Excellent, Without a doubt!!

As Good As It Gets

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

For fans of Frank Herbert's "Dune," Aeon Flux (to a degree), "Across the Universe" (the musical, and up to the part it started to drag), and "Triplets of Belleville," I recommend this movie.It takes place in a netherworld (or our world) future, 7 centuries down the line, and I thought of "Dune" in that there's a new system in place for all inhabitants.I thought of "Across the Universe" because of its use of music to disjointedly establish the events leading up to the climax. Next, I was reminded of "Triplets of Belleville" because of its use of visuals (sans sound) to construct the mood of the scene. There is some Aeon Flux-ish stuff in there, but not too much; Aeon Flux fans are warned. Just some scenes for you to remember those late nights watching MTV to catch an episode before the hour was run out.In all, I believe this movie was such a fantastic artistic feat, I am not sure whether calling it an "LGBT movie" does it any justice. Rather, I found it was a very ambitious animated movie project that worked very well.

Spoilers in this entire review! I was browsing Netflix when I came across this film unexpectedly and thought it looked interesting. After reading a review, and seriously, seeing the really weird animation for the cover, I figured I'd give it a try. Maybe even if it was just a trippy movie to laugh at, it was something to watch.I didn't realize that the two main characters being gay was anything notable. Big deal; it certainly doesn't help or hurt the story and in no way makes it more compelling, get over yourself about that.Now, what I personally found very hard to get over was the animation. The backgrounds and what appears to be CGI were done very well, but the main characters look downright awful. They remind me of someone who has just learned about Illustrator and is going to great lengths to look like they have talent, but ends up with weirdly proportioned and cheesy characters. Animation is such a beautiful art form and can express so much, oftentimes more than live action. This film made me depressed to have to watch it, just for the art style and animation of the main characters. I love animation, and this is not the cream of the crop.As to the sci-fi aspect, yea, it's technically sci-fi what with the A.I. and spaceships and living on the moons of Jupiter. I get that, but nothing else really made it sci-fi, it wasn't included in a meaningful way to the story line except to be a stage for the characters to play on.(Yes, even more spoilers here too) Now, down to the nitty gritty. I love sci-fi, I love animation, and who doesn't love a love story? This one is dull, uneventful, sometimes hard to follow, and certainly doesn't make me ache for the two main characters to get back together.The movie was actually just barely "ok", up until the point where the flimsy rescue is formed and put into motion. Things started to unravel at this point and I think the writers lost their way. They lost my suspension of disbelief here several times. From the way they break in and break the clone, to finding the lab and breaking in there (why again didn't they just go straight to the lab?), all really made for a bad ending and oh, the cliché! Left and right it was the same old recycled clichés about "Boo hoo, my girlfriend was taken by an evil music exec, and they don't let me see her,! Damn! She was the best thing that ever happened to me! I'm just a poor rich kid that wants to play her music and eat her cake too, if you know what I mean. *winky*" Yes, get ready for plenty of girl on girl action. It's almost like the creator thought the only way to keep an audience involved was getting some more lesbian stuff in there. Mind you, this is not explicit at all, just some suggestive hands and bellies exposed, but almost every scene with the two main characters has some girl stuff going on. Puhhhhlease, who wrote this? A 14-year-old boy? It can't be a great movie and NOT have girl action every 4 minutes, right? It gets to the point of almost depending on the lesbian theme just to fill time and make it full length. (Sidenote: which reminds me reading somewhere that the director was using high school students to draw and animate this movie? Well, I'm sure the kids had no problem with some PDA and a dash of T&A!) Overall, not that great of a movie. If you can get past the visual experience, the storyline is just not compelling or unique. There is a lot of great animation out there WITH great story telling. If this was the directors first step into movie making while they were in film school, I would say it was a pretty good first try at it, but this was not good enough to be taken seriously.

A daringly innovative trip into sci-fi awesomeness, Strange Frame: Love and Sax truly is a diamond in the rough. From its jazz infused soundtrack to Claudia Black's spellbinding voice, the film is an audiovisual "galvanizer." And if Black's soothing narration doesn't make your heart skip a beat, maybe voice acting vets Tara Strong and Cree Summer can do the trick! I would be doing the film injustice by saying its cast is made up of simple stars. Stars? These guys are Solar System titans of Ganymedian proportion! Two words. Tim. Curry. that is all... The visual style is so eye-catching and unique, that it can only be described as an intergalactic fever-dream. Although the story could be seen as pretty standard sci-fi fare, the film's overall ambition and vigorous creativity ultimately shine through, giving a breath of fresh air to a much-beloved genre that (as of late) has unfortunately plummeted to the nether regions of "same ol' same ol'" I am amazed by and thankful for the film's use of LGBT themes, which are neither played for laughs nor jammed down our throats with pseudo- respect and sympathy. Strange Frame is not a gay love story, but a love story (and that's how gay love stories are done right!) It is also refreshing to see such themes reflected in not only a sci-fi film but an animated film. The soundtrack transcends mere praise. From classics like Pink Floyd (and the masterpiece that is "the gunner's dream") to (at least for me) new-found gems like Shelley Doty (what an artist!) the music in Strange Frame will resound in your mind long after the credits have rolled. If you're a fan of sci-fi and animation do yourself a favor and check this film out...just pop the corn, lay back and hold on to the dream! ;)

the context of this story was good. it was about a type of everyday life about two lovers. it was a good way for gay people to express themselves and i hope they feel more open to show the way they are. in this movie, the contour lines are amazing. the 3d shapes were really organized and looked so real. most of the characters in the movie was non-representational because the characters were odd looking. only a few were actually representational but it was pretty cool to see the way people will probably look in the future. i really enjoyed the colors, especially the bright colors of the girls hair-Naia's girlfriend. the iconography of the video was easily seen for me because i knew it was about the future and how the world will be and look.