The French Dispatch (2021)

Well suited for our family's Christmas movie, this madcap "love letter to journalists" from auteur Wes Anderson fleshes out four stories and an obituary that appear in a New Yorker-type magazine, and we loved it. Its full title is The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun.

The cast of over 250 features, among others, Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux, Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, and Bill Murray in the disparate segments, many of which take place in a fictional town called Ennui-sur-Blasé, which translates to boredom on apathy. There are too many puns and Easter eggs to list. Just be alert, especially if you know any French.

Anderson directed and wrote the script with story help from Roman Coppola, Hugo Guinness, and Jason Schwartzman. This is Anderson's tenth feature and I'm glad to have seen them all.

I'm streaming the jaunty score by Alexandre Desplat on Apple Music as I type, and you can also get it free on Spotify. Here's also a list of songs.

Director of Photography Robert Yeoman aptly mixes black and white with glorious color in the various segments, framed with creativity, and I must mention the terrific production design team, led by Adam Stockhausen.

Anderson, Coppola, and Schwartzman were last blogged for Isle of Dogs, del Toro for Sicario, Brody for Third Person, Swinton for The Personal History of David Copperfield, Seydoux for The Lobster, McDormand for Nomadland, Chalamet for Little Women, Murray for On the Rocks, Desplat for The Midnight Sky, Yeoman for Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang, and Stockhausen for Bridge of Spies. And, though I didn't mention it in the blog, Guinness co-wrote the story for The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are rather blasé, averaging 74 and 76%, respectively. We heartily disagree.

On December 25 we rented it from iTunes and I, for one, was glad to have the pause button to look at the magazine covers displayed with the end credits. And, just for statistics' sake, this is the 16th movie in 17 years that Jack, Amy, and I have watched together on Christmas day (COVID kept us apart last year but at least this year we were able to isolate together!).