Man on Film: Moonrise Kingdom

It's been quite some time since I saw this one, and I'll start things off by saying that my feelings were mixed. At one point, Wes Anderson was probably the working director whose next work I most looked forward to. Unfortunately, the more I grew up, the more he stayed the same. This difference has become increasingly clear as his last two films have been a stop-motion animation flick about an adolescent fox and now a summer camp movie about a 12-year-old orphan in love.

As with The Fantastic Mr. Fox, this film is cute and probably more effective than the last two "adult" films Anderson directed. There is also a certain allowance one must make when walking into the theater to see a Wes Anderson film. It will have a very distinct look and feel; its characters will be emotionally damaged and stunted; and there will be daddy issues. While Moonrise Kingdom does mostly succeed in what it sets out to do, one has to wonder if this is not because Anderson has set the film's protagonists as precocious 12-year-olds who are then called upon to convey the only depth of emotions that the auteur himself is capable of reaching. Their sentiments ring truer, in part, it would seem precisely because the writer/director is largely stuck in that place.

Moonrise Kingdom does suffer from being too precocious and cute. Its unknown stars, Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward, are what they are meant to be, and both are atypically outstanding for child actors, but both are used in such a way as to imply a sexuality that is frankly a bit unnerving. While they both remain sexually innocent, there exists within the film a gaze that borders on uncomfortable voyeuristic objectification of minors, as they are both clad in their underwear while on their getaway--an off-putting element of the film to be sure. When found by her father (played by Bill Murray, who reprises the role of neutered man in a loveless marriage that he played in The Royal Tenenbaums), they are donning that attire and sleeping together, innocently as it may have been.

Again, the film does mostly succeed in being what it attempts to be, and it is hard to fault a filmmaker for not being something he is not. It is just sad to see an auteur with such tools fail to realize a greater potential in favor of being a developmentally arrested genius fixated on his junior high years and a strained relationship with his father.

Man on Film: The Fantastic Mr. Fox

Since The Royal Tenenbaums, it has kind of felt like Wes Anderson was treading water. In each film, he seems to have been desperately seeking his father's approval, and each has ultimately drowned in paternal pathos. Even the shine of Anderson's perpetual quirkiness has begun to lose its luster, as his characters have become increasingly unlikeable and decreasingly tethered to a reality anyone in the audience can share.

As the real world has become a less than integral element in Anderson's ouvre, the leap to The Fantastic Mr. Fox makes sense.


Now if one were to assume that since The Fantastic Mr. Fox is a movie for children that there wouldn't be any daddy issues, one would be mistaken. For nearly the entire film, the Jason Schwartzman-voiced Ash begs for his father's attention/approval.

Luckily, since there is a clear break from reality and stop-motion animation is a new medium for Anderson to work within, this doesn't feel as tired as The Darjeeling Limited and (especially) The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou did.

For the most part, The Fantastic Mr. Fox is a fun ride. The kiddie flick 'cuss' alternative is amusing for the adult. The farm-robbing hijinx breathe enough life into the film not to bore.
Visually speaking, the stop-motion animation that he first experimented with in The Life Aquatic gets to breathe a full breath, stretch its legs out, and make itself comfortable. Given the time of a feature-length film and the hand of a director who doesn't seem to have a whimsy off-switch, the full breadth of what the stop-motion can do is realized to great effect. That combined with the boisterous agri-capers that the George Clooney-voiced Mr. Fox ventures out on, make for a fun, family-friendly romp.

The one thing I do wonder is whether or not children are going to get this film. I mean, I'm not a kid so personally I don't give a damn whether it works for children, but I doubt that most six-year-olds are going to be drawn into a film in which the character that they would most closely associate themselves with is conniving and whining for a good chunk of the film.

Again, that does not color my view on the film, and I liked it walking out to the car, so I guess that's all that really matters.

Now if only Wes Anderson's father would express some pride in his son's work, so we could all get to see what might happen if he made a film with a different thematic template...

Man on Film: The Brothers Bloom

As the Royals' season has tanked, I have found myself rediscovering the joys of reading and going to the gym. This has also kept me from the computer and, thusly, the internet.

What it hasn't done is gotten in the way of going to the movies.

Last week I saw three films in the theater, the first of which I'll write about tonight*.

*Tonight began as last night, but I fell asleep on the couch while trying to complete this entry. Pretty ridiculous, I know, but it happened.

Having heard a negative reaction to Rian Johnson's second film, my expectations were tempered. By the end of the prologue with its spot on Ricky Jay narration, writer/director Johnson had convinced me that my friend who shall remain unnamed was unequivocally wrong.

For those of you who may not know who Rian Johnson is, I'll bring you up to speed. His debut film, Brick, was a brilliant juxtaposition of a classic noir film in the setting of a present day California high school. Everything about the film could exist in the world that writers such as Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and Raymond Chandler helped create, except for the selection of setting. Sure, "Veronica Mars" had heavy elements of noir throughout the series, but at no point did it make the leap past having noir themes throughout. Brick was an enthralling breath of fresh air on the cinematic landscape. A film that showed a deep love for the language of a bygone film genre while contemporizing its setting. Not since Being John Malkovich had I been so impressed by so unique a voice.

The Brothers Bloom does for the grifter tale what Brick did for film noir. Just as in his first film, Rian Johnson has imbued The Brothers Bloom with a love for the language of the genre. Despite its placement in the present, TBB is every bit the classic tale of swindles, double-crosses, marks, and fast-talking con men.

Inherent in such a film is a lighter spirit than his prior effort, and this allows for the proper stage in which Mark Ruffalo may put his infectious enthusiasm on display. For the first time since You Can Count on Me, Ruffalo is given a film role in which his immense gift for comedy and his ability walk the line between affable and dangerous can once again be on full display. Where Adrien Brody's Bloom is the sympathetic lead (I hesitate to dub him either anti-hero or hero, as the character exists in the gray area in between), Ruffalo's Stephen is who we all really want to be. He is the mastermind. He is the magnetic force. He is what Ferris Bueller would have grown up to be if he had grown up fending for himself as a child.

As for the other cast, Rachel Weisz made me momentarily forget how mean she was to Paul Rudd. Rinko Kikuchi simultaneously embodied ambivalence and anarchic destruction with aplomb, stealing nearly every scene she was in while uttering nary a word (or maybe I'm fetishizing the Asian female, as we white males are wont to do).

Rather than go further into a reflection on the film, which worked on every level for me, personally, I'll go ahead and address the issues that my friend had with the film.

In short, he felt that the film was a shameless Wes Anderson rip off. For the first ten minutes or so, I attempted to find the basis for such an argument to be made. It took that long for me to dismiss the statement. Upon completion of viewing, it struck me as simply lazy. Such an argument would seem to suggest that Wes Anderson invented quirkiness. Past quirkiness, it seems to me the the films of Anderson operate from a world in which all those quirks arise from the source of stunted emotional growth. Nearly every central figure in Wes Anderson's films has been emotionally damaged and has troubles assimilating him or herself into society. Furthermore, the anachronism inherent in Anderson's works seems merely a function of his own predilection for inserting preciousness for the sake of amusement.

On both fronts, it would seem The Brothers Bloom does not fit. While each of the characters in the film may have issues, it does not feel at any point that their actions are driven by their social retardation. They are archetypes within the structure of the standard grifter flick. Sure, there have to be motives for the actions of characters, but it never feels like they are crippled by their pathos (aside from maybe Bloom at the end). As for the anachronism within, there is a tongue-in-cheek wink at many turns. What Rian Johnson so aptly achieves for a second time here is the marriage of an old-timey story with a contemporary setting. The anachronism here operates past the realm of decorative flair. Perhaps he is taking what Anderson does one step further, but there is an element of import that exists in the filmic sense that is largely lacking in Anderson's usage of anachronistic inserts.

All right, enough tangentially venting.

In short, I loved this film. I will fight you if you differ with my opinion. Or not.

Whatever.

Here's the trailer in HD, with admittedly shoddy music backing it.

Things that I've seen or heard recently and liked or disliked

"In Rainbows" - I'm not even remotely impartial, but the new Radiohead record is really fucking great. I can't say I was expecting what I got. It seems a little less resigned to minor keys, and they seem to have gotten back to guitar-driven music, which I think they're fucking great at. I've said nothing new to anyone, though, and there has been an over-abundance of Radiohead reviews/reactions, so I'll let this rest.

Gone Baby Gone - Unlike Marjorie Baumgarten at the always reliable Austin Chronicle, I was enthralled by Casey Affleck's turn as Patrick Kenzie. "Nebbishy quality and mumbly speaking voice" aside he really owns this role. More importantly, I was much more than pleased with Ben's direction and adapted screenplay. He establishes the city as a character exceptionally well and lets his actors chew on insanely engrossing monologues and diatribes. Ed Harris outside of the hospital blows a hole a mile wide right through your gut. It's much better than the other Lehane adaptation, Mystic River and, conspiring with his work on The Wire, makes me want to actually check out his work, which Mystic River most definitely did not accomplish.

The Darjeeling Limited - It was a welcome return to a world in which I could imagine myself living in, unlike my least favorite Wes Anderson film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. I loved that each of the brothers were more or less complete assholes and was shocked by the Schwartzmann finger-lick, which is very much akin to the moment in the classroom in Rushmore where Miss Cross gives her "not if you've ever fucked before" speech to Max. It's certainly not Anderson's best film, which I still believe is Rushmore, but it was certainly good.

"The Shepherd's Dog" - Fucking amazing. There is not a single misstep in Sam Beam's musical evolution as far as I'm concerned.

"Yellow Dog" - The new Greg Brown live record is pretty damn good. It's full of songs that he pulled straight from a notebook. He'd not performed them or recorded them previously. Aside from "Oily Boys" being perhaps a little heavy handed (and with a political song the heavy handedness tends to go over like a lead balloon with me), the songs are great. It's also for a good cause with much (if not all) of the proceeds going to help the Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Michael Clayton - While it certainly looked good, this film is simply a retread of every fucking ethical dilemma lawyer movie we've all seen 15 times before. The actors are all great, but I'm sure no one expects Clooney, Wilkinson, et al., to be anything other than that. Quite frankly, I'm not sure what anyone could have seen in this to make them think this was anything less than run-of-the-mill. Again the acting is great, but I kept waiting for the film to surprise me, and it didn't.

And there will be one more rave to come, not that anyone cares.