The best childbirth scene of all time??? Not that I was counting??
I loved how this film gave just as much focus to the little things in life as it does to the big things - A pen running out of ink or kumquats for breakfast are given just as much emphasis as falling in love, falling out of love, triumphs and tragedies, or yes, having a baby. While we remember our milestones, it’s the quiet insignificant filler in between…
If you stare in the abyss for long enough sometimes the abyss won’t fuckin’ shut up
I really wish this had left more open to interpretation. It flips back and forth between intriguing cryptic scenes and painful debriefs where characters immediately answer any lingering questions.
It wears its influences on its sleeve, so while the imagery is often compelling, it never goes deeper than a grab-bag of popular horror cliches from the past 30 years.
Oh to look as baller as Adrian Brody does sucking down half a million cigarettes.
The blending of the supernatural wonder with the low-stakes mundanity is Totoro’s biggest strength.
I used to struggle with the plot being so relaxed, but now I love how the long stretches of nothing emphasise a world where magic is real, but it’s not a big deal. A haunted house or a forest spirit are no more unexpected than a rainy day or a stray cat wandering into your garden. Life goes on.
What little conflict there is gets solved almost immediately, and yet there is still magic to be found in day-to-day life.
I grew up quietly dreaming of maybe moving to a new place one day with no plan and immediately get offered a room above a quirky bakery or something.
When I was 21 I moved to Auckland and lived above a dairy. But I wasn’t as strong as Kiki and moved back home after a while - maybe this was my version of losing my witch powers.
I will remember how to fly again soon.
Fiennes! Tucci! Lithgow! The true holy trinity! This is the most interesting the church has been in 2000 years!
Utterly compelling from beginning to end, and uses the vehicle of cardinal politics to illustrate universal human struggles and reveal the sobering knowledge of good and evil.
When people praise The Wild Robot, I feel like Flow is the movie they’re pretending it is.
I could say the same for that Stray video game from a few years ago, where the promising concept of playing as a cat was drowned out by cyberpunk window dressing.
Flow proves you can tell a complex, heartbreaking and spiritual story where the animals are simply behaving as animals do, without the immersion breaking celebrity voices or a grandiose sci-fi premise to beef it up. I feel like I have been wanting to see this movie for years.
We love the Cheshire Cat, but the designs for the little oyster family (with the pearl for the Granny’s nose and the shells being beds and bonnets 😍) are still some of the more creatively unique examples of anthropomorphic character designs from the last century.
I’m surprised this isn’t just how you draw cartoon oysters now. We don’t shut up about white rabbits or looking glass metaphors, but nobody is intertextually referencing these adorable oysters. The problem is there’s not enough demand for family comedies about oysters. Until now.