Street of Crocodiles (1986)

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Powerful

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The acting in this movie is really good.

This is an absolutely stunning-to-watch and well crafted animation. I was so intrigued by how it was done, I had to watch it again just to follow the story, never mind the incredible music by Tool ( song is from "10,000 Days"). This show reminded me of watching the Wizard of Oz, muted, while listening simultaneously to Pink Floyd's Dark side of the Moon. Fantastic!

This is honestly the single worst movie I have ever seen. The "brilliant" minds behind it are the hipster's Tim Burton. The level of disturbing is incomparable to even Human Centipede. The "explanation" at the end was not enough to justify the complete lack of tangible story. While I will admit the set pieces were amazing (sort of like I-Spy on meth), even that was not enough to rescue this shipwreck of a short film.In short, I despised nearly everything about this movie. It was the worst $5 I have ever spent on anything (and I've bought some dumb stuff in my day).

This visually amazing achievement in clay animation begins with a live action man closing up a lecture hall and reaching into a box in which he snips the string holding a scrawny, almost skeletal puppet. Unconstrained, the puppet cautiously wanders the darkened rooms in the world of the box. The dismal vibes and infectious musical score suggest a tone of seclusion and senselessness, constraining us into direct empathy with the puppet as he deals with a domain of his reality, which is full of simple machines and mechanisms and man-made amusements. As he seeks to conform, or is coerced, of which we are never quite sure, the film little by little bares how fruitless the environment essentially is. Soul and strength are slowly reduced to expose the phase of life as a macrocosm.The idea of a puppet being cut loose from its string inside of a box of dark rooms to wander about without aid is fascinating, but lots of people could make a movie that basically revolves around the idea of a wasteland where nothing ends, nothing concludes. It's quite easy. It's basically an excuse to trail off on a stream of consciousness. However the Quay brothers have done something organic and beautiful by telling a story with images. The understanding of cinema intrinsic in Street of Crocodiles is important and exceptionally valuable. Its concept is in truth a very deeply imagined allegory for a mind-shiftingly objective philosophical, perhaps existential, perception, taking life as a whole and putting it in the context of another impression of it, a smaller sort of spin-off of human life, causing us to rethink our existence.

Not an imitation, rather an homage to Jan Svankmajer, the Borther's Quay can be a little unsettling to the uninitiated. They are well worth the price of admission and then some. Always a rich tapestry of the imagination gone wild, this collection of short films is effective both for the heart and the head. That these brothers have not gone on to blockbuster status is either a testiment to their great artistry or a testiment to La La land's great stupidity in not scooping up the brightest minds in the business. Here is somthing new.