Moonrise Kingdom

Film Review by Keir Roper-Caldbeck | 03 Oct 2012
Film title: Moonrise Kingdom
Director: Wes Anderson
Starring: Jared Gilman, Kara Hayward, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton
Release date: 1 Oct
Certificate: 12

Like Wes Anderson's previous films, Moonrise Kingdom is located in a place that is at one remove from reality, where he can create a jewel-like world with a manic attention to detail. Here, that place is a small New England island in 1965 where the local community becomes embroiled in a manhunt for two 12 year olds who have run away to escape their difficult home lives.

The film continues Anderson's mix of blank comedy, artifice, archness and high drama that so beguiles some viewers, and so infuriates others, but there is an undeniable emotional resonance to Sam's and Suzy's yearning for adventure and romance, while Bruce Willis's soulful performance as a melancholy sheriff provides the story with a moral centre. And the film is studded with sequences - even single shots - whose intricacy and clockwork perfection make you gasp with pleasure. This is a DVD which will bear - and demand - repeated viewings.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1748122/