Moonrise Kingdom

The opening night film at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and the summer’s surprise box-office hit, Moonrise Kingdom is the highly acclaimed new film from director Wes Anderson (Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Royal Tenenbaums). Featuring a strong ensemble cast including Anderson regulars Bill Murray (Fantastic Mr. Fox, Get Low) and Jason Schwartzman (HBO’s Bored to Death, Fantastic Mr. Fox), Academy Award® winners Frances McDormand (Burn After Reading, North Country) and Tilda Swinton (We Need to Talk About Kevin, I Am Love), as well as Harvey Keitel (A Beginner’s Guide to Endings, National Treasure), Bruce Willis (Red, The Expendables) and Edward Norton (The Incredible Hulk, The Italian Job), Moonrise Kingdom is an amusing, affecting and dazzlingly inventive fable of young love.

The year is 1965, and on the fictional New England island of New Penzance a star-crossed romance is about to shake thecommunity to its very foundations (literally). After a year of ardent correspondence, lovestruck twelve-year-old misfits Sam and Suzy (newcomers Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward) run away together into the wilderness and attempt to live off the land, in a ridiculous yet touching pre-teen fantasy of grown-up love. Their escape triggers a frantically amusing island-wide search by Suzy’s uncomprehending parents (Murray and McDormand), the local chief of police (Willis), and Sam’s fellow Khaki Scouts and their earnest troop leader (Norton). Meanwhile, a violent storm is making its way towards New Penzance, and the melodious strains of Benjamin Britten’s Noye’s Fludde foretell a deluge of near Biblical proportions.

Awash in Anderson’s intricate and idiosyncratic visuals (which at one point pay homage to Canadian painter Alex Colville) and distinctively quirky humour, and carried along with his typically carefully curated soundtrack (which mixes Alexandre Desplat’s sprightly original score with Britten, Hank Williams and Françoise Hardy), Moonrise Kingdom is a beautifully nostalgic love letter to a time that largely never existed. Melancholy, joyful and hilarious by equal measure, it’s a guaranteed treat for Anderson fans and a delightful discovery for the uninitiated.

CRITICAL NOTES

"Moonrise Kingdom breezes along with a beautifully coordinated admixture of droll
humor, deadpan and slapstick." —Manohla Dargis , The New York Times

Director: Wes Anderson
Cast: Jared Gilman, Kara Hayward and Bruce Willis
Year: 2012
Runtime: 94 minutes
Country: USA
Language: English
Distributor: Entertainment One


Ratings: ON NR / BC NR / AB NR / SK NR / MB NR / QC NR / Maritmes NR

SCREENING DATES 

Date	Circuit Centre	Location

This film has no active screening dates.