Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 2012

The Contenders:

Amour
Django Unchained (winner)
Flight
Moonrise Kingdom
Zero Dark Thirty

The Pirates of (New) Penzance

Film: Moonrise Kingdom
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on laptop.

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating here: it must be kind of great to be Wes Anderson. Moonrise Kingdom is a film with a cast list so deep that no less a luminary than Harvey Keitel doesn’t even appear on the cover of the DVD case. Anderson can evidently just call people up and ask them to appear in his films and they evidently show up to do it. Anderson is definitely an acquired taste, but it’s a taste I’ve managed to acquire without much trouble. I often need some time between Anderson films because of how astonishingly quirky they are. In this case, though, I enjoyed The Grand Budapest Hotel enough that I figured I was in the mood for more of him.

Like a lot of Wes Anderson movies, I’m not exactly sure where I should or even can start with discussing this film. At its heart, it’s the story of two kids, Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) and Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) who have fallen in love with each other. As could only happen in Anderson’s world, Sam and Suzy have something more substantial than just puppy love. They are united by their outcast status. Sam is a recent orphan and basically friendless. Suzy acts out frequently getting violent. The two meet the summer they are 11 and become pen pals, deciding to run away together the next summer when Sam returns to New Penzance Island for his annual summer as a Khaki Scout, the Wes Anderson version of the Boy Scouts.