WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

Written by Spike Jonze and David Eggers
Directed by Spike Jonze
Starring Max Records, Catherine Keener and Mark Ruffalo
Voices by James Gandolfini, Catherine O’Hara, Forest Whitaker, Chris Cooper and Lauren Ambrose


Judith: Happiness isn’t always the best way to become happy.

It’s been a fair amount of time since I was a young boy. Fortunately for me, it has not been so long that I have grown past the age where I can get completely lost in the wonderful world of Spike Jonze’s WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE. Jonze must have had to fight his own wild beasts during his lengthy and tumultuous journey to bring the 1963 Maurice Sendak classic picturebook to such exquisite life. Originally due to be released in the spring of 2008, Jonze had to fight the studio to make the film he wanted and believed in when it was being criticized for being too dark a work to be considered a family film. A year and a half later, Jonze has made a film that both parties are happy with and, while it still may be too dark to play to the littler ones, WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE is a modern family classic in every possible sense.


In the original Sendak tale, Max (played here by the precocious boy with the power name, Max Records) is sent to bed without supper for being bad. From there, he escapes to another world complete with a monster community that he incorporates himself into quite nicely. When his adventures are over, he returns home to find a plate of food waiting for him by his bed. At under 500 words, it’s pretty sparse but Jonze, alongside AWAY WE GO co-writer and novelist, David Eggers, has transformed WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE into a contemporary exploration of how a child might deal with the changing face of his family and finding a way to fit in it. Max’s Mom (Catherine Keener) still sends him to bed without supper for acting up but his wild outburst now has context and his adventure offers a healing that stretches past the troubled boy to touch the inner child of anyone watching.


The wild things themselves are mostly giant, furry monsters and precisely where Max stumbles upon them is never pinpointed but, once he gets there, he declares himself king and rightfully so. After all, this place is essentially inside his head and even with the wild things running, well, wild in there, he is still aware enough to know that he is in charge of all these extensions of his own personality. Max’s family issues are mirrored in Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini), a monster with his own difficulties keeping his rage in check. Whether the monsters and Max are trying to build a perfect living space or whether they are just pouncing on top of each other in one big giant pile, they are doing things together and the conversations that take place in between are simple musings, not unlike those that Max might have with himself in his mind. Never do Max’s two worlds resolve each other perfectly but nor could one live without the other.


WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE is simply unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The screenplay is elegant and uncomplicated; its ferocious beauty is matched only by the magnificence of its aesthetic. With the help of two-time collaborator and handheld guru, Lance Acord, Jonze creates a world that is at times tender and warm while at others, frightening and fragile. Who would ever expect a family film to be so visceral, let alone so disarming? Learning to accept your family, or even life, as it is can be difficult at any age but leaning into it brings security and tames the wildness of the mind. Perhaps we all could stand to learn a lesson from Max and get a little wild when needed instead of always quieting what needs to get out. While WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE may be lost on the truly young, it will not be lost on the young at heart.

IN THE LOOP

Written by Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Arnando Iannucci and Tony Roche
Directed by Arnando Iannucci
Staring Tom Hollander, Chris Addison, Anna Chlumsky and James Gandolfini


Michael Rodgers: No, you needn’t worry about the Canadians; they’re always happy to be there. They’re always surprised to be invited.

Pretty much everyone knows what it means to be in the loop and naturally, pretty much everyone wants to be there as often as possible. When it comes to the political players of British comedian, Arnando Iannucci’s first feature film, IN THE LOOP, people are falling in and out of the loop several times an hour. To watch them all scramble makes for two hours of absolutely hilarious political satire that not only exposes the buffoonery of both the American and British governments but also exposes the harsh realities that come to existence because no one seems to know what they’re doing.


That isn’t quite fair. Everyone in IN THE LOOP seems to know what they’re doing, well mostly. They’re just doing everything for their own gain without any regard for the people who elected them to be there. This isn’t exactly a revelation but the language in which Iannucci lets us in his own personal loop is certainly pretty close to revelatory. Never before have I heard such inspired, outrageous dialogue. For instance, I have never heard anyone referred to as a lubricated horse cock before. If you can handle the dirt, then IN THE LOOP will pull so many laughs from your gut that you will feel as though you have been doing crunches the entire time you’ve been watching it.


IN THE LOOP tells its own version of how the United States and Britain convinced (or conned, depending on how you want to see it) the United Nations that they could go to war in Iraq despite their objections. Granted, they are still there and people are dying so perhaps we shouldn’t be laughing this hard but that’s the great thing about satire when it is done right. It is not only sharp, brilliant and hysterical but it is also a scathing condemnation on war profiteering and personal gain at any expense. Iannucci has plenty of experience with the topic, having produced the British show, “The Thick of It”, which IN THE LOOP is based on, and he uses his expertise to cut through the superfluous so that he can kick hard where it truly hurts.


It pays to be those in the know. When the potential of the Iraq war was being talked up all over the news and Washington, those of us sitting at home were frustrated because we were simply not in that particular loop. We were being fed certain stories that were being used as justifications and even though none of it seemed to be based in any fact, we had to accept it for what it was because there was no way for us disprove any of it. IN THE LOOP finally gets us in there, even though it is making it all up as it goes along. That’s the funniest part though; they were making it all up back then too.