Wes Anderson, in full Wesley Wales Anderson, (born May 1, 1969, Houston, Texas, U.S.), American director and screenwriter known for the distinctive visual aesthetic of his quirky comedies and for his collaboration with screenwriter and actor Owen Wilson.

Wesley Wales Anderson was born in Houston, Texas. Anderson attended the University of Texas in Austin, where he majored in philosophy. It was there that he met Owen Wilson. They became friends and began making short films, some of which aired on a local cable-access station. One of their shorts was Bottle Rocket(1994), which starred Owen and his brother Luke Wilson. The short was screened at the Sundance Film Festival, where it was successfully received, so much so that they received funding to make a feature-length version.

Anderson discusses his inspirations and the final scene of the film.

An analysis of Moonrise Kingdom that includes quotations from interviews with Wes Anderson regarding the production and outcome of the movie.

This webpage includes a list of reviews from major newspapers and magazines.

Wes Anderson's mind must be an exciting place for a story idea to be born. It immediately becomes more than a series of events and is transformed into a world with its own rules, in which everything is driven by emotions and desires as convincing as they are magical. "Moonrise Kingdom" creates such a world and takes place on an island that might as well be ruled by Prospero. It's set in 1965, though it might as well be set at any time.

The word auteur is entirely overused and misunderstood in the field of film criticism, but in its true form, the label certainly applies to director Wes Anderson. There are unique, instantly identifiable tonal and thematic connections across his body of work that could come from no one else, and he has maintained a high level of quality throughout his career.

Escapism functions as mode, subject, and plot of Wes Anderson’s nostalgic fable, Moonrise Kingdom (2012) as the film’s two child protagonists flee to a secret miniature world that offers a refuge from the unhappy circumstances associated with adulthood. Its emphasis on escape, the lack of serious harm in dangerous situations, and the artifice of miniature spaces create a dissonance between the comedy of escape and the underlying sadness of the film’s characters. Like other Anderson films, Moonrise Kingdom exhibits a conflicted attitude toward the classical “comedy of love.” Although the seemingly happy ending marks a return to civilized order and community, the film favors nontraditional arrangements of family, utilizing comedy to emphasize awful parenting and generational conflict.

The debate of film 'authorship' began in post-war France, as Pam Cook explains in The Cinema Book; after Nazi occupation ended, “French intellectuals and filmmakers were able to see previously unavailable Hollywood films at the cinematheque in Paris”. (Cook, 2007: 390) This extended exposure to the 'best of Hollywood' allowed film magazine critics to rethink how film should be appreciated. Of all the concepts created, one in particular had a resonating impact on film analysis and critical debate.

The following clip from the commentary features a question from Chris Mertan of Huntington Beach, California, and is read by Jake Ryan (who plays Lionel in the movie); Roman Coppola, who cowrote the film, also gets in on the answer.

Moonrise Kingdom amounted to Wes Anderson at his best. It was a relate-able story of first love, injected with Anderson’s playful wit, his sense of the absurd, and his singular visual style. The result was a $66 million worldwide gross and one of the year’s big specialty film hits.