One is a big and brash look at some American heroes left out to dry by their government and the other is an animated take on one man's bittersweet attempt to feel like he belongs. And though they don't have a lot in common, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi and Anomalisa kind of bookend the movie business: a larger than life action movie and a smaller than life artsy fartsy "think piece." Of the two, I preferred 13 Hours, not so much because it's a better movie or a better story, but because it's a more important film, a whistleblowing on a corrupt political regime for whom the military are pawns to be used and abused. I had hoped for more from Anomalisa, being a sucker for stop motion animation, but came away wondering why they bothered making it that way; about the only thing that made stop motion necessary was an explicit sex scene the filmmakers probably couldn't have gotten away with and maintained their 14A rating using real actors.

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