Every so often, a film comes along that's so fresh and distinctive, your immediate impulse is to stand up and applaud it. This indie anime by director Kenji Iwaisawa, adapted from Hiroyuki Ohashi's cult manga, gets the year off to a terrific start.
A magical realist paean to the mind-altering powers of music, "On-Gaku: Our Sound" feels like an instant classic. To call it the best high school band movie since Nobuhiro Yamashita's "Linda Linda Linda" (2005) may be faint praise, but it's that as well.
With deadpan humor and a laconic style reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch, it follows the exploits of a trio of misfits who find their calling as outsider musicians. Their leader, Kenji (voiced by former Yura Yura Teikoku frontman Shintaro Sakamoto), looks more like a construction worker than a student, with his shaved head, scraggy moustache and perpetually blank expression.