“Anomalisa,” this year’s animated darling for many top-notch film critics, has been touted as the “most human film of the year,” sans any humans on the screen. From the creative mind of screenwriter and director Charlie Kaufman, “Anomalisa” emerges as a stark contrast from its competitors in the Academy Awards’ Best Animated Feature Film category, which includes Pixar’s crowd favorite, “Inside Out.” Once watching the film, I realized the critics’ frequented line of praise foreshadows a much deeper truth that emerges within the context of the film’s narrative.
Disclaimer: I was never a Belieber. True, I reluctantly attended two Justin Bieber concerts in seventh grade, back when Bieber was on the brink of superstardom. These are the concessions you make when your childhood best friend is high with “Bieber fever” and drags you to his free live shows in Los Angeles. Within the walls of the iconic Hollywood Palladium, sanitized to accommodate throngs of pre-pubescent girls and their unwilling parents (and best friends), I witnessed Justin Bieber’s cherubic face and vanilla choreography.
“Twinsters” is an incredible separated-at-birth story that can only exist in the digital age. The heartfelt documentary is told through the perspective of American-raised actress and YouTube star Samantha Futerman. The story begins when French-raised design student Anaïs Bordier discovers Futerman through the Internet and believes they might somehow be related. The film opens with Bordier and her friends attempting to establish contact with Futerman on Instagram and Facebook after realizing that the two look eerily similar.
