Natch'.

This is a unique, first-rate Military Satire, the best Military comedy since Buffalo Soldiers.

That's a brilliant extension of the effect which is seen in Cunningham's Law.

Fan387, here's a live-action movie you might want to track down, as it moodily explores the same feelings of romantic separation as the wonderful 5 Centimeters Per Second:

The Thai film What Time Is It There?

Here's a movie with the ambition to really go all the way with that concept, but not enough talent to pull it off:

He Said, She Said (1991). At the movie's halfway mark the narrative starts over and tells the story from the opposite perspective.

That could be Number One, son! (Nudge nudge, wink wink.)

Here are some films I'll recommend, which I haven't seen mentioned yet:

Death In Venice, Anomalisa, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, The Illusionist (I'm talking about the animated film), The Florida Project, Babe: Pig in the City, Last Year at Marienbad, A Night in Casablanca, Room Service, A Room with a View, and John Huston's atmospheric The Night of the Iguana.

I always liked the joke that a Hallmark movie just needs to be good enough to listen to while folding clothes.

bejeweled_sky: Here's something you might find useful, an example of masterful direction outside of films:

Genndy Tartakovsky's animated series Primal.

There is something in the history of "Film Language" known as Pure Cinema, the original visual language intuited and codified in Silent Movies, which had to portray all of their emotional and narrative intentions without words.

Writer-Director Tartakovsky wanted to do this in an animated series, which would be set in a world before spoken language, but which still found a way to illustrate all the big universal feelings (and thoughts) at the wellspring of sentience: Fear, repulsion, longing/desire, love, hatred, joy, hunger, loyalty, wonder, satiation, hope/hopelessness, puzzlement, fatigue, inspiration, etc. etc.

So he set his story in a fantasy prehistoric world with a proto-human as the protagonist (hence the double meaning of the title, Primal). It's very impressive; and the "simplified"/artistically-heightened facial expressions might be useful for your clients.

One of the finest adaptations of a good slim novel I've ever seen was Bill Condon's version of Christopher Bram's book Gods and Monsters (Father of Frankenstein).

Instead of making smart (but major) artistic changes to achieve the same themes/meanings as the source material, as many amazing adaptations have done, Gods and Monsters tried to duplicate the literary material beat for beat, with no bowdlerization, elisions, combining of characters, changes or removal of major scenes, etc. --while also finding a classical visual language which matched the novel's straightforward prose. It's really impressive (--as well as being a movie which, early on, showed that Brendan Fraser was a terrific dramatic actor, playing opposite the world-class Ian McKellen).

Does this image look familiar?

https://sunsetgun.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cb7469e202a2eed9bec7200d-800wi

I'm the person who, over 18 years ago, originally came up with the alternate theory of the film arguing that the creatures in the narrative were actually demons instead of aliens.

I wrote this for The AV Club, but someone made a Reddit re-post of it which got thousands of hits --which is how Reddit first came to my attention, prompting me to sign-up here. Since I originally wrote this, it's been quoted and re-posted in publications around the world many hundreds of times --and I still stand by the analysis (if not my shabby writing):

HERE'S WHAT I ORIGINALLY WROTE:

Let’s skip the M. Night hatred for a moment. I, too, think he’s become something of a joke. But he has made a number of worthwhile movies, and this is one I initially couldn’t stand, thinking it was full of ridiculous plot-holes. And then…EUREKA!

When I first saw this film, I didn’t realize that it wasn’t about aliens at all. It’s about the return of demons.

Notice it’s all about a priest’s resurgence of belief, and a preordained moment of redemption-if-dared-and-attempted. There is no alien technology or weaponry or clothing of any kind, only a clawed, naked beast-creature and lights in the sky (which are just like Biblical images of Heavenly Lights).

Furthermore: The running joke throughout the movie is that people see these “invaders” in a way that’s related to their particular frame of mind: The cop sees them as prankster kids, the bookstore owners see them as “a hoax to sell commercials,” the Army Recruitment Officer sees them as invading military, the kids see them as UFOs…and the priest sees them as test of faith.

This understanding of the film removed my hatred of the “You’ve got to be kidding me, they were killed by WATER!” concept. In fact, the priest’s daughter had been referred to as “holy” (as revealed during Mel’s key monologue) –-recognized, he stated, by all who saw her at her birth as “an Angel.” And her quite particular relationship to water is shown to be very special and spiritual: In other words, she has placed vials of what are, essentially, HOLY WATER all around the house. (And the creature’s reaction when coming in contact with this blessed liquid is exactly like monsters/vampires being splashed by spiritual “acid.”)

This view of the movie also explains the creature’s actions: They act like superior tricksters, are not able to break in through closed doors, can be trapped behind simple wooden latches –all mythological elements of demons and vampire-like creatures of lore. It also (and this is most crucial "proof") explains the news over the radio at the end of the movie that an ancient method of killing the creatures has been found “in three small cities in the Middle East” –-which one would suspect are likely the religious “hubs” of the three main Abrahamic traditions, each discovering the “mystic methods” of protection-and-dispatch that I’ve noted earlier.

Note also: All the Christian iconography throughout the movie, the references to “Signs and Wonders” (the true meaning of the title), the crucifix shapes hinted-at everywhere (check out the overhead shot, looking down on the street driving into town) and the ultimate fact that the entire movie is built around a Priest rediscovering he is not abandoned to a random, Godless, scientifically-oriented Universe but, rather, is part of a predicted and dreamed-of plan.

Now, these creatures may for all intents and purposes be some sort of extraterrestrial or inter-dimensional “aliens.” But the point of the movie seems to be that they are, in the ACTUALITY OF THE FILM'S WORLD, the dark stuff from which all the character’s tales of devils and night-creatures were born.

This already happened. Twice. Damon starred in Eastwood's film Invictus and co-starred in his film Hereafter.

Here's something famous for doing just that:

Robert Altman's neo-noir film The Long Goodbye.

Every single piece of music in the entire film (except for the End Titles' Music, which features a satiric use of Hooray for Hollywood) is a variation of the same piece of music: "The Long Goodbye" --composed by John Williams! (It's one of his most unique scores.)

But the thing is, each time it's heard (mostly diegetically) it's re-composed for an entirely different genre, in a way which is in tune with the scene: There's a Blue's Version, a Piano Bar Version, a Jazz version, a Mariachi Band version, composed as music for a Funeral procession; it's hummed by a thug, heard as Muzak in a grocery story, and used in many other ways. The opening notes of its melody are even used as the doorbell chime at the home of the movie's femme fatale.

#Styscraper.

I'll cite the Coen Brothers' True Grit --which uses the 1888 hymn "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" as Mattie Ross's theme; and over a quarter of the film's original score draws from this hymn (often almost erupting into the melody, only to pull back), which makes its final use in the film more grandly spiritual and elegiac and satisfying.

Here's a quote I've found different ways to use many times:

"Kids are starving in India and you're walking around with a sombrero full of peanuts."

Here's something different:

The massive Chief Bromden pulling the heavy drinking fountain off its foundation and throwing it through the reinforced windows so he can escape at the end of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.

There's a fantastic, creepy, gruesome scene in David Lynch's Dune, featuring Baron Harkonnen getting doctor's treatments to keep his grotesque skin diseases flowering.

And one of the bigger side-stories in Terry Gilliam's Brazil has "Mrs. Lowry" undergoing perpetual plastic surgery:

ONE SUCH SCENE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zYREwD9e6U

Here's something original, great, charming, funny, exuberant: Breaking Away.

"I know you are, but what am DIE!"

I loved that show. (It was cool to see that Kurt Russell's son had so much talent.)

This sort of beautiful competency in the face of disaster is the soul reason that Sully was made.

"More proof of the Jewish Cabal!!" --Marjorie Taylor Greene

In L.A. Confidential, Guy Pearce/Ed Exley and Russell Crowe/Bud White go along with the lie (at a Press Conference) that James Cromwell/Captain Smith was a hero, rather than a criminal. So rather than bringing down the entire Police Force, they prop it up in the hope that some good can still be achieved.