Friday, June 08, 2012

Movie Review - Moonrise kingdom, is a strangely wonderful tale, extraordinarily well told


In 2009 I was blown away by the surreal, stop-motion treatment of the Fantastic Mr Fox (despite the predations of the real thing on my sad little flock) delivered by Wes Anderson. Three years on and Mrs Stuffy (who'd caught a trailer for this movie, Moonrise Kingdom) was keen to see it

As regular readers will know Mrs Stuffy's word is law so hey-ho to the multiplex. I'd seen no reviews and apart from passing familiarity with the aforementioned foxy-tale had no preconceptions. I was immediately struck by the similarity of technique the director employed in the opening sequences but this time with actors rather than animated farmyard folk. The opening scenes, the seamless editing and the intelligent use of music introduced us to the family at the heart of this tale and set a number of clues for what was to come, it's a gentle tale, a fine collection of slightly damaged, eccentric, dysfunctional folk, played by a really strong cast and directed by a writer/director with a very individual way of seeing, and portraying, his world.

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It's very hard to describe the story, the beauty of this film is in the very oddness, the quaintness, the gentle (mostly) handling of personalities, relationships and the way characters react to each other and the bizarre situations which curiously seems both very odd but absolutely right at the same time. The young leads, Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward are delightful, the adult characters without exception consistently and coherently weird and the location in Newport, Rhode Island, looks idyllic.


If you'd enjoy an evening of great unusualityness I'd strongly recommend this film, I'm tempted to watch it a second time as I know I missed lots of subtle goodness going on.


Mrs Stuffy, was alert, pillow-less, mostly coherent and mildly amused throughout... which was nice.


An eccentric haiku


Old hands and young love
deliver likeable Lord
of the (butter)Flies*





*did you see what I did there ? No, go see the film then ...

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posted by Stuffy @ 1:39 pm 0 comments

Monday, June 04, 2012

Movie Review - Men in Black, back, again...


We've caught a couple of excellent movies recently and I was thinking of combining the reviews,thereby letting me kill 2 birds with one stone, (which seems unduly harsh on the birds and if you've ever tried to kill a bird with a stone you'll know how silly that idiom is).




So, let's abandon the combo-review approach and give each movie the attention it deserves. Kicking off with Men in Black 3. Well, the first MIB film was a delightful concept, novel, stylish, well structured, thoughtful, excellently executed and very amusing, the second film, heck this is really easy, it's another of those, if you like MIB1 and MIB2 you'll almost certainly enjoy MIB3, if you didn't like 1 and 2 why the heck would you go to this one?






There's a lot less of the delicious dryness of Tommy Lee Jones and more of his excellently portrayed younger self (a great impression by Josh Brolin). There is, as ever, a fine performance from Will Smith, some fine gags and we finally find out why the Tommy Lee character is so grumpy, which is sad, but not too sad.
It's a film that rewards the viewer for being around 50 with lots of sixties in-jokes and gags, if you're not sure who Andy Warhol is you'll still enjoy this film but you'll miss a few choice lines.


Mrs Stuffy (for those of her fans who demand guidance) stayed alert, awake and she chuckled attractively on a number of occasions.


A mysterious haiku


Sci-fi fun in black
Tommy, Will and Josh go back
Untimely! alack

posted by Stuffy @ 1:36 pm 1 comments