A lonely woman tells her life story to her pet snail in Memoir of a Snail. After the death of her last remaining friend friend Pinky (Jacki Weaver), Grace Pudel (Sarah Snook) goes into the garden and releases her longtime pet snail Sylvia. As Sylvia inches her way to her final destination, recounts her sad …
stop motion animation
A stop-motion adventure nearly five decades in the making comes to fruition with The Primevals. Sherpas in the Himalayas have killed a creature that seems to be the mythical Yeti. When the specimen is acquired by Dr. Claire Collier (Juliet Mills), her former student Matt Connor (Richard Joseph Paul) wants to lead an expedition to …
Guillermo del Toro co-directed a new stop-motion version of the classic story with Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. Distraught over the death of his young son Carlo, wood-carver Geppetto (David Bradley) carves a pine tree into a puppet made in Carlo’s likeness before collapsing into a drunken stupor. Feeling sympathy for the grieving man, a Wood …
A sentient shell enlists the help of a filmmaker to find his family in Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. Marcel (Jenny Slate) is a talking mollusk shell wearing pink sneakers who is discovered living in a house with her grandmother Connie (Isabella Rossellini) by filmmaker Dean (Dean Fleischer-Camp). Dean records a series of interviews …
Stop-motion master Phil Tippett presents his three decades in development magnum opus with Mad God. In a Miltonesque world of monsters, mad scientists, and war pigs, an intrepid special agent travels on a special mission. Along the way, he passes through a landscape of corruption and decay, with plenty of horrors on the road ahead. Throughout …
An explorer helps a Sasquatch try to find his brethren in Missing Link. Sir Lionel Frost (Hugh Jackman) is an explorer, who specializes in investigating mythical creatures, which results in him being scorned by a society of great men headed by Lord Piggot-Dunceby (Stephen Fry). Desperate to become accepted by the society, Lionel follows a …
The best goddamn cop on the force has to deal with an infestation of vampire tramps in Chuck Steel: Night of the Trampires. Chuck Steel (Mike Mort) is a jacked up action hero cop, who knows what it takes to clean up the streets of L.A. While investigating a series of murders, Steel encounters an old …
Wes Anderson returns with the stop motion Japanese adventure Isle of Dogs. 20 years in the future, all the dogs of Japan are afflicted by a virus and Mayor Kobayashi (Kunichi Nomura) of Megasaki City decrees that all dogs be deported to nearby trash island. One day, the five alpha dogs of Chief (Bryan Cranston), Rex …
A lonely self-help author finds a connection with an anomaly of a woman in Anomalisa. Self help author Michael Stone (David Thewlis) has traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio to promote his latest book at a hotel customer service convention. However, Michael is an incredibly lonely man, who perceives everyone (Tom Noonan) as exactly the same. However, …
Rodney Ascher (Room 237) explores the terrors of sleep paralysis in The Nightmare. There are people who suffer from a mysterious sleeping condition, where they feel like they are awake, yet they find that they cannot move. Many of those suffering from sleep paralysis have visions of shadowy figures coming at them in the darkness. …
Rodney Ascher (Room 237) explores the terrors of sleep paralysis in The Nightmare. There are people who suffer from a mysterious sleeping condition, where they feel like they are awake, yet they find that they cannot move. Many of those suffering from sleep paralysis have visions of shadowy figures coming at them in the darkness. …
From the animation studio Laika (Coraline, ParaNorman) comes the stop-motion fantasy-adventure The Boxtrolls. The town of Cheesebridge live in fear of the subterranean Boxtrolls, who are rumoured to kidnap and eat children. Because of this, Lord Portley-Rind (Jared Harris) hires the sinister Archibald Snatcher (Ben Kingsley) to exterminate the Boxtrolls, in exchange for membership to …
This month saw the release of, the latest film by Wes Anderson, The Grand Budapest Hotel, which I saw last week. As such, it seemed fitting that I make my blindspot selection this month the only film of Anderson’s that I had yet to see. Fantastic Mr. Fox is based on the book by Roald …
Frankenweenie began life as a half hour short film made towards the beginning of Tim Burton’s career in 1984. 28 years later, Burton has expanded Frankenweenie into a feature length, black and white, stop-motion film, which is essentially Burton’s homage to classic horror films. The film, which is directly inspired by Frankenstein, sees a boy …