The French Dispatch (2021)

Director: Wes Anderson

Cast: Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux

Have I Seen it Before: No… Although I did spend 2021 reading most of every edition printed in that year of The New Yorker, so even before the first frame reached my eyes, the film felt familiar.

Did I Like It: It’s a bit sad to report that—unlike the rest of Anderson’s films—this film is merely equal to the sum of its parts. It is meticulously designed. To receive anything less from Anderson would feel like a betrayal. It is persistently charming, and more than occasionally quite amusing. There are few filmmakers working today who work at every level of the filmmaking process to eschew viewer’s expectations of how a film should be put together.

Beyond his normal bag of tricks, Anderson does reach for new surprises beyond putting out the most singularly twee films ever imagined. Several shots in “The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner” credibly look like they might have actually been shot in the 1940s. Has any modern director convincingly made a film which feels as if it could have been shot at any other time than the precise moment in which it was produced? A timeless quality will help the film age better than most.

Some might be put off by the aspect ratio, but looking at the shot composition as something akin to the column inches of a publication makes the entire affair fit together like a meticulously crafted work of art, which serves as more evidence that Anderson has once again hit its target.

And yet, not all of the film adds up in a completely satisfying manner. The connective through-line for the film—involving the death of Dispatch publisher Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray, channeling the same understated energy he has brought to a number of Anderson’s films)—is the least engaging main plot of any film in Anderson’s oeuvre. The sudden switch to animation feels jarring. I can’t imagine Anderson didn’t mean to do it that way, but it doesn’t feel as if he did… which does ten to fly in the face of the ethos of the whole film.

And yet, I can’t say I didn’t dislike the film entirely, either. I don’t know if I could stand to read one more word of The New Yorker, but I wouldn’t mind thumbing through an issue or two of the Dispatch. If the slavish homage can outpace the source, then the flaws of either may not matter anymore.

Spectre (2015)

Director: Sam Mendes

Cast: Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Léa Seydoux, Ben Whishaw

Have I Seen it Before: Sure.

Did I Like It: Does the plot of a Bond movie really matter? If they do, then this one suffers a bit. It tries to ape the “greatest villain reimagined” motif that The Dark Knight (2008) made de rigueur and movies like Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) drove into the ground. The story of the resurgence of Blofeld (Waltz) feels like it has come too late to the party to be anything other than lame. Bond movies are no stranger to feebly chasing after the current moviegoing trends, with equally shaky results. I refer the jury to Moonraker (1979).

Really, truly, the film is actually too late for two separate parties. The Spectre aspects of the Bond mythology had spent decades tied into endless copyright disputes by the time Roger Moore had taken over the tux and martini. Corporate mergers collided with the death of intransigent rights holders so that every possible atom of the Bond property could once again be wielded by EON Productions. Did they try to bring us a new version of Spectre and Blofeld, re-combining the parts we knew into something new? No, they tried to retcon the man and the organization as the mastermind of every event in the Daniel Craig era. The results, as I have said, are still somewhat awkward.

And yet, I may be beyond complaining about Bond movies at this point. Maybe its that No Time To Die feels further and further away the more it is delayed. Maybe I’m just—like Craig—mellowing in my old age. Maybe its that at its core, all I need from a Bond is some gadgets, a couple of set pieces, and a man at the center of it all that exudes such confidence and swagger forging the fantasy that a human could walk the Earth completely divorced from the notions of angst or klutzyness. It’s an enduring—if admittedly toxic—fantasy in machismo. Each of the actors in the role had that ineffable quality, and Craig has had it in spades throughout his tenure, and in great supply here. It can keep a Bond movie afloat, and this one manages.