Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson, 2012)

Say it softly, but the king of wilful quirkiness may finally be developing a point to his admittedly still occasionally irritating style. Points remain in anything he does where you cry out for a stick of celery instead of yet another gateau, but this may be his best film to date alongside The Grand Budapest Hotel, for the simple reason that you care about the characters, and that lowers your guard down so you can then enjoy the silliness too.
In a nutshell, it's about a 12-year-old boy and girl who are square pegs in their little New England island community and run away together, resulting in a manhunt after them. Yes, they talk with a tongue-in-cheek degree of self-possession for their age, yes, all the characters have some off-the-wall idiosyncrasy, but so few filmmakers want to just transport their viewers because they actually like people (Burton and Jeunet are two others who spring to mind) that you have to forgive the man his foibles and be charmed.

7/10