Review: Moonrise Kingdom
Morning all. Mum was feeling poorly last night, so me and dad decided to get out of her hair - we ended up getting pizza and heading to a (very swish and cushy!) London cinema to watch Moonrise Kingdom.
I don't know what exactly I was expecting. I'd briefly seen the trailer, and it looked... odd, but interesting. I think I was expecting it to be weird, and so I went in with a fairly open mind.
One-word summary: Brilliant. :D
It's definitely an odd film; and I can see it maybe getting a marmite response from audiences, though I know it's done really well with the critics. Firstly the whole thing is just beautiful to look at. Wikipedia tells me it was filmed in Rhode Island, which kind of makes me want to go there. It's not just beautiful in terms of landscape and settings, but also in the way all the colours stand out and the costumes and the design.
In terms of cast, there are two sides to it - the adult cast, which seems to be mostly made up of fairly big names (Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, and a bunch of people whose names I don't recognise off hand but have apparently won many awards), and the younger cast, which is mostly unknowns. Before I saw the film I only knew about Bruce Willis, and I thought that I'd end up with Korben Dallas on the brain for the whole film (I've been writing an essay on The Fifth Element so I've seen it about three times in the last two weeks); but I was completely distracted, and I didn't even really notice the fact that Norton, Murray and Swinton were the actors playing the scout leader, the father and social services besides going "huh, I know that face from somewhere." They were all excellent and they didn't feel overused; you know sometimes a film gets a big name in it and spends half of its runtime going "look at the famous actor!"? Yeah, none of that.
The real focus was on the two main kids, Sam and Suzy, played by Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward who both seem from a little research to be new to films. So many people would have made the film much funnier and much worse by taking the mickey of them; but instead the film took them very seriously. They were so earnest, and honest, and serious. Which was just lovely - and Jared Gilman's inscrutable expressions are fantastic. Not to mention all the other scouts and Suzy's little brothers, who worked really well as an ensemble.
I don't want to go overly-spoilery with mentioning plot-points; but I loved the dog, and the lightning, and the dummy, and the way Tilda Swinton's character had no name but was just called "social services" among many other things. It's definitely a film that's going on my wishlist, I think I could rewatch that for a long, long time. I'd definitely recommend it - and it's well worth a trip to the actual cinema instead of waiting for it on DVD, because some of the sequences are wonderfully overwhelming in a big dark surround-sound room :D
Has anyone else seen it yet? What did you think?
Hazel
I don't know what exactly I was expecting. I'd briefly seen the trailer, and it looked... odd, but interesting. I think I was expecting it to be weird, and so I went in with a fairly open mind.
One-word summary: Brilliant. :D
It's definitely an odd film; and I can see it maybe getting a marmite response from audiences, though I know it's done really well with the critics. Firstly the whole thing is just beautiful to look at. Wikipedia tells me it was filmed in Rhode Island, which kind of makes me want to go there. It's not just beautiful in terms of landscape and settings, but also in the way all the colours stand out and the costumes and the design.
In terms of cast, there are two sides to it - the adult cast, which seems to be mostly made up of fairly big names (Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, and a bunch of people whose names I don't recognise off hand but have apparently won many awards), and the younger cast, which is mostly unknowns. Before I saw the film I only knew about Bruce Willis, and I thought that I'd end up with Korben Dallas on the brain for the whole film (I've been writing an essay on The Fifth Element so I've seen it about three times in the last two weeks); but I was completely distracted, and I didn't even really notice the fact that Norton, Murray and Swinton were the actors playing the scout leader, the father and social services besides going "huh, I know that face from somewhere." They were all excellent and they didn't feel overused; you know sometimes a film gets a big name in it and spends half of its runtime going "look at the famous actor!"? Yeah, none of that.
The real focus was on the two main kids, Sam and Suzy, played by Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward who both seem from a little research to be new to films. So many people would have made the film much funnier and much worse by taking the mickey of them; but instead the film took them very seriously. They were so earnest, and honest, and serious. Which was just lovely - and Jared Gilman's inscrutable expressions are fantastic. Not to mention all the other scouts and Suzy's little brothers, who worked really well as an ensemble.
I don't want to go overly-spoilery with mentioning plot-points; but I loved the dog, and the lightning, and the dummy, and the way Tilda Swinton's character had no name but was just called "social services" among many other things. It's definitely a film that's going on my wishlist, I think I could rewatch that for a long, long time. I'd definitely recommend it - and it's well worth a trip to the actual cinema instead of waiting for it on DVD, because some of the sequences are wonderfully overwhelming in a big dark surround-sound room :D
Has anyone else seen it yet? What did you think?
Hazel