moonrise kingdom

The houses in Moonrise Kingdom look like advent calendars, tiny compartments filled with toys. There are bird costumes and a raccoon cap and an ancient phonograph that runs on batteries. You can see every room, because the camera never stops moving, as though the director, Wes Anderson, were afraid he might miss something. You begin to suspect that Anderson thinks of the whole world as a cabinet of wonders. The story has to do with a boy and girl who run away into the woods, where they camp out in the world's smallest tent. Everything that happens is completely implausible, so I believed it utterly. When I left the movie theater, I passed a vendor selling ginger juice and a woman from an animal shelter who was surrounded by tiny cats. I thought: Wes Anderson has found a way to production-design New York. When you see the movie, you may want to watch it on freeze-frame, so you can ask the same question you ask about a cabinet of wonders: How did they do that?