Hormones wreck havoc throughout the body, sending the fragile teenage ego into dismay, and for a good part of our formative years we exist in a state between childhood innocence and realizations of adulthood. Showcasing sharp wit and highly quotable dialogue, comic-book artist turned animator Dash Shaw has encapsulated all these feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing in his creatively unhinged first feature, My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea, which stars an enviable voice cast of indie stars: Jason Schwartzman, Lena Dunham, Susan Sarandon, Maya Rudolph and Reggie Watts. Pulling from his own recollections of navigating the dangerous waters […]

Where is all the great independent animation? While Pixar and LAIKA are spinning out animated classics for a new generation, and independent filmmakers are putting their own idiosyncratic spins on nearly every genre, there have been relatively few animated independent features in recent years. And this is despite a boom in quality graphic novels and the new talent that creates them. It’s too early to know whether or not My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea is the beginning of a new movement in independent animation, but the feature, premiering tomorrow at the Toronto International Film Festival, brings with […]

This post-SXSW screening Q&A for The Grand Budapest Hotel is a few cuts above average. For one thing, Wes Anderson, Jason Schwartzman and music supervisor Randall Poster get to have Richard Linklater as their moderator, which makes for a higher class of question and a more relaxed rapport between two sympatico filmmakers. Native Texans who’ve both worked with animation, Linklater and Anderson are equally ready to discuss the films of Max Ophuls and which Stefan Zweig books in particular they have or haven’t read. Other highlights: Poster talks about how they arranged to record with a full balalaika orchestra, Anderson […]

Alex Ross Perry’s first feature Impolex was an oblique gloss on Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, while his higher-profile follow-up, The Color Wheel, stole the font of Philip Roth’s ’70s hardcovers for its credits, as well as that writer’s abrasive fearlessness and sexual disreputability. Literature hangs heavy over Listen Up Philip as well, not least in its subject: a young, New York novelist on the precipice of success being mentored by a Roth-like literary titan. That writer’s spirit is still present, but the major structural reference is William Gaddis’ behemoth debut The Recognitions, whose main through line is a pure-spirited and […]

“You sound like you’re bragging,” an ex tells novelist-on-the-cusp Philip (Jason Schwartzman). “That’s because I am bragging,” he answers without missing a beat at the start of this trailer for Alex Ross Perry’s acerbically witty, keenly anticipated third feature Listen Up Philip. Entering limited release on October 17 and hitting VOD four days later, Perry’s follow-up to The Color Wheel has great parts for Schwartzman, Elisabeth Moss as his long-suffering girlfriend and Jonathan Pryce as the young writer’s Philip Roth-esque mentor. (Dig the title card font, taken from the hardcovers of Roth’s ’70s novels.) It’s a funny and depressing work […]

Youth culture didn’t start in the ’60s. In the parlance of today’s teens, the appropriate response to this might be “duh.” Teenage, director Matt Wolf’s artful new non-fiction film, uncovers the “hidden history” of youth culture and locates its origins in various youth movements in the first half of the 20th century. From German Swing kids to American Victory Girls, the film offers a veritable lexicon of lost teen vocabulary (“teen canteen,” “buzz bucket,” “boogie in the strut hut”), and reminds us that the invention of teenager culture depended on the invention of a new language — and one that […]

Not often does a director with an indie pedigree seamlessly segue into subject matter like… children’s literature. But in many ways Wes Anderson has been training for the moment to use his hyper-stylized, extremely detailed storytelling to make a film like Fantastic Mr. Fox. Based on the Roald Dohl classic, Anderson (and co-writer, Noah Baumbach) use the book’s premise of a sly fox who outwits his farmer neighbors to steal their food to create a film that dazzles children and adults alike with it’s Andersonesque storytelling and stop-motion animation. When we meet Fox — voiced by George Clooney with motormouth […]