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‘Stopmotion’ Review: Art Infects Rather Than Imitates Life in IFC’s Partly Animated Creepshow
Aisling Franciosi plays a directorial alter ego losing grip in English animator Robert Morgan’s striking if uneven first feature, 'Stopmotion.'
English animator Robert Morgan has deservedly accrued a shelf of awards over the past quarter-century or so for shorts like “The Cat With Hands,” “The Separation” and ickily awesome “Bobby Yeah.” Their macabre, surreal nightmares are at once threatening and oddly winsome, with a sinister aesthetic equally redolent of the Brothers Quay, early David Lynch and the painter Francis Bacon — all of whom count among the director’s admitted influences. Of course, such requirements can be waived: In recent years, two notable epics of the same titular technique, Phil Tippett’s “Mad God” and Chilean “The Wolf House,” managed to sustain disturbing visions while remaining near-abstract in realms of plot cohesion and character depth. One wishes “Stopmotion” had taken an equally grand conceptual leap, since its considerable imaginative style and technique get hamstrung to a degree by lip service paid to matters its makers have little evident interest or skill in — like hewing to a thriller’s basic story beats, and trying to make actors sound like actual people in underwritten roles.
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