Flight of the Stone

For those viewers tired of watching one-note films, Flight of the Stone offers an alternative: the half-note film. When a young man throws a stone at an enemy and misses, the stone--in a feat of impossible physics derring-do--sails off into a very low earth orbit, crossing over field and dessert and town, witnessing various altercations between humans around the world, and occasionally dipping (again, without explanation) to street level where it, say, knocks a baby carriage around or busts through a reader's newspaper. Less than two minutes in, I was a) bored and b) knew precisely how the film--after it finished displaying its monotonous series of visual non sequiturs--would end (hint: what goes round, comes round). Shown mostly from the stone's point of view, the filmmakers use a technique called "pixilation" (shooting one frame of film for every few steps as they walked, lending the illusion of fast movement) as they journey through Germany, France, the U.S., Thailand, Japan, Greece, and India on what is supposed to be an anti-violence sketch but looks suspiciously like one heckuva tax-deductible vacation. Not a necessary purchase. Aud: E, I, J, H, C, P. (R. Pitman)