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Sunday, May 20, 2012

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

On a small island off the coast of New England in 1965, two perceived "troubled" adolescents (Jared Gilman, Kara Hayward) fall in love and run away. As a deadly storm of hurricane proportions approaches the island, the town mobilizes to find the two children. An absolute joy! Wes Anderson has made a genuinely magical film, not only artistically but literally. He's created a world unique unto itself. The look of the film goes beyond mere stylization. The stunning production design and art direction (kudos to Adam Stockhausen, Gerald Sullivan and Kris Moran) creates an off kilter reality. Real life smashing head on to a fairy tale. The screenplay by Anderson and Roman Coppola is humorously quirky yet captures the angst of the adolescent misfit trying to fit into like a square peg into a societal circle. The two adolescent actors, Gilman and Hayward, give marvelous performances. The film belongs to them but the adults all get a chance to shine too: Bruce Willis, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Edward Norton, Harvey Keitel, Jason Schwartzman and Bob Balaban. The underscore is mostly adaptations by Benjamin Britten including, appropriately, the opera NOYE'S FLUDDE supplemented by a sterling original score by Alexandre Desplat.

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