Moonrise Kingdom.

Set on New Penzance, a coastal island off New England, in 1965 Wes Anderson’s latest movie is a story of two twelve year olds pen pals who fall in love with each other, but out of love with their self contained world and who can blame them? Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) complete with Davy Crocket hat and thick horned rim specs is a very unhappy Boy Scout, hated by the rest of the Khaki Scout Troop for no apparent reason and not wanted by his foster parents. He leaves a resignation note with Scout Master Ward (Edward Norton) and sets off to meet the love of his life, Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) with the implicit intention of running away together. Suzy’s dysfunctional family consists of her three obnoxious wee brothers and her unhappily married parents Mr and Mrs Bishop (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand) who indecently are both lawyers. When its realised the youngster’s are missing a search party, consisting of the Scout Master, his troop of scouts and the islands police force Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis), (que Hank Williams; your need to see the film) sets out to discover their whereabouts and social services (Tilda Swinton) is informed.  In the mean time our missing young lovers are setting up camp in a tidal outlet which they rename Moonrise Kingdom (2012). During the hubbub a dog is killed with a bow and arrow, a scout is stabbed in the kidney with a pair of scissors and Suzy gets her ears pierced with fishhooks!

Suzy and Sam

Wes Anderson’s stage is always a completely autonomous world of his own making, as a certain BBC comedy programme used to say ‘now for something completely different’. The grown ups in Andersons movie completely complement the superb feature film debuts from Gilman and Hayward. The director, and co-writer with Roman Coppola, treats trivial things with the utmost seriousness and serious things as if they were completely trivial[1] the humour is deadpan and off the wall but extremely funny. What a perfectly delightful evenings entertainment this film turned out to be. It was  a real shame there was not more people at the Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre to enjoy it.

Social Services.

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[1] Paraphrased from a critique by Sam Davies. 

Fargo.

The wide open spaces of a Coen movie.

Wednesday night at the RBC Film Theatre was another in the Directors Focus series, this time following, True Grit on Monday, the Coen Brother were the subject of Darren Conner’s discussion. The evening started with a showing of the 1996 award winning Fargo.

The Coen character study.

Fargo is a dark comedy crime drama set in a very snowy North Dakota where Jerry Lundergaard a car salesman, who’s desperately in debt, arranges for two ex-cons to abduct his wife. The ransom is to be paid by Jerry’s rich, bullying father-in-law and split between Jerry and the two villains. But the “no rough stuff” deal does not work out as planned. This is due to two things the clumsy ineffectual crooks and the intervention of the seven-month pregnant local police chief Marge Gunderson.

Produced, directed and written by the brother’s Coen it stars the absolutely brilliant Frances McDormand as the very sharp local police officer, William H Macy as the anxious car dealer, the “funny lookin little fellow” Carl Showaller is played by Steve Buscemi and the psychopathic Gaear Grimsrud, a killer with a craving for pancakes, is portrayed by Peter Stormare. The film earned seven Academy Award nominations, winning Best Original Screenplay for the Coen's and a very disserving Best Actress in a Leading Role for McDormand.

Coen humour.

Following the film Darren gave a very good talk with reference to what makes a Coen movie, something I have already rambled in my comments on True Grit (see link below) but suffice to say the Coen’s are unique, with an attention to detail, humour, strong characters and their tremendous writing ability. I think all of us who attended on Wednesday would agree that the whole evening was very enjoyable and I’m sure we would all like to thank Darren, who’s next for a focus then?

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