Movie critic Steven Rea's weekend selections
Anomalisa. From the brain of Charlie Kaufman, co-directing with Duke Johnson, a stop-motion animation tale of a sad, unsatisfied man who meets a woman on a business trip, takes her to his hotel room, and, well, yes, there is puppet sex. A portrait of midlife morass, regret and mundanity, cut with comic and surreal moments. Eerie in its lifelike, and dreamlike, vision. With the voices of David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Tom Noonan. R
Anomalisa. From the brain of Charlie Kaufman, co-directing with Duke Johnson, a stop-motion animation tale of a sad, unsatisfied man who meets a woman on a business trip, takes her to his hotel room, and, well, yes, there is puppet sex. A portrait of midlife morass, regret and mundanity, cut with comic and surreal moments. Eerie in its lifelike, and dreamlike, vision. With the voices of David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Tom Noonan. R
The Revenant. A wild, woolly, transcendentally cinematic wilderness survival thriller, with a bearded, bloodied Leonardo DiCaprio as a trapper left for dead in the snowbound 1820s outback, and Tom Hardy as his coldblooded, ornery nemesis. Revenge is the motor that runs this machine - a stunning big-screen saga from Birdman director Alejandro G. Iñárritu. R
Brooklyn. Saoirse Ronan is an Irish country girl who travels to New York in search of a new life. It's the early '50s, and she's full of pluck, fear, loneliness. One of the most memorable characters of recent film, born from Colm Tóibín's 2009 novel and brought to exquisite life via a screenplay by Nick Hornby and the savvy direction of John Crowley. Moving and magnificent. PG-13