FLOW (Straume) is another one of those animated features I ask for sometimes, the type that respects the medium enough to do something one-of-a-kind instead of just making up some cartoon guys and grafting them onto one of the handful of available formulas. This one is from Latvia but there’s no dubbed vs. subtitled issue because (hey, kinda like ROBOT DREAMS) it has no dialogue. It’s about a cat and some other animals wandering around, they are only anthropomorphized in the sense that they eventually pick up some unlikely talents like controlling the rudder of a boat. They’re 3-D computer animated in realistic settings but their designs are a bit stylized, lo-res almost. A style that looks great on a budget.
It follows a cat who’s out in a forest when he sees a pack of dogs catching, then fighting over, a fish. He makes the short-sighted choice to take the fish and run off, so he gets chased. There is fleeing and hiding, he seems to get away, and then the dogs are charging at him… past him. Oh shit, what are they running from?
Well, it’s a deer stampede. This poor cat almost gets Mufasa’d, it’s terrifying. And what are the deer running from? Turns out to be a tsunami. It’s kind of a disaster movie, I guess – an ensemble of animals getting thrown together in a situation and trying to survive.
(read the rest of this shit…)
I checked around, and unless somebody’s lying to me it seems nobody asked for there to be a straight-to-Paramount+ prequel to 
BETTER MAN is a musical biopic of Robbie Williams that came out last week, but 
The original 2022 Danish film 
THE THICKET is a new western that played a few theaters last year and now is on Tubi (who have their name on the credits). I was aware of it because it’s based on a book by Joe R. Lansdale – I don’t know the book, but his name will usually draw my attention. That said, I’m always wary of an indie western in this day and age. Maybe I’m generalizing, but most of them I’ve come across just don’t cut it. I put this one on, though, and I immediately thought oh shit, this is a real movie.
ROBOT DREAMS is a lovely and lyrical 2023 animated film from Spain. It has no dialogue, but English signage because it’s set in New York City. It’s some time in the ‘80s and there are no humans, only animals living like humans (in apartments, wearing clothes, having jobs). Nothing too deep, just a cartooning conceit we can easily accept, with the occasional joke like when the main character Dog is reading Pet Sematary and we have to wonder what the hell that book is in this world. The animals seem to have achieved all the same things as human civilization: the Twin Towers, pizza delivery, ALF, “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire, you name it.
After seeing 
If Stephen Norrington had only ever been a special effects guy he still would’ve made a mark. He worked under Dick Smith, Rick Baker, Stan Winston and Jim Henson. He did the Grand High Witch makeup in THE WITCHES, and designed creatures for Jim Henson’s The Storyteller. He played the Gump in 
THE WILD ROBOT is this year’s feature from DreamWorks Animation, and I’m not sure I would’ve guessed that without the logo. It’s a funny movie but not a smart alecky one, not a child of SHREK. Based on a 2016 young readers book by Peter Brown (first in a trilogy), it’s a simple, sweet tale with an elegant premise: a shipment of mass-manufactured helper robots crashes in the wilderness, one of them survives, accidentally imprints on an orphaned gosling runt and, since her programming requires her to complete all tasks, she becomes convinced that she must teach the goose to swim and fly before migration time in the winter. So there’s a goal to work toward and an inevitable sadness if it’s ever achieved. Good drama. 
Unless I’m forgetting something, Clint Eastwood only has two movies that could be classified as spy movies, and both involve a mission to a mountain in the Alps. One is 
