BEST OF THE NORTHWEST ANIMATION FESTIVAL Eat the butterfly. EAT IT
  • BEST OF THE NORTHWEST ANIMATION FESTIVAL Eat the butterfly. EAT IT

We're in that weird space where Hollywood's cold, calculated blockbusters have petered out and Hollywood's cold, calculated Oscar bait has yet to show up. Theaters abhor a vacuum.

Vince Mancini on The Identical:

The sudden synergy between commercial Christianity and Hollywood materialism has gotten weird. I wandered into a press screening for The Identical knowing next to nothing about it, which turned out to be a bit like taking mushrooms and wandering into a clown college audition.

How should I prepare you for this experience? Basically, imagine if Tommy Wiseau from The Room was an evangelical Elvis impersonator who made a batshit, royalty-free vanity biopic about a Christian not-Elvis starring himself. As twins.

Wm. Steven Humphrey on The Last of Robin Hood:

Things were decidedly easier for Hollywood statutory rapists in the Golden Age of film.

Courtney Ferguson on the Best of the Northwest Animation Festival:

There are obvious audience favorites culled from 2014's full Northwest Animation Festival, which took place in May. There's Péter Vácz's Rabbit and Deer, for example, about best friends whose bond is strained by Deer's fascination with discovering the secrets of the third dimension. (It's kinda like the episode of The Simpsons where Homer gets the third-dimension treatment, only 1,137 times more adorable.) Or French entry Premier Automne, a fairy tale about a child of winter who meets his summer counterpart. It's creepy and beautiful in equal measure.

We've got more reviews, as ever, in Film Shorts (including Denis C. Theriault's take on Dark Dungeons, a 40-minute-long film inspired by the panicked Chick Tract about Dungeons & Dragons). And here are your Movie Times. You have but a short time left in this world; choose wisely.

I leave you with a quote from one of our greatest living filmmakers.

“Just ten days ago I acted in a tiny cameo part in a TV show called, uh, Parks and Recreation?” The audience laughed and cheered, and he went on to explain how he’s playing “an elderly guy who sells his decrepit house to the young couple who are the leading characters in this, and directly to the camera, I address the audience and I say, ‘You know, I lived in this home for 47 years. And I decided to move out now and sell this because I’m moving to Orlando, Florida, to be close to Disney World.’ I’ve never seen the show, but I hope they kept some of it.” —Werner Herzog