Wes Anderson's love letter to love letters. How you feel about Moonrise Kingdom will depend entirely on your tolerance for Wes Anderson's particular mode of tweeness. Period details and upper-class ennui abound in this tale of two 12-year-olds falling in love against the background of a hurricane on beautiful New Penzance Island. The performances from Bruce Willis, Frances McDormand, and Bill Murray are the most interesting part of the movie, but go woefully underexplored in favor of tween couple Suzy and Sam. Anderson continues to fetishize objects in a way that feels uncomfortably close to commercials or a catalog advertising goods to help customers attain a perfectly curated mid-century fantasy luxury lifestyle. It's beautiful, but very shallow.
Editor's note: Every once in a while, we here at the Hollywood Prospectus blog take a break from our back issues of Cahiers du Cinéma and Teen People to check in with the world of sport, and it has recently come to our attention that football season is indeed upon us. Now, if there's one thing better than watching actual football, it's watching actors pretend to play football in movies, complete with all the improbable passes, heartwarming speeches, and goofy hijinks usually missing from the real thing. Without further ado: The Grantland staff's favorite football moments in film.
[This week, we pour one out for the late, great Ray Bradbury (and geek out over the impending release of Prometheus) with our favorite sci-fi clips. Note: If you don't see the videos, please try another browser. We put them in, we promise.]
Moon
Dan Silver: Frack off, Battlestar Galactica. I love you, but there’s been no piece of sci-fi created in the last decade (maybe two) that has been able to sniff the space jock of Duncan Jones’s brilliant Moon. Its dexterity in construction is rivaled only by Sam Rockwell’s (most heartbreaking Oscar snub of 2009) performance. I’ve sat through this movie at least five times, and am constantly amazed by Jones’s seamless blend of computer-generated landscapes and CGI with practical effects, and consistently haunted by Clint Mansell’s score. If you haven’t seen this movie, do yourself a favor and Netflix it now.
