Isle of Dogs (5/5 Stars)

 Crisis! Setting: The Japanese Archipelago, Megasaki Prefecture. An epidemic of snout fever is raging through the population of dogs with no signs of abatement. Mayor Kobayashi initiates a dramatic solution: Ban all dogs to the nearby trash island. Wholly Moses! Whatever happened to man’s best friend?

So begins in efficient precision the conceit of Writer/Director Wes Anderson and co.’s third masterpiece in a row (following Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel) the Isle of Dogs. I say Wes Anderson and co. because it so obvious from his last three movies that he has assembled an extraordinary crew of artists around him. These movies are quite frankly on another level. A few words of effusive praise can be spent on the look of the movie. It is rendered in spare crisp black and white tones, obviously heavily influenced, nay in direct homage, to the efficient elegance of the best of Japanese art. It is an animated movie, using the same stop-motion technology and style Anderson previously used in Fantastic Mr. Fox. As such, the entirety of each and every frame is designed. And what design! Pick a frame at random and you’ve got a painting.

After the dogs are unfairly marooned, a young boy named Atari pilots his way to the Isle of Dogs to find his beloved dog Spot. Atari his helped in his search by a group of dogs with names such as Chief, Rex, Boss, King, and Duke, voiced by such A-listers and Anderson regulars as Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, and Jeff Goldblum respectively. Why do they help the child? Because they are dogs and dogs love children. Such cute logic is all over this movie. (For example, a not-so-subtle reason for the nefariousness of the Kobayashi clan is the fact that they are associated with cats. The ancient grudge between cats and dogs is continued). The plot is disarmingly simple and the sympathy it commands so persuasive (unless you’re are some kind of cat-lover/dog-hater) that I expect this movie will become the favorite movie of legions of children. For once, grateful parents will have at least one movie their kids are obsessed with that they would not mind watching a hundred times over.

Isle of Dogs is routinely funny in that wry and dry Wes Anderson way. His humor has gotten sharper over the years and his last three movies are a testament to that. There is a particularly good joke concerning a dog, called the Oracle, who the other dogs believe has special powers. Actually she has figured out how to watch T.V. and is letting everyone know what she is sees on the news.

The pathos works as well. One flashback scene shows the first meeting of Atari and Spots, his newly assigned guard-dog. Spot, as if a seasoned professional, describes at length his employment to Atari, the various functions he has and his and commitment to Atari’s well-being. “In other words,” Spots concludes, “I am your dog.” There is a simple profundity to that which just killed me.

I have left to discuss perhaps the more original and inventive detail of Isle of Dogs. The human characters are Japanese and speak Japanese, which the movie chooses to not provide subtitles for. The barks of the dogs, however, have been rendered into English. This provides for a unique experience in which half of the dialogue is not understandable, or is being translated by more-or-less reliable translators. There are enough visual cues so that an English only speaker can definitely understand what is going on, but the decision made by Anderson to not provide a translation of the Japanese is an interesting one. Like Lost in Translation, I expect part of the experience is not understanding the Japanese language. Or it could be that Anderson wanted to make it clear that the Japanese and the dogs indeed speak different languages and do not fully understand each other. In any case, it works.

I always pegged Wes Anderson as more of a “cat guy”. Obviously, I was wrong.  

The Death of Stalin (5/5 Stars)

Democracies get all the bad press as dictators and totalitarian governments don't allow their citizens to complain about them. So there seem to be several movies a year that feature the failings of American politics (not to mention daily editorial pieces in press) but not so many concerning the truly awful governments. When the truly awful governments are covered, they get the Nazi treatment so to speak. They are the evil antagonists in the action blockbuster or serious drama. Almost never are unspeakably bad governments used for laughs. That makes the horrifying and hilarious satire “The Death of Stalin” a rare treat. Watching it will not only make you laugh but thank your lucky stars no movie like this could ever be made about America.

The writer-director of “The Death of Stalin” is Armando Ianucci. It is a perfect meeting of man and material. Mr. Ianucci has spent the last decade and a half satirizing British politics (“The Thick of It”) and American politics (“Veep”) and at least one time both (“In the Loop”). Mr. Ianucci specializes in cruelty. In British and American politics this played out in bullying, betrayals and language whose foulness was only matched by its creativity. In Soviet politics, women are raped and men are murdered. Mr. Ianucci may be the only person in the business that could have pulled off the black humor in this picture as well as he does.

If one ignores the sheer terror of it all, Russia under Stalin had a lot that was funny about it. When Stalin collapses from a stroke late one night, his guards are so scared of Stalin’s potential anger for needlessly interrupting him that they pretend not to hear anything. Stalin is not discovered until the morning. When he finally is discovered, it is determined that a doctor should be called. However, Stalin had previously ordered the murder of all the best doctor’s in Moscow because he believed that Western medicine was a conspiracy. The inferior doctors are brought in to help. However, they do not use the equipment that would save Stalin’s life because it was manufactured in the United States. Stalin eventually dies betrayed by the incompetence his despotic rule bestowed upon his country.

The movie is the comedic version of “1984”. Everyone participates in ‘double-think’. That is the ability to know something is untrue and to believe it anyway because Stalin said so. Everyone knows that Stalin is a homicidal maniac. When they hear of his death, they grovel and weep and mourn deeply their country’s awesome loss. Meanwhile a power vacuum has opened and the member’s of Stalin’s highest committee start vying for power. There is a great scene where they must pretend to continue to believe Stalin is without error while making their first order of business to stop the latest round of political assassinations Stalin had just ordered the week before.

The two men vying for ultimate power after Stalin’s death are Lavrenti Beria (Simon Russell Beale), the head of Stalin’s secret police, and Nikita Khruschev (Steve Buscemi). Stalin’s successor-in-name is his deputy Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor). Rounding out the committee is Vyacheslav Molotov (Michael Palin). Mr. Ianucci makes an interesting choice in directing the actors to use their regular voices instead of adopting Russian accents. This choice is confusing and then illuminating. After all, Russians do not hear accents when they speak to each other. (The best version would be for all the actors to speak Russian. However, that would impair Ianucci’s ability to write sharp satire in his style.) So everyone might as well speak in their native accents. This reminded me of the American accents in “Amadeus”, which also worked remarkably well.

The performance of Steve Buscemi is a revelation. Like the actor, the man Khruschev seems a harmless character actor. But this betrays a deep political cunning, which Iannucci and Buscemi slowly develops until the moment of action when Nikita outmaneuvers his enemies and takes control. Then the comeuppance is chilling and exhilarating. As Khruschev also seems to be the least worst of all the members of the committee, this brutal satire also unexpectedly has a happy ending. Jeffrey Tambor as well is perfectly cast as a weak man. Michael Palin’s presence appropriately connects Iannucci’s style with its most obvious predecessor, Monty Python. This is a great movie. Unsurprisingly, it has been banned in Russia. Apparently they are still afraid of Stalin over there.