Category: animation
914 – yesterday evening
909
0905 – Under the Silver Lake (2018)
timespace coordinates: 2011 Los Angeles

Under the Silver Lake is a 2018 American neo-noir mystery film written, produced and directed by David Robert Mitchell. Set in Los Angeles, it stars Andrew Garfield as a young man who sets out on a quest to investigate the sudden disappearance of his neighbour (Riley Keough), only to stumble upon an elusive and dangerous large-scale conspiracy.
Joshua Rothkopf of Time Out gave the film a perfect five rating, calling it “Hypnotic, spiraling and deliriously high” and stating “the ambition of Under the Silver Lake is worth cherishing. It will either evaporate into nothingness or cohere into something you’ll want to hug for being so wonderfully weird.” Eric Kohn of IndieWire gave a positive review, calling it “a bizarre and outrageous drama grounded in the consistency of Garfield’s astonishment at every turn. […] Aided by cinematographer Mike Gioloukas’ sunny visuals and a searching Disasterpiece score, the movie becomes a bittersweet ode to wanting answers from an indifferent world overwhelmed by superficial distractions. The homage can be irritating and some of the transitions work better than others across an unwieldy running time — but even the flaws speak to the movie’s beguiling raison d’être. It’s fascinating to watch Mitchell grasp for a bigger picture with the wild ambition of his scruffy protagonist.”
Owen Gleiberman of Variety gave a positive review, calling it “a down-the-rabbit-hole movie, at once gripping and baffling, fueled by erotic passion and dread but also by the code-fixated opacity of conspiracy theory. The movie is impeccably shot and staged, with an insanely lush soundtrack that’s like Bernard Herrmann-meets-Angelo-Badalamenti-on-opioids. When it’s over, though, you feel like you’ve seen a meta-mystery made by someone who spent too much time scrawling notes in the margins of his frayed copy of Infinite Jest. (wiki)

901 – Mowgli (2018)
timespace coordinates: 1850s British Raj
Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (also known and stylized on screen simply as Mowgli) is a 2018 fantasy adventure film directed by Andy Serkis based on stories collected in All the Mowgli Stories by Rudyard Kipling. The film stars Rohan Chand, Matthew Rhys, and Freida Pinto, along with voice and motion capture performances from Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Benedict Cumberbatch, Naomie Harris, and Serkis. (wiki)

‘Mowgli’: A wildly impressive — and very dark — version of ‘The Jungle Book’
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0890 – Origin: Spirits of the Past (2006)
It is 300 years into the future. Earth’s environment had been devastated by mankind’s own foolish plans and humankind is beleaguered by the sentient forests which they have awoken. The world balance is tipped when a young boy named Agito stumbles across a machine that glowed in a strange blue hue inside a forbidden sanctuary. The machine, which has preserved a beautiful girl named Toola from the past, is activated. Toola has a “mission” that had been entrusted to her by the past …

Origin: Spirits of the Past, known in Japan as Silver-Haired Agito (Japanese: 銀色の髪のアギト Hepburn: Gin’iro no Kami no Agito), is a 2006 Japanese animated science fiction film directed by Keiichi Sugiyama, written by Nana Shiina and Naoko Kakimoto, and produced by Gonzo. (wiki)

