The French Dispatch

After the death of a magazine publisher, the writers find out that their magazine is ending. And in the last issue, besides the obituary, they will publish the best articles about art, politics, and food. Wes Anderson presents a not very interesting bunch of stories about journalists in a form that prevents him from selling what usually makes his films most interesting. (11/21/2021)

In colors typical of mannerism, Anderson delves nostalgically into rose-tinted memories of the press, which has long since ceased to exist in this form. A time when journalists were paid for everything and had time to build a real relationship with their themes. A time when writing was valued. In doing so, it pokes fun at artistic, activist and culinary snobbery, and does so with passion and gusto. I hope that someone will take up his idea for a new gastronomic style: food suitable for police surveillance, because it would be useful today for other professions too. IN A NUTSHELL: About the press with love, nostalgia and fantasy. (05/16/2023)

Wes Anderson has his own world, where he shoots one film after another. The fact that he has an incredible overview and subtly pours an infinite amount of information into his films deserves enormous respect. I just have a feeling that his films sometimes lack, and that word I have been looking for a long time is fun. There are plenty of ideas here, actors are standardly great, and they are all fantastic. But the plot, where the editor-in-chief of a magazine dies and they release the final issue, from which Wes turns every reportage into the form of this film, is something that will captivate you in the first five minutes (for formality) and after half an hour you will want it to end. Maybe there are too many ideas that can't be handled at first glance. Maybe it's also the structure of the story, which is not cohesive but scattered into a series of small ones that are less and less entertaining. Hard to say. For me personally, however, Grand Budapest Hotel still remains unequivocally the best, funniest, most inventive, and musically most brilliant film of the director in this unspecified genre. Simply everything that unfortunately this film lacks. (03/02/2022)

The more recent Anderson’s films, the less animate the dolls he plays with, but they inhabit grander and more decorous rooms. The paradox of his tribute to the floridly descriptive and snobbishly authorial style of journalism consists in the fact that his film highlights its artificiality and illusoriness. (12/02/2021)

A short story tribute to "good old France and reportage journalism" that starts with by far the best story (meaning the Seydoux/Del Toro one, not the introductory one), which makes the others seem a bit unfairly ordinary. Another snag is that they are "one and the same". This is doubly annoying because they are "as if by different authors, each with their own unique style of writing", which should have resulted in each having a clear visual identity. But they are all an amalgamation of styles (different genres, film periods, animation) and therefore they are all indistinguishable from each other. Otherwise, everything is typically Anderson: distinctive poetics, elaborate camerawork, work with pompous mise-en-scene, performances on the edge of caricature, but without slipping into goofiness. Overall, this is so much a Wes Anderson film you’ll know with absolute certainty in advance whether you will like it or not. The only question is how much you'll (dis)like it, since it's a Wes Anderson film that's kind of idling this time. (12/27/2021)