Film

power boat owners 5,615

Jewelry shoppers 9,215

RN&R

Stop-motion sense

Anomalisa

When picking 2015’s best film, I found myself struggling more than in other recent years. It came down to Leonardo DiCaprio getting his face ripped off by a bear in The Revenant, or Charlie Kaufman’s daring stop-motion animation effort, Anomalisa. I ultimately went with Leo and the bear, but on any given day, I could find myself oscillating back to the notion that Anomalisa is last year’s best film. It’s certainly the year’s most original movie and the year’s best animated film. It’s also the weirdest, and Kaufman, who wrote Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, does weird so well. Anomalisa takes a rather mundane day in the life of rich businessman Michael Stone (voiced by David Thewlis) and somehow turns it into a wondrously imaginative movie. Using stop-motion figures, Kaufman and his team come up with a way to do animated facial expressions that is nothing short of mind-blowing. These figures are creepily human, and never anything short of amazing to behold. The voice cast includes Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh as Lisa, and Tom Noonan. I don’t want to give away too much about what Noonan does in this movie because I’d be giving away one of the film’s great surprises. Let’s just say Noonan gets a major opportunity to expand his vocal acting horizons in this one. The film picks up with Michael as he goes to Cincinnati for a speaking engagement and takes a room in a hotel. Yes, that sounds fairly routine, and it is. Yet Kaufman and crew capture so much detail in that little hotel room, it’s just as impressive as if they had recreated all of Manhattan. In the subtlest of ways, Kaufman, who wrote the script and the play it’s based on, shows us that Michael is having some sort of breakdown. His marriage lacks spark, he has an abnormal obsession with a past lover he’s trying to reconnect with, and, finally,

he gloms onto Lisa, a young fan of his staying at the hotel. Michael finds something incredibly unique about Lisa at first, and is beyond smitten. They ultimately share a night of lovemaking that rivals only Team America: World Police in the realm of puppet sex. Kaufman also gives us that night’s afterby Bob Grimm math, and there’s something very human about this movie even though dolls portray bgrimm@ the action. newsreview.com Michael’s view of the world is, to say the least, disturbing. Actually, Michael is 5 a really, really disturbing man. There are moments in the film where he simply loses his grip on reality, and those moments are startling. When it comes down to it, Michael is probably one of the more despicable cinematic characters of 2015. He’s as pathetic a human being as can be. And he’s a puppet. That’s how good this movie is. You start believing you’re watching a human story, and not just a bunch of puppets jabbering at one another. These action figures possess depth. The script is brilliant. It’s Kaufman at his very best. His core idea for this story is so grim, it’s actually a solid achievement that the film still manages to be enjoyable, let alone entertaining. But entertaining it is, and Kaufman has more than his own script to thank for that. I have never felt such joy watching somebody’s ice bucket be filled up at a hotel before. It’s the little details in this movie that just take the breath away. Little ice cubes, packs of cigarettes, coffee makers, roll away luggage—they all constitute a movie miracle. Anomalisa got edged out by Pixar’s Inside Out at this year’s Oscars. Now, I loved Inside Out in a way that had me believing it couldn’t be beat for that award when I saw it. But then I saw this movie and, without a doubt, this one should’ve taken home the prize. A hundred years from now, when film historians are putting together lists of films like no other, Anomalisa will be near the top. Ω

“What d’ya mean, animated actors can’t win the acting Oscars?” 1

Poor

2

Fair

3

Good

4

Very Good 5

Anomolisa ends its short engagement at the Century Riverside theater on March 24, but it's available for digital download on iTunes.

310 Cloverfield Lane What’s the significance of the word “Cloverfield” in this movie’s title? Producer J.J. Abrams is calling this movie a blood relative to the original found-footage monster movie. The new film is not a found-footage film (and thank god for that). After seeing it, I can tell you that the title is not misleading, but don’t go to this thinking you’ll see the Cloverfield monster laying waste to middle America. It’s a much different kind of movie. The film starts with Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) having an urgent phone call with somebody. She grabs her keys, hits the road, and drives for what appears to be many miles out of the big city into the cornfields. After stopping for some gas, her car crashes for mysterious reasons. She wakes up from said crash with an IV drip and her leg cuffed to a bar. Shortly thereafter, she meets Howard (John Goodman). Howard seems a little bit anxious and tells her she needs to hydrate, practice using crutches, and, oh yeah, the end of the world is nigh. No one really knows why, but the air above is now contaminated, and they must reside in his emergency bunker for what could be years. There’s another inhabitant of the bunker, and that’s Howard’s soft-spoken neighbor Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.). The film then becomes an intense “is she a hostage?” drama, and then something altogether different by the time credits roll. Goodman and Winstead are both excellent in what turns out to be a nifty little thriller.

1The Brothers Grimsby Sacha Baron Cohen delivers his first bona fide bomb with this, a tired action comedy with no comedic nuance to speak of. In the past, Cohen has thrived with his mockumentary format, or simply in the service of a good comedic director (most notably Adam McKay on Talladega Nights). Now, he’s penned a screenplay for director Louis Leterrier, a man mostly known for action fare like The Incredible Hulk and Clash of the Titans, although his lousy Now You See Me was more of a drama. This colossal mess has Cohen playing a soccer-loving idiot in search of his long lost brother (Mark Strong). It turns out the brother is a spy, and when the two get together, they are a regular old odd couple. The plot is nothing but a setup for scenes like Cohen and Strong stuck in an elephant’s vagina, resulting in them getting fucked by many large elephant penises. Sorry folks, there was really no delicate way to describe that scene to you. In fact, I cleaned it up a bit, for what actually happens in the movie is far more disgusting and raunchy than my description. Now, I do believe there’s a director somewhere who could’ve made the sight of Cohen and Strong covered in elephant cum hilarious. Leterrier isn’t that man, and most, if not all, of the jokes in this movie bomb big time. I’ve been a Cohen fan in the past, but if this is a sign of things to come, I’m renouncing my admiration as of this date.

4Deadpool Ryan Reynolds scores big in this twisted film from first time director Tim Miller. The movie establishes its weirdness with scathing opening credits that poke fun at Reynolds’s stint as Green Lantern. It then becomes a consistently funny tragicomedy involving Wade, a mercenary who comes down with terminal cancer, dimming the lights on his future with girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). He submits himself to an experiment that leaves him disfigured yet superhuman, bent on revenge against the criminal who made him this way. Reynolds finally gets a good movie to match his charms, and Deadpool gets the nasty film the character beckons for. The film gets an R-rating for many reasons, and there was no other way to make a Deadpool film. It needed to be depraved, and it is.

3Pee-wee’s Big Holiday It’s been 28 years since Pee-wee has had his own movie (1988’s Big Top Pee-wee), and the world’s happiest man child has not lost a step. Paul Reubens still effortlessly slides into his alter ego Pee-wee, even as he gets deep into his 60s. That’s right, Pee-wee Herman is almost 64 years old. That’s almost as old as Paul McCartney. He’s as nimble, as joyous, and as fun as he was when he made his big screen headliner debut in Tim Burton’s Pee-wee’s Big Adventure 31 years ago. The new film, produced by Judd Apatow and directed by John Lee doesn’t quite have the visual exuberance to match Pee-wee’s bravado, but the story (written by Reubens and Paul Rust) breezes right along. Pee-wee meets a movie star (Joe Manganiello of True Blood, playing himself) while working in a diner in his all American town. The two hit it off, and Joe invites him to his big birthday bash in New York City. This means a road trip for Pee-wee, during which he meets up with a crazy guy in the woods, a crazy lady with a flying car, and winds up at the bottom of a well. Again, the movie has some dull production values, but Reubens elevates things so that it really isn’t that much of a problem. Plus, Pee-wee’s car is badass. Hopefully, this will be the start of some more adventures for Peewee. He’s clearly still got it. Look for Lynne Marie Stewart, Simone from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, in a small but pivotal role. (Currently streaming on Netflix.)

3Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Tina Fey makes a seamless transition to more dramatic fare with this, the story of a female journalist dropped into the middle of the war in Afghanistan. Based on the book The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Kim Barker, the film has a MASH vibe to it when it’s at its best. Fey gets plenty of chances to be funny, but this is her meatiest role yet, allowing her to show off a promising more serious side as an actress. When her life in New York gets too humdrum, Kim (Fey) winds up in Afghanistan with no major field reporting experience, dodging RPGs and filing stories nobody cares about. She has standard long-distance relationship problems on top of that, along with an on-site romance with a freelance photographer (Martin Freeman). Directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (Crazy, Stupid, Love and Focus) the film pops on occasion, but spends a little too much time in dusty apartments rather than out in the field. Margot Robbie is great, if Gift certificates to local merchants for up to 50% off a little underused, as another field reporter, while the likes of Billy Bob Thornton and Alfred Molina perform admirably in supporting roles. The film doesn’t always click, but it stands as an interesting turning point in Fey’s career.

5The Witch Unlike The Blair Witch Project, this Sundance award-winning directorial debut— and total masterpiece—from Robert Eggers, who also wrote the script, actually has a witch in it. She makes her first appearance very early on in the film, and she’s doing a bad thing. A really, really, horribly disturbing, oh-that’s-how-thismovie-is-really-going-to-start bad thing. Set in 1630s New England with an exceptional attention to detail, there are plenty of ways to interpret the events and themes of The Witch—the mark of a good, heady horror film. The sense of dread kicks in immediately after William (Ralph Ineson) is banished from his New England settlement for getting a little too over-the-top with his religious beliefs. He, his wife Katherine (Kate Dickie), their little baby, their oldest daughter, Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), son Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw), and creepy twins Mercy and Jonas (Ellie Grainger and Lucas Dawson) must head out into the gray forests and fields to make a life away from government and society. What follows are hellish encounters with different incarnations of the witch, talking goats, possessed kids, and a bunch of other stuff that will unsettle you. Eggers has made a great movie that can be interpreted many different ways. If it doesn’t scare you, you are far braver than me.

3Zootopia Disney delivers another winner with this cute, uplifting story with a surprising dark side. It’s the sort of movie that’ll have kids asking their parents a few questions about some tough topics, while also being a movie that should entertain just about anyone who sits their butt in a theater seat to watch it. Judy (Ginnifer Goodwin entering the Voice Acting Hall of Fame) is a little bunny determined to be the first bunny cop on the force in Zootopia, a metropolis populated by animals. On the road to joining the force, she faces a lot of opposition for being both a bunny and a girl. Judy beats insurmountable odds, and winds up on the force, much to the chagrin of Chief Bogo (Idris Elba). She soon finds herself on a missing mammals case and enlists the help of a sly fox (Jason Bateman) for investigative work. The film is co-directed by three guys: Byron Howard (Tangled), Rich Moore (Wreck-It Ralph) and Jared Bush (his feature debut!). The animation is top notch and inventive, with cute little touches throughout. When a cop chase winds up in a rodent community, it becomes a funny Godzilla riff. There are little witty touches throughout, and the movie is just another animated home run for the Disney catalog.

merchants for up to 50% off Gift certificates to local

www.newsreview.com

RN&R