Fantastic Mr. Fox

Six months ago, I began a stretch where I watched what was basically the entire Wes Anderson filmography. The lone exception - aside from The Life Aquatic, which I'd already seen - was Fantastic Mr. Fox. There were a variety of reasons I didn't include it during my Wes Anderson kick. For one thing, I'd kind of already seen it before, in the way that falling asleep ten minutes into a movie counts as kind of seeing it. But mostly I just figured an animated movie was an outlier of sorts, and one that couldn't quite exude much of a tone or personal feel to it. I mean, quick, name the director of any popular animated movie ever made. Maybe that's an easy task for some of you, but I'm totally drawing blanks here.

How wrong I was, though. This was such a Wes Anderson movie, from its zippy energy to its eclectic soundtrack. And it was a pretty entertaining movie, too. It isn't easy to fit a ton of recurring motifs and throw-away joke callbacks into a ninety-minute film based on a children's book. George Clooney absolutely nails the title role. I don't care if it's just his voice; it was a wonderful Clooney performance. And for the second Wes Anderson film in a row, I've got to give tons of credit to Jason Schwartzman for his work as well.

I found my interest waning just a tiny bit in the movie's third act, but all in all this was another great movie from Wes Anderson. And now there are no more for me to see. Until the next one, I guess. Here's looking forward to The Grand Budapest Hotel. God, what a Wes Anderson title for a movie to have.