{"id":1201,"date":"2018-08-21T15:00:50","date_gmt":"2018-08-21T21:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1201"},"modified":"2020-02-05T19:08:59","modified_gmt":"2020-02-06T02:08:59","slug":"movie-isle-of-dogs-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2018\/08\/21\/movie-isle-of-dogs-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"MOVIE: Isle of Dogs (2018)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IsleIsle of Dogs
\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2018
\nRating: PG-13
\nLength: 101 minutes \/ 1.68 hours<\/p>\n

A few years ago, I got on a Wes Anderson kick. I practically watched his entire filmography to that point in one long binge-worthy day. After catching up, I felt I truly appreciated his quirky, orthogonal cinematography and deeply complex characters. I\u2019ve essentially been a fan of his since\u00a0Moonrise Kingdom<\/em>\u00a0(2012), so I was looking forward to his latest work,\u00a0Isle of Dogs <\/em>(2018). After all, he had proven his skill at stop-motion animation with\u00a0The Fantastic Mr. Fox\u00a0<\/em>(2009) and had received nominations for Best Picture and Best Director for\u00a0The Grand Budapest Hotel<\/em>\u00a0(2014) since then.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, while\u00a0Isle of Dogs<\/em>\u00a0carries Anderson\u2019s distinct style and charm, it felt a little watered down. Sure, the shots were full of their beauty and symmetry, and the story had its cute moments, but it mostly felt like he was on autopilot. Maybe the PG-13 rating was holding him back? I don\u2019t know. In most fiction, there is a suspension of disbelief, but setting this film 20 years in the future while still holding to the aesthetic of the antique (I doubt there will be\u00a0nearly<\/em>\u00a0that many reel-to-reels in the future) seemed to backfire a little.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll give Wes Anderson some credit, though: he did try something new by including the \u201clanguage barrier\u201d and adopting the Japanese style as much as he could. It also seems that stop-motion techniques have improved significantly since\u00a0The Fantastic Mr. Fox<\/em>, likely due to many of the same 3-D printing technologies used for\u00a0Kubo and the Two Strings<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(2016). The mixture of 3-D stop-motion and 2-D animation in\u00a0Isle of Dogs<\/em>\u00a0should also be commended. In the end, I think my main qualm with this film was that it was a smidge too predictable. Perhaps this was due to the standard McGuffin of the boy trying to be reunited with his dog.<\/p>\n

Full of Wes Anderson\u2019s charming cinematography but not too much else, I give\u00a0Isle of Dogs\u00a0<\/em>3.5 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n

\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"\u00a0\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"\u00a0\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"\u00a01\/2<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Isle of Dogs Year: 2018 Rating: PG-13 Length: 101 minutes \/ 1.68 hours A few years ago, I got on a Wes Anderson kick. I practically watched his entire filmography to that point in one long binge-worthy day. After catching up, I felt I truly appreciated his quirky, orthogonal cinematography and deeply complex characters. I\u2019ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,1199,2],"tags":[1020,91,1414,1420,688,254,1418,13,8,1417,1416,1419,1415],"class_list":["post-1201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3-5-stars","category-animated","category-movie","tag-1020","tag-animation","tag-isle-of-dogs","tag-japan","tag-japanese","tag-kubo-and-the-two-strings","tag-moonrise-kingdom","tag-movie","tag-review","tag-stop-notion","tag-the-fantastic-mr-fox","tag-the-grand-budapest-hotel","tag-wes-anderson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1201"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1978,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1201\/revisions\/1978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}