Wes Anderson Directed A Christmas Short Film Starring Adrien Brody

It's been a few years since we last heard from director Wes Anderson, who vanished into thin air following the well-deserved critical and financial success of 2014's The Grand Budapest Hotel (which is a masterpiece and very possibly his best movie). Updates on his new stop-motion film, his first since 2009's Fantastic Mr. Fox (another masterpiece and very possibly his second best movie) have been sporadic. And while we'll have to keep on waiting to learn more about his next feature movie, Anderson has gone and made a Christmas-themed short film starring Adrien Brody that you can watch right now.

Technically, Come Together is a commercial for the Swedish clothing company H&M, but this is a Wes Anderson project down to its bones. Everything that Anderson loves is on full display here: an unplaceable time and location, meticulously detailed sets, casual cynicism offset by a hesitant affection for humanity at its core, and a camera that does its best to transform a three-dimensional world into a two-dimensional plane. It's delightful. Plus, the train setting and the use of Anderson regular Adrien Brody makes this feel like a weird companion piece to The Darjeeling Limited (which is not a masterpiece, but is still pretty good).

It may be a four-minute commercial, but let's face it: the world would be a better place if more commercials were directed by genius filmmakers who work to evoke specific feelings and tell stories rather than just shove a product in your face.

Of course, this isn't the first time Anderson has used an advertisement as an excuse to make a short film. Although it's more of a straightforward commercial than some of the others, I remain very fond of his American Express ad from a while back, which finds Anderson playing himself as he casually navigates a complicated film set populated by all of his usual quirky touches.

More recently, Anderson collaborated with Prada to make Castello Cavalcanti, an eight-minute short about a Formula One racer played by Jason Schwartzman who finds himself stranded in a small Italian town after crashing his car.

It's hard to begrudge Anderson making commercials when they're this much fun, especially since they don't water down his voice in any way. Plus, this will tide us over until his new movie, which is apparently set "Japan-inspired" and about a dog and stars the voices of Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum and Bob Balaban, is finished.