Logan and Henry take a trip through the desert and review Wes Anderson’s new film Asteroid City. The film is now available to watch at home on Premium Video on Demand.
#AsteroidCity #MovieReview
“Following a writer on his world famous fictional play about a grieving father who travels with his tech-obsessed family to small rural Asteroid City to compete in a junior stargazing event, only to have his world view disrupted forever.”
If you’ve ever been a 10-year-old who felt they outgrew Disney or that you were more mature than most kids around you, then Rushmore is the perfect movie for you. I grew up watching it on Comedy Central for years and it was at a perfect time in my life when my parents were getting divorced and I was starting middle school. I didn’t really have many people to lean on so Wes Anderson’s distinctive style spoke to me for many reasons. I felt Rushmore was a good version of a ‘90s teen movie filtered through a very reserved but adult lens. It feels like a prototypical high school movie but its unusual tone sets it apart from other movies like it. A lot of this is what has kept me coming back to it over the years and shows why Wes Anderson is still the best to ever do it.
With Bottle Rocket being a critical hit, it only made sense for another studio like Touchstone Pictures to come calling and give Wes Anderson the skills to become the filmmaker that he is today. Due to its larger budget and higher profile, it’s no doubt that Rushmore is truly a Wes Anderson movie. I remember it being the movie that introduced me to Wes Anderson. Because of his unique style, no movie was like it at the time to me. Not to mention that it stood out from many other high school movies of its time such as Can’t Hardly Wait or American Pie. He knows how to use his style to create an immersive world that’s so meticulously detailed that he’s able to flesh out the characters and the story in a more convenient and subtle way than other filmmakers would probably do. Watching it now was somewhat unexpected. While I don’t think I can tout it as the masterpiece I once did, it was still an entertaining movie.
Sometimes, I get bored reviewing new movies so for some reason, I wanted to go through all the Wes Anderson movies in chronological order in the meantime. It’s just something that gives me a challenge to do and maybe there will be unexpected feelings and unique thoughts I never saw coming. So, without further delay, let’s begin with his 1996 debut, Bottle Rocket. I remember this being a movie that got a lot of play on Comedy Central back in the day and it was always the kind of movie that I never felt compelled to watch when it’s on. Honestly, I was never impressed with the bits I’d seen, but there were always interesting sequences that made the rest of the movie worth it. So, in subsequent years, I would watch bits and pieces because there was sometimes nothing to watch on cable. When I last watched this movie, I rated this movie rather highly back when I was more of a snob when it came to movies. But as anyone who has read my Phantom Thread review, I’ve decided to just to watch movies as their own individual self, judge them as their own thing no matter who’s involved in terms of the directors, the writers, or the actors. Watching this again was interesting. As a movie directed by someone who would be later become one of the most idiosyncratic and quirky filmmakers of our time, younger middle school me who watched this on cable was right. Outside of a few well directed sequences, it’s fine.
Simultaneously charming and depressing, Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs will find a way to stick with you long after the credits roll. While it might not reach the levels of Rushmore or Moonrise Kingdom, Anderson still manages to utilize his trademark style into a unique and entertaining experience. The movie follows a group of dogs in a dystopian future version of Japan and isolated by the evil new mayor on a trash island literally called “Trash Island,” after an outbreak of a dog flu virus in the city. When Atari, a young Japanese boy, gets stuck on the island while looking for his own dog, the other dogs agree to help him, including the cynical Chief.
Cinephellas 