Anomalisa

Celebrated screenwriter Charlie Kaufman has fashioned this existential crisis as a dark, bizarre stop-motion animated movie, and while it's extraordinary in many ways, it's clearly not for kids. ANOMALISA began its life as a kind of radio play; then Kaufman enlisted animator Duke Johnson as a co-director, and they came up with an amazingly detailed, mundane, grimly comic world in which the puppets' seams are allowed to show. (This isn't a movie about smoothness.)

Fans of Kaufman's earlier, imaginative work -- like Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind -- will find Anomalisa a more dispiriting affair, with special attention paid to the imperfections of the human body and our sometimes-clumsy relationships with food, drink, and sex, not to mention longing for love and sense of purpose. The film pays special attention to sound -- not only spoken voices, but also music (Lisa sings a song that can break the heart). It's perhaps more hopeless than hopeful, but it's a deep, thoughtful experience.