Film Review - World Animation: Paprika (2006)

Paprika (パプリカ) is a 2006 Japanese animated film co-written and directed by Satoshi Kon, based on Yasutaka Tsutsui's 1993 novel of the same name, about a research psychologist who uses a device that permits therapists to help patients by entering their dreams. It is Kon's fourth and final feature film before his death in 2010.

Kon and Seishi Minakami wrote the film's script, and Madhouse animated and produced the film alongside Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan, which distributed it in Japan. The film's score was composed by Susumu Hirasawa.

Three scientists at the Foundation for Psychiatric Research fail to secure a device they've invented, the D.C. Mini, which allows people to record and watch their dreams. A thief uses the device to enter people's minds, when awake, and distract them with their own dreams and those of others. Chaos ensues. The trio - Chiba, Tokita, and Shima - assisted by a police inspector and by a sprite named Paprika must try to identify the thief as they ward off the thief's attacks on their own psyches. Dreams, reality, and the movies merge, while characters question the limits of science and the wisdom of Big Brother.

Paprika has gorgeous animation throughout, especially the dream sequences that manages to capture the childlike, helter-skelter chaos and curiosity of the human mind. The dreams in the movie burst with creative and unique visuals that make them incredible spectacles to watch. The story very smoothly weaves from sci-fi thriller, detective story, examinations of technology, and the nature of reality. 

Film Review - World Animation: Mary and Max (2009)

"Mary and Max" is a 2009 Australian clay-animated black comedy-drama film written and directed by Adam Elliot and produced by Melanie Coombs. The voice cast included Philip Seymour Hoffman, Toni Collette, Eric Bana, Bethany Whitmore, with narration by Barry Humphries.

Adam Elliot is an independent Australian stop-motion animation writer and director based in Melbourne, Australia. His five films have collectively participated in over six-hundred film festivals and have received over one hundred awards, including an Oscar for "Harvie Krumpet".

Spanning 20 years and two continents, "Mary and Max" tells of a pen-pal relationship between two very different people: Mary Dinkle, a chubby, lonely eight-year-old living in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia; and Max Horovitz, a severely obese, 44-year-old Jewish man with Asperger's Syndrome living in the chaos of New York City. As "Mary and Max" chronicles Mary's trip from adolescence to adulthood, and Max's passage from middle to old age, it explores a bond that survives much more than the average friendship's ups-and-downs.

A very funny yet bitter sweet clay animation by Adam Elliot who tells the stories of two very misunderstood characters in a unique way. The attention to detail is incredibly well done especially for Max's bleak environment in New York by presenting it in greyscale. The narrative presents the ideal about how our expectations and realities of someone or something never match up perfectly.