NEW YORK MOVIE JOURNAL (Dec. 2015-Jan. 2016)

[Chris Knipp]

French poster for the film

ANOMALISA (Duke Johnson, Charlie Kaufman 2015). Stop-motion animation with urination, masturbation, cunnilingus, and a Kafkasesque Willy Loman experience, a dull business trip to Cleveland by a Brit living in L.A. who seduces a young woman, and has a paranoid syndrome that makes everybody but her sound to have the voice of Tom Noonan. David Thewlis voices the man and Jennifer Jason Leigh voices the young woman in this hallucinatory celebration of ordinariness and loneliness. A "masterpiece"? The jury, for me, is still out on that. But a Charlie Kaufman original and maybe the last standout to be US-released at the end of the year. Opened in NYC Wed., 30 Dec. 2015, seen that day at Landmark Sunshine. (Also showing at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas 6.)