112 replies to this topic

[Overstreet]

Mike Fleming:

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When Wes Anderson is ready to make a movie, talent comes running. I'm told that Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton are all in talks to star in Moon Rise Kingdom, a script that Anderson wrote with Roman Coppola and which Anderson will direct late next spring. ...

Moon Rise Kingdom is set in the 60s. Two young adults fall in love and run away. Leaders in their New England town are sticking the idea that they've disappeared and go in search of them. Norton will play a scout leader who brings his charges on a search. Willis is in talks to play the town sheriff who’s also looking, and who is having an affair with the missing girl’s mother, the role McDormand is in talks to play. Murray, a regular in Anderson films, will play the girl's father, who has his own issues.

So in other words, it's a Wes Anderson film. The scouts and their badges. The cross-country pursuit of something. The woman in a new relationship, while her husband (or ex) is a failed and despondent father.

Edited by Overstreet, 12 January 2012 - 05:38 PM.

[Ryan H.]

I'm growing tired of Wes Anderson. I love, love, love THE LIFE AQUATIC--and I even enjoyed his latest, FANTASTIC MR. FOX--but I find myself not even slightly excited at the prospect of MOON RISE KINGDOM.

[Tyler]

[Overstreet]

Part of me is saying, “Oh, brother. Wes Anderson’s style is becoming so familiar that I couldn’t tell the difference between a parody and the real thing.” Another part of me is saying, “This looks like all kinds of fun.”

[Ryan H.]

Overstreet, on 12 January 2012 - 05:38 PM, said:

Part of me is saying, “Oh, brother. Wes Anderson’s style is becoming so familiar that I couldn’t tell the difference between a parody and the real thing.” Another part of me is saying, “This looks like all kinds of fun.”

The "This looks like all kinds of fun" part of me is winning the battle at this moment.

[opus]

Ryan H., on 12 January 2012 - 07:52 PM, said:

Overstreet, on 12 January 2012 - 05:38 PM, said:

Part of me is saying, “Oh, brother. Wes Anderson’s style is becoming so familiar that I couldn’t tell the difference between a parody and the real thing.” Another part of me is saying, “This looks like all kinds of fun.”

The "This looks like all kinds of fun" part of me is winning the battle at this moment.

Same here.

[Attica]

That last shot is great. Bill Murray can be pretty awesome when he's given a chance.

[Anders]

Attica, on 13 January 2012 - 12:01 PM, said:

That last shot is great. Bill Murray can be pretty awesome when he's given a chance.

Yeah, regardless of whether the movie as a whole works (as as someone who has really enjoyed Anderson's last two films, THE DARJEELING LIMITED and FANTASTIC MR. FOX, I have a lot of hope) that scene is already a classic in my mind.

"I'm going to find a tree to chop down."

[Overstreet]

It's a Cannes-opener.

The poster:

Edited by Overstreet, 09 March 2012 - 12:08 AM.

[Joel Mayward]

Todd McCarthy likes it.

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A blandly inexpressive title is the worst thing about Moonrise Kingdom, a willfully eccentric pubescent love story in which even the most minute detail has been attended to in the manner of the most obsessive maker of 19th century dollhouses.

So does The Guardian.

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Anderson's movies are vulnerable to the charge of being supercilious oddities, but there is elegance and formal brilliance in Moonrise Kingdom as well as a lot of gentle, winning comedy. His homemade aesthetic is placed at the service of a counter-digital, almost hand-drawn cinema, and he has an extraordinary ability to conjure a complete, distinctive universe, entire of itself. To some, Moonrise Kingdom may be nothing more than a soufflé of strangeness, but it rises superbly.

I'm hoping this is as good as I want it to be, and so far the reviews seem to be confirming my hopes.

[SDG]

Joel Mayward, on 17 May 2012 - 12:35 AM, said:

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A blandly inexpressive title

...what?

[Joel Mayward]

SDG, on 17 May 2012 - 06:14 AM, said:

Joel Mayward, on 17 May 2012 - 12:35 AM, said:

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A blandly inexpressive title

...what?

That beginning part made me pause too, but if the title is the worst thing about "Moonrise Kingdom" (and I'd consider it to be a rather expressive and whimsical title), then I'm more excited for the film itself.

[Darren H]

I'm encouraged by hearing several critics describe this as the Rushmoriest film Anderson has made in years. Until Fantastic Mr. Fox came along, I've liked each of his films less than the one that preceded it -- to the point that I never even saw The Darjeeling Limited.

[Anders]

Darren H, on 17 May 2012 - 07:46 AM, said:

I'm encouraged by hearing several critics describe this as the Rushmoriest film Anderson has made in years. Until Fantastic Mr. Fox came along, I've liked each of his films less than the one that preceded it -- to the point that I never even saw The Darjeeling Limited.

RUSHMORE is still my favourite Anderson film, so this bodes well for me.

But I think you should check out DARJEELING. I re-watched it on Blu-ray recently, and I probably like it more now. The family dynamics and current of mourning are there like in TENENBAUMS (there are three brothers in my family, and the brother dynamic is strong in the film). Also, it's interesting to see Anderson film on location and the way he uses the train. The strong horizontal staging that is present in all his other films (like peering into a diorama) is particularly well suited to the train.

[Peter T Chattaway]

Robert Koehler @ FIlmJourney.org:

The opening minutes, for that matter, the opening 40 minutes, are fairly divine, as Anderson and Roman Coppola’s screenplay relates an escape into the wilderness by Suzy (Kara Hayward) and Sam (Jared Gilman), both deemed disturbed and unmanageable by those adults who supposedly care for them. In the movie’s most experimental and dangerous tack, Hayward and Gilman—who share a large amount of screen time together—are deliberately directed to perform awkwardly, verbally flat, their sheer botchedness designed to become an expression of pre-teen discomfort. The strategy works. . . .

Anderson doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone, and piles it on in the second half, until Moonrise Kingdom loses much of its mirthful charm. Its storybook pages get gummed and marked with a pile-on of business, rivalries within rivalries within rivalries, Hurricane Harvey Keitel making an entrance (even Coppola’s relation Jason Schwartzman, in a fairly pointless turn), the flood stirred by the storm and, for good measure, Benjamin Britten’s own operatic version of Noah and the Great Flood. What was gliding along is now stomping along, and there’s the itch to want to make it all stop, or at least, calm back down to what it was. . . .

[andrew_b_welch]

As a major Wes Anderson fan, I know I'm biased, but I loved this. I was completely taken with it from beginning to end, and something about the direction of it felt more confident and assured. I wish I could be more specific about what made me feel that way...but that will have to wait till I've seen it at least once more. For now, the best that I can do is say that it feels like Anderson is in complete control--and IMO, that's a good thing.

[Peter T Chattaway]

Richard Brody @ New Yorker:

What makes the film thrillingly different—in content and in affect, in emotional energy and in visual imagination—is its metaphysical and religious element. There’s an expressly transcendent theme in “Moonrise Kingdom” that raises the tender and joyous story of young lovers on the run to a spiritual adventure. The moral vision of the world, which was always implicit and latent in Anderson’s other films, here bursts out as a distinctive, ecstatic, visionary new cinematic dimension. Anderson has always been far more than just an exquisite stylist—his style is an essential part of a consistent spiritual vision. But in “Moonrise Kingdom,” his world view is projected beyond personal experience into a cosmic fantasy. It’s Anderson’s own counter-Scripture, a vision of a moral order, ordained from on high, that challenges the official version instilled by society at large—and he embodies it in images of an apt sublimity (as well as an aptly self-deprecating humor). . . .

There’s always an element of catastrophe in Anderson’s films, yet here it’s set in expressly mythopoetic, religious terms, with the local historian and narrator (Bob Balaban) foretelling, as if prophetically, apocalyptic doings. It’s impossible to talk much more about these doings, but the mention of Noah should suffice. The young lovers, with their innocent, daring, intensely sincere, and consecrated love (and the ultimate proof of that consecration, as one spiritually awakened young character says, is their willingness to die for each other), have provoked a scandal. They are assumed by the authorities—parents, scoutmasters, scouts, and even the state, as embodied in the figure of social services (Tilda Swinton)—to be doing something indecent, immoral, intolerable. They’re outlaws, and the law—the ostensible moral law—is after them. But in Anderson’s view, they’re on the side of the good, indeed, the highest good. And he conveys the notion—again, latent in his other films, explicit here—that true and noble souls are in synch with nature, and that when true passion is thwarted or frustrated, all hell—or, rather, heaven—breaks loose, with a deluge of divine vengeance against those who would keep the couple apart. (In another Hitchcock reference, to “Vertigo,” Anderson expressly challenges the stiflingly moralistic world view of that film and filmmaker, targeting not the lovers in a bell tower but the tower itself.)

The story of Noah and the ark, after all, a story of destruction, is also a story of rebirth—of couples paired off under divine authority. “Moonrise Kingdom” poses a vast question: Who are the righteous? Those whose love is true and beautiful. It’s proven true by their readiness to face danger, even death; it’s proven beautiful by their sense of style, which, in Anderson’s world, is the touchstone of great emotion and the noble expression of it—the conversion of great emotion into great and good works, and thereby into the improvement of the world through its beautification. . . .

[Tyler]

[Darrel Manson]

I have not liked many of Anderson's films, but this was wonderful. I look forward to running this around in my head for a bit to put together a review. Qoheleth, I think, would love this film (if his/her dark soul enjoys much of anything). Really liked the music - juxtaposing Benjamin Britten and Hank Williams.

[Christian]

Peter's link and Darrel's reaction have me thinking this might be the first Wes Anderson film I love. It's been a long time since I've even liked an Anderson film.