Kaufman has created a very smart movie, and I ended up liking it for what it was. It is not a heartwarming romp. It is a dense, sneaky movie about narcissism, cruelty, and Lisa's own shy resilience.

| Feb 9, 2021

Anomalisa is fascinating, and I cannot say I was ever bored by anything that Kaufman and Johnson were choosing to show me.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 16, 2016

By the time Michael and Lisa are up in that hotel room, trying so heroically to say the right thing, the picture has transcended its gimmicks.

| Apr 27, 2016

I've seen it thrice. It has not palled.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 14, 2016

There's something magical about the malaise which raises this above mere misanthropy - a heightened sense of fragile life that perhaps only puppets could hope to achieve.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 13, 2016

Though fellow fatalists Woody Allen (when in Dostoevskian mode) and Todd Solondz occupy similar territory, the arrival of Kaufman's stop-motion drama Anomalisa reiterates the uniqueness of [Kaufman's] surreally skewed metaphysical inquiries.

| Mar 11, 2016

From the brilliant mind of Charlie Kaufman comes the best film about hotel-related boredom since Lost in Translation. But with puppets.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 11, 2016

Anomalisa is a reminder that animation can do much more than provide high jinks for a family audience. This is a surprisingly dark film, but it is a lyrical and insightful one. It delves into areas that even the frankest live-action dramas shy away from.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 10, 2016

Exquisitely sad, strange, and achingly humane ...

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 10, 2016

Even in its apparently throwaway opening gag, Anomalisa has human existence covered.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 10, 2016

No one would start a punch-up if they said that the screenwriter Charlie Kaufman is the most original voice to emerge in US cinema since David Lynch.

| Mar 10, 2016

It's experiencing this film that matters, and experiencing how remarkably affecting it is, and experiencing the thrum that won't leave you be.

| Mar 10, 2016

Kaufman and Johnson's puppets are quaint yet spooky, rudimentary yet lifelike.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 10, 2016

Intricately, brilliantly, tragically solipsistic.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 10, 2016

The hell of other people fuses with the hell of loneliness in this strange miniature masterpiece from Charlie Kaufman.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 10, 2016

Anomalisa has more heart, soul and pathos than 99.9 per cent of live-action movies.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 18, 2016

It's not often a film so radically different comes our way, and for the adventurous cinemagoer, Anomalisa is unhesitatingly recommended.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Feb 10, 2016

The film refuses to settle on one interpretation, instead opening up a space for larger philosophical questions.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 10, 2016

Charlie Kaufman's animated feature is one of his best films yet, a haunting fable about the illusion of love.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 29, 2016

Kaufman's script stings with uncomfortable truths, but doesn't do much else. Kaufman's medium has changed but his message is still the same.

| Original Score: C+ | Jan 22, 2016