When I say the name Spike Jonze, the first thing that comes to the minds of most moviegoers is Being John Malkovich, his elaborate music video career, or Adaptation. What doesn't pop up are childhood works of fiction, especially not Maurice Sendak's classic Where the Wild Things Are.
Where the Wild Things Are is not a lengthy book by any means, 48 pages long, so the question was how Spike Jonze would manage to string together enough material for a film to be worthwhile. Yet succeed Jonze did and provided cinemas this week with probably the best film about childhood that isn't for children.
Max Records stars as the boisterous Max, left understandably angry after his parents divorce and at odds with the world. His mother (Catherine Keener) has been paying a little too much attention to her new boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo) instead of him, and it is driving him mad. Max throws a temper tantrum and storms out of the house and out into the night. As the trees blur behind him, Max ta…
Where the Wild Things Are is not a lengthy book by any means, 48 pages long, so the question was how Spike Jonze would manage to string together enough material for a film to be worthwhile. Yet succeed Jonze did and provided cinemas this week with probably the best film about childhood that isn't for children.
Max Records stars as the boisterous Max, left understandably angry after his parents divorce and at odds with the world. His mother (Catherine Keener) has been paying a little too much attention to her new boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo) instead of him, and it is driving him mad. Max throws a temper tantrum and storms out of the house and out into the night. As the trees blur behind him, Max ta…