Isle of Dogs by Wes Anderson is a beautiful work of art. Isle of Dogs is a feature-length stop motion animated film with tremendous visuals, talented voice actors, and a pretty good story that may make you cry.

Isle of Dogs is mainly about a young boy looking for his dog, who because of the evil government in the film, got thrown away living literally in a trash dump. But it’s much more than that. As it is said in the last part of the movie in Atari’s Lantern:

It is also about nature, love, friendship, eternity, and a black owl. I call it, Atari’s Lantern.

Isle of Dogs (Screenwriter: Wes Anderson)

I won’t talk about the plot much due to lazyness and also keeping a lid on spoilers, but all in all it’s a good plot that’s not hard to follow and easy to grasp.

This is actually my first time watching a feature-length stop-motion movie and it was amazing. The movie is incredibly fluid and dynamic, and the attention to detail is mind-blowing. The visuals are full of colour, sometimes even ridiculous, but I definitely enjoyed this animation style. If you want to know how good this movie looks, just take a look at all the work they put in this less-than-five-minute scene:

Additionally, the voice actors are very impressive. I enjoyed the portrayal of Atari, even if he never said a single English word, but i’m even more impressed at the people who voiced the dogs. With actors like Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray, and Liev Schreiber, you really can’t go wrong in the voice actor department. It’s really interesting how the movie doesn’t give subtitles for when the actors are saying something in Japanese, but this is resolved with other more creative ways that help improve the movie and give it a special touch.

Also, bonus for the music. I’m not sure who did the music for this film, but they definitely did a great job. The drums and beats help create great tension and I love how the music is used to set the tone of a scene.

I’m just a bit sad this didn’t win an Oscar for Best Animated Film as it’s definitely terrific, but at least it was nominated. BTW, the winner was Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which I reviewed in last week’s Film Friday.

So, that’s a quick short Film Friday for you. I didn’t have time to complete the Tech Thursday this week, so I’ll just finish it for next week’s. Come on, it’s my blog. Okay, have a good weekend guys and girls!

Film Friday will focus on movies and maybe sometimes TV shows (despite the title) every Friday.

Today I’ll take a look at Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Yes, I know, this movie came out for some time already, but I just recently watched it, so here we go.

I’ll list down some thoughts I had about the movie,

First of all, its story has a great premise. It’s great seeing all these characters from different worlds, dimensions, comics and them teaming up. Every one of these characters have different personalities, special characteristics, and great design. It’s really cool seeing different iterations of Spider-Man showcasing each of their special traits and I also really liked how the movie introduced them with that “I’m Spider-Man” comic sequence.

Second, I loved the great design and l0ok of this movie. There are several articles about this already, I’ll just sum it all up and give my thoughts. So, they obviously went with a very unique comic style, if you pause a frame of the movie and zoom in, you can see these little dots like the ones in a comic book. Also, the movie is amazingly bright and colourful. They have such a unique look, and to get better movement, they also took the 2D animation style of 12 frames per second instead of the usual 24 frames per second.

For the individual characters, Miles looks great. I also love how the spray painting scenes look so creative and realistic with that comic look. Peter and Gwen look awesome, Spider-Man’s moves really look comic-y, maybe a little stop motion in there. Peni is also really cool, she looks straight out of an anime and yet fitts in pretty well with the others. Spider-Ham looks okay, definitely on a further side of cartoon, and Spider-Noir gives a very interesting take at the character. Other characters like Kingpin, Liv, and the Prowler all have a really interesting design style too.

The possibilities don’t end at the character design, I also noticed while in their spider-suits, the characters can still show their emotions by movements in their eyes, which looked really organic and cool. There were also the comic effects to show the spider-sense, that was also pretty cool.

Next is the voice acting. I think they did a tremendous job for the casting, everyone was great, I’ll just mention Shameik Moore as Miles, Jake Johnson as Peter, and Hailee Steinfield as Gwen. Liev Schreiber was also terrific as Kingpin, albeit he had almost zero lines.

So, that’s all! A few weeks ago, they received the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film, which is great and well-deserved. Thanks to the director, producers, cast and crew for an amazing and creative movie. Hats off, guys! See you guys tomorrow for Weekend Lessons!