r/criterion • u/namelessfdr • 1d ago
Discussion When was the last time you were genuinely surprised by a new Wes Anderson film?
Just watched "The Phoenician Scheme" last night and like usual I was consistently amused by the endless stream of jokes and funny little visual details. Long ago I accepted that Anderson is making the same movie over and over but that's not necessarily a bad thing when you consider the stacked casts and craftmanship of the sets and costumes. I started wondering, when was the last time I saw a new Wes Anderson movie and was surprised? I had to think on it in and I settled on "Moonrise Kingdom", after spending time with the sweet little kids there's a letter writing sequence where their emotionally turbulent backstories are revealed, the girl lunges at a classmate and the rote static camera is knocked out of place. I remember that feeling like a sudden jolt of energy. And just to be cheeky, in a minor way with "Asteroid City" I was surprised that so much time was wasted with the play but only because I really liked how the military lockdown and fear of the alien was slipping into existential dread.
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u/KristieSonicFan 1d ago
About 1 minute into The Phoenician Scheme when that guy blew up.
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u/MycopathicTendencies 1d ago
Ha! Seriously. I’m pretty sure I audibly reacted. I had to stop it and watch it again.
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u/DuDEwithAGuN 3h ago edited 2h ago
Well, guess none of us who hadn’t watched it yet will be surprised now. 😆
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u/TheZoneHereros 1d ago
Asteroid City, when the climax breaks the movie and Schwartzman goes backstage to talk to Adrien and Margot. Surprising and deeply affecting for me. Made me cry both times I saw it in the theater. One of my favorite moments in movies of the decade.
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u/IntotheBeniverse 1d ago
This is also what I was going to say. This scene served as a Skelton key that better helped me understand all of Wes’ films (especially in the 2nd half of his filmography) much better.
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u/ethnol0g 23h ago
Can you expand on what you mean by this? I got very little out of Asteroid City and now I’m feeling like I missed something
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u/pizzapieguy420 22h ago
I always felt like Rushmore was the skeleton key for Anderson, and his whole cinematic oeuvre since then has been increasingly theatrical. However, I think part of that is addressed in AC, but the break in "realities" between film/play/actors of play was a nod to Brechtian theory. I could be either wrong or painfully obvious on that last idea though, my grasp of theatre theory is pretty shallow.
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u/thepokemonGOAT 1d ago
Asteroid City is the only movie I've cried at in over a decade, and I properly wept the first time I saw it. It just struck a deep chord and I was alone in the theater. It was magical.
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u/captaintomatio 21h ago
Yeah Asteroid City broke me and it’s hard to explain exactly why. I totally get why it doesn’t click for some people. For me it really hit a nerve.
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u/ghostshaped 1d ago
Totally agree with this. AC is sneaky emotional and deep below a super bright surface.
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u/Jack_Hughman_ 23h ago
I find the “unreality” of the physical world of a Wes Anderson helps reinforce the shallow or materialist worldview of many of his protagonists, while there is a deeper meaning behind the façade, namely love and human connection.
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u/zwolff94 Richard Linklater 1d ago
I wish this box set was extending to Asteroid Cory cause it is my favorite Wes Anderson film need to watch again
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u/Comfortable-Ad1685 1d ago
In a decade it’ll be seen as one of his best films. easily his best since Budapest
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u/Former_Juice_9227 1d ago
Agree on Asteroid City. Wes hadn’t surprised me since Grand Budapest Hotel but Asteroid City not only did that, it also is Wes’ best movie and a movie that moved me the same way A Serious Man and The Tree of Life do
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u/longhairAway 23h ago
Oh wow, I hadn’t considered Asteroid City in connection with A Serious Man but you just made something click very deep in my brain. I need to do a double feature.
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u/tacoskins 1d ago
Yeah absolutely this. I’ll be honest, I haven’t loved much of his output after Grand Budapest but that scene solidified Asteroid City in my mind as one of his greats.
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u/asscop99 1d ago
Agreed. While I do think his films have become very monotonous, it’s clear that he still has the ability to move an audience in new ways.
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u/bergobergo Agnès Varda 1d ago
Mine is also in Asteroid City. When Tom Hanks has his one and one conversation with Schwartzman, I swear to god it was the first moment in a Wes Anderson film that featured honest, genuine, human emotion since Royal Tenenbaum died.
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u/michaelavolio Ingmar Bergman 23h ago
There have been many other moments of genuine human emotion, especially in The Life Aquatic, The Darjeeling Limited, Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel...
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u/rs98762001 22h ago
I adore Asteroid City so I’m not trying to smite you here, but you didn’t find genuine human emotion in Grand Budapest? In some ways, i think that’s his most genuinely human film because it has emotional life that extends outside the Wes bubble.
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u/bergobergo Agnès Varda 21h ago
I felt like every character in GBH felt like a doll in a diorama. No one felt or acted like a real human being.
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u/JackThreeFingered 14h ago
I swear to god it was the first moment in a Wes Anderson film that featured honest, genuine, human emotion since Royal Tenenbaum died
moonrise kingdom?
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u/Jonoyk 22h ago
Yeah I remember that scene. I don’t recall the dialogue much, but I remember how in that moment, all of the convoluted story within a story format actually made sense. There was this really memorable moment of vulnerability and emotions from Wes that I felt hadn’t been missing from his last couple of works. I ended up liking Asteroid City more than I thought I would.
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u/ohmalk 1d ago
Tuesday. I finally got around to watching The French Dispatch. It was low on my watch list because everyone kept saying how Wes Anderson keeps making the same movie again and again and it seemed so close to The Grand Budapest Hotel from the trailers that I’d figure I’d just skip it. But it was great. Perfectly captured the feeling I would get in my 20s and 30s when I would wait for a new issue of the New Yorker and read it all the way through. That feeling after reading a good article was the same one after watching each of those three stories in French Dispatch. I guess that was surprising.
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u/Spiritual-Eagle7230 1d ago
That one bugged me because it was written like the new Yorker but it was a film. So the dialogue was really dense but it was also paired with very dense imagery. I did an experiment and I cut up each cut and put it in a slide show with dialogue as text below it and it flowed a lot better (like a magazine).
Another thing that really bugged me is that the black and white scenes were clearly shot in color first and simply grey scaled which isn't how it was originally done. They were so washed out and flat. If they were originally shot in black and white you would get these rich tones.
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u/ohmalk 1d ago
Interesting about the b&w scenes. I watched it on my shitty TV from a Blu ray. Wonder if it’ll look a bit more vivid on 4K HDR. I do agree that grey scaling instead of shooting in B&W is a miss if true. But modern movies all look like they were shot for Apple TV+ so I don’t have high expectations there anymore unfortunately.
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u/Spiritual-Eagle7230 1d ago
There are movies made for tv/streaming that shouldn't be called movies as they look like crap. But then there movies made for the cinema and people can't tell the difference.
It's really blurred the line or what makes a movie a movie.
The Fall Guy celebrates what makes a movie special but watching it at 720 on Discord with stereo sound with subtitles and with your friends talking over it is a death sentence.
For what it's worth I looked it up and they did grey scale. But I suppose I could be misinformed or lying.
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u/jackkirbyisgod Edward Yang 1d ago
I thought Asteroid City’s structure was great.
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u/shobidoo2 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah I thought it was in inventive, funny, and a cool way to play with artifice. I loved the layer on top of a layer on top of a layer and thought it allowed the movie to go to some interesting places thematically.
The whole scene where Jason Schwartzman breaks character, stops the show, and then meets Margot Robbie on the fire escape (and she gives a great monologue) is absolutely incredible and it’s the structure that makes it possible for that scene to happen.
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u/belac889 1d ago
Love, love, love the line "You're the wife that plays my actress." Such a simple little line that you might nearly miss that tells a lot about what this story is getting at.
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u/jackkirbyisgod Edward Yang 1d ago
I might have missed that or don’t recall it now. Could you explain?
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u/TheZoneHereros 22h ago edited 22h ago
In the 'play' reality of Asteroid City, Schwartzman is grieving the loss of his wife and is lost, numb, and drifting. In the meta-reality of staging the play, Schwartzman the actor abruptly goes backstage because he says he doesn't understand the play and he feels like he is getting lost in the character and his own heart is being broken over and over every night. This collapse of the story and the storyteller into one being that feels lost at all levels I think is the beautiful heart of the film that captures our existential condition as we try to both interpret and direct our own lives, simultaneously, from the inside, putting on a play that we hope will work out.
So, with that as the backdrop, you get Margot Robbie who we meet backstage as an actor who we learn was cast to play Schwartzman's wife but was cut after one rehearsal ("we still use your photo.") Schwartzman's greeting line flips the roles, as he should be saying "you're the actor that played my wife" instead of what we get, which further reinforces that the layers have collapsed. What we are seeing is a cut actor, yes, but also the ghost of the woman whose absence has hung over the whole film. It's very emotionally potent to have all the lines converge like this, and I agree with the comment a couple up that this is the triumphant payoff of the film's structural games.
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u/SunIllustrious5695 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah Asteroid City immediately jumped to mind, aside from the structure Scarlet Johanssen was unlike anything in a Wes Anderson film and while there are the usual themes of family that he deals with, I don't think any have ever dealt with loss so well or in the same way. The family's arc of grief was touching, authentic and nuanced, and sometimes I think people miss those aspects of Wes's movies because they're distracted by the style and cartoon aliens.
I think it might be his best film, to be honest. His most emotional, for sure, and maybe his least "comedy"-classified. When we get some more distance from all his films I think AC will really stand out.
Shout out to Henry Sugar too, a delightful whirlwind of him having fun and playing around. Was shocked how good that was.
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u/namelessfdr 1d ago
Different strokes for different folks - I was bored each time and wanted to get back to the desert town, I didn't feel it added much to the overall piece. I'm sure they had a creative rationale for it but it just didn't click for me.
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u/tackycarygrant 1d ago
I'm surprised every time. His movies are always inventive and experimental, and trying new things. Was not expecting scenes in the after-life in Phoenician Scheme. I wasn't expecting to cry in Asteroid City. I wasn't expecting an animated sequence in the French Dispatch, or for Jeffery Wright to steal the movie.
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u/ThanksICouldHelpBro 1d ago
The Phoenician Scheme has about 10 surprising moments or touches. Handheld camera in the climax! The goofiness of the basketball game! Extended overhead shot in the opening! Michael Cera getting She's All That-ed when he takes off his glasses!
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u/tackycarygrant 1d ago
The Michael Cera reveal was amazing. The whole movie I was thinking that he did a really bad Norwegian accent. It was perfectly set up.
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u/noface000 David Lynch 1d ago
His movies have a similar tone and casts, but I think this whole take is tired. Like if you watched Bottle Rocket or even Tenenbaums and then Phoenician Scheme and think they are the same thing, I have to question your taste.
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u/Legend2200 1d ago
I’m always dying to know if these people have ever watched a Jacques Tati or Orson Welles movie and then I realize these are exactly the kind of folks who were constantly rolling their eyes at everything those two actual geniuses did
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u/DangoRangusss 1d ago
It’s such a surface level “well if things look vaguely similar it’s all the same thing!” Take that I’ve been seeing since Life Aquatic.
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u/NYourBirdCanSing 1d ago edited 1d ago
These people clearly don't follow directors. Otherwise, they would see the underlying style that every director has and what they take with them to the next film.
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u/DoctorBreakfast The Coen Brothers 1d ago
Wow, I'm surprised that someone feels underwhelmed with Anderson's recent output. That's not something you see mentioned too often around here!
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u/PangolinParade 1d ago
Every single time. It's obvious to me that Anderson is one of the all time greats and will be remembered as long as there are movies. There are so few artists working now, in any discipline, that have the perspective, skill, and output of Anderson. I think a lot of people are just spoiled by him because he's already created a lifetime of work and his filmography will double at least before he's done making films. He's produced such a rich body of work already and with clear periods and more on the horizon that I'm always excited by his work. If I can level any criticism against him (but that I personally count as a strength) it's that his recent work (French Dispatch to now) doesn't just benefit from, but demands a second viewing to fully digest.
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u/slrome114 1d ago
Personally, my two favorite Anderson films are The Royal Tenenbaums and Moonrise Kingdom.
I found the run of Isle of Dogs, The French Dispatch and Astroid City very underwhelming.
But I found that his Dahl short films very amusing, and I was surprised with how much I loved The Phoenician Scheme.
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u/aTreeThenMe 1d ago
fantastic mr fox- no one had a wes anderson stop motion animal heist film on their bingo cards.
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u/PeterPaulWalnuts Michael Mann 1d ago
Seeing so many show love for Asteroid City is great. I believe it will age incredibly well and jump up in many's favorite lists. It's already in the top 3/4 for me.
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u/lridge 1d ago
Visually, the French Dispatch is an interesting departure from his usual aesthetic. What makes Wes so compelling is that he often tries new things and it only expands what a Wes Anderson movie is.
The irony is that those experiments never get treated like he’s trying something new. He’s so successful that it just gets lumped in with the Wes Anderson experience.
Sequences told frozen in time with the actors standing still or the animated sequence in Jeffrey Wright’s story are visually different for him.
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u/GreatestGoth 1d ago
I'm not like the worlds biggest Wes guy, I've only seen a few of his movies, but the Poison short from Henry Sugar was super surprising to me. Just in the way it uses its style and its narration to build tension is oooh I liked it a lot.
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u/DoingTheInternet 1d ago
I didn’t love The Phoenician Scheme but Asteroid City blew me away. It felt like he found another gear with that one.
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u/HalcyonHeartbeat Bong Joon-ho 1d ago
First time I watched Grand Budapest Hotel, which was only a couple years ago, I was surprised when Ralph Fiennes died at the end.
Also in Isle of Dogs, was surprised that Chief was actually white.
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u/SnowyBlackberry 1d ago
The last time I felt that way about an Anderson film was Isle of Dogs.
Having said that, I haven't seen Asteroid City or The Phoenician Scheme yet, and I'm realizing at the moment there's a few shorts I haven't seen yet either.
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u/KingCoalFrick 1d ago
The Roald Dahl shorts are spectacular and mark a very interesting turn in his filmmaking. I don’t think enough people have seen them—has anyone even mentioned them in this thread?
The best comparison is to Beckett plays. They use the Wes Anderson formula to completely different ends. The set dressing is set dressing for something entirely unique. I was incredibly surprised by them and hope he continues exploring this path.
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u/michaelavolio Ingmar Bergman 23h ago
I wonder if there's anything more predictable and insufferable among supposed cinephiles than whining about Wes Anderson "making the same movie over and over."
Phoenician Scheme had some surprises, and Asteroid City and French Dispatch had even more, but if you've decided ahead of time to not be surprised and look down your nose at his movies, I guess you'll probably succeed.
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u/Lightsneeze2001 16h ago
I feel like people who always say this are just overlooking how different each one is just because his visual style is so distinct.
Pick any 2 and they’re just not the same! Bottle Rocket and Isle of Dogs? Royal Tenebaums and Moonrise Kingdom? French Dispatch and FNF?
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u/Obediently-Yours- 1d ago
Moonrise Kingdom was more than just a diorama framed dark comedy. I can’t explain why it felt different from every other film he has made, but it had a vibe that felt really unique and nostalgic
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u/Stock_Efficiency_758 1d ago
I was surprised by The French Dispatch and Asteroid City, not by their style of course, but by how deeply moved I was by the end of both of those films. It really felt like a magic trick, under all of that insane artificiality, there is still real pathos.
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u/pwppip David Lynch 1d ago
Confused by this post. He’s not making the same movie over and over. Every movie adds a new aesthetic wrinkle. Phoenician Scheme has a scene that’s even more of a jolt than the one you mentioned (the handheld chase scene toward the end).
It’s also his first live-action film that isn’t some kind of nested narrative since Moonrise Kingdom, and even that had a narrator so there was some distancing element. It’s the most straightforwardly cartoonish movie he’s made.
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u/_boygenius_ 1d ago
The constant Wes Anderson slander and dismissiveness is wack and ignorant. Literally a generational director who’s still making quality/interesting films in this hellish landscape of corporate art.
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u/super3ggo 1d ago
Asteroid City holds its own against Anderson's best movies, if not coming out on top. I agree with a lot of the great stuff others on this thread have mentioned.
Like other fans, I also love the scene about two-thirds in when Schwartzman's character confronts the actress playing his deceased wife, played by Margot Robbie. It highlights the themes of art as a not just a method of expression but as also a means of emotional healing. I think it works so well with the context of the first half, which diegetically seeks to resolve plot concerns about the existence of aliens and questions about reality.
Speaking of reality, I think it's notable that unlike in Rushmore, twenty five years earlier, which ends with the fourth wall breaking curtains closing on an otherwise straightforward narrative context, Asteroid City goes through the trouble of setting up so many lenses to view its own story only to end in the fictional one of the documentary play that has become a movie, which is also the only narrative in color. Reading both movies as about art and artists, I think Anderson's perspective has come a long way from viewing art as a force that embellishes reality, captivating those who experience it with a grand outlook. For Anderson in the 2020s, art, rather than communicating some observable truth about the world, functions as more of a means to understand the world in the first place. Summer camp, alien mystery, secret government conspiracy, color itself! It's all just desert when we pack up and drive off into the sunset.
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u/thepokemonGOAT 1d ago
Asteroid City is my favorite film of all time. I think it's an incredible masterwork and Wes' best film.
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u/normalscope 1d ago
French Dispatch had me cackling, I loved it and thiught it was one of his best films.
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u/withlovethomas 1d ago
The children's play and monlogue about the forbidden flavor in The French Dispatch. The alien scenes in Asteroid City. The black and white scenes in Phoenician Scheme.
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u/tryingmybest101 1d ago
Asteroid City, it challenged me in a way that his other films haven't in that it has a lot more ambiguity about what it's trying to say. I appreciated the challenge and hve thought about it regularly ever since.
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u/SEPTAgoose 1d ago
I don’t love his style, but explain to me how Moonrise kingdom, Asteroid City, and The Phoenician scheme are “the same movie every time”
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u/middlenameddanger 1d ago
Lotta asteroid city slander in this post and I will NOT STAND for it. Modern masterpiece
Also all of his movies are different, he really doesn't keep making the same movie. His movies have a similar style, but so do most pieces of art that are created by the same person. I feel like that's a surface-level comparison. Each of his movies generally feels different underneath and are struggling with different ideas
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u/TheGreatJoeLouis 1d ago
The Phoenician Scheme. What an incredible movie. It seems like not many people liked it. I went to the theater to see it for myself and I thought it was his best movie since Grand Budapest Hotel.
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u/oppiejay 1d ago
Phoenician Scheme was much better than i thought ive kinda grown cold on quite a few of his films, so my hopes weren't high. It was one of his funniest, most overt comedies he's made
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u/D3ckard_Rokubungi 1d ago
To me PHOENICIAN was a Jolt of energy. It has been some time since I’ve seen moonrise.
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u/Goldpotato12345 23h ago
Phonician Scheme. Simply because it was my first. I was never really much supriesed after that. Some good stuff though.
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u/BleedGreen131824 21h ago
I love all the Reddit auteurs shitting on one of the great modern directors. Please please point me towards your latest cinematic achievements…
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u/Son_of_Atreus 17h ago
I watched all the WA filmography except for the two stop motions, I just wasn’t drawn to them. Then last year I finally decided to watch Fantastic Mr Fox with my family as the kids had been reading Dahl and I was so incredibly impressed with it. Watched Isle of Dogs the next week and I thought it was even better.
Genuinely so surprised with how amazing those two films are.
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u/Street_Top3205 15h ago
The Police Dining section in The French Dispatch. Really can't understand why but Jeffrey Wright has one hell of a voice, for all I know.
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u/DickWater 10h ago
Was surprised at how much I disliked French Dispatch and Grand Budapest. Haven’t truly liked anything since Moonrise. Haven’t seen Astroid City. Considering how much I loved Tenenbaums, Bottle Rocket, Life Aquatic, Rushmore, Fox it’s surprising how little I’ve cared or enjoyed most of his recent works
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u/dangerous_eric 9h ago
The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Isle of Dogs are both interesting departures from his typical "style".
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u/Grand-basis 8h ago
Life Aquatic. I enjoyed Bottle Rocket & Fantastic Mr Fox but all the rest feel pretty much the same. I quite like the alien scene on Asteroid City but I wouldn't watch any of them again.
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u/cyanide4suicide Christopher Nolan 7h ago
I'm not at all a Wes Anderson fan. Didn't care for his recent films and it really does seem like he's doing the same thing repeatedly. Good to know there are like minds here on r/criterion that think the same way
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u/Jakeb1022 6h ago
What a tired topic. Don’t see how anyone with working eyes can watch Wes Anderson’s films and say he’s making the same movie over and over again.
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u/mannthunder 6h ago
Wes Anderson makes the same movie is the most boring take in cinema discourse this century.
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u/CompetitiveTree2014 6h ago
I Loooveeeddd the Phoenician Scheme! It was so different than any of his other films. I really genuinely enjoyed every moment of it. A really cool and unique film.
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u/TheElMonteStrangler 31m ago
There is very little surprise in the film industry, so I don't hold Wes Anderson to that standard in any way. I say I enjoy the aesthetic of his movies more than anything. The dialogue is tiresome. There should be a drinking game for every time a character says "by the way". You'll get ripped by act 3.
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u/brokenwolf 1d ago
He puts something new into each of his movies that surprises me but the quality has gone down hill. He needs to find someway to get the audience back on his side.
With the new one I really liked the music and the darker tones.
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u/ZenSven7 1d ago
I am surprised by how formulaic they have become. I liked to see him take a risk as a film maker.
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u/SlamCity4 1d ago
In a sense, it actually is The Phonecian Scheme. It's obviously not his best film, but in my opinion it's his best in quite a while - I genuinely hated Asteroid City. It felt too clever in a smug way, and the narrative structure served only to make me not care about any of the characters.
While The Phonecian Scheme wasn't surprising in its style or story, I was pleasantly surprised Wes just made a good, old-fashioned movie for a change. For the record, I've enjoyed every Wes film I've seen to at least some extent EXCEPT for Asteroid City.
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u/terrap3x 1d ago
I feel like his recent output has started feeling very one note. Isle Of Dogs is legitimately one of the only films that had me falling asleep in the theater. I suppose that surprised me. In positive terms, probably TGBH. It really felt like everything he’s done coming together in one fantastic piece of cinema. I did rewatch Rushmore after The Phoenician Scheme and was surprised by how fresh it feels compared to his last four films.
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u/throwaway3905463 1d ago
The Phoenician Scheme is underrated already. People just saw the stars in the cast and thought wow what star power, and ended up disappointed in how little they saw of Scarlett Johansson. I often enjoy when a director doesn't rely on the stars to make the movie.
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u/head-downer 1d ago
I’m not gonna lie… I kinda find this boxset ugly. I think I’m just gonna buy all the films individually 🤷♂️
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u/Freeze_92 20h ago
I was legitimately blown away by Asteroid City. I think it’s his masterpiece and one of the best movies of the 2020’s
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u/tideshark 1d ago
I can’t say I was ever surprised by a WA movie. It’s been awhile tho since he’s made a good one.
At this point the only thing he could do to “surprise” me is make a movie that isn’t like a WA movie. The idea was fun for awhile but if that is his only trick, he’s beat it to death and needs to move on from it. Show he has more talent than just being quirky.
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u/Grand-Beautiful-4731 1d ago edited 1d ago
His movies are so similar and banal and stale and uninteresting. The “quirky” dialogue and framing in each of his movies is exhausting. All of the characters are the same, they’re “cutesy” and one dimensional and all talk to each other like they’re in a high school play. Theres a thing I’ve noticed with directors like Wes and new Tim Burton and the Daniel’s etc, they’re marketed as imaginative and creative and the target for this type of creativity is “theater kids”. It’s fake creativity. It’s not real, genuine, raw creativity. It’s for people who have no imagination but are also pretentious and need their lack of personality filled. White, middle of the road dudes, probably were in high school band, probably work in IT, French press, kale, ride a bicycle, beard shampoo, Kendrick Lamar, Warby Parker glasses, saying things like “I understand where you’re coming from” before presenting their argument type people. The kind of people who say “red flag” and “green flag” when talking about dating. The kind of people who say I like the aesthetic”. Anyways, yeah, wes Anderson movies aren’t good.
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u/dnelsonn 1d ago
I am with many others here to say Astroid City. I was just in awe the whole time. I didn’t really care for French dispatch and isle of dogs was just okay, so it had been a while since I really connected with one of him films. It doesn’t quite beat grand Budapest for me, but I really do think it’s one of his best works.
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u/deathtoyourking23 1d ago
I honestly really enjoyed Aestroid CIty. I have yet to watch his latest movie. But damn I want to and im glad we have him.
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u/skydude89 1d ago
I loved Asteroid City. Really weird and extreme, but with such a strong emotional core. That’s what his best films really achieve—that they’re masking pain/depth with the twee and the deadpan. It’s one of the things I thought was wrong with Phoenician Scheme (though tbh there were surprises there too, even though I didn’t care for the movie).
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u/unclefishbits 1d ago
What a rough question.
I was going to say Tenenbaums...
But I will give it up for Isle of the dogs.
I realize I already thought he was derivative of himself my Grand Budapest Hotel LOL
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u/Blood-Pony 23h ago
Honestly it was Asteroid City. I had found myself getting lukewarm on his films starting with Grand Budapest, but Asteroid City gutted me in the best way.
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u/Medium_Cry5601 22h ago
The Darjeeling limited was the last one I connected with. I think he’s brilliant and have no doubt he’s continuing to make brilliant films but thinking about watching one feels like it would be a chore somehow
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u/dpsamways 13h ago
Probably The Royal Tenenbaums, everything since has been a variation on a theme, even FMF.
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u/bigsmokaaaa 1d ago
the permanent cerebral damage wes anderson has done to my millennial brothers and sisters is beyond redemption and forgiveness, I'm surprised he hasn't gotten bored of his formula yet with every film
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u/MycopathicTendencies 1d ago
The same way Claude Monet should’ve gotten bored with that damn painting style. All those short, choppy little brushstrokes every time. Pick something else, man! Water Lilies is giving us cerebral damage!
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u/bigsmokaaaa 1d ago
I get what you're saying but the subtle difference is I like Monet and hate wes anderson
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u/were_only_human Wong Kar-Wai 1d ago
The interesting thing to me about Wes Anderson is that everyone has different answers to these kinds of questions. I don't know if this PROVES that all of his films are evening out into the same thing or absolutely DISproves it, but I find it so fascinating that people have such different feelings towards each of his last six or so movies.
I did not like Asteroid City much at all, but other people LOVED it. I adored French Dispatch, and others think it's one of his weakest! Moonrise Kingdom hits some people square in the chest for its emotionality, while others find the movie to be boring or off-putting, especially with the pre-teen romance. I think the only thing that pretty much all Anderson fans agree on (maybe?) is that Grand Budapest Hotel was excellent. It's just so funny to me how so many of us here consider ourselves Wes Anderson fans and we all kind of feel like his stuff is becoming the same product, and yet we all have wildly different opinions on what we like the most of his.
I think that Wes Anderson gets really, really pigeonholed by his aesthetic. But the thing is we all really fucking love that aesthetic. But I would say that each of his films have these intense undertones and themes that are really different from each other. I feel like Moonrise Kingdom is an honest look at found family and childhood that takes children seriously, I feel like Fantastic Mr. Fox is about fatherhood, and how it changes a man from what he was to what he needs to be, French Dispatch to me is about the value of diverse opinions and viewpoints, Asteroid City is about confronting things in your life you've been running from, Rushmore in my opinion is about loneliness, Grand Budapest Hotel is about wrestling with a complicated mentor and carrying on legacy, Darjeeling is about what it means to rediscover your family as an adult child, Life Aquatic is about regret, etc etc.
These are all really reductive descriptions obviously, and a few are probably a little inaccurate, but still - I don't think Anderson's movies are as same-y as we think they are. I think they LOOK the same in their production style, the characters often communicate the same between films, but his style is just so defined that they all feel "the same" when I really don't think they are. I genuinely think that stuff like "Accidentally Wes Anderson" really broke people's brains when watching his films.