Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

He really is that stupid.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Let there be snark.

I really should read my own blog.

T R E 4 5 O N

The willow is too close to the house.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

White supremacy is terrorism.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

You are here: Home / Medium Cool / Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Wes Anderson

Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Wes Anderson

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In case you’re new to Medium Cool, BGinCHI is here once a week to offer a thread on culture, mainly film & books, with some TV thrown in.  We’re here at 7 pm on Sunday nights.

Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Wes Anderson

First, an Announcement

Join Medium Cool on Sunday, April 24 at 7:00 EST for a Q&A with John Lingan, author of the forthcoming biography of Creedence Clearwater Revival, A Song for Everyone (Hachette, August 9, 2022). John will be there in comments to field questions and chat about the book and the band.

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In this week’s Medium Cool, let’s talk about the films of Wes Anderson.

I can’t think of an American filmmaker who divides opinion more than Anderson (OK, maybe the other Anderson (Paul Thomas)). That a film like Don’t Look Up was nominated and The French Dispatch wasn’t is an indication. Anderson’s films are often dismissed as style over substance, and I could not disagree more.

So, it’s clear what I think, but I’m curious what you all think. From Bottle Rocket to the aforementioned film from this past year, what about it?

Reader Interactions

101Comments

  5. 5.

    JPL

    @Mike in NC: Same but there are few of his films that I didn’t enjoy.   I haven’t watched the French dispatch yet, but plan on streaming it.   I loved Moonrise Kingdom.

  6. 6.

    BGinCHI

    The still for this post (from “Rushmore”) a reminder of one of the ways that film is a nifty reworking of “The Graduate.”

  7. 7.

    NotMax

    I can’t think of an American filmmaker who divides opinion more than Anderson

    John Waters? Woody Allen? David Lynch? Zack Snyder? Oliver Stone? Tod Browning?

    :)

  8. 8.

    BGinCHI

    @JPL: See what you think about French Dispatch. I wish it had veered away from its New Yorker roots more and toward some of the profound relationships and storytelling in parts of it.

    I agree on Moonrise Kingdom. The first 5 minutes are beautiful visual storytelling. So much interesting stuff in that one. Took me several watches to get the feel for it.

  9. 9.

    BGinCHI

    @NotMax: Is there someone who doesn’t like John Waters?

    Otherwise, yes, good list. I’m not a Lynch fan, personally. But boy does he have his defenders.

  15. 15.

    germy

    SCOOP: Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s Q&A tour is off to a disastrous start.

    In Long Beach, CA, on Friday workers challenged Starbucks’ illegal union busting campaign.

    “If you hate Starbucks so much, why don’t you go somewhere else?” Schultz shot back. https://t.co/ZcRypRjN0w

    — More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) April 10, 2022

    “He would have made a fine labor secretary”

  16. 16.

    West of the Rockies

    @NotMax:

    Don’t forget Charlie Kauffman.   Anomalisa was very odd and a terrible first date movie, I can report.

  18. 18.

    AWOL

    Wes? He actually made the death of a child in India twee.

    But the other Anderson is worse—he actually thinks he’s intelligent.

  20. 20.

    Another Scott

    Yeah, very white. But I find WA entertaining in occasional doses.

    I enjoyed The Royal Tenenbaums and The Grand Budapest Hotel. I don’t know if I’ve seen any other of his films. He certainly has his own visual style, and it can get in the way of the story if he’s not careful.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  22. 22.

    Yutsano

    I’m going for an extreme minority position right away: I HATED The Royal Tennenbaums. I to this day don’t know how I was supposed to take pleasure in such unlikable humans.

  23. 23.

    azelie

    Moonrise Kingdom is definitely my favorite, and I like The Royal Tenenbaums quite a bit as well.  Couldn’t get into The Life Aquatic or the Darjeeling Express, and I haven’t seen the most recent one.

    On the twee-ness of Wes Anderson: He designed the cafe at the Prada Foundation museum in Milan.  It has the general aesthetic of his movies.  When I was in Milan for work, I went to check it out out of curiosity.

    https://www.fondazioneprada.org/barluce-en/?lang=en

  24. 24.

    BGinCHI

    WA’s visual style is so distinctive it spawned this web site, where people take “accidentally Wes Anderson” photos of things all over the world.

  25. 25.

    zhena gogolia

    Can’t really jump in here. Have never seen any of his films or even portions of them.

  27. 27.

    BGinCHI

    @azelie: I don’t like either one of those films. Total style over substance work there. Without a strong script his films are cartoonish.

  31. 31.

    CliosFanBoy

    I realize I’ve never seen one of his movies. I tried watching “Royal Tennanbaums” and “Isle of Dogs” and couldn’t get more than 15 minutes into either of them..

  33. 33.

    Brachiator

    Can this blog get any whiter?

    Probably the only director whiter and more twee than Wes Anderson is Whit Stillman, director of films such as Metropolitan.

    That said, I loved Anderson since Rushmore and think that Grand Budapest Hotel is a great film. What set these films apart for me is that they have great heart, a sensitivity that bursts through the sometimes rigid formalism of the production and direction.

    Anderson’s work has a coldness that reminds me a bit of the Coen Brothers, who often seem to embed their work with little markers to remind you that they are making a movie, and that any emotions that you might feel are little more than reflexive responses to audio and visual stimuli.

    Anderson also reminds me a bit of Woody Allen, without the baggage of scandal, in that actors seem to love, love, love, appearing in his films, even in small roles.

    And I might also say that Anderson reminds me a bit of Hitchcock. Hitchcock was a master of cinema, and yet some critics and viewers thnk that he was satisfied in mining a particular genre of film, and had no great desire to take on more challenging subjects. Anderson seems content to churn out his perfect little miniatures, like the pastries in Grand Budapest.

    Anderson has been criticized for the weakness of his female characters, when he has women as significant figures at all in his film. I guess this is true to some degree, but I love Olivia Williams in Rushmore and Saoirse Ronan in The Grand Budapest Hotel.

    Really looking forward to Anderson’s upcoming remake of Shaft.

  35. 35.

    VFX Lurker

    I’ve only seen The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) and Isle of Dogs (2018).

    Isle of Dogs  has a dynamite soundtrack that I often borrow from Hoopla Digital. The story also takes place in Japan, but I kept thinking about American xenophobia the two times I saw it.

  36. 36.

    Elizabelle

    I loved The Grand Budapest Hotel.  Strong visuals.  Willem Dafoe’s character; Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes was unctuously marvelous.  Wes Anderson gets very good actors who, I think, enjoy the over the top and right up to the line of ridiculousness roles they play.

    All that said, the scenes on the train were genuinely chilling.

    Have only seen a few of his movies, and you kind of have to be in a mood for the twee, but I am glad to see a discussion of his films.

    Moonrise Kingdom is at our local arthouse theatre later this month, and it will be a little sad to see Bruce Willis, having learned of his aphasia diagnosis.

    Theatre has been showing several Anderson films, but I just got back; missed most of them.  Rushmore and Grand Budapest up soon.

  39. 39.

    Elizabelle

    @Brachiator:

    Anderson seems content to churn out his perfect little miniatures, like the pastries in Grand Budapest.

    That’s a wonderful line.  The pastries are so emblematic of that movie.

  41. 41.

    Brachiator

    @BGinCHI:

    I don’t like either one of those films. Total style over substance work there. Without a strong script his films are cartoonish.

    And of course, some of his films are works of animation.

  43. 43.

    Steve in the ATL

    @O. Felix Culpa: I am here to serve.  And give Omnes props for the excellent Vampire Weekend reference!  Would the judges also have accepted Ben Folds Five?

  46. 46.

    AndyG

    @Brachiator:  I was just going to write that the only director I dislike more than Wes Anderson is Whit Stillman! Not especially due to their whiteness, but just…. bleaghh. And I love movies. i really do…

  48. 48.

    Brachiator

    @zhena gogolia:

    Hitchcock is the greatest film director who ever lived.

    Perhaps after Billy Wilder and Kurosawa.

    But yeah, he is in my pantheon. I have run across some Youtube videos where people react to his ‘classic” films, but they are always his American movies, such as Rear Window, Psycho, and Vertigo. I keep suggesting that they watch some of his British masterpieces.

  55. 55.

    Elizabelle

    FWIW, CNN is airing Roadrunner, documentary about the late Anthony Bourdain at 9 eastern.  About half an hour from now.

    Here’s a free online source (via Live News Chat) for CNN, if you don’t have cable.  (And just watch then; they’re just interviewing Ryan Lizza now … how much trouble is Biden in??)

    https://livenewschat.eu/breaking-news/?wpmeteordisable=menu

    A jackal shared this site, several years ago.

  62. 62.

    Elizabelle

    I would like to see a thread upcoming on movies and other forms that have dealt effectively with warning of impending fascism.  Or depicting its effects.  Can be old movies, too.

    We seem to live in a nation full of perpetual adolescents, and the casually educated..  Got to somehow get a message across to them, and entertainment is a good medium.

  65. 65.

    Rand Careaga

    Someone mentioned Whit Stillman. Love his work (we’re near-contemporaries—he’s half a year my senior—although unlike him I’m the scion of Southern California proles). As to Wes Anderson, I like his work, and his fanatical attention to detail: in The Grand Budapest Hotel there is a brief shot of a newspaper headline, onscreen for a couple of seconds, max, above an obituary that includes a sly Nabokov reference that cannot have been seen by a theatre audience.

    I saw The French Dispatch in Santa Cruz last Thanksgiving, the first time I had set foot in that theatre since my college sweetie and I took her former roommate there in 1974, having stuffed her full of LSD, for a screening of Zardoz (she enjoyed it unreservedly as I recall). As to The French Dispatch, people who like Wes Anderson films sill adore it; those who do not will detest it.

  66. 66.

    Big Picture Pathologist

    Seeing ‘Rushmore’ in 1999 was one of the most unexpectedly joyous experiences I’ve ever had in a movie theater.

    ‘Moonrise Kingdom’, ‘The Darjeeling Limited’, ‘The Life Aquatic’, and ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ all had their moments of entertainment and wonder to varying degrees.

    ‘Tenenbaums’, OTOH, left me cold.

  68. 68.

    James E Powell

    @hueyplong:

    Loved Grand Budapest Hotel & I generally like Wes Anderson’s movies. He doesn’t always hit it, but I like that he swings.

  69. 69.

    PJ

    @Brachiator: I was going to say Belle and Sebastian.  So twee his movies make me break out in hives.  Spare me movies about rich people moaning about how hard their lives are.  I wanted to punch every character in the face in Darjeeling Express

  71. 71.

    trollhattan

    Will go with “Moonrise Kingdom” as the one that has aged well in my aged brain. I think he understands the pubescent brain very well, and I don’t mean that in a creepy way, dang it. “Quirky as fuck” is what ties his works together, at least those I’ve seen.

  74. 74.

    Ivan X

    @Yutsano: with you 100%. That’s not to say that I haven’t found mild amusement in other of his films, but man that film was painful.

  75. 75.

    japa21

    @zhena gogolia: Agree with you, although Brachiator’s choices are also good.  Also, like you, can’t comment directly to the subject here because, to the best of my knowledge, I have also seen none of Anderson’s work.

  76. 76.

    zhena gogolia

    @schrodingers_cat: I’m not sure I’ve even seen trailers. The reviews were enough. But of course I could be wrong! I’m kind of allergic to the Coen brothers as well, except for O Brother Where Art Thou.

  79. 79.

    Lynn Dee

    I don’t think WA is just style over substance, but even when I enjoy one of his movies, I still don’t care a bit about his characters.

  82. 82.

    Lynn Dee

    @Yutsano: Yes, but … Gene Hackman saying “We can swing by her grave too” (on a trip to the cemetery to visit someone else’s plot) still cracks me up.

  83. 83.

    James E Powell

    @Yutsano:

    I’m going for an extreme minority position right away: I HATED The Royal Tennenbaums. I to this day don’t know how I was supposed to take pleasure in such unlikable humans.

    All my cinephile friends loved it, but I didn’t like it at all. It’s on a long list of “maybe I need to watch that one again” films, but I’m in no hurry.

  86. 86.

    Brachiator

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Not watched any Coen brothers movies either, other than Fargo.

    O Brother, Where Art Thou is an oddball comedy of a prison escape film loosely inspired by Homer’s Odyssey. Good songs.

  87. 87.

    Elizabelle

    I love the Coen Brothers.  Have not seen all of their films, but they’re excellent filmmakers.

    Come on people.  Raising Arizona? The Big Lebowski?  Fargo?  Blood Simple?

    Ethan Coen wrote a good book of short stories, Gates of Eden.  One story about some seriously unambitious mobsters.

  90. 90.

    Elizabelle

    @debbie:   Haven’t seen it!  Haven’t seen most of PT Anderson’s films; just caught Boogie Nights (at the arthouse) in the last year.

    Lots of movies out there to catch up on.  And they’re wonderful to see on a big screen, especially if it’s a first time.

    Arthouse had Dr. Strangelove today at 2; couldn’t attend.  Am going to see The Thin Man later this week.  I think they’ve acquired a wine and beer license. If so, some bubbly might be in order for that one.  Or suds …

  96. 96.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    @Elizabelle:

    I would like to see a thread upcoming on movies and other forms that have dealt effectively with warning of impending fascism.

    If a film dealt effectively with warning of impending fascism, would we know?

    I mean, wouldn’t an effective warning of impending fascism presumably prevent fascism to the extent that we would never know the warning was effective, or even necessary?

  97. 97.

    NotMax

    Now that a welcome onset of nap time has run its course, looked up W. Anderson’s filmography. As with others above, haven’t seen a one of them.

  99. 99.

    trollhattan

    @debbie: Aimee Mann soundtrack, and John C. Reilly stood out for me, but Cruise was really good as the ironically $cientologist-like pop guru.

    And frogs.

  100. 100.

    UncleEbeneezer

    Very late to this (sorry Sunday night is the rare time we actually have for watching movies).

    My wife absolutely adores Wes Anderson films.  I love SOME of them.  We are both very aware of how twee and painfully white they are.  But they still have incredible charm, creativity and humor.  The night that we got married we went and saw Moonrise Kingdom at the theater in Mammoth.  So that one will always have a special place in our hearts.  I also really loved Life Aquatic and Rushmore.  The rest all sort of blend together in my mind.  Still haven’t seen French Dispatch yet since we are both still a bit irritated that Anderson chose to have a theater release even when Covid was still pretty bad.  Not sure how long we will hold this grudge.

    The other Anderson (Paul Thomas) is probably my personal fave director out there.  His movies certainly aren’t perfect, but they are pretty much perfectly targeted to me with their mix of music and nostalgia.  Boogie Nights and Phantom Thread are two of my fave movies of all time.  Also really liked Punch Drunk Love, but not sure how well it holds up nowadays that I’m over toxic masculinity and dudes throwing temper tantrums.

  101. 101.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @trollhattan: I wish Magnolia had been about an hour shorter.  But agreed on Cruise (who was so good in that role) and the killer soundtrack featuring the brilliance of Aimee Mann and Jon Brion (engineer/producer).

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