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Declan Quinn/Sony Pictures Classics Neil Young drives around Omemee, Ont. (POSTMEDIA)

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Niko Tavernise / Focus Features Jared Gilman in Moonrise Kingdom. (CP)

Moonrise Kingdom

SAM (Jared Gilman) is a kid poured from the mould of Jason Schwartzman's rebellious hero in director Wes Anderson's Rushmore, precocious, free of self-doubt, and single-minded in his pursuit of what he wants.

What he wants is Suzy (Kara Hayward), the beautiful fellow 12-year-old he spies in a church choir production of Noah's Ark. (She plays a raven.) When he seeks her out in a backstage dressing room, their meeting has the momentous spark of Romeo getting a glimpse of Juliet, except this union is only embryonically sexual. After a secret, highly romantic exchange of letters (this is pre-texting 1965), Sam escapes from the scout camp where he has been plotting to put his wilderness skills to good use on this romantic escapade, much to the surprise of his kind-hearted scoutmaster Ward (Edward Norton).

Suzy, on the other hand, is giving up a cushy life in a lighthouse-like New England summer home. Her imagination nurtured on romantic girls adventure books (which she packs in a suitcase and shleps through the forest), Suzy isn't just running off with Sam, she's running away from her bickering lawyer parents (Frances McDormand and Bill Murray) who address each other as "counsellor" in bed. Suzy, forever looking through her binoculars, can see mom is surreptitiously enjoying a dalliance with Capt. Sharp (Bruce Willis), the cop who patrols their quiet little vacation community.

The hunt is on. Ward rallies his scout troupe with a pep talk: "This is not just a rescue party. This is a great scouting opportunity." Capt. Sharp competently organizes a search party. And Suzy's parents are obliged to take a sober look at the family dynamics that inspired their daughter to fly the tastefully appointed coop.

The clock is ticking too, with a helpful cartographer/narrator (Bob Balaban) offering warnings that a destructive storm is about to befall this lush forest paradise.

Well-performed, especially from the startlingly good juvenile actors, Moonrise Kingdom lifts its cool esthetic from children's literature, but more closely resembles the eccentric family drama of other Anderson films such as The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic.

In the foreground, the movie is a celebration of youthful passion and purpose, but lurking behind that, the adults in the cast offering a wistful, sad forecast of estrangement, doubt and compromise.

A storm is coming indeed.

The Blu-ray edition offers only a miniimum of extras including a set tour with Bill Murray. 'Ö'Ö'Ö'Ö

Neil Young Journeys

THIS third documentary collaboration between 66-year-old rocker Neil Young and director Jonathan Demme offers the simplest set-up.

Neil Young tours his childhood hometown, an event crosscut with a solo concert at Toronto's Massey Hall, evidently in support of his Le Noise album.

And no, fellow Winnipeggers, the childhood hometown is Omemee, Ont., and not Winnipeg.

If the previous Young/Demme movie Heart of Gold featured Young's recollection of obsessively playing the jukebox at Falcon Lake, this movie is comparatively Ontario-centric. The result is that the movie is not so much an examination of Young's formative years as a musician (that would have to involve Winnipeg) so much as it's about his formative years as a man.

Thus, we get Young driving around in a roomy '56 Ford talking about an idyllic childhood, raising chickens. With his older brother Bob, he checks out his old schoolyard and hometown haunts, including the grown-over green space that used to accommodate the Young family abode.

If you're looking for it, you can make the connection that Young's current persona as an environmental activist was at least partly driven by a childhood spent in the idyllic pastures of Ontario.

But Demme doesn't belabour that point. Young has always been at his most articulate on a stage, and this particular concert tour shows him in potent form as a solo act in a venue that is at once as burnished and well-worn as Young himself.

He plays old and new material with equal passion. In fact, his version of Ohio, a paean to the four college students shot by the National Guard during a protest rally at Kent State, is undiminished in its sheer anger.

The film also demonstrates Young's astounding penchant for innovation, a quality that has kept him a creative force when most of his living contemporaries fill auditoriums with their robotic performances of golden oldies.

Young himself remains a compelling presence, with a battered white jacket and a scarred straw hat, he looks like a perpetually scowling beachcomber with his pant legs rolled down.

Neil Young Journeys might not convince you that Young is a class act. But it certainly convinces that Young is in a class by himself.

Extras on the Blu-ray include a featurette on the making of the film and a couple of Q and A exchanges with Demme and Young at the SlamDance Film Festival and at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. 'Ö'Ö'Ö1/2 stars

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 18, 2012 E4