"Did he just throw my cat out the window?"

Rating: 8/10 (29 December 2014)

I don't know if you'd call Wes Anderson an acquired taste or not; I didn't like 'The Life Aquatic' very much and felt the subject matter for "Moonrise Kingdom" is part of the reason the culture is hitting bottom of the barrel levels these days. Yet this film held a strange fascination for me that's tough to put a finger on. I enjoy movies with rapid fire dialog, and crusty language doesn't bother me, so those features of the picture delivered quite well. There was also the stylized CGI used in the scenes of the hotel itself and that very odd funicular railway construct that seemed just the right sort of bizarre for my taste. I managed to recognize virtually all the cameo players except for Tilda Swinton and Harvey Keitel, the rest were on either side of hilarious. Willem Dafoe's Jopling character was particularly over the top and made for an intriguing assassin. The story itself was rather interesting, a sort of offbeat heist and murder mystery, but with elements that defy classification. I guess with Anderson's films you have to take them one by one. This one I could take a couple more times.