Moonrise Kingdom Moonrise Kingdom is a film by Wes Anderson that released on May 25, 2012. Prior to watching it I had only seen two other Wes Anderson movies (The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and Fantastic Mr. Fox both of which I liked) so I knew what I was getting into. I had no real expectations for this movie and all I knew about it was what the Netflix description told me. Once the movie started it was immediately recognizable as a Wes Anderson movie. His particular style is one of the most recognizable in the entire industry. The movie is about two kids around the age of 11 or 12 who run away from their issues at home together. This causes the guardians of the children to search for them and the story goes on from there. This makes the movie sound very serious and dramatic but in reality it is rather goofy and lighthearted. Moonrise kingdom has a few big names on the cast with actors like Bill Murray, Bruce Willis, and Edward Norton. The movie has a lot of heart and was very fun to watch. It is easily my favorite Wes Anderson movie out of the three I have seen. I really enjoyed the child actors in this movie which is rare for me because I'm usually bothered by child actors. My biggest takeaway from this movie was the directorial style. The movie on its own wouldn't be nearly as good without the cinematography. The acting is good and the overall story is simple but interesting but if the movie didn't have the cinematography and style that it does then the movie would have been boring and completely forgettable. It's the perfect example of how important it is to create your own style in a movie and how interesting and good camera angles can make a movie infinitely better.
Pacific Rim Pacific Rim might be the greatest dumb movie ever made. I know that sounds weird but let me explain myself. Pacific Rim is a movie about giant monsters coming out of the ocean to fight big robots. It's pretty simple and dumb when it comes to a plot. The whole story is just an excuse to have crazy visual effects showing giant robots and monsters fight. The Acting isn't great especially the lead actor who is struggling to do an American accent throughout the entire film. This on top of the flimsy plot should effectively ruin the movie but for me does the exact opposite. The dumb plot is fun to listen to and the bad acting is just funny. But the true strength of the movie are the fights between the robots and monsters. The fights are ridiculously fun to watch. The visual effects look great and the way the robots move makes it seem almost realistic in some weird way. The fights are just fun to watch with the robots interacting with their environment as they fight. For example during one of the fights a robot picks up a cargo ship and uses it as a baseball bat to beat up one of the monsters. That alone should give you a feel for how the entire movie plays out. The world building for the movie is surisingly good. The movie creates an interesting society that exists in this world which is explored with a couple scenes that show the black market which sells body parts from the giant monsters illegally. Guerillmo Del Toro directed the film and that can be scene through the design of all the robots and monsters and just the overall style is reminiscent of his other films like hellboy. In my opinon this movie is one of the greatest of all time not because its inspiring or meaningful but because it is just genuinely fun to watch and at the end of the day isn't that what's most important.