Beasts of the Southern Wild
a film directed by Benh Zeitlin
Moonrise Kingdom
a film directed by Wes Anderson
The phrase “adventure movie” was food, in childhood, for the most pleasurable kind of anticipation. The excitement wasn’t really ever about the particular exploits, historical or otherwise, that were ostensibly to be celebrated. It had more to do with the prospect of sweeping movements and eye-popping primary colors—of imposing and ever-changing spatial perspectives—of an immersive experience of rivers and canyons and forests, and the opportunity to wander inside half-buried cities or remote encampments. The promise was of dreamlike freedom of movement through a world at once concrete and mysterious—a world shaped for unsupervised play.
