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    Pets Can’t Stop Watching ‘Flow,’ the Oscar-Winning Cat Movie

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    “Flow,” a dialogue-free animated Latvian film made with open-source software, is keeping our domesticated friends riveted.One night shortly before the Oscars ceremony, my boyfriend decided to catch up on “Flow,” the animated film from Latvia that would go on to win best animated feature. When I returned home from dinner, I found that the film had also captured the attention of another viewer — my dog Daisy, a corgi mix.Search on TikTok and you’ll find a number of videos of dogs and cats alike viewing “Flow” alongside their owners, appearing to recognize themselves in the gentle saga, which tells the tale of an adorable black kitty who must work with a motley crew of other industrious animals to survive rising sea levels in a surreal landscape. The trend is a particularly cute coda to what was already one of the feel-good stories of awards season in which the dialogue-free indie — made on open-source software and directed by Gints Zilbalodis — triumphed over studio fare like “Inside Out 2” and “The Wild Robot,” to earn Latvia its first ever Oscar.Watching “Flow” in the theater is a wonderfully immersive experience where the spectacle of the movie’s visuals are on full display. On a big screen, you can lose yourself in the animation, noticing the way the water ripples, succumbing to the beauty and terror of the universe this little kitty is trying to navigate. Watching “Flow” at home (it is streaming on Max) with an animal is an equally delightful experience, but a different one. You may find your attention pulled in two directions as you try to contemplate what this all means to your pet as well as what it means to you.I, for one, tried to decipher just what was going on with Daisy. Surely, she wasn’t understanding the climate change allegory, but her huge ears stood up straight as she gazed upon the heroic cat, and I caught her running up to the TV for a sequence in which it and its capybara ally go tumbling off their boat. Seeing — or perhaps just hearing — the characters in peril stressed her out on some level.

    @orionsgalaxy 10/10 would recommend ⭐️ #fyp #flow #max #animatedmovies #flowmovie #movies #cat ♬ sonido original – 𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗹 ֹ₊ Matiss Kaza, who produced and co-wrote the film, said in an email that he suspects that it’s the real animal sounds used in production that attract the attention of our domesticated friends. “We don’t commonly think of pets as a potential target audience when making films, but we are glad that ‘Flow’ has proved to be a special bonding experience between viewers and their dogs and cats.”

    @goldendudesamson He loved it! The movie is called Flow. Fully animated, such great visuals and a cute story. Does your dog watch tv? #goldenretriever #dogmom #cutedog #funnydog #goldenretrieverlife #flowmovie #movie ♬ original sound – Samson | Golden Retriever We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Like ‘Mickey 17?’ Watch These Movies About Clones Next.

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      Mickey is the latest addition to the world of expendable doppelgängers created to perform all sorts of dangerous and unpleasant tasks humans would rather not do.In “Mickey 17” (in theaters) Robert Pattinson plays a former pastry chef and an amiable dimwit who applies for a lousy, inevitably lethal job on a contaminated ice planet. As an Expendable, Mickey goes into the worst sorts of situations, dies in some horrible way — you know, for the mission — then gets cloned over and over again to take on the next awful task. At various points he’s irradiated, instructed to breathe in a deadly space virus, left for dead in a cave full of space bugs, used as a guinea pig in a series of failed experiments, and fed bad meat.In many Hollywood movies about clones, the doppelgängers are just as expendable as Mickey, created to perform all sorts of dangerous and unpleasant tasks humans would rather not do. They work on lunar mines (“Moon”) and in theme parks (the cloned assassins in “Futureworld”); they labor as super soldiers (the clone troopers of the Star Wars franchise) and organ donors (“Parts: The Clonus Horror”).Most don’t know they’re expendable, of course, and aren’t all that keen about their situations if they do. “Mickey 17” is an outlier here: an expendable who becomes one willingly, actually writing “expendable” on his job application. Eventually, however, Mickey tires of the drudgery of dying painfully day after miserable day. Who wouldn’t?Movies about these genetic sad sacks run the gamut of genres, from horror and sci-fi to action films and dramedies. Filmmakers use clones to ponder questions about fate and free will and what it means to be human; various films have examined such disparate topics as the nature of sentience (“Blade Runner”); U.S. race relations (“They Cloned Tyrone”); and the very ethics of cloning itself (“Never Let Me Go”). Here are five notables from an admittedly fringe genre.The Island (2005)Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson in “The Island.”Doug Hyun/DreamworksWhere to watch: Stream “The Island” on Pluto TV.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Mickey 17’ and the Long Line of Movie Clones

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      Mickey is the latest addition to the world of expendable doppelgängers created to perform all sorts of dangerous and unpleasant tasks humans would rather not do.In “Mickey 17” (in theaters) Robert Pattinson plays a former pastry chef and an amiable dimwit who applies for a lousy, inevitably lethal job on a contaminated ice planet. As an Expendable, Mickey goes into the worst sorts of situations, dies in some horrible way — you know, for the mission — then gets cloned over and over again to take on the next awful task. At various points he’s irradiated, instructed to breathe in a deadly space virus, left for dead in a cave full of space bugs, used as a guinea pig in a series of failed experiments, and fed bad meat.In many Hollywood movies about clones, the doppelgängers are just as expendable as Mickey, created to perform all sorts of dangerous and unpleasant tasks humans would rather not do. They work on lunar mines (“Moon”) and in theme parks (the cloned assassins in “Futureworld”); they labor as super soldiers (the clone troopers of the Star Wars franchise) and organ donors (“Parts: The Clonus Horror”).Most don’t know they’re expendable, of course, and aren’t all that keen about their situations if they do. “Mickey 17” is an outlier here: an expendable who becomes one willingly, actually writing “expendable” on his job application. Eventually, however, Mickey tires of the drudgery of dying painfully day after miserable day. Who wouldn’t?Movies about these genetic sad sacks run the gamut of genres, from horror and sci-fi to action films and dramedies. Filmmakers use clones to ponder questions about fate and free will and what it means to be human; various films have examined such disparate topics as the nature of sentience (“Blade Runner”); U.S. race relations (“They Cloned Tyrone”); and the very ethics of cloning itself (“Never Let Me Go”). Here are five notables from an admittedly fringe genre.The Island (2005)Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson in “The Island.”Doug Hyun/DreamworksWhere to watch: Stream “The Island” on Pluto TV.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jonas Mekas, Master of Avant-Garde Film, Shows His Tender Side

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      Mekas’s diaristic film clips, left behind when he died, fuel a new documentary that renders an intimate portrait of a man who often trafficked in the abstract.For 70 years Jonas Mekas, widely seen as the godfather of American avant-garde film, created nearly daily visual documents that showed elements of his life.He called them “film diaries.” They were recorded on film reels and tapes that were stored in cardboard sleeves with labels like “angry dog,” “small memorabilia” and “Warhol.” Those were stacked throughout Mekas’s loft in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, organized in a way that only he fully understood.After Mekas died in 2019 at 96, a re-creation of the cluttered loft was installed on the fifth floor of an arts center in New Jersey, including the recordings and other possessions: Mekas’s old film editing equipment. A cardboard box with trimmings from the beard of his longtime friend Allen Ginsberg. A scarf he brought when fleeing his home country, Lithuania, in the 1940’s and held onto while surviving a Nazi labor camp.In the summer of 2020, the filmmaker KD Davison started sifting through those archives to create a documentary about Mekas. That film, “Fragments of Paradise,” will begin streaming on Amazon Prime Video on March 13.The documentary draws heavily from Mekas’s visual diaries, which Davison said seemed to reflect the rootlessness he experienced as a refugee during World War II and his enduring search for moments of beauty or calm.“I began to see this melancholy that I think isn’t often associated with Jonas,” she said. “It was like watching someone through the course of their life reconcile themselves with loss and begin to find freedom and joy just in the present moment.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares34 Views

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      ‘Housewife of the Year’: Contestants Look Back in Dismay

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      Ciaran Cassidy’s film revisits an Irish television show that judged stay-at-home moms on budgeting and appearance.There’s a temptation, when making a documentary about some obviously retrograde practice from the past, for filmmakers to treat their subject like something to gawk at. Can you believe how backward earlier generations were? Let’s all point and stare and wince.“Housewife of the Year” (in theaters), directed by Ciaran Cassidy, could very easily have gone in that direction. The film is about (and named after) a live, prime-time televised competition that took place from 1969 to 1995 in Ireland — and it’s pretty much what it sounds like. Women, generally married and raising a large family, were judged on qualities ranging from sense of humor and civic-mindedness to budgeting, preparing a simple meal and, of course, keeping up their appearance. All of this, the movie briefly explains via text onscreen, can be seen as an effort to prop up the social order in a deeply religious, deeply traditionalist country where it was virtually impossible for a married woman to maintain many kinds of employment. “The state shall endeavor to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home,” Article 41.2 of the Irish Constitution proclaims. The competition helped reinforce those values.As Irish society changed, especially with respect to women’s rights and reproductive freedoms, the competition eventually turned into “Homemaker of the Year,” open to all genders. But that’s not the focus of the documentary, nor is there ponderous narration explaining to us what happened. Instead, “Housewife of the Year” focuses on two main ways of telling its story. The first is archival footage from the competition, which reinforces how much of it focused on patronizing and even belittling the women as they participated, via the male host, Gay Byrne, interviewing them onstage. It’s remarkable to watch.But woven throughout are present-day interviews with many of the participants, now much older, who see things differently than they probably did back then. They tell stories of what was really going on in the background: alcoholic or deadbeat husbands, economic catastrophes, backbreaking labor. One woman, Ena, talks about having given birth to 14 children by the time she was 31, owing largely to the ban on contraception.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares47 Views

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      ‘Chaos: The Manson Murders’ Review: All You Ever Knew is Suspect

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      Errol Morris returns to his main obsessions — evil and delusion — in a new Netflix documentary about the famous murders.Two recurring inquiries — scary ones, entwined — characterize Errol Morris’s decades-long directing career, which includes landmark documentaries like “The Thin Blue Line,” “Mr. Death,” “The Fog of War” and “Standard Operating Procedure.” The first question regards the nature of evil: what it is, where it comes from, whether it’s invited into a man’s heart or chooses to takes up residence there. The other is the fine membrane between truth and fiction, which dictates how we become deluded, by others and by self, and how those delusions come to rule the world.In Morris’s more recent work, those themes are brought together most sharply in “American Dharma,” a 2019 chiller in which Morris feeds ample rope to the Trump adviser Steve Bannon to explain his vision of the world and, in so doing, expose a kind of cruelly pompous vapidity. But other contemporary works by Morris — “Separated,” about policies that tear migrant children from their parents; “The Pigeon Tunnel,” about what the spy novelist John le Carré never really revealed about himself — are also held together mostly by these questions. At their heart is some primal fear: that evil, or evil people, can control us without our even realizing it. And for Morris, this is not a religious question so much as an existential and political one.Little surprise that his latest project, the Netflix documentary “Chaos: The Manson Murders,” returns to the same arena. Based, sort of, on the hair-raising book by the journalist Tom O’Neill, the film winnows its central question to one recurring baffler: Why are we, as a culture drenched in true crime narratives, so obsessed with this particular set of murders, which occurred over 55 years ago?Most likely you know the outline of the case: Charles Manson, the failed musician and wild-eyed hippie, ordered his “family” — drug-addled runaways, mostly, who had been living with him at a ranch full of old movie sets — to carry out a series of gruesome murders on the evenings of Aug. 8 and 9, 1969. Among the victims was the actress Sharon Tate, then eight and a half months pregnant with her first child. Her husband, the director Roman Polanski, was out of town at the time.The story includes all kinds of weird spiky bits, well-documented, from accidents and coincidences (who was there that night, who wasn’t) to Manson’s connections to Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys and his worship of the Beatles to the bizarre behavior he and his acolytes exhibited during the sensationalized trial. O’Neill, in his book, goes deeper, raising the specter of various conspiracy theories about potential covert government operations that seem, with the space of time and some well-placed Freedom of Information Act requests, to at least have the potential of maybe being linked to the case.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘On Becoming a Guinea Fowl’ Review: Watchful Eyes

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      The heroine of Rungano Nyoni’s second feature keeps her cool even as she uncovers long-buried family secrets in Zambia.Shula, the watchful heroine of the quietly stirring “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl,” doesn’t seem cut out for bold gestures. She’s reserved, at times to the point of standoffishness and given to introspective silences. There’s admirable grace to her composure but also an air of practiced caution. The only really obvious thing about Shula is that she has recently returned to her comfortable, suburban family home in Zambia, and that she would clearly prefer to mind her own business. When a mystery reopens old traumas that, in turn, lead to a bruising cultural reckoning, Shula soon finds herself minding everyone else’s business, too.That discovery turns out to be the corpse of her Uncle Fred splayed on the road that Shula (the subtly magnetic newcomer Susan Chardy) is driving on one night. En route home from a party, Shula is wearing large sunglasses and a glittery silver headpiece that suggests a bedazzled ancient military helmet. She looks like a glamorous alien, which she is, in a way. When she steps out to look at the body, you see that she’s dressed in a ballooning black jumpsuit. If you inflated it, she could probably float away. Given what happens — and the mysterious girl who briefly materializes near the corpse — it’s a surprise that she doesn’t try.Rungano Nyoni, who was born in Zambia and grew up in Wales, knows how to make an entrance, and so does Shula. She’s a great character, and while her arresting introduction grabs you from the start, Shula keeps you tethered throughout. Hers is a story of discoveries both minor and monumental, one that’s flecked with troubling visions and an escalating sense of urgency. Shula keeps her cool until she doesn’t, and shortly after finding Fred’s body, she is buffeted by different forces, including her sprawling family, acquaintances and a complex patrimony that threatens to engulf her. (This is Nyoni’s second narrative feature; her first was “I Am Not a Witch,” a 2018 drama about a Zambian orphan accused of witchcraft.)Shula’s discovery of Fred’s corpse leads to a series of encounters, by turns comic and anguished, in a winding story about family secrets, cultural norms and generational trauma. It’s heavy, at times, painful, though not crushingly so. Much like her protagonist, Nyoni maintains an observant, quasi-analytic distance — the camerawork is suitably steady, calm — as the story grows more complicated and long-buried secrets are disinterred as the family arranges things. Even amid the growing emotional tumult, Shula keeps it together, which keeps the viewer at a remove. This gives you breathing and thinking space (you watch, too, and wait), but Shula’s coolness also leaves you unprepared for when she sheds her reserve.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Picture This’ Review: Five Dates Away From Love

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      Simone Ashley (“Bridgerton”) stars as Pia, a talented photographer in London navigating business pressures with her wish for independence in this vivid rom-com.Did the casting call for “Picture This” state that those without dimples needn’t apply? Most of the actors in this British rom-com — directed by Prarthana Mohan — have them. Especially the men orbiting Pia (Simone Ashley of “Bridgerton”), a talented photographer in London who is the hard-pressed business owner at the film’s center.There’s Jay (Luke Fetherston), her “gay bestie,” he says by way of an introduction, the co-owner of the 9th Mandala portrait studio; cardigan-wearing Akshay (Nikesh Patel) who works for Pia’s mother (Sindhu Vee) and Pia’s ex, Charlie (Hero Fiennes Tiffin). The former couple meet again when Charlie is included in the wedding party of Pia’s sister, Sonal (Anoushka Chadha).Written by the novelist Nikita Lalwani and based on the Australian movie “Five Blind Dates,” this twisty film finds Pia navigating her wish for independence and her business’ need for a cash infusion. Her mother promises a safety box of jewels for when she gets married, but Pia wasn’t planning on that possibility. The transactional and the traditional are wed when a jolly medium prophesies Pia will meet the love of her life in her next five dates.The title asks us to consider the film’s visuals. The palette here is vivid. Screens split — sometimes vertically, other times horizontally — all in the spirit of playfulness, while the music is a mix of international pop grooves. For all the potentially crushing challenges Pia faces — losing her business, not living out her dream of being a photographer, alienating her beloved younger sister — “Picture This,” keeps it light, never letting the sharp edges of potential failure come into focus.Picture ThisNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. Watch on Prime Video. More

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      ‘There’s Still Tomorrow’ Review: An Updated Italian Heroine

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      Set in Rome after World War I, this black-and-white feminist film directed by (and starring) Paola Cortellesi tells a nuanced story about domestic abuse.“There’s Still Tomorrow” is set in Rome after World War I, but it unfolds with timeless verve and romanticism. It’s the directorial debut of the Italian singer and comedian Paola Cortellesi, who also stars. This feminist dramedy tells a story about domestic abuse — echoing still-timely concerns about violence against women and toxic masculinity in Italy — in captivating, unexpected ways.Shot in silky black-and-white and paying homage to the stylized working-class films of Federico Fellini, “There’s Still Tomorrow” follows Delia (Cortellesi), a doting mother of three who is regularly beaten and surveilled by her husband Ivano (Valerio Mastandrea). The cash she gets from her various odd jobs goes straight into Ivano’s pocket, and should she drop a dish, leave the house without asking, or accept favors from the American soldiers stationed around town, there’s hell to pay.The film never shows the batterings directly. In one scene, it’s choreographed with the drama of a tango, and in most others, we take the perspectives of Delia’s children or the group of gossiping housewives perpetually stationed in the courtyard.Cortellesi, as both director and performer, doesn’t sink into miserabilism. The beautifully built-out sense of place, populated by memorable personalities (Ivano’s bedridden father; Delia’s best friend, who runs a vegetable stand; the mechanic with whom Delia is in love), demonstrates the richness of Delia’s life in an effortless balance of humor and tragedy. Bursts of slick contemporary pop music give an edge to her plight.Crucially, the plot revolves around the future of Delia’s teenage daughter Marcella (Romana Maggiora Vergano), who dreams of getting married to her wealthy boyfriend and leading a life unlike her mother’s. Delia, whom Cortellesi plays with weathered charm, strives to save Marcella — and ultimately herself. This struggle is carried out with larger-than-life dramatics and touches of fantasy that make the film, for all its grim, real-life parallels, something of an escapist pleasure.There’s Still TomorrowNot rated. In Italian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. In theaters. More