Strange Frame: Love & Sax (2012) Reviews

• A strange that draws you into it.

  venusmoon1242012-09-06

  From the opening to the close I found myself in the constant motion of this film. Each detail compelled me to want more. Strange Frame is twisted and foreign yet the film maker calls me home. We have no earth but we have taken all the familiar virtues and evils with us to a new world. With unlikely heroes,gay, crippled, broken, addicted, colored and colorful I am totally under the spell of it. Abandon your prejudices and Strange Frame makes it easy as it weaves a cloth of seduction in your mind. It is a different way for the hero to get the girl. See it and come away humming the soundtrack. And by the way, that soundtrack is a cross between down home blues and sultry jazz clues. I cannot wait to own this film in my personal collection.

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• Disillusioned

  alec-m-robinson2013-11-11

  I have to question whether the film that I just watched is the same one that other reviewers here are labelling "visionary", "groundbreaking" and "unique". I like a lot of strange and unusual films, but there was just nothing terribly compelling to be found here. While I admire the film for it's same-sex love story and the director's attempt to employ young people domestically in its production, claims of delivering "a dreamlike tale unlike anything you've ever seen" quickly fall flat. The story rife with clichés, from the rich-kid-run-away protagonist, to her under-class rebel love interest, dystopian future setting, and the downward spiral into the world of rock-and-roll, sex, drugs, exploitation, and broken dreams. I wouldn't call the imagery anything groundbreaking. It was all reminiscent of Wizards and Heavy Metal, with lengthy, brightly coloured drug-trip sequences. I might have enjoyed it more had there been any attempt to evolve beyond the clichés... But there was nothing innovative to be found here. Vapid, one-dimensional characters and plot chug along in perfectly predictable fashion until the film's stereotypically cheesy "generic art film fade-to-black with indeterminate character fate"(TM) conclusion. Overall it can be summed up as a trippy stoner art film with sci-fi overtones. No new ground is broken here. Nothing new or innovative is explored or attempted. The characters and plot are all tired and generic. All the themes and storytelling in this film have been done before, and done better.

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• Spoilers

  csilvern122014-01-09

  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.

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• It's great to see a fresh story, style, and approach being produced for an adult audience!

  GraydenLaing2012-11-23

  I got a chance to see Strange Frame at the Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema (www.wfac.ca). It's a visionary forerunner of what promises to be a new era of animated features being produced and directed by auteur filmmakers. Through clever use of resources and locally trained Hawaiian talent G.B. Hajim was able to produce, craft, and complete a unique story that never would have made it to movie theatres or television screens even five years ago. Aside from being ground breaking though... there are gorgeous visuals and the voice talent is second to none. The story also has some sweet subversive twists, but it's also designed to be enjoyable - which is a relief from all the weighty animated features being produced for adults in the West. Don't get me wrong, I love those weighty animated features, it's just nice to see a fresh story, style, and approach being produced for an adult audience. Here's hoping we see more from G.B. Hajim and his team. Also, If you get a chance, I highly recommend you watch this film on the big screen with a proper surround sound setup. Because.... Gary Rizzo worked on the audio mix. You might remember him from his work such small films as... Titanic, Tron: Legacy, The Dark Knight Rises... and so on ;)

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• A future cult classic.

  zetes2014-02-17

  This trippy animated feature brings to mind stuff like Fantastic Planet and Heavy Metal, and I imagine lots of drugs will be done while watching it. I don't partake, but I enjoyed the mindbendingness unaltered plenty. The animation style is simple but beautiful. It's pretty difficult to describe, but the trailer can be watched on IMDb or Youtube. It's a lesbian love story between a saxophonist and a singer/guitar player who live on the moons of Jupiter in the 28th Century. The singer, Naia, is targeted by evil record producers, and her lover, Parker, is left out in the cold trying to figure out how to win her love back. The story isn't entirely coherent, but no matter. It's a rich visual and aural experience that left me breathless. It streams on Netflix and is highly recommended.

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