MaestroReviews

Deb and I are artists, painters actually. We go see films as often as once a week. That's right, we go to the theater and sit in a dark room with strangers to see movies. We rarely rent. We like "little" movies, foreign and documentary films. We try to stay away from mainstream and blockbusters whenever possible, but a couple sneak in each year. We seek out the obscure. We try to avoid violent movies, and that really limits our choices, most film makers seem to think violence makes a story interesting.
I try not to give anything away in the reviews, but offer an honest reaction.
We rate them 1~10, 10 being highest.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Moonrise Kingdom



Deb 10                Me 8

Funny movie. It was top of list to go see because it features Bill Murray. It’s not a Bill Murray movie, but he’s in it and he’s excitingly listless as usual. There are other actors too. Frances McDormand seems to gravitate towards off center projects and Harvey Kietel is here in a family friendly role. Bruce Willis is another big star here who usually plays either a warrior or a wuss and here he ably plays a simple nice guy. I had no idea about this movie, didn’t see trailers or read anything about it so I was surprised to see it’s a movie filled with kids. Two main players are young folks, early teens I’d guess and they’re fine.
The movie is quirky. It tries to be quirky and succeeds despite trying too hard at times. There are some nice background oddities, ala Harold and Maude, but the main thing seems to be emotional detachment, dry and somber most of the time with a few punctuation marks thrown in for contrast. There’s an odd little man from Seinfeld who adds nice touches here and there.
It’s a comedy with a few holes in the storyline that need to be overlooked and some formulaic tedium that film-makers seem compelled to include; but I liked it.