Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

This movie is awesome. It is well acted and well written, but the most important part of this film to me is the direction - the tone, the artistic vision, the pacing, the sets, the uniformly goofy performances drawn from the actors - old and young.  Wes Anderson wrote this with Roman Coppola, and he directed. He used some of his favorites:  Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, but added Bruce Willis, Frances McDormand, Ed Norton, Tilda Swinton and more.  Look at the high number of Oscar winners / nominees in that group. It's an honor to work with this guy, and I bet it's a lot of fun too.

Newcomers Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward play 12 year old kids with more than their share of pre-teen angst, family problems and raging hormones.  The year is 1965 and they run away together; she runs from home and he runs from his Khaki Scout camp.  They are found missing, chased, captured, and run again. This is sad, but it isn't a tragedy.  It is sweet and funny and sad and it rings true in a lot of ways, even though it was shot Wes Anderson style.  To me that means it has an odd mix of live action camera shots mixed with still shots of sets that seem so false / fake that they almost have a cartoonish quality.  It works for me, and I find that the almost unreal quality of his sets and art direction draws more attention to the dialog and the acting.  I laughed out loud a couple of times in this movie, but I was shocked a couple of times as well.  I don't know quite what to expect in a Wes Anderson film, which adds to the pleasure for me.

I highly recommend this.