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Is “The Phoenician Scheme” Wes Anderson's Most Emotional Film?

87 points by prismatic 1y ago

otherayden 1y ago
Archived link using a site I made to auto-redirect you to archives :) https://unbloq.us/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06/09/the-phoenician-scheme-movie-review https://unbloq.us/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06...
- empath75 1y ago
  you can just do this with archive.is/https:// https://...
- dmos62 1y ago
  Hey, good job!
  - otherayden 1y ago
    Thanks! I hope it can be a good tool for people to reach for if they ever hit a paywall
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- a012 1y ago
  Why not just post direct link to archive?
  - dmos62 1y ago
    To share the service? https://unbloq.us/ https://unbloq.us/
    - otherayden 1y ago
      Yeah pretty much, just hoping people might get some use out of my side project
      - yard2010 1y ago
        Thank you for making the internet a better place these days <3
        otherayden 1y ago
        thank you! I love HN and really hope people here get some value from my thing!
  - bryanrasmussen 1y ago
    normally I find getting to crawled version is a couple of steps, this takes you immediately is one thing I notice.
    - otherayden 1y ago
      yeah, it's a pretty incremental change but it will find the latest archive of the link, and as long as it exists, you will be redirected to it. If there's no archive yet, it automatically puts you in the archive.today queue to get your page archived
kumarvvr 1y ago
[flagged]
- mighmi 1y ago
  Because it's in the middle of the night.
  - DHolzer 1y ago
    somewhere
  - dkdbejwi383 1y ago
    It’s almost 8 in the morning, rush hour
    - mdp2021 1y ago
      With a bad, possibly even dismissive expression, the poster may have wanted to note that (interestingly) to different timezone-related aggregations seem to correspond different interests. ...But details-wise, I think Dang for example has shown to be often active at this time.
- jrimbault 1y ago
  I find this article from the New Yorker to satisfy my own intellectual curiosity. I think that's the wording in the guidelines on what to submit on this site.
- DJBunnies 1y ago
  Samurai Jack too, we like good colors and style and writing.
- mdp2021 1y ago
  I think the idea is not "relevant to hackers in service" but "interesting to hackers as a broad profile". Building things? Doing things? Creating? Assessing? Managing? Understanding? Noting? (Etc.)
- 1y ago
keiferski 1y ago
I am looking forward to seeing this, as while I really enjoy the aesthetic of Anderson, I increasingly wish someone would push him out of his comfort zone. His films are the same thing repeated in different circumstances with different characters. Maybe he isn’t interested in doing anything other than what he’s doing, and at some level that’s all the justification he needs. He doesn’t owe anyone anything. But I do think the cinematic world as a whole would benefit from him experimenting a little more, trying a novel format, and so on.
- ofalkaed 1y ago
  >His films are the same thing repeated in different circumstances with different characters. I am not sure what you mean, Asteroid City with its complex structure utilizing metafiction to explore things mostly removed from the characters and the story does not have much in common with The Royal Tenenbaums other than aesthetic with its fairly simple and direct use of character to explore the individual and family. Do you want him to make a superhero or action movie or something?
  - keiferski 1y ago
    When you go see an Anderson film, you have a pretty solid idea of what you’re going to get. The mood, character development, cinematography, quirkiness, and pretty much everything else is largely the same across his films. I think this is obvious (?) to most people. Yes, there are individual differences between films, but I don’t think my opinion is an uncommon one. There are more genres than action and superhero. A whole world of cinema, in fact. So it would be great if Anderson took his formidable skills and tried something new. A selfish request from a viewer, sure, but I just never feel like he’s trying to improve as a filmmaker and is merely doing what is comfortable to him.
    - mda 1y ago
      Just to add to your sentiment, I agree with you. The setup of his films became so similar to each other in many ways, same quirky (slightly insane) characters, same pastel colors, same textures. All subjective of course, but I found his later movies soulless and hard to watch.
e40 1y ago
The article completely spoils the movie.
- throwbigdata 1y ago
  Isn’t that the point?
  - e40 1y ago
    The movie's not even out yet. It's possible to talk about a movie without spoiling it.
xnx 1y ago
https://archive.ph/FkNc3 https://archive.ph/FkNc3
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
xg15 1y ago
> ensemble cast This being a Wes Anderson film, I expect at the very least an introductory chapter heading and title card for each character. They might or might not have argued for two months about the individual fonts to pick for each card, before eventually settling on hiring a font designer (one per character).
ddanielsantos 1y ago
i think wes anderson was replaced by AI, his last 3 films lacks alot of soul
- fellowniusmonk 1y ago
  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.
bag_boy 1y ago
I like Wes Anderson movies in general, but I was unable to finish Asteroid City at home. It felt emotionally monotone. I probably need to go back and rewatch it. Hope this one is a bit more exciting. Rushmore is my favorite. The yearbook montage is awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMyh6ptegko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMyh6ptegko
- ctrlp 1y ago
  The genius of Rushmore is inseparable from the collaboration with Owen Wilson and the autobiographical inspiration of their school days. Wes Anderson can never make another movie like it. His oeuvre since then is without charm for me.
  - subpixel 1y ago
    I agree but I think there's lots of charm, it's just that charming gets old.
- AlanYx 1y ago
  I feel that his movies post-mid-career have been trending more and more towards an emotional monotone. That's more of an issue IMHO than the predictable artistic approach that people tend to focus on. I haven't seen The Phoenician Scheme, but if it changes that then it's a positive sign.
- ubermonkey 1y ago
  Rushmore was my favorite of his films until the release of Moonrise Kingdom. Fun fact: Rushmore was shot in an era without social media. All my film nerd pals were aware of Anderson after Bottle Rocket, and were tacitly awaiting his next film, but its ultimate arrival was a surprise. Even MORE surprising (at least for us) was that it was shot right here in Houston -- recognizably, obviously Houston. (I'm sure the St John's community was aware... ) Its release also solved a puzzle for my friend E. and I dating from the winter of 97-98. We'd stopped for sushi at a middling but reasonably priced joint between our rental house the bar we were headed to, and after posting up at the corner of the sushi counter and ordering a bit, we noticed the guy at the far end of the bar. He had a sort of admiring entourage with him of 2-3 younger folks. The guy looked familiar, but we couldn't place him. Finally: "Wow, that guy looks like Bill Murray." "Yeah, he really does, doesn't he?" "I think that might actually BE Bill Murray." "What the hell is he doing in Houston?" "No idea. Is there a tournament at the River Oaks club?" We ate. We left. We forgot about seeing him -- until we saw Rushmore the following fall. (In the unlikely event someone reading this knows Houston: this was at the Miyako that used to be just north of 59 on the west side of Kirby, so close to River Oaks.)
yooo000 1y ago
Why does it feel like any film churned out by Hollywood is just mindless banter in between sex and explosions...haven't seen a movie in theaters since well before covid because it's really not worth it, waste of time.
- hhh 1y ago
  I think you might just not be interested in the overwhelming amount of movies coming out that have neither sex nor explosions. I have a subscription and go 2-7 times a month to see new movies. Plenty of slop that is both sex and explosions, but a ton of interesting movies that aren't.
- beart 1y ago
  Perhaps you can share some examples of the films you are referring as "mindless banter in between sex and explosions". I'm not sure that description really fits most of the films coming out recently. If you said, "Dumb comic book films", I would maybe agree with you, but there isn't typically any sex in those so I assume you are not referring to them. Covid halted the production of a lot of movies, and changed how others were made. It also shut down theaters. So, "since covid", is really talking about before and after an era. Kind of like saying, "since 9/11", in terms of the impact on culture. A lot of creativity has moved from the movie theaters to streaming services and from films to more episodic content. However, here is a short list of films worth seeing (imo) since covid (2019). Zone of Interest (2023) The Holdovers (2023) Parasite (2019) Dune (2021) Dune Part Two (2024) Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) 1917 (2019) The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) The Substance (2024) Palm Springs (2020) Oppenheimer (2023) The Lighthouse (2019) Hundreds of Beavers (2022) Barbarian (2022) Flow (2024)
  - tuveson 1y ago
    Oppenheimer had sex and explosions, but the banter part might be more subjective
  - drdaeman 1y ago
    > Flow (2024) "Flow" was a huge disappointment for me. I couldn't get past the animation jerkiness and overall unrealistic look. I have two cats, and cats simply don't move like pictured: while most of the keyframes were perfectly fine, the transitions between them were off, which completely broke it for me. Heck, "Stray" (the video game) had much more realistically moving cat than "Flow" and I think it's supposed to be the other way around. I get that it was "indie" stuff done on a relatively small budget, but those broken movements became sort of an uncanny valley for me. I guess, I also had wrong expectations from the beginning. The movie was heavily advertised as non-verbal, so - naturally - I expected it to portray the behaviors of non-human consciousness (with slight allowances for plot reasons, sure). And then the animals behaved as if they were unquestionably and heavily anthropopsychic. To sum it up, "animals don't move like this and don't behave like this" paired with some invalid pre-expectations, sadly, was too much to break my suspension of disbelief and ruin the movie for me. But yeah, it's certainly not a "mindless banter in between sex and explosions".
rafaepta 1y ago
I miss Rushmore’s plain approach. Just enough quirk, sharp acting, and visuals that back the plot instead of hogging it. Newer Anderson films look like photo shoots: pretty, but the story drags. Same story dev teams hit when designers chase pixel-perfect screens and users still wait on real features.
- dstroot 1y ago
  Rushmore is my favorite Wes Anderson film. I think you nailed it. It was a great film that was “enhanced” by Wes Anderson’s style. Newer films seem to be primarily delivery vehicles of his style, with a hint of story and plot to move it along.
  - kyleblarson 1y ago
    Were you in the shit? Yes, I was in the shit.
- whodidntante 1y ago
  Absolutely agree. My favorites,in order of how often I have watched them: Fantastic Mr. Fox Rushmore Royal Tenenbaums Life Aquatic The rest, I don't really care for, nothing new, just flash, no substance, and have stopped watching his new movies.
- elif 1y ago
  Yes this. Tennenbaums and Zisou were still primarily narrative fiction which allowed the actors to really be the spotlight, which let the characters really come alive. In Budapest, French and Asteroid it felt increasingly like the actors were too confined to fulfilling an aesthetic for them to come alive or for the actors to shine. Apologies in advance for sounding controversially critical, I can't help but be reminded of AI art where its trying so hard to look a way that it stops being something you want to look at.
- chadd 1y ago
  This is because the older films were co-written with Owen Wilson. Once they stopped collaborating, Anderson's later films are unbalanced - they have the whimsical aesthetic, but are too sweet without the bitter piercing wit and clarity of Wilson's writing to make them less cloying (IMHO).
mhh__ 1y ago
It genuinely looks like an AI generated Wes Anderson film. He needs to go to Siberia and relearn what made him great.
pursuableproofs 1y ago
Haven't read the article but saw the film. If Wes made No Country For Old Men in this style it would suck. The films look incredible but the monotone delivery and lack of soundtrack remove any drama and intrigue. I say this as someone that loved Rushmore, Tenenbaums, Life Aquatic
- rickdeckard 1y ago
  > If Wes made No Country For Old Men in this style it would suck. I genuinely don't understand what this means, No Country for Old Men is a Coen Brothers movie. Do I need to see "The Phoenician Scheme" to understand this reference...?
  - pursuableproofs 1y ago
    No, you don't need to see the film but it was a way of me trying to put across how much his style really sucks out of the films. I see No Country For Old Men as one of the top films of the last 20 years, what with its pacing and the atmosphere they create. It's not an original story, based on a book, so therefore any director could have been brought on board. You might say I am comparing apples to oranges but it was just a way to illustrate what I think the problem is.
    - sdenton4 1y ago
      There's still a selection problem in adaptation.... Directors are not interchangeable, and that's ok! It means there can be a broader range of styles and flavors in the world. For example, what if the Coen brothers had directed, say, 'Adaptation'? It would have been a completely different film. Would we ever want to see Christopher Nolan adapt Stefan Zweig? Hardly.
    - rickdeckard 1y ago
      I don't see how this helps to illustrate anything, it's not like it's a top film prior to the execution by a director. If Wes made No Country for Old Men it would be another movie, just like if Martin Scorcese would have done it...
sys32768 1y ago
He keeps pushing his actors to become more wooden and paper-doll like. At some point he may use real wooden puppets like the 1960s TV series Thunderbirds, which looks very Wes Andersonesque: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLiH4xrCITI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLiH4xrCITI
- freejazz 1y ago
  Have you considered his actual films with actual puppets?
southernplaces7 1y ago
With Tenenbaums, Rushmore and maybe the Darjeeling Limited we had enough of the classic Anderson visual style for the films to have lovely atmosphere, but with the actors still being warm, lively and human enough to create real sympathy. After those, his own movies have almost become caricatures of an Anderson film and the characters have become so much like clockwork that they might as well be set pieces themselves. The one later exception I can think of, off the top of my head was Ralph Fiennes in Hotel Budapest. His character, and the actor himself in how he plays him, are just too zesty to stay wooden.
- ramesh31 1y ago
  >After those, his own movies have almost become caricatures of an Anderson film and the characters have become so much like clockwork that they might as well be set pieces themselves. I think this is a feature of his artistic refinement through the years; he's the last true visual storyteller in Hollywood. Actors don't really matter, scripts don't really matter - it's a treat for the eyes alone. Something really was lost in the transition from silent to "talkies" where the focus became entirely on plot and dialogue. If you go back and watch those films now, the very best of them had almost no dialogue or title cards. I'd liken what he is doing to something like Joyce in literature, where it's not even about the words, but their semantic structures alone. It seems that all visionary artists end up going in this direction, see Picasso in his later years of total abstraction, or Schoenberg's final works that completely abandoned tonality.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - Citizen_Lame 1y ago
    Check out Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal. First season has no dialogue.
- bborud 1y ago
  Ralph Fiennes in Grand Budapest isn't just an exception. The performance, in my not so humble opinion, is quite possibly the most memorable and brilliant of any performance in a Wes Anderson movie. It is delightful. That being said, I actually think his style of late has its place. At least he is trying something different in a time when most movies are so derivative and bum-numbingly boring that I rarely bother seeing a movie in a movie-theater. There is a rarity of interesting outliers in mainstream film today. Outliers are good. They are not wayward miscreants that must be herded back into mediocrity lest we have to think. It isn't like I'm a snob who only watches art films. I used to watch almost everything that hit the big screen, and I'd enjoy the whole range from hard-to-grasp, arty farty stuff most people think is boring/demanding/ugly/confusing to blatantly commercial nonsense ... that was nonetheless entertaining and fun. (I'd make my proto-hipster friends cringe with my love of B-movies). I had to empty my wallet of ticket stubs regularly so it wouldn't burst the seams.
rurban 1y ago
I loved it. I think it's better than the Tenenbaums, more emotional, more funny, more serious. Perfect from the start to the finish. Only Rushmore, the Fantastic Mr Fox and Moonrise Kingdom were better so far.
luckydata 1y ago
Emotional is a big word for that movie.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

87 points by prismatic 1y ago

Archived link using a site I made to auto-redirect you to archives :) https://unbloq.us/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06/09/the-phoenician-scheme-movie-review https://unbloq.us/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06...

empath75 1y ago
you can just do this with archive.is/https:// https://...
dmos62 1y ago
Hey, good job!
- otherayden 1y ago
  Thanks! I hope it can be a good tool for people to reach for if they ever hit a paywall
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
a012 1y ago
Why not just post direct link to archive?
- dmos62 1y ago
  To share the service? https://unbloq.us/ https://unbloq.us/
  - otherayden 1y ago
    Yeah pretty much, just hoping people might get some use out of my side project
    - yard2010 1y ago
      Thank you for making the internet a better place these days <3
      - otherayden 1y ago
        thank you! I love HN and really hope people here get some value from my thing!
- bryanrasmussen 1y ago
  normally I find getting to crawled version is a couple of steps, this takes you immediately is one thing I notice.
  - otherayden 1y ago
    yeah, it's a pretty incremental change but it will find the latest archive of the link, and as long as it exists, you will be redirected to it. If there's no archive yet, it automatically puts you in the archive.today queue to get your page archived

kumarvvr 1y ago

[flagged]

mighmi 1y ago
Because it's in the middle of the night.
- DHolzer 1y ago
  somewhere
- dkdbejwi383 1y ago
  It’s almost 8 in the morning, rush hour
  - mdp2021 1y ago
    With a bad, possibly even dismissive expression, the poster may have wanted to note that (interestingly) to different timezone-related aggregations seem to correspond different interests. ...But details-wise, I think Dang for example has shown to be often active at this time.
jrimbault 1y ago
I find this article from the New Yorker to satisfy my own intellectual curiosity. I think that's the wording in the guidelines on what to submit on this site.
DJBunnies 1y ago
Samurai Jack too, we like good colors and style and writing.
mdp2021 1y ago
I think the idea is not "relevant to hackers in service" but "interesting to hackers as a broad profile". Building things? Doing things? Creating? Assessing? Managing? Understanding? Noting? (Etc.)
1y ago

keiferski 1y ago

I am looking forward to seeing this, as while I really enjoy the aesthetic of Anderson, I increasingly wish someone would push him out of his comfort zone. His films are the same thing repeated in different circumstances with different characters. Maybe he isn’t interested in doing anything other than what he’s doing, and at some level that’s all the justification he needs. He doesn’t owe anyone anything. But I do think the cinematic world as a whole would benefit from him experimenting a little more, trying a novel format, and so on.

ofalkaed 1y ago
>His films are the same thing repeated in different circumstances with different characters. I am not sure what you mean, Asteroid City with its complex structure utilizing metafiction to explore things mostly removed from the characters and the story does not have much in common with The Royal Tenenbaums other than aesthetic with its fairly simple and direct use of character to explore the individual and family. Do you want him to make a superhero or action movie or something?
- keiferski 1y ago
  When you go see an Anderson film, you have a pretty solid idea of what you’re going to get. The mood, character development, cinematography, quirkiness, and pretty much everything else is largely the same across his films. I think this is obvious (?) to most people. Yes, there are individual differences between films, but I don’t think my opinion is an uncommon one. There are more genres than action and superhero. A whole world of cinema, in fact. So it would be great if Anderson took his formidable skills and tried something new. A selfish request from a viewer, sure, but I just never feel like he’s trying to improve as a filmmaker and is merely doing what is comfortable to him.
  - mda 1y ago
    Just to add to your sentiment, I agree with you. The setup of his films became so similar to each other in many ways, same quirky (slightly insane) characters, same pastel colors, same textures. All subjective of course, but I found his later movies soulless and hard to watch.

e40 1y ago

The article completely spoils the movie.

throwbigdata 1y ago
Isn’t that the point?
- e40 1y ago
  The movie's not even out yet. It's possible to talk about a movie without spoiling it.

xnx 1y ago

https://archive.ph/FkNc3 https://archive.ph/FkNc3

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

xg15 1y ago

> ensemble cast This being a Wes Anderson film, I expect at the very least an introductory chapter heading and title card for each character. They might or might not have argued for two months about the individual fonts to pick for each card, before eventually settling on hiring a font designer (one per character).

ddanielsantos 1y ago

i think wes anderson was replaced by AI, his last 3 films lacks alot of soul

fellowniusmonk 1y ago
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.

bag_boy 1y ago

I like Wes Anderson movies in general, but I was unable to finish Asteroid City at home. It felt emotionally monotone. I probably need to go back and rewatch it. Hope this one is a bit more exciting. Rushmore is my favorite. The yearbook montage is awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMyh6ptegko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMyh6ptegko

ctrlp 1y ago
The genius of Rushmore is inseparable from the collaboration with Owen Wilson and the autobiographical inspiration of their school days. Wes Anderson can never make another movie like it. His oeuvre since then is without charm for me.
- subpixel 1y ago
  I agree but I think there's lots of charm, it's just that charming gets old.
AlanYx 1y ago
I feel that his movies post-mid-career have been trending more and more towards an emotional monotone. That's more of an issue IMHO than the predictable artistic approach that people tend to focus on. I haven't seen The Phoenician Scheme, but if it changes that then it's a positive sign.
ubermonkey 1y ago
Rushmore was my favorite of his films until the release of Moonrise Kingdom. Fun fact: Rushmore was shot in an era without social media. All my film nerd pals were aware of Anderson after Bottle Rocket, and were tacitly awaiting his next film, but its ultimate arrival was a surprise. Even MORE surprising (at least for us) was that it was shot right here in Houston -- recognizably, obviously Houston. (I'm sure the St John's community was aware... ) Its release also solved a puzzle for my friend E. and I dating from the winter of 97-98. We'd stopped for sushi at a middling but reasonably priced joint between our rental house the bar we were headed to, and after posting up at the corner of the sushi counter and ordering a bit, we noticed the guy at the far end of the bar. He had a sort of admiring entourage with him of 2-3 younger folks. The guy looked familiar, but we couldn't place him. Finally: "Wow, that guy looks like Bill Murray." "Yeah, he really does, doesn't he?" "I think that might actually BE Bill Murray." "What the hell is he doing in Houston?" "No idea. Is there a tournament at the River Oaks club?" We ate. We left. We forgot about seeing him -- until we saw Rushmore the following fall. (In the unlikely event someone reading this knows Houston: this was at the Miyako that used to be just north of 59 on the west side of Kirby, so close to River Oaks.)

yooo000 1y ago

Why does it feel like any film churned out by Hollywood is just mindless banter in between sex and explosions...haven't seen a movie in theaters since well before covid because it's really not worth it, waste of time.

hhh 1y ago
I think you might just not be interested in the overwhelming amount of movies coming out that have neither sex nor explosions. I have a subscription and go 2-7 times a month to see new movies. Plenty of slop that is both sex and explosions, but a ton of interesting movies that aren't.
beart 1y ago
Perhaps you can share some examples of the films you are referring as "mindless banter in between sex and explosions". I'm not sure that description really fits most of the films coming out recently. If you said, "Dumb comic book films", I would maybe agree with you, but there isn't typically any sex in those so I assume you are not referring to them. Covid halted the production of a lot of movies, and changed how others were made. It also shut down theaters. So, "since covid", is really talking about before and after an era. Kind of like saying, "since 9/11", in terms of the impact on culture. A lot of creativity has moved from the movie theaters to streaming services and from films to more episodic content. However, here is a short list of films worth seeing (imo) since covid (2019). Zone of Interest (2023) The Holdovers (2023) Parasite (2019) Dune (2021) Dune Part Two (2024) Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) 1917 (2019) The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) The Substance (2024) Palm Springs (2020) Oppenheimer (2023) The Lighthouse (2019) Hundreds of Beavers (2022) Barbarian (2022) Flow (2024)
- tuveson 1y ago
  Oppenheimer had sex and explosions, but the banter part might be more subjective
- drdaeman 1y ago
  > Flow (2024) "Flow" was a huge disappointment for me. I couldn't get past the animation jerkiness and overall unrealistic look. I have two cats, and cats simply don't move like pictured: while most of the keyframes were perfectly fine, the transitions between them were off, which completely broke it for me. Heck, "Stray" (the video game) had much more realistically moving cat than "Flow" and I think it's supposed to be the other way around. I get that it was "indie" stuff done on a relatively small budget, but those broken movements became sort of an uncanny valley for me. I guess, I also had wrong expectations from the beginning. The movie was heavily advertised as non-verbal, so - naturally - I expected it to portray the behaviors of non-human consciousness (with slight allowances for plot reasons, sure). And then the animals behaved as if they were unquestionably and heavily anthropopsychic. To sum it up, "animals don't move like this and don't behave like this" paired with some invalid pre-expectations, sadly, was too much to break my suspension of disbelief and ruin the movie for me. But yeah, it's certainly not a "mindless banter in between sex and explosions".

rafaepta 1y ago

I miss Rushmore’s plain approach. Just enough quirk, sharp acting, and visuals that back the plot instead of hogging it. Newer Anderson films look like photo shoots: pretty, but the story drags. Same story dev teams hit when designers chase pixel-perfect screens and users still wait on real features.

dstroot 1y ago
Rushmore is my favorite Wes Anderson film. I think you nailed it. It was a great film that was “enhanced” by Wes Anderson’s style. Newer films seem to be primarily delivery vehicles of his style, with a hint of story and plot to move it along.
- kyleblarson 1y ago
  Were you in the shit? Yes, I was in the shit.
whodidntante 1y ago
Absolutely agree. My favorites,in order of how often I have watched them: Fantastic Mr. Fox Rushmore Royal Tenenbaums Life Aquatic The rest, I don't really care for, nothing new, just flash, no substance, and have stopped watching his new movies.
elif 1y ago
Yes this. Tennenbaums and Zisou were still primarily narrative fiction which allowed the actors to really be the spotlight, which let the characters really come alive. In Budapest, French and Asteroid it felt increasingly like the actors were too confined to fulfilling an aesthetic for them to come alive or for the actors to shine. Apologies in advance for sounding controversially critical, I can't help but be reminded of AI art where its trying so hard to look a way that it stops being something you want to look at.
chadd 1y ago
This is because the older films were co-written with Owen Wilson. Once they stopped collaborating, Anderson's later films are unbalanced - they have the whimsical aesthetic, but are too sweet without the bitter piercing wit and clarity of Wilson's writing to make them less cloying (IMHO).

mhh__ 1y ago

It genuinely looks like an AI generated Wes Anderson film. He needs to go to Siberia and relearn what made him great.

pursuableproofs 1y ago

Haven't read the article but saw the film. If Wes made No Country For Old Men in this style it would suck. The films look incredible but the monotone delivery and lack of soundtrack remove any drama and intrigue. I say this as someone that loved Rushmore, Tenenbaums, Life Aquatic

rickdeckard 1y ago
> If Wes made No Country For Old Men in this style it would suck. I genuinely don't understand what this means, No Country for Old Men is a Coen Brothers movie. Do I need to see "The Phoenician Scheme" to understand this reference...?
- pursuableproofs 1y ago
  No, you don't need to see the film but it was a way of me trying to put across how much his style really sucks out of the films. I see No Country For Old Men as one of the top films of the last 20 years, what with its pacing and the atmosphere they create. It's not an original story, based on a book, so therefore any director could have been brought on board. You might say I am comparing apples to oranges but it was just a way to illustrate what I think the problem is.
  - sdenton4 1y ago
    There's still a selection problem in adaptation.... Directors are not interchangeable, and that's ok! It means there can be a broader range of styles and flavors in the world. For example, what if the Coen brothers had directed, say, 'Adaptation'? It would have been a completely different film. Would we ever want to see Christopher Nolan adapt Stefan Zweig? Hardly.
  - rickdeckard 1y ago
    I don't see how this helps to illustrate anything, it's not like it's a top film prior to the execution by a director. If Wes made No Country for Old Men it would be another movie, just like if Martin Scorcese would have done it...

sys32768 1y ago

He keeps pushing his actors to become more wooden and paper-doll like. At some point he may use real wooden puppets like the 1960s TV series Thunderbirds, which looks very Wes Andersonesque: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLiH4xrCITI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLiH4xrCITI

freejazz 1y ago
Have you considered his actual films with actual puppets?

southernplaces7 1y ago

With Tenenbaums, Rushmore and maybe the Darjeeling Limited we had enough of the classic Anderson visual style for the films to have lovely atmosphere, but with the actors still being warm, lively and human enough to create real sympathy. After those, his own movies have almost become caricatures of an Anderson film and the characters have become so much like clockwork that they might as well be set pieces themselves. The one later exception I can think of, off the top of my head was Ralph Fiennes in Hotel Budapest. His character, and the actor himself in how he plays him, are just too zesty to stay wooden.

ramesh31 1y ago
>After those, his own movies have almost become caricatures of an Anderson film and the characters have become so much like clockwork that they might as well be set pieces themselves. I think this is a feature of his artistic refinement through the years; he's the last true visual storyteller in Hollywood. Actors don't really matter, scripts don't really matter - it's a treat for the eyes alone. Something really was lost in the transition from silent to "talkies" where the focus became entirely on plot and dialogue. If you go back and watch those films now, the very best of them had almost no dialogue or title cards. I'd liken what he is doing to something like Joyce in literature, where it's not even about the words, but their semantic structures alone. It seems that all visionary artists end up going in this direction, see Picasso in his later years of total abstraction, or Schoenberg's final works that completely abandoned tonality.
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- Citizen_Lame 1y ago
  Check out Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal. First season has no dialogue.
bborud 1y ago
Ralph Fiennes in Grand Budapest isn't just an exception. The performance, in my not so humble opinion, is quite possibly the most memorable and brilliant of any performance in a Wes Anderson movie. It is delightful. That being said, I actually think his style of late has its place. At least he is trying something different in a time when most movies are so derivative and bum-numbingly boring that I rarely bother seeing a movie in a movie-theater. There is a rarity of interesting outliers in mainstream film today. Outliers are good. They are not wayward miscreants that must be herded back into mediocrity lest we have to think. It isn't like I'm a snob who only watches art films. I used to watch almost everything that hit the big screen, and I'd enjoy the whole range from hard-to-grasp, arty farty stuff most people think is boring/demanding/ugly/confusing to blatantly commercial nonsense ... that was nonetheless entertaining and fun. (I'd make my proto-hipster friends cringe with my love of B-movies). I had to empty my wallet of ticket stubs regularly so it wouldn't burst the seams.

rurban 1y ago

I loved it. I think it's better than the Tenenbaums, more emotional, more funny, more serious. Perfect from the start to the finish. Only Rushmore, the Fantastic Mr Fox and Moonrise Kingdom were better so far.

luckydata 1y ago

Emotional is a big word for that movie.

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