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Showing posts with label david thewlis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label david thewlis. Show all posts

Thursday, June 7, 2018

Anomalisa (2015)

An American stop motion animated drama directed by Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson, starring David Thewlis and Jennifer Jason Leigh.
The best thing about this was that it was strange. The pacing seemed to build through the duration and as the plot developed. The plot itself was not all that interesting, but it had some moments when things went nuts. I liked all of the characters only being voiced by only 3 people, regardless of age and gender. What made this really interesting is that it turns out to be a plot point. Dialogue was mostly mundane, but glimpses of insanity shone through all that much better this way. Everything being models and figures, the sets and character design was convincing and complex. Not everyone makes stop motion characters with removable clothing. I thought the camera-work was done very well. What impressed me most was correct use of focal depths. Sometimes the focal point was the only thing in focus and others showed deep focus. The audio seemed to be mixed fine. There was a little too much dynamic range on the dialogue vocals for my liking, but I turned it up just a little bit and everything was fine. This won 4/32 awards that it was nominated for, IMDb has a 7.3/10 rating listed, Metacritic lists an 88% metascore and Rotten Tomatoes shows 91% tomatometer with 70% audience score for an average of 80.5%. I think that's predictable because the whole film seemed a little on the mundane side, with little bits of interest poking through. I rate it adequate for being artfully made and a little strange, but not quite interesting enough.

Saturday, June 4, 2016

Naked (1993)

A British black comedy directed by Mike Leigh, starring David Thewlis.
This film follows the adventures of Johnny, the smart-ass vagrant, his ex-girlfriend and her current roommate.
Wonderful! The plot was a little desultory, but that worked out for the best. The characters were absolutely priceless! Johnny had a Malcolm McDowell style personality that just lit up the screen. The dialogue was all amazingly well written. The video had that gloomy Dolores Claiborne look of decreased saturation. All of this was put together to create a film that made me want to watch it again right after it was over. In order to fully understand how amazing this is, you should watch it. I have to rate this best.