Wes Anderson's Best

Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums are two of my favourite movies, but I feel like "favourite" is an understatement. These are movies I fell deeply in love with. As a teenager, I saw Rushmore and could relate a lot to Max Fischer. I proceeded to watch it repeatedly thanks to Comedy Central's frequent airing of the movie. Before I saw The Royal Tenenbaums in theaters, I did not realize it was Wes Anderson who directed both movies (as well as Bottle Rocket). The visuals, the acting, the story, and unexpected hilarity won my heart.

Faithfully, I saw The Life Aquatic, but felt disappointed by it. (The only part I loved was the Portuguese musician.)  I still had hopes for The Darjeeling Limited, and loathed it. While beautiful, it made me realize all Wes Anderson movies were about boys with daddy issues. Even after those two movies, when I heard about Fantastic Mr. Fox, I was beyond excited. Theoretically, Wes Anderson plus animation should equal out to awesome. Unlike Royal Tenebaums, this movie did not steal my heart. Though, the true beauty of this movie is it being a Wes Anderson film for children. It's everything typical from his films (yellow filter, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, amazing soundtrack, daddy issues plot), but for a child. The movie felt fresh and was a big step up from his previous two films.

Wes Anderson's six films were all just build up to his seventh, Moonrise Kingdom. This is his funniest, most absurd, and most beautiful film yet. I saw it opening night at E Street Cinema in DC. It was showing on three screens and every show was sold out. There was even someone trying to scalp tickets outside the theater. While waiting for the movie to start. I overhead audience members talk about their favourite Wes Anderson films. One hipster proclaimed, "The Darjeeling Limited was my favourite because no one else liked that one." Another much more reasonable human being said The Royal Tenebaums was her favourite. It was difficult for me to choose between Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, but I now choose Moonrise Kingdom.

Yes, it was that good. I'm going to refrain from giving too much away, but I will say a few things. All of the actors are fantastic. The children are hilarious, and I absolutely love Bruce Willis' and Edward Norton's characters. There were a couple of details in this movie that caught my eye every time. One was a kitten. Every time the kitten was in the shot, it did exactly what it should have been doing. How they got this kitten to do this, I'm not entirely sure. I also loved all the patches on the scouts uniform, especially the poorly stitched brown raccoons on their front pockets. Little things like this just go to show how much attention to detail Wes Anderson has.

In conclusion, go see Moonrise Kingdom.