Isle of Dogs
Superficially, Isle of Dogs dazzles. Wes Anderson’s second foray into stop-motion animation—following 2009’s unassailably wonderful Fantastic Mr. Fox—is full of delectable visual treats. (This time, the director’s grade-school diorama aesthetic floods your ocular circuits with a retro-futuristic version of Japan, where all the dogs of Megasaki City have been exiled to Trash Island following an outbreak of snout fever.) Things get a little more... complicated below the surface, as Anderson’s depiction of the film’s Japanese humans leaves something to be desired.
by Ned Lannamann