This movie is a solid courtroom drama wrapped around a sordid child sex case. The ending doesn’t do justice to the subject matter, and the court proceedings aren’t gripping enough to overlook it. And knowing where the narrative is headed takes the tension out of the preceding scenes.
Content warning: language, female nudity
Closest comparison: It’s like American Beauty by way of A Few Good Men.
Setting: Courtroom Drama
Plot: Detective
Tone: Sordid Drama
This movie is starts off fairly strong, but finishes abysmally. The cinematography, costume design, sets, acting, etc. are all top notch but their impact all hinges on the solution to the murder mystery, and the solution here is simultaneously stupid, ignorant, and insulting. The film is also continually horny, and seems to exemplify the thing it’s mocking which is never a good sign. There’s an overt political subtext that overtakes the narrative at a certain point, and in the end many of the carefully laid clues don’t make sense.
Closest comparison: It’s like an attempt at a mystery like Knives Out, as clumsily executed as The King’s Man, with a veneer of Fool’s Gold.
Setting: Mystery
Plot: Mystery
Tone: Mystery
This movie is predictably funny, sweet, quirky, and occasionally a bit harsh in the signature style of Wes Anderson. It’s an evolution of The Fantastic Mr. Fox visually, but the story is more classic rescue adventure fodder with some fantasy and sci-fi elements thrown in. Its quirkiness will impact audiences differently, but where Darjeeling Limited and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou had the quirkiness on full display Isle of Dogs relegates it more to the deeper levels of story and narrative structure.
Closest comparison: It’s like The Fantastic Mr. Fox with a more grounded story.
Setting: Near Future Sci-Fi
Plot: Adventure
Tone: Quirky
The action scenes are pretty fun, though they don’t always make much sense. The plot is kept simple and plays out decently enough, though it also sometimes doesn’t make sense. Characters often act in a mildly confusing way, but luckily their core motivations are easy to track and land them right where the movie was going all along. The CGI doesn’t really hold up over time, but I can’t fault a film for being a product of its era. Edward Norton and Liv Tyler are pretty bland, but fortunately Tim Roth comes through with a solid performance to balance them. Still, if you’re in the mood for a thoughtless action superhero movie, it’s certainly watchable.
Closest comparison: It shifts from a bad Jason Bourne imitation to Venom-style CG fight scenes.
Setting: Military Thriller
Plot: Spy Thriller
Tone: Action
This movie's strength is in its moviemaking. It is shot to look like it's all one continuous, unbroken take, using very clever invisible cuts to make it possible. There are also quite a few mirrors in the film but never the camera reflected in them, a feat which I'm still not sure how they were able to accomplish. The story is pretty weird, though, and there's a lot of sexual dialogue and situations that don't actually add anything to the film. Also the ending undercuts itself. The film could have been going one of two directions, basically, and has an unclear ending that doesn't come down on either side. Instead of making both interpretations meaningful and valid, it only serves to make neither of them interesting or satisfying. If you like dissecting film-making techniques it's really cool, but otherwise I'd skip it.
