**

The Hero – sp

Sam Elliot is a captivating actor, tall, rugged with an unbelievable resonant voice. He plays such a character in this film which was specifically written for him by Brett Haley who is the director and screenwriter. Mr. Elliot even admits that the actor he plays in the film is somewhat like his real self, but the plot is fortunately not his story.

Lee Hayden (Elliot) is an over the hill actor in his early 70’s, long time divorced and estranged from his daughter Lucy (Krysten Ritter). He once starred in a very successful cowboy film but now does mostly voice-overs. He also has a newly discovered challenging health problem at the same time he has met Charlotte, a young woman (Laura Prepon), and they share a mutual attraction to each other. Did we say young woman? She is actually in her 30’s. almost a 40 year difference. Our hero has to try to figure out this relationship while facing his own mortality and trying to make peace with his daughter. At the same time, he may have the opportunity for a great part in a new movie.

The problem with this situation and the problem with this movie is as far as we’re concerned is that we really don’t understand these characters. We don’t know the real backstory on this young woman who is attracted to this older man nor do we understand why our hero got divorced from his wife (who by the way is played by Katherine Ross, Mr. Elliot’s real life wife).

In a post-film interview with Mr. Elliot, we learned a little bit about how he has approached his own career and didn’t try to play characters that he couldn’t relate to. However, this movie we believe didn’t offer much insight into the personality of the main character and his issues. We give kudos to Mr. Elliot as a compelling actor, but we can’t recommend this film (2017)

**

Anomalisa-sp

This is a movie like no other movie that you have seen. The technique used is stop-action puppets. This means that realistic puppets of human beings were utilized which were about one foot in length with movable parts to simulate walking and talking. Sets made to scale were built in which these figures would exist and interact with other puppet/people. The puppets in the environment in which they were interacting would be slightly changed for each frame (24 frames per second). it would take an animation team one day to film two and a half seconds of the film. There were about 15 animation teams working at one time with many identical puppets and several identical sets. It took many months to build the puppets and plan for each scene. The entire endeavor took about two years.

If you think this setup was unusual , the voice over approach was also quite unique. There were two separate voices for the two main characters. David Thewlis was the voice of Michael Stone, a middle-aged businessman who comes to stay at a hotel in Cincinnati in order to deliver a speech the next day. He meets a young woman by the name of Lisa, voice-over by Jennifer Jason Leigh, with whom he has an affair. All the other numerous characters which include a wife and child, an old girlfriend, numerous hotel personnel and a few other characters all have voice-over by one person, Tom Noonan!

The creative nature of this film continues as you try to figure out what exactly was the meaning of the story. You will have to wade through a dream sequence, a serious hotel love making scene, most of the voices sounding the same, and a mixed up main character who seems to be having a lot of trouble figuring out who he really loves and does he really love it all.

This is all the brain child of Charlie Kaufman who wrote the screenplay and directed and produced it with Duke Johnson. They kick-started it all by raising $400,000 (with the initial contributors getting puppets and parts of the miniature sets) and then put together a relatively low budget of a couple of million dollars more which Paramount and some others provided.

We can’t recommend this as a worthwhile cinematic experience, considering all the excellent films out there today, unless this stuff is right up your alley. However, we do admire the unusual creative effort. (2015)