When you’re choosing what movies to see this weekend, don’t shrug your shoulders and say, “whatever works.” Take a tip from us and hit the Landmark Sunshine for the stop-motion animated oddity $9.99, which is like those old Davey and Goliath cartoons with a blood-splattered edge. Then head on over to Film Forum for the autobiography-by-proxy doc The Windmill Movie, in which director Alexander Olch completes the half-finished life story of his mentor, Richard P. Rodgers. It wouldn’t kill you to then check out the 1947 British noir Brighton Rock (above), featuring Richard Attenborough as Pinkie Brown, a psychopath to end ‘em all—and a supposed influence on Johnny Rotten. Anarchy!

Yes, it’s actually called that—$9.99—but you’re going to pay $12 at 92YTribeca tonight and happily. Here’s why. First of all, who doesn’t love stop-motion animation? Seriously. You can keep your computerized Pixar rats and whatever. Clay, people. It’s what dreams are made of. Also, $9.99 is a serious drama about human foible and mortality. So while you’re oohing and ahhing at the craft, you also get a little goose—hello!—that perks you up and says: Let’s be adults. Not a real goose, mind you. It’s animation so I should clarify. Finally, director Tatia Rosenthal will speak afterward. You can ask her about your own foibles. It’s a bring-your-own-foibles event.

How much money would you reckon knowing the meaning of life is worth? We asked popular Israeli novelist Etgar Keret about $9.99—a film based on his stories and shot in stop-motion—to talk about that and other aspects of the deceptively complex animated movie that he made with director Tatia Rosenthal (we review it here). It’s the story of a group of residents in a Sydney apartment building, all looking for meaning in their everyday lives.

I used to live in a Sydney apartment building like the one in the film, but it didn’t seem a likely place to find the meaning of life.
[Laughs] No. It doesn’t seem the most likely place where you would find the budget for a screenplay written by two Israeli short-story writers. But you find things where you find them, and not necessarily where you start looking for them.

Quite so. Do you find city apartment buildings to be, in general, good spots to find stories?
You know, I think it’s not the apartment building, but people together in close proximity that always makes for good stories. In a plane or Club Med or an apartment building. I think for me the fact that it’s specifically an apartment building is less of interest. Just the fact that these people lived so close together but lived lives that were totally different.

How much would you pay, personally, to find out the meaning of life? In American dollars, please.
Well, as much as I can afford. Which isn’t much.

Read the rest of the interview after the break.

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