Where The Independent Filmmakers Are

I love Spike Jonze.
I love Spike Jonze more than my love for Richard Kelly, not Kevin Smith love, but by god it's a close battle.
Spike Jonze hasn't just done two masterpieces of cinema in Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, but he's made some amazing short films, exceptional music videos and helped create Jackass. He's got an amazing sense of humour, genius visual style and amazing mix of indie hipster and mainstream.
In Malkovich he gave us the most freaky, funny, bleak tale, in Adaptation we got two Nic Cages (When he was really good) being shot at by Meryl Streep and now, like Wes Anderson, he's chosen to make a kids film.
Or so it seems.
What we get from Jonze and Away We Go writer Dave Eggers is an adaptation of a book from the 60's or 70's that's about a child's reluctance to accept responsibility, instead the violent, bi-polar kid escapes into a fantasy world occupied by parts of his psyche and he learns how hard a job his mother has.

Max Records as the lead is a capable actor, for such a young kid he makes us care enough and wonder what's wrong with him, The Wild things are voiced impeccably with people like Catherine O'Hara (jealous), James Gandolfini (anger), Paul Dano (immaturity), Chris Cooper (compassion) and Forest Whitaker as, well, I dunno.
On top of that Catherine Keener is impeccable as the mother, subtle, simple, sweet.

The film never tries too hard, we have an intro about aggression and depression, some very kid like moments, then a mass escape, then the Wild Things segment which is the majority of the movie, where fascination and childlike wonder meets the mental challenges of the child, and soon it becomes a life lesson.

Between wildly inventive and bleakly compressed, WTWTA manages to be a big budget film that doesn't care about magic and hope, and replaces things like that with the simple artistic devices you'd find in a student production, once again Jonze switches the expected with the opposite, and doesn't even make you expect it. He's a smart one, Mr. Jonze.

Whilst being an odd film, tonally, visually, structurally, it's still an amazing film, a real gem. Script-wise it's impeccable, acting is strong, and if you've yet to catch it, go now, I promise you'll be disappointed if you expect anything big.
9/10