Second Best – My favorite Sophomore films: Part 2

If you missed part one, you can take a look at it here. Otherwise, let’s dive back into the list.

“Moonrise Kingdom” Review

Wes Anderson movies have a great knack for sneaking up on you. On the surface, they are very controlled, almost hermetic, but inside they’re full of dark, messy, human issues. I like how he commands his pictures, but it’s the emotional undercurrent that makes them more than pieces of stylistic razzle dazzle. From the perpetually unsatisfied Dignan of Bottle Rocket to the tragically stunted Tenenbaum clan to Mr. Fox and his fear of aging, there is sadness to Anderson’s intricate design. His characters appear to be ostentatious caricatures, but his movies are all about showing how they’re not. Moonrise Kingdom is no different and ranks as one of the writer/director’s best.

Re-Animated: If Dreams Came True

[Editor's note: Re-Animated is a new column devoted to remakes, some movies we'd like to see and some we wish Hollywood would leave to rest in peace.]

In the world today it seems that very few people are coming up with new ideas for movies. Which is fine, there is an end point to all creative endeavors. So what do we do? We pick ourselves up, dust off some of our old favorites, and remake them with our newfangled CGI and color film and lady directors. Woohoo! Wait, wait, something horrible just happened. We chose all the wrong movies to remake. Like a bad techno cover of a beloved 80’s dance album, these terrible remakes keep on coming and fewer people even bother seeing the original. Now we’re even remaking startlingly recent films so that we don’t have to know how to read to see a movie (e.g. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Let The Right One In) But what about movies that need to be remade? There is a wonderful, beautiful, and much undernoted wealth of movies that could use a little modern charm. Let us start with an example.