Saturday, June 09, 2012

Long Lost Movie Reviews



I saw Moonrise Kingdom last night. Quick thoughts:

Wes Anderson gets to do whatever he wants, which is pretty cool.

He is excellent at provoking nostalgia even for events and places I haven’t experienced.

The first ¾ was very funny. Then it stopped being funny, which was jarring. I’m not saying it’s a tragedy, there was just a precipitous drop in jokes.

The most striking thing about Anderson’s films are the visuals. It occurred to me that not only are they beautiful, but they’re funny. I can’t think of anyone who makes me laugh as often at scenes without dialogue.

Reviews had indicated the child actors were surprisingly not horrible. I’d go as far as to say they were quite good. Their characters primarily required stilted dialogue, but they were effectively endearing.

Mr. Anderson, you’re great, but seriously, you don’t need to throw a topless scene into every movie. He had to work really hard to sneak those breasts in to this one.

All in all, quite good. I was in a theater full of people that were drooling over it, which always leaves mixed feelings for me. It’s nice having crowd interaction, but it was sometimes a bit much.

 Rank:
1.    The Royal Tenenbaums
2.     The Fantastic Mr. Fox
3.     Moonrise Kingdom
4.     The Life Aquatic
5.     Rushmore
6.     The Darjeeling Limited
7.     I still haven’t seen Bottlerocket! I’m a phony.

3 comments:

ESOdhiambo said...

Did the Fantastic Mr. Fox really have a topless scene? Truthfully, I don't remember a topless scene in any of these movies, but maybe they are less shocking to me. I can't believe Rushmore is so far down your list! The sound track alone should pull it up.

Ranteumptom said...

Animal nudity is much more acceptable. Mostly it bothers me when showing Tenenbaums, Life Aquatic, Darjeeling and now Moonrise that I do have to put in the disclaimer "Oh yeah, and there's 1.5 seconds of nudity, that has nothing to do with the plot. But you may be blinking and miss it."

katilda said...

I wasn't a fan of the nudity either. I also wasn't a fan of the overzealous audience....which I don't mind at appropriate should-be-overly-zealous movie events (e.g. midnight showings of harry potter), but it was a bit annoying that people in the theatre were laughing in the first 5 seconds of the film, at nothing, just because. With all that said...I loved the movie. "Are we going to be men and stop him from getting part of his brain removed from him?"