Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival is now screening some of the best movies of 2015. This week I’m looking at two coming-of-age films, one set in Quebec the other in Ontario, that look at summer stories; and an unusual animated drama about celebrity and conformity.

Anomalisa
Dir: Duke Johnson and Charlie Kaufmann

Michael Stone (David Thewlis) is a minor celebrity in the world of business self-help books. He’s much loved by office staffs all across America. His specialty? customer service. He’s staying at a hotel in Cincinnati for a day to prepare for an upcoming speech he’s giving there.

But something seems not right. Everyone else (Tom Noonan) just repeats what they’ve been told: Cincinnati has a great zoo. Cincinnati makes great chile. And they all look the same too: same face, same voice. Old or young, male or female, they all talk just the same.

He begins to doubt his sanity… maybe he’s the robot, not them!.

Then, somewhere outside his hotel room door, he hears a voice, a distinctive voice, a woman’s voice. He pulls on his pants, runs out of his room, and races down the hall, knocking on every door. Until he finds what he’s looking for. It’s a woman named Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), from Akron in town to hear Michael’s speech. She’s ordinary looking, not particularly bright, but he decides, she’s the only real person left in this world. Lisa is the anomaly amongst all the conformity. Anomalisa.

Could this be true love?

What I haven’t said yet is that this is an animated film using stop-motion photography. And in fact, Michael, Lisa, and everyone else are actually dolls. Anatomically correct dolls. They get in fights, sing songs, get drunk, have realistic sex – with all the bumps and faux pas – but they’re not human. So it’s a triple conundrum: is this an animated movie about a normal middle aged guy losing it? Or are we seeing the characters as animated dolls because that’s how the main character envisions the world? Or are we all actually identical automatons?

Anomalisa is a weird and funny, if troubling, drama.

Sleeping Giant
Dir: Andrew Cividino

Adam (Jackson Martin) is a sheltered, middle-class kid who still goes to bed on time. He’s up in cottage country on Lake Superior for the summer. His parents just bought an expensive place, so everything seems to be going well. But parents don’t see everything.

Adam is 15, and still in touch with his old summer friends, mainly girls like Taylor (Katelyn McKerracher). But now he has some guy friends to tell him what’s what. Nate and Riley (Nick Serino and Reece Moffet) are a pair of cool cousins he meets out there on the road. They are staying with their grandma, with no parents around to supervise. Nate’s the aggressive fast talker, while older Riley is less volatile.

Together the two of them are slowly corrupting Adam, introducing him to the basics adult life: lying, stealing beer, getting drunk, smoking pot and badmouthing girls. They use a golf cart to rob a liquor store. But things start to go wrong when Taylor upsets the delicate “guy balance”. One of them falls in love with her, another feels stilted and a third sees her as a danger to their friendship. And looming in the background is a huge rocky cliff on a nearby uninhibited island. Legend has it, someone jumped and died there.

Based on a short film, Sleeping giant is another great coming of age story that looks at the scariness and discovery of adolescence played against the cottages and lakes of northwest Ontario.

The Demons
Wri/Dir: Philippe Lesage

Felix (Édouard Tremblay-Grenier) is your average 10 year old boy in a Quebec suburb. Bigger kids pick on him so he bullies littler kids. He spends his days at school where he forgets his pencils, at home where he hears his parents fighting, or with his friends at the outdoor swimming pool. He’s at that age between childhood and adolescence where everything is new and strange and more than a little scary. Like ghosts that can sense your fear, kidnappers who might grab you off the street, and AIDS which will infect you if you act “too gay”.

His fears are preyed on by his siblings and friends. They pile on the kind of urban myths that make you shiver. Like the girl who has cockroaches growing inside her tongue, or how chewing your hair leads to death from hair balls. But at the same time, something weird and sinister is happening all around him. Why did his Dad spend the night visiting his best friend’s mom? How come the girl he loves ignores him? And why are kids disappearing right around his neighbourhood?

Demons has a terrific ensemble cast with kids saying the stuff they won’t say in front of adults. It’s based on the director’s memories of his own childhood and it rings true. This is an unsparingly realistic look at dark shames and fears. Really good movie.

Anomalisa opens today in Toronto; check your local listings. And Sleeping Giant and The Demons are both part of Canada’s Top Ten Film Fest. Go to tiff.net for details.

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.