Moonrise Kingdom: What kind of bird are YOU?

Rating: 8/10 (10 April 2014)

If you have yet to see Moonrise Kingdom by Wes Anderson, you definitely should.
A (basic) summary of the plot:
Boy meets girl. They fall in love. Pack up their possessions. Empty their savings. And Run away together.
(Oh, and did I mention they're 12 years old?)
'That's ridiculous!' you might say. Not if it happens in a Wes Anderson movie.
Despite the absurd storyline, the movie somehow just works. And for those 94 minutes we are sucked into the naive world of Sam and Suzy, feeling like the rest of the world just doesn't get 'it'.
The cast was definitely one of the things that made it work. The 2 young characters (with Suzy pretty much a splitting image of Lana del Ray) carried their own alongside quite an ensemble of actors including Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray and Tilda Swinton.
It's hard to find fault with this film but if I had to I'd say not everyone will enjoy the sporadic method of storytelling and the sometimes surreal quality of the movie. If you like your movies to flow from A to B and grounded in reality without an ounce of humour then perhaps this isn't for you.
It was quite clear the amount of meticulous planning and thought that went into just one scene, with so much happening in the background and foreground that each on its own resembled a vivid painting or photograph. So it's quite amazing that Wes Anderson managed to tell an entire story almost through a series of well-framed photographs.
For me though, it was these gaps and silences and the dream-induced quality that were some the best features of the film. That and the cameo by one of Santa's elves shooting homemade nature documentaries.
IMDb: 8/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 94%