Isle of Dogs movie review.

Few directors are as idiosyncratic as Wes Anderson. Warts and all, his signature style is unmistakable, crafting obsessively layered films both in craft and in concept, with the likes of The Royal Tenenbaums, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Moonrise Kingdom standing out as some of his finest highlights. Given what a hands on filmmaker he is, it certainly made sense for him to venture into stop-motion, previously adapting Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox to the screen in 2009.

It's been far too long since his last feature, and now he returns again to stop-motion with Isle of Dogs. Any animal lover would likely be put off by that very premise, given the grisly fates that animals and pets in his films usually meet, which is only one area where Anderson has proven himself a distinctly macabre visionary. But even if it's likely to test your sensitivity, Isle of Dogs certainly proves no less an outstanding effort from the prolific filmmaker.

Brief thoughts on A Quiet Place.

Sound and silence are often taken for granted. With movies, in particular, since films have ironically evolved from no audio at all, to sound and dialogue becoming a huge part of our stories. Nowadays, silence tends to take a back seat to the big budget spectacles, with studios at war with and one-upping each other to see who can have the biggest explosions and mayhem. But silence is never truly gone, simply buried, waiting for a truly special film to make use of it. And so does A Quiet Place, director John Krasinski's eerie and terrifying feature.

Ready Player One movie review.

I am, and I assume many of my readers are, a nostalgic lover of the 80's and its pop culture. The decade of Duran Duran and Michael Jackson still continues to resonate with a great many for its iconic achievements and shifting social attitudes, that obsession continuing to follow us to today, as 80's franchises find new life in continuations and reboots, and generating brand new pop culture phenomenons like Stranger Things, that wear their old-fashioned setting like a badge of honor.

And if you were a lover of the 80's, chances are you were also a lover of Amblin and Steven Spielberg, for crafting some of the most endearing and memorable franchises and films of the decade. But, fun as nostalgia may be, to leap into it blissfully unaware of the world's larger problems can be a danger all on its own. That's an issue Spielberg himself tackles, in his adaptation of Ernest Cline's fanboy favorite book Ready Player One, of a world crumbling to pieces as that nostalgia dominates.