Anomalisa

Absolutely, unforgivably terrible. This movie will have you repeatedly cringing at both the despicable nature of the primary protagonists, and also the intentional and heavily misguided doses of awkwardness injected into the film on a constant basis. Only a sycophantic audience would appreciate a movie so utterly deprived of even a small dose of meaning. The trailer for this movie was the true work of art - it painted a beautiful picture of a spiritual awakening coming to a man drowned in the ordinary... the movie, however, shows only the half-hearted depravity of one man's midlife crisis bursting it's way forth in a gurgle of dry dialogue. We can, of course, all speculate as to what this may "mean", but the movie itself gives us nearly nothing to go on... it does not explain why he finds so much of his life to be meaningless, and it furthermore very unapologetically reveals the protagonists as intellectually and morally dishonest. There is nothing to love in those two. If you're looking for a hallow movie masquerading as a lucidity-inducing drama, look no further... go grab you're thick rimmed glasses and your favorite flannel shirt. For everyone else, steer clear...

I threw in a few bucks to the kickstarter, which described a short form film. Had I known it had been expanded to feature length, I'd have made an effort to see it during it's theatrical run. Then, I'd be angry for about 40 plus minutes at a specific artistic decision made about the voice acting. That kinda resolved itself when the story reveals itself to be sort of a psychological episode of the Twilight Zone. That probably sums up Kaufman's work in general, but here we'd be better off if this was it's projected forty minutes (including the several minute closing credits) than a full feature. Liked it well enough towards the end, but didn't love it.

This is Director Charlie Kaufman's second movie he's directing. The detail in the puppets and setting is breathtaking. This film also does an amazing job showing what it is to be human, to be alive. It's a shame that some people don't like the film because they're not open minded enough to understand it. Anyway if you enjoyed this movie definitely check out some of Charlie's other pieces of work.