Anomalisa

A motivational speaker who wrote a book about customer service checks into a hotel in Cincinnati. Everyone around him has the same face and the same voice, until he hears a different one down the corridor. The idea comes straight out of a psychiatric condition. Charlie Kaufman first wrote the piece as a 2005 audio play and credited it to the pen name Francis Fregoli. The Fregoli delusion is the belief that different people are actually one person in disguise. In the film every character except the two leads, men and women alike, is voiced by Tom Noonan. Starburns Industries went to Kickstarter to make it outside the studio system, and a campaign with a 200,000 dollar goal took 406,237 dollars from 5,770 backers. It was pitched as a forty-minute short until Paramount came in and it became a feature. The puppets were 3D printed, eighteen Michaels and six Lisas in total, and the animation took two years frame by frame. Who it is for: anyone who believes animation can be adult and depressive. Who it is not for: viewers who will find a sex scene between puppets absurd. The film plays it entirely straight.