9.5/10 – Grilled Seal of Approval

Oh yes. Oh Hell Yes.

David Michod is a director on the rise and this is a very, very good film.

Hey, you know me by now, right? I make some jokes, I talk a lot of bullshit, I generally speak in terribly grammatically incorrect circles and tangents, but I’m not going to do that for Animal Kingdom. I’m not going to do it. I want to do it, but I can’t and I won’t. The movie is just too good to do anything except give it a proper standing ovation. The film is sort of like going to a monster truck rally when you are eight and being all excited to both see giant machines crushing and crashing into each other and waves upon waves of mullets and then, to top it all off, the lights drop off the earth, the engines become machine guns of explosion, and the trucks fly off their jumps and into the stratosphere,

And you’re just sitting there in that darkened arena with the starlights twinkling and flashing about you and watching as the brilliant headlights bore straight into your soul. You can see your entire life playing out before you, and it’s just as boring and purposeless as you always hoped it wouldn’t be. The lights illuminate your fears and pierce your aura of invincibility and you find yourself reaching out a hand for your father’s. But he’s looking in the opposite direction as the rest of the crowd and he doesn’t see fate flying across the arena and heading straight for our seats. The crowd scatters around us, flying far and wide in a tangle of limbs and cursing and screaming, but we – my Dad and I – remain seated. His head turns back to the front and I see his eyes widen in surprise just before the truck succeeds in permanently etching us into the floorboards.

So, I’m not going to talk about that. I’m just going to clearly state how awesome Animal Kingdom is.

Animal Kingdom is awesome. Go See It.