Anomalisa (3/5 Stars)

Back in 2008, when I reviewed Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York” I wondered if he would retire. I mean what more could he say? (By the way isn’t it amazing that I can refer to a review I wrote eight years ago?) When I heard that he was coming out with a stop-motion animation movie this year, I saw a glimmer of hope that the idea was just crazy and ambitious enough to not be a let down from his previous masterpiece. Well, it was inevitably a let down. The worst thing had to be that I had to wait eight years to see it. If he had spent a year or two making this in between bigger projects I would have been totally content. But the prospect of waiting several more years for him to create something else after this movie is rather painful. I guess what I’m saying is that I want more, Charlie Kaufman. “Anomalisa” wasn’t enough. Give me more!

Michael Stone, a graying middle-aged man voiced by David Thewlis, has just landed in Cincinnatti to speak at a customer service convention. He is big stuff in the area. Several times his book is referred to as the cause of a 90% boost in efficiency. Not that the movie cares much about customer service. The choice has been made it seems for ironic purposes. Michael Stone is suffering from some kind of strange mental problem. Everyone he meets has the same face and the same voice (Tom Noonan’s). Even when he calls home he hears over the phone the same voice for his wife and son.  

The hint for what is happening is in the name of the hotel he is staying at: Fregoli. He has what is called a Fregoli delusion: wherein the sufferor sees the same face and voice for every person he meets. The one exception is a woman he meets named Lisa, voice by Jennifer Jason Leigh. She is an anomaly, hence the title: Anomalisa. He immediately falls in love.

It does take awhile for this to be set up. The first half of the movie attempts to establish the dullness of this man’s life and accomplishes the task. In the second half he meets Lisa, they involve themselves in a not so torrid love affair, and the very next day over breakfast her face and voice tragically turns into Tom Noonan’s.

At that point I was rather interested in what was happening. In particular, there is a dream sequence that is funny and exciting. But too bad, the movie ends with no third act or resolution. Some more astute friends of mine observed that the Fregoli delusion was just a metaphor for his sad relations with women. I noted with some disappointment that this mundane explanation was more likely than my apparent misunderstanding that the movie was literally about the Fregoli delusion. I feel it would have been a more interesting movie if it were literally about the Fregoli delusion. Oh, well. 

I really hope it will not be another eight years for the next Charlie Kaufman movie to come about.

Brooklyn (4/5 Stars)

Winter movies are generally awards fare and thus tend to gravitate toward the dramatic. The two movies I saw before this one were “The Revenant” and “Room” the two most intense movies of the year. I was ripe then to see “Brooklyn” an adorable movie about nice people in pretty places.

Nick Hornby adapted “Brooklyn” from the book by Colm Toibin about a young Irish woman who immigrates to America. Nick Hornby, well known for his novels about young men (Fever Pitch, High Fidelity, About a Boy) has made his last three projects on adapted screenplays of novels about young women (An Education, Wild, and now Brooklyn). It is a pleasant development and does its little job in trying to fill the yawning chasm in the modern movie marketplace for stories about women. His skill in drawing women is evident in the fact that the lead actress in each of his movies has gone on to score an Oscar nomination. Saoirse Ronan, who plays the lead this time, Ellis, is no exception.

Ellis leaves Ireland for economic opportunity. At home there is no job better than part time cashier. In America, she has the opportunity to develop. There are many people helping her. Her family in Ireland is supportive. In NYC, a kindly Irish Catholic priest (played by Jim Broadbent) helps her get a home in a boarding house, a job in a fancy Manhattan department store, and night classes for accounting. Such are the benefits of being Irish and immigrating to America in the 1950s as opposed to the 1850s. She is standing on the shoulders of 100 years of past immigrants who are kin to help her out. About the worst that happens to her is a bout of homesickness, which is cute because it only happens when nice people miss nice people.

Of special mention is the boarding house and the nightly dinners there. At the head of the table is Mrs. Keogh (Julie Walters) who prides herself on being strict and proper but betrays an absolute glee in spending her nights around the table with several twenty-something girls. She and the other girls, Patty (Emily Brett Rickards), Diana (Eve Macklin), and Shelia (Nora-Jane Noone), pull off something rather rare in movies. We have all seen characters that are funny without knowing it and characters that make wisecracks meant obviously for the consumption of a movie audience. But it is rare to feel like a fly on the wall in a place where there are several obviously witty people genuinely having a good time talking to each other. That is what is going on in these boarding room dining room scenes and it is a delight to watch them. I want to be there.

The Irish community in Brooklyn goes so far in helping Ellis that they actually facilitate her love life as well. She meets an Italian named Tony at a church dance. They start dating and Tony is a swell guy. He proposes something that he feels might be too fast and it turns out to be dinner with his family.

This leads to the only real conflict in the movie. At some point Ellis goes back to Ireland. She is walking around her dowdy small town with her education (which swiftly lands her a good job) and her glamorous NYC style (she stands out to say the least) and quickly attracts the small town’s most eligible bachelor, Jim Farrell (Domnhall Gleeson, again.) So now there is a love triangle but each guy is great so the audience isn’t really sweating it. I liked this movie. If you ever wanted a safe evening where nobody anywhere would be offended by anything and it also would be a decent movie, than this one is recommended.

Room (5/5 Stars)

If I were to compare the experience of watching “Room” to another movie, I would settle on a very odd choice: Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket.” Not because it has comparable subject matter but because the two movies have a first half that rivals the best movies ever made and a second half that is merely good. I would suggest anyone somewhat interested in seeing “Room” to read as little about it as possible. Many of the spoilers occur quite early in the movie. Thus it is impossible to discuss the movie without giving something away. So stop reading if you intend on seeing it someday.

“Room” was directed by Lenny Abrahamson. He entered my consciousness with last year’s “Frank” starring Michael Fassbender as a very alternative musician. “Frank” was an exceptionally unique movie at turns comical and whimsically strange. This movie is especially gritty and seriously real. The contrast shows Abrahamson’s exceptional range through two movies. I highly anticipate his next one.

“Room” was adapted by Emma Donoghue from the novel “Room” by Emma Donoghue. It is somewhat rare that a novelist would write the screenplay to her own book but given the skillful way it was accomplished here it is more a question of why it is not done more often. I expect the original conceit of the book is still present in the movie. It is quite the conceit. The story is told by a five-year-old boy named Jack who lives in Room with Ma. Also in Room is Bed, Sink, Dresser, and assortment of other household items. What makes Room special is that all these supposedly common household items are not common at all. In fact, there is only one of them known in existence (at least to Jack) and thus each is referred to in the capital. It dawns on the audience that as far as Jack knows, nothing exists outside of Room. It is slowly revealed that his mother has been kidnapped and imprisoned by a man named Old Nick for seven years. He has continually raped her for that entire time thus resulting at least once in a pregnancy. Apparently Ma has not told Jack about the outside world yet.

The first half of the movie contains not only the explanation of what the situation is but also much specificity on how raising a child in a garden shed for five years works. The reality of it automatically makes the situation very intense. That we are then witness to an ingenious scheme of escape in which much of the success of the outcome relies almost entirely on how Jack will react to a lot of things he has never seen before in a situation of incredible danger, is what I meant by the first half of movie being one of the best one hour of movie storytelling I have ever seen. 

Now given that all of this takes place in a little room and consists of a mother and son talking to each other makes the performances very important to the success of the story. In this way, Brie Larson, who plays Ma, has earned her inevitable Best Actress Oscar. She plays her character on many levels: in what she perceives, in what she chooses to reveal to her son, in how she explains to her son what she reveals, and how she feels about all the risks she must make him take. Jacob Tremblay plays Jack in such a realistic way that one would hardly think a five year old would be capable of doing it.

I do not know how much more I am going to willing to write about the movie. This will be one of my shortest reviews in a while as I got to this point and then decided not to write about the second half. You know what other artwork I was reminded of when I saw this movie. I was reminded of Mary Shelley’s book “Frankenstein.” Imagine seeing the world for the first time as a fully conscious creature. There is a moment in this movie where Jack sees the sky for the first time. It is just incredible to be there.