Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
A young man arrives at the last hometown of painter Vincent van Gogh to deliver the troubled artist's final letter and ends up investigating his final days there.
Loving Vincent earns top marks for its groundbreaking cinematography and novelty: painted entirely in oil on canvas frames by over 100 artists in Van Gogh's own style, it is a genuinely singular achievement in animation history. The visual conception is one-of-a-kind and unmistakable. The plot, however, is a fairly conventional mystery-investigation that doesn't fully exploit its extraordinary visual canvas — serviceable but not exceptional. Acting is solid, particularly considering the rotoscoped performances, though the emotional range is somewhat constrained by the format. The ending resolves the mystery but lands with more ambiguity than power, feeling slightly anticlimactic given the buildup.