My appreciation of the films of Wes Anderson began curdling halfway through The Royal Tenenbaums. His star on the rise, Anderson began buying into his own press and from it emerged a style that, even with the best intentions, tended to engulf, rather than inform. What followed was children’s wallpaper from a frustrated production designer, Tim Burton with a better director of photography. (True that! There is no cameraperson currently at work who can touch the electrifying chromatic range or Robert Yeoman.) Perhaps it’s my misty-eyed nostalgia for magazines that softened thinking — the first third left me slack-jawed in amazement. When Tilda Swinton’s work is done, the picture leaves with her and it’s back to business: compositions that alternate between see-saw ‘Scope and center-scan spherical. Already much has been written about the long take that follows Jeffrey Wright through a labyrinth maze of studio carpentry. Executed without the aid of a computer, the shot is no doubt a technical marvel destined to leave audiences agog. Apart from eliciting gasps of “Wow! That’s cool!” from the audience, what the shot does to advance or inform the plot forever escapes me. (2021) — Scott Marks
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