This trailer for the new Wes Anderson movie "Moonrise Kingdom," due out on May 25, was released online a couple weeks ago. Upon seeing it, I immediately remembered how much I like Wes Anderson movies.
There are some directors who try to do something different with every movie, or at least, they try to progress and change every once in a while. You wouldn't know without someone telling you that "Schindler's List" and "E.T." were directed by the same person. Martin Scorsese's made a lot of films with similar themes, but "Hugo" will never be confused with "Goodfellas," not even if someone re-scored it with a Rolling Stones song.
With a lot of directors, their movies are different, but there's a theme that threads their films together. David Fincher's films are dark. Quentin Tarantino movies are violent. The characters in Coen brothers movies like to talk.
Wes Anderson movies, however -- aside from "The Fantastic Mr. Fox," which I still haven't seen, and I know I need to, so shut up -- all look kind of the same. And that's the beauty of them. Sometimes, variety is overrated. Wes Anderson knows what he's good at, and with "Moonrise Kingdom" he's going to do it again, and God bless him for that.
This movie appears to be about a couple of kids who escape from camp to be together, upon which a search party is assembled to rescue them. And, um, that's about it. But then again, what was "The Royal Tenenbaums" about anyway? The trailer has all the marks of a Wes Anderson movie: the dreamy, evocative music (it's Francois Hardy's "Le Temps de L'Amour"), the deadpan looks, the old-timey font, the Jason Schwartzman and the Bill Murray. The Bill Murray shirtless, at that. I suppose that's something different.
So here's a director who knows his style, and isn't going to change, and I love him for that. Personally, I can't wait to see "Moonrise Kingdom." Bring on the quirk.
