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.
