The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, by Wes Anderson

First things first: I loved this movie, and came out with a really big grin on, just as I did coming out of Rushmore and The Royal Tenembaums, the directors previous two films, with which this film shares the same kind of deadpan, laconic humour, in which very little is laugh out loud funny, but there's an almost constant level of quiet bemusement. I found The Life Aquatic to be superior to both those films, because while they were straight drama-comedies, this film also contains elements of action, musical, and even (a smidgen) of sci-fi.

It's not often that the set of a film, particularly one set in contemporary times, will strike me as being particularly impressive, but I have to give special mention to the insanely cool set of this film. They've made a complete cross-section of the Belafonte (the ship the film is mostly set in) so that the camera can see into all the rooms. When I first saw this enormous set, all displayed at once, I assumed it was some kind of special effect in which they'd spliced various different rooms together. However, as the camera roams around the ship, often following characters as they travel from room to room, you rapidly realize that they've constructed the entire thing, from stem to stern and it's fantastic. A surreal effect that somehow slots in quite nicely with the often surreal comedy.

Apropos of surreal effects, the creature effects (which I've been told are CGI but for the life of me looked like stop-motion animation) are neatly done- everytime the crew descends below the surface of the ocean, they enter an obviously fake undersea world (sort of like a fish tank?), populated by these charming, bizarre little fish and, somehow, it works- it really complements the rest of the film, moreso than if they had used real undersea footage, or more convincing effects.

I also have to give a shout out to the film's soundtrack, which is composed almost entirely of David Bowie tracks, played acoustically in Portuguese by one of the cast members. While you get the sense that this is something of a running joke, it also fits in nicely with the rest of the bizarreness. There's also some awesome mad-synth tracks for the documentary scenes, which are hilariously fun. The only non-Bowie song is near the conclusion of the film, and I have to admit that, partially due to the context of the film, partially to the song itself, I found it incredibly affecting (and got a bit teary!). The song was Staralfur and it's by Sigur Ros, and (unless you're planning to see the film in the next week or so) I'd highly recommend that you download it and give it a listen, it's stunningly beautiful.

Right, so, in summary: surreal comedy, light romance, tragedy, pirates, hundreds of Siamese cats, great soundtrack, cool set, gunfights, submarines, this movie is great: go see.