of time.

I think you might just not be interested in the overwhelming amount of movies coming out that have neither sex nor explosions. I have a subscription and go 2-7 times a month to see new movies. Plenty of slop that is both sex and explosions, but a ton of interesting movies that aren't.

Perhaps you can share some examples of the films you are referring as "mindless banter in between sex and explosions". I'm not sure that description really fits most of the films coming out recently. If you said, "Dumb comic book films", I would maybe agree with you, but there isn't typically any sex in those so I assume you are not referring to them.

Covid halted the production of a lot of movies, and changed how others were made. It also shut down theaters. So, "since covid", is really talking about before and after an era. Kind of like saying, "since 9/11", in terms of the impact on culture. A lot of creativity has moved from the movie theaters to streaming services and from films to more episodic content.

However, here is a short list of films worth seeing (imo) since covid (2019).

Zone of Interest (2023) The Holdovers (2023) Parasite (2019) Dune (2021) Dune Part Two (2024) Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) 1917 (2019) The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) The Substance (2024) Palm Springs (2020) Oppenheimer (2023) The Lighthouse (2019) Hundreds of Beavers (2022) Barbarian (2022) Flow (2024)

Oppenheimer had sex and explosions, but the banter part might be more subjective

> Flow (2024)

"Flow" was a huge disappointment for me. I couldn't get past the animation jerkiness and overall unrealistic look. I have two cats, and cats simply don't move like pictured: while most of the keyframes were perfectly fine, the transitions between them were off, which completely broke it for me. Heck, "Stray" (the video game) had much more realistically moving cat than "Flow" and I think it's supposed to be the other way around. I get that it was "indie" stuff done on a relatively small budget, but those broken movements became sort of an uncanny valley for me.

I guess, I also had wrong expectations from the beginning. The movie was heavily advertised as non-verbal, so - naturally - I expected it to portray the behaviors of non-human consciousness (with slight allowances for plot reasons, sure). And then the animals behaved as if they were unquestionably and heavily anthropopsychic.

To sum it up, "animals don't move like this and don't behave like this" paired with some invalid pre-expectations, sadly, was too much to break my suspension of disbelief and ruin the movie for me.

But yeah, it's certainly not a "mindless banter in between sex and explosions".

The animals behave like animals at the beginning of the movie, but differently by the end. That’s clearly a choice by the filmmakers.

I think Flow is one of the best movies I’ve seen in years, in part because of how it chooses to depart from reality.

I think it also helped that I saw it in a theater which I find far more immersive than watching at home.

Just to toss in a couple of 'dumb comic book movies' that hit different, the two (so far) Spiderverse films. They put Flow to shame both visually and emotionally (at least for me).

This is the kind of comment that starts the conversational bar at such a low point there really is no point in engaging with it.

Emotional is a big word for that movie.

i think wes anderson was replaced by AI, his last 3 films lacks alot of soul

It's very odd. I thought Asteroid City (a really tough watch, like eating a 3 day old biscuit without water to wash it down) and Isle of Dogs were the most stilted. I didn't like Darjeeling Limited when I first saw it. It's visually and musically beautiful but maybe was too close to home so I was bored of the brothers relationship, also, I don't really think Wes Anderson can do sex scenes. Scenes of intimacy sure, but not sex scenes. I found it very awkward on the first viewing, I've grown to like it more but... idk, it has some issues still I think outside of that. Pretty much every deeper aspect of that film I don't like, even the brothers character arc I find meh. More than most of his movies I think it showed that he can't really enter into the headspace of the economically disadvantaged.

The Roald Dahl short stories on Netflix were very dysfunctional but so obviously in the spirit and tone of Roald Dahl that I thought they were actually very faithful to his writing, I think Wes Anderson did a rare thing in transliterating those stories to screen, the good and the flaws in tone are directly from Roald Dahl who I really enjoyed as a kid because the absurd and ironic detachment, the odd meanness of spirit, was rare in childrens books at the time (maybe still is, idk). I didn't enjoy them as film but I did enjoy their faithfulness to the authors work.

Dispatches felt like basically Wes Anderson explaining his own personal feelings of his life, being an ex-pat enamored but disconnected from his new home country, I could be wrong but it felt like it was the closest he'll ever have to an autobiography. It was effectively a short story format as well. I mean the guy went from being a Texas rube / self manufactured dandy dreaming of exotic locations through the lens of the fucking new yorker (what a weirdo right?) to living in Paris, what an odd personal life arc, the film felt like it was all exploring that. As someone who has lived in these kinds of personal cultural displacements and unexpected life arcs it felt very obvious, and I really enjoyed that part. This could all be projection of course.

I don't know, I wonder if he has the pathos required for long form any more, maybe he is just bored with the traditional arcs they require (I'm getting older and it's very easy to get bored of any consumptive activity) but he can't really seem to find his footing on short stories either. Maybe he's happy and resolved trauma and can't speak to it in that subtly authentic way anymore. I loved Life Aquatic, I loved the exploration of an unsympathetic main character who didn't want to realize why he had become unsympathetic, I already loved Seu Jorge and so the soundtrack is perfection to me as well.

> Asteroid City (a really tough watch, like eating a 3 day old biscuit without water to wash it down)

A great way to describe it, unfortunately. I love Wes Anderson movies, but my patience with Asteroid City ran out when the (spoiler alert) quirky-looking stop-motion alien landed.

Haven't read the article but saw the film.

If Wes made No Country For Old Men in this style it would suck.

The films look incredible but the monotone delivery and lack of soundtrack remove any drama and intrigue.

I say this as someone that loved Rushmore, Tenenbaums, Life Aquatic

> If Wes made No Country For Old Men in this style it would suck.

I genuinely don't understand what this means, No Country for Old Men is a Coen Brothers movie.

Do I need to see "The Phoenician Scheme" to understand this reference...?

No, you don't need to see the film but it was a way of me trying to put across how much his style really sucks out of the films.

I see No Country For Old Men as one of the top films of the last 20 years, what with its pacing and the atmosphere they create. It's not an original story, based on a book, so therefore any director could have been brought on board.

You might say I am comparing apples to oranges but it was just a way to illustrate what I think the problem is.

There's still a selection problem in adaptation.... Directors are not interchangeable, and that's ok! It means there can be a broader range of styles and flavors in the world.

For example, what if the Coen brothers had directed, say, 'Adaptation'? It would have been a completely different film. Would we ever want to see Christopher Nolan adapt Stefan Zweig? Hardly.

I don't see how this helps to illustrate anything, it's not like it's a top film prior to the execution by a director.

If Wes made No Country for Old Men it would be another movie, just like if Martin Scorcese would have done it...

Every once and a while you see an auteur get coaxed out of their genre. Lynch did Dune in '84 right off the back of The Elephant Man. And while he hated the entire experience I know that I'm not the only person that enjoyed the particularly lynchian facets of the story that he brought into the light. His film is much more concerned with exploring the more psychedelic aspects. The divination that comes with being the Kwisatz Haderach, the grotesqueness of the Harkonen house, the psychedelic experience of the spice.. which are all present in the source material. Whereas the Villeneuve take is much more concerned with other aspects colonialism primarily, and those things that Lynch leaned into he certainly acknowledged but spent more time in other places. I love both and I love when we get to see multiple adaptations of the same source material, even if some aren't so great, just because we do get to see these different aspects of the original work.

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