Watch Idiots and Angels For Free

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

It's always an amazing and thrilling experience to come across art that hits you with its' depth.I tried to watch the film when I was tired and looking to have something on as I slept, and something wouldn't allow me to. I'm glad I waited until I was awake and alert the next day to see this.I've always believed that great work can't easily fit into a genre, and this is one of them.I highly recommend for those that don't seek explosions and loud noises as entertainment, but something that captures the attention.The story is crazy. So much is being said that it's almost overwhelming.Well done.

I always liked the work of the animator Bill Plympton. His shorts (And his movies as well) are not only funny and imaginative (In a very twisted way) but also beautiful to look at: In all his works, Plympton manages to turn the most ordinary things from life into something unpredictable and fascinating, and "Idiots and Angels" isn't the exception.While the premise of this film (A selfish and abusive man who grows a pair of wings that forces him to be nice against his will) seems like some sort of moral fable, it is actually much more than that: As always Bill Plympton avoid any kind of clichés or forced messages, instead of that, he exploits all the strangeness that the plot could have. And that's why the film works so well: It's bizarre, twisted and filled with lots of dark comedy…But it is also immensely enjoyable, being able to exploit all the craziness and impossible situations that only could be done in the animated medium.Even when "Idiots and Angels" isn't my favorite film from Bill Plympton, it is still a pretty good film, with great animation and music, interesting characters and many impressive scenes. I highly recommend it, especially to those viewers who like strange and surreal films.9/10

While I have long enjoyed Bill Plympton's short films, I have been left cold by his features. That is until Idiots and Angels came along.The movie is completely free of dialogue and this combined with Bill Plympton's trademark surreal images gives the movie hypnotic quality. I have to say, after all the fuss that was made about the first 30 minutes of the mediocre Wall-E, you would think an animated movie that is without any dialogue at would be declared the greatest thing since sliced bread by the movie going public. Who knows? That may happen, but I doubt it.I'm pretty sure this movie is only playing festivals right now, but, if you have a chance to check it out I highly recommend that you do so.

In the unit on Self in the Intro Philosophy course that I teach, we talk about the difficulties of imagining the cognition of lesser species, because all animals besides humans don't think in words. This is loosely analogous to seeing a Bill Plympton film, devoid of dialogue as all his works are. For the first 20 minutes, I am enthralled, but by a half an hour in, the continually morphing figures and the animated viscera blur into a soupy blend it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain focus on. I spend the last half of the film slipping in and out of consciousness, enjoying what I see and not all that fussed about missing out on the continuity, because what there is tying the various scenes together is almost entirely subjective anyway.In a way, Plympton's works are immensely impressive, giving one an effect akin to witnessing a 90-minute Salvador Dali painting continually in flux before your eyes. The man undoubtedly has a fertile imagination. Limiting yourself to images only, how do you even plan out a storyline? Does he write out the stories in words and then draw pictures to match the ideas? Or does he just block them out in image-form only? Does he say to himself: "Ok, then the guy morphs into an ant and the ant envisions himself dancing with the lady in the bar, and then the bar turns into a skip being tossed about on the ocean, and then we pan back and we see that the ocean is just inside the man's head"? Or does he just draw it without any explanation and see where it takes him? Perhaps, though, to paraphrase Kierkegaard (or was it Dick Van Patten?), "to define him is to negate him". Just enjoy the visuals - it's a fun ride.