Strange Frame
Strange Frame
NR | 01 March 2013 (USA)
Strange Frame Trailers

28th century, 200 years after the Great Earth Exodus. Naia, a feisty, young singer/songwriter, falls in love with the beautiful saxophonist Parker in Ganymede, one of Jupiter's moons. The two form a band - and now they have to not only make it as musicians but also to fight for their freedom. Dramatically rendered in rich, hand drawn animation, Strange Frame brings us into a world of space pirates, indentured slaves and genetic mutations - infused with music throughout, to create a dreamlike tale unlike anything you've ever seen.

Reviews
deborah-global

Looking for something more artistic, interesting, and unique? This film's focus on an alternate universe where a black lesbian can be the star of a film got me interested in checking out other science fiction The drama is compelling, the animation is original and creative, the music is wonderful, and the voices will draw you in. As others have noticed, it's got quite the stellar cast of voices! If you're looking for your normal high-budget action/adventure film with automatic graphics and white male heroes, don't worry, I'm sure there's a film or two around where you're still the lead. If you want a lively and innovative science fiction/fantasy film, try this one on for a change!

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wondernat

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.

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Charles Herold (cherold)

Years ago I used to occasionally read a sci-fi comics magazine called Heavy Metal, which for all I know still exists. It was full of perplexing, often pointless narratives told somewhat incoherently, and was notable mainly for its weird art and fondness for sexy girls.Strange Frame reminds me of that. True, the sexy girls are seen from a lesbian view rather than the straight guy view of most of Heavy Metal, but sexy girls are sexy girls.Besides Heavy Metal, the movie reminds me of East Village indie magazines from the 80s and fan fiction. For me, the movie felt amateurish and slack. The animation did nothing for me. But it reminds me of other things people like that I don't like, so if you like East Village underground art, Heavy Metal, or bad fan fiction, you might love this. I did not.

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csilvern12

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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