The films of the Brothers Quay often seem less like movies in the conventional sense and more like half-remembered nightmares from the depths of the subconscious. Their films are quintessentially "not for everybody," in the same way that absinthe, fetish, and tantra aren't: You have to accept going "out there" more than a bit in order to enjoy the ride.
The Quays' latest film, "The Piano Tuner Of Earthquakes," comes over a decade after their last feature-length offering, "Institute Benjamenta"(1995). But their modus-operandi has changed little in the interim: Intricate, baroque stop-motion animation is combined with live actors inhabiting otherworldly sets, with the entire product designed to look like some old, silent-era film unearthed after gathering mold in a catacomb for a few decades.
I'll admit to being a bit of a fan of stop-motion animation. Whether it's cartoony stuff like "Wallace & Gromit" or "Corpse Bride," or darker stuff like Czech maestro Jan Svankmajer's grotesquerie, stop-motion possesses a texture, a material presence that continues to elude computer-generated images, all glossy and flat, and — particularly in the deep focus — fuzzy and indistinct. It also seems as if the daunting technical aspects of CGI have caused a brain-freeze in its animators' creative vision: So many fantasy worlds all look the same.