The Films of Wes Anderson: Critical Essays on an Indiewood Icon

by Peter C. Kunze (Editor)

Wes Anderson's films can be divisive, but he is widely recognized as the inspiration for several recent trends in indie films. Using both practical and theoretical lenses, the contributors address and explain the recurring stylistic techniques, motifs, and themes that dominate Anderson's films and have had such an impact on current filmmaking.

Genres: Film

234 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2014

Reviews

[DeadWeight]

You get what it says on the box, of course. Succeeds as an academic resource - good selection of essays, though the work itself can be dry, overly-academic, occasionally pretentious. Really, this review could stand in for a review of any sort of critical anthology.

Why do we teach our grad students to write like this? Purposefully abstruse? None of the essays in this collection flirt with ideas that are actually much more complicated than one could explain to most children, yet rather than just say, for example, that Wes Anderson "likes shit that looks neat in a way that almost makes it look obviously fake," James MacDowell tells me that Anderson has "a visual style that courts a fastidious 'artificiality.'" Jesus tap-dancing Christ! This collection isn't half as guilty of this as some collections I've read, but this awkwardly verbose academic peacocking shit has to stop.

[Josey]

Most of the essays were kinda boring but if you are really into Wes Anderson and his films, you will like it