Isle of Dogs (2018)

Jack and I expected to love, and did, this stop-motion animated tail, er, tale of dogs exiled to an island trash dump and the boy who searches there for his lost dog. Set in near-future Japan where a crooked mayor hates dogs, the movie is delightfully idiosyncratic, including Japanese-speaking humans and English-speaking dogs (the translation techniques are explained in the beginning).

The main dogs are a group of four domesticated ones and a stray. I had trouble identifying the voices so here's my guide. Look at this picture. Chief, the stray with the black fur, is arguably the alpha dog (though they're all called alpha dogs) and is voiced by Bryan Cranston (after Wakefield he had a cameo as himself in The Disaster Artist). The other four (whose voice-actors were all in the director's last picture--more on that in a moment) are Rex, with blonde fur (Edward Norton, last blogged for Birdman); Duke, with gray and white fur (Jeff Goldbum, most recently in these pages for Le Week-End); Boss, who wears a jersey (Bill Murray, last in The Jungle Book); and King, who has floppy ears (Bob Balaban, who has done some TV after The Grand Budapest Hotel). Liev Schreiber (last in Spotlight) makes a late appearance as a dog with white fur and blue eyes.

Among the cast of dozens, four women stand out: Scarlett Johansson (most recently in these pages for The Jungle Book) voices Nutmeg, the show dog; Greta Gerwig (last acting gig we saw was in Jackie) plays Tracy the human freckled American exchange student; Frances McDormand (just won her second Oscar for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) is the human interpreter; and Yoko Ono (the last time she acted was to play herself in a 1995 episode of Mad About You) has very few lines as Assistant Scientist Yoko-ono, also a human.

Director/screenwriter Wes Anderson's last project was The Grand Budapest Hotel, and 2009's Fantastic Mr. Fox was also stop motion animation. I really enjoyed this video about the puppets used here and another making-of video. You can watch several more offered below those.

The story is credited to Anderson as well as to Roman Coppola (co-writer of Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom), Jason Schwartzman (he and his cousin Coppola co-wrote The Darjeeling Limited (2007) with Anderson as well as creating and writing several episodes of Mozart in the Jungle), and Kunichi Nomura (his writing debut after acting in Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation (2003) and The Grand Budapest Hotel. He also does the voice of the Mayor in this movie and is a famous radio host in Japan).

One of several reasons I was excited to see this movie is my love of Japanese taiko drumming, featured prominently in the trailer. Composer Alexandre Desplat (won his second Oscar for scoring The Shape of Water and the first was for The Grand Budapest Hotel) uses the big taiko drums throughout the wonderful soundtrack, melding Eastern and Western influences, which you can stream from this youtube page (unfortunately it stopped and started on my computer today), this playlist, or use this one to link to apple music or spotify. The songs include Sauter-Finegan Orchestra's Midnight Sleighride from the 1950s and The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band's I Won't Hurt You from 1966.

We saw it opening day on Friday and, apparently, it's too soon for Rotten Tomatoes' audiences to weigh in, other than 97% "want to see." Its critics, however, are averaging 92%. Some have said it's no coincidence that "Isle of Dogs" sounds a lot like "I love dogs." If you do, go ahead and see this now.