Wes Anderson's 'The French Dispatch' Review Thread

Rotten Tomatoes:

Metacritic: 88/100 (7 critics)

As with other movies, the scores are set to change as time passes. Meanwhile, I'll post some short reviews on the movie.

While The French Dispatch might seem like an anthology of vignettes without a strong overarching theme, every moment is graced by Anderson’s love for the written word and the oddball characters who dedicate their professional lives to it. There’s a wistful sense of time passing and a lovely ode to the pleasures of travel embedded in the material, along with an appreciation for the history of American foreign correspondents who bring their perceptive outsider gaze to other cultures.

-David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

Mostly, though, “The French Dispatch” is a fun watch because it keeps reinventing itself. Each chapter gives another journalist the chance to take charge.

-Eric Kohn, IndieWire: B+

The result is hugely impressive and awfully scattershot, a wry piece of art that is always entertaining but also so excruciatingly detailed that you wonder if it will connect the way the more emotional, more fully drawn stories of “Grand Budapest,” “Moonrise Kingdom” or “The Royal Tenenbaums” did.

-Steve Pond, The Wrap

Frivolous as this all may sound, Anderson is right to celebrate a generation who broadened our idea of what storytelling could be, shaping more than just journalism: They found poetry in the streets and heroes on the margins; they challenged the establishment and represented a nouvelle vague every bit as influential as the one sweeping cinema around the same time.

-Peter Debruge, Variety

His new film, The French Dispatch, long delayed by Covid, has on the strength of the extensively picked-apart trailer, been condemned as more of the same. To which I can only say … sure, yes, more fun, more buoyancy, more elegance, more marvellously eccentric invention, more originality. It might not be at the very zenith of what he can achieve but for sheer moment-by-moment pleasure, and for laughs, this is a treat.

-Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian: 4/5

Artifice imitates life in The French Dispatch, Wes Anderson’s exceedingly clever love letter to literary magazines such as The New Yorker. Told in chapters which represent individual reported stories that appeared in the now-defunct titular publication, the director’s 10th feature is among his most visually remarkable, each frame filled with meticulously crafted small details that add up to a dense, inviting cinematic jewel box.

-Tim Grierson, Screen Daily

Wes Anderson sends up The New Yorker in superbly kooky style.

-Robbie Collin, The Telegraph: 5/5

It’s hard not to believe that, if he could, Anderson would not willingly jump into the world he’s so scrupulously created in The French Dispatch and live there forever. And a certain number of us might be sorely tempted to join him. The filmmaker has fashioned a fantastic and fantastical adjacent realm here like no other in filmdom, much less the real world, and for some people it’s a place they might care to visit time and again, even if Anderson himself is the only full-time resident.

-Todd McCarthy, Deadline

But there is something delightfully perverse about Anderson's hyper-industrious treatment of such flimsy material. His craftsmanship is so overwhelming that unless you're already allergic to his tics and trademarks, you should get a buzz from the film's many, many incidental pleasures. One thing's for sure: there is nothing quite like The French Dispatch – except Anderson's other films, of course.

-Nicholas Barber, BBC: 4/5

The French Dispatch is a rocket ship ride to your cinematic soul, meshing word, action and vision in one glorious bon-bon that’s both sweet and savory. It’s a film I cannot wait to visit over and over, and it’s a film that reminds that, yes, stories truly can take one to places that they never knew they wanted to be, yet are forever changed by the journey that we’re led on.

-Jason Gorber, /FILM: 10/10

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PLOT

The film is a love letter to journalists set in an outpost of an American newspaper in a fictional 20th Century French city and brings to life a collection of stories published in ‘The French Dispatch’ magazine.” The film will reportedly be set in both 1950s Paris and the fictional commune of Ennui-sur-Blasé.

DIRECTOR

Wes Anderson

SCREENPLAY

Wes Anderson

STORY

Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola, Hugo Guinness & Jason Schwartzman

MUSIC

Alexandre Desplat

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Robert Yeoman

Release date:

July 12, 2021 (Cannes Film Festival)

October 22, 2021 (theaters)

STARRING

• Benicio del Toro as Moses Rosenthaler

• Tony Revolori as young Moses Rosenthaler

• Adrien Brody as Julien Cadazio

• Tilda Swinton as J. K. L. Berensen

• Léa Seydoux as Simone

• Frances McDormand as Lucinda Krementz

• Timothée Chalamet as Zeffirelli

• Lyna Khoudri as Juliette

• Jeffrey Wright as Roebuck Wright

• Alex Lawther as Morisot

• Mathieu Amalric as The Commissaire

• Stephen Park as Lt. Nescafier

• Bill Murray as Arthur Howitzer Jr.

• Owen Wilson as Herbsaint Sazerac

• Liev Schreiber as Talk Show Host

• Elisabeth Moss as Alumna

• Edward Norton as The Chauffeur

• Willem Dafoe as Albert the Abacus

• Lois Smith as Upshur “Maw” Clampette

• Saoirse Ronan as First Showgirl

• Christoph Waltz as Paul Duval

• Cécile de France as Mrs. B

• Guillaume Gallienne aș Mr. B

• Jason Schwartzman as Hermes Jones

• Rupert Friend as Drill-Sergeant

• Henry Winkler as Uncle Joe

• Bob Balaban as Uncle Nick

• Hippolyte Girardot as Chou-fleur

• Anjelica Huston as The Narrator

Submitted July 13, 2021 at 12:07AM by SanderSo47 https://ift.tt/3xA98A3