Double Bill Mini Reviews: Under Your Radar Edition...

Anomalisa:
What's it about?
A middle-aged family man arrives in another identikit hotel in advance of giving another motivational speech on yet another whistle-stop tour. Feeling lost and alone in his life, so much so that everyone but him in this world has the same face and the same voice, he's doomed to misery - until Lisa enters his life.
Who would I recognise in it?
David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Noonan (all voices).
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Sometimes the format in which you tell a story can make all the difference, or put an intriguing spin on the material. With "Anomalisa", writer/director Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) teams up with director Duke Johnson to present this very grown up tale of middle-age melancholy in the form of stop-motion animation...

Click "READ MORE" below for the verdict on this flick as well as Kevin Smith's weirdest movie to date...

Beautifully realised in all respects, the script carries a gentle thread of humour throughout as Thewlis' Michael Stone goes from a traveller whose soul is hopelessly lost to the man he once was when he encounters Leigh's Lisa, a vulnerable, endearing, and utterly unique woman who hasn't known love in eight long years. Their brief and fumbling time together sings with small and honest details, while the film manages to maintain the balance of inner truth and a subtle sense of being uplifted. This small budget indie (partly funded through KickStarter) may very well have flown under your radar, but it's definitely well worth seeing - highly recommended. Great.

Yoga Hosers:
What's it about?
Two teenage girls - "The Colleens" - get totally derailed from attending a 12th Grade party when they're forced to work the late shift at the Eh-2-Zed convenience store in the heart of Canada. As if that wasn't 'basic' enough, they soon find themselves besieged by one foot tall Bratwurst Nazis - or Bratzis - yep, you read that right...
Who would I recognise in it?
Lily-Rose Depp, Harley Quinn Smith, Austin Butler, Tyler Posey, Kevin Smith, Johnny Depp, Justin Long, Ralph Garman, Hayley Joel Osment, and numerous others from the SModiverse family.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
This is the second part in Kevin Smith's "True North Trilogy" of bizarro films, following on from "Tusk" (in which Justin Long played an acerbic podcaster who gets turned into a walrus by a madman) and coming in advance of "Moose Jaws" (it's Jaws ... with a Moose!). Birthed from the weed-infused whimsy of Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier's SModcast podcast, this weird tale - too weird for some (or many) - is in some ways akin to "Gremlins" or "Critters", but with smart phones and a Canada fetish. It's a goofball PG-13 monster comedy for the iGeneration in which Johnny Depp plays a roundly mocked, skew-eyed Canadian detective (with roaming facial moles) called Guy LaPointe. Whimsical to a bizarre degree, you're either onboard within ten minutes or left in the dust with a baffled look on your face. Packed with numerous references to Smith's previous films and back catalogue of SModcast chit chat, it may very well be too much of a 'view askew' for you, but isn't it great to know we live in a world where a stoner Writer/Director can go from giggling in front of a microphone to prancing about dressed as a fascistic sausage with concentrated sauerkraut for blood? Good.