The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

I quite liked this, but, as with The Royal Tenenbaums, I felt that Anderson was trying to have it both ways - he wants to present a skewed, surreal narrative, peopled by semi-caricatures, in which the artifice of the medium is foregrounded (eg, the absurdly brightly coloured sea animals, the cutaway views of the ship, the obvious fakeness of the pirates' weapons, the cliché 'action' sequences), and make an affecting, character and relationship-driven piece at the same time. The result is interesting and often amusing, but ultimately unconvincing (though I must admit that the finale, in which nearly the whole of the cast, sans Owen Wilson, crams into the submarine and comes face to face the glowing jaguar shark to the strains of - appropriately enough - Sigur Ros' "Staralfur", worked for me). Tops cast, though.