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... in a movie theater in the East Village. OMG.
For many years, it's been a challenge for computer graphics people to get water looking right. This movie is largely about water, and they did an amazing job of it, while staying clearly on the "animation" side of the uncanny valley. The animation, whether water, scenery, or living characters, is lush and gorgeous.
The characters are all non-human: a house cat, several domestic dogs of various breeds, a bunch of lemurs, a bunch of secretary-birds, a capybara, etc. There's no dialogue, beyond the sorts of noises you would expect those species to produce. They aren't overly anthropomorphized: they move and behave in ways you could believe that species moving and behaving, with the exception of a few who figure out how to use a boat's rudder. The individual personalities and inter-species relationships develop plausibly, if you've seen any of the YouTube videos about bonding between actual animals of different species.
The setting is intentionally ambiguous: the fauna are a mix of South American, European, and African, the flora seem to be subtropical, and the night skies have visible aurora, which makes it subpolar. Remnants of human civilization are everywhere -- some ruins thousands of years old, other human constructions that seem to have been abandoned only months ago, but no actual humans. There's no explanation of why the humans are gone, or where they went, and that's fine: the nonhuman characters don't care about those abstract questions, only "how do I survive in the world I'm in right now?" Likewise, the flood that motivates the whole movie happens for no particular reason: when you're a house cat, things like that just happen, you don't wonder why, you just deal with it.
And there's a lot of "it" to deal with: the characters face life-threatening peril every day, mixed with existential traumas like the loss of a toy overboard, and moral crises like whether to rescue other characters whom you don't particularly like. These crises are deeply involving and moving, and you'll find yourself wincing in sympathy. Highly recommended.
Next up: "The Wild Robot", also nominated for "best animated feature". Not showing in theaters any more, so we'll have to stream it.
For many years, it's been a challenge for computer graphics people to get water looking right. This movie is largely about water, and they did an amazing job of it, while staying clearly on the "animation" side of the uncanny valley. The animation, whether water, scenery, or living characters, is lush and gorgeous.
The characters are all non-human: a house cat, several domestic dogs of various breeds, a bunch of lemurs, a bunch of secretary-birds, a capybara, etc. There's no dialogue, beyond the sorts of noises you would expect those species to produce. They aren't overly anthropomorphized: they move and behave in ways you could believe that species moving and behaving, with the exception of a few who figure out how to use a boat's rudder. The individual personalities and inter-species relationships develop plausibly, if you've seen any of the YouTube videos about bonding between actual animals of different species.
The setting is intentionally ambiguous: the fauna are a mix of South American, European, and African, the flora seem to be subtropical, and the night skies have visible aurora, which makes it subpolar. Remnants of human civilization are everywhere -- some ruins thousands of years old, other human constructions that seem to have been abandoned only months ago, but no actual humans. There's no explanation of why the humans are gone, or where they went, and that's fine: the nonhuman characters don't care about those abstract questions, only "how do I survive in the world I'm in right now?" Likewise, the flood that motivates the whole movie happens for no particular reason: when you're a house cat, things like that just happen, you don't wonder why, you just deal with it.
And there's a lot of "it" to deal with: the characters face life-threatening peril every day, mixed with existential traumas like the loss of a toy overboard, and moral crises like whether to rescue other characters whom you don't particularly like. These crises are deeply involving and moving, and you'll find yourself wincing in sympathy. Highly recommended.
Next up: "The Wild Robot", also nominated for "best animated feature". Not showing in theaters any more, so we'll have to stream it.
