siderite

The story was weird, grotesque and pretentious. I didn't like or care about any of the characters and the pacing was glacial for a film barely an hour long.

The animation was... artistic, but not beautiful or entertaining.

There is no dialogue, just a song somewhere randomly placed in the film.

I guess people who like this kind of movie like it for reasons that I will never be able to understand. I see how much effort has been put in the film and I appreciate it, but I cannot like it, so I will give it a "decent" and move on.

Showing the banal hideousness of humans doesn't make one appear smart, BTW, just depressed.

Many people criticized the film for being too sentimental, probably resenting the fact that it made them tear up, but it's not the kind of sad that you usually see in films. Instead it's a bit bittersweet, with an underlying solution for that sadness.

The story is about a little mute child in a poor fisherman village where everybody is struggling, is frustrated and sad. His mother is sad, his uncle is sad and he has no friends until he befriends an old man who fixes his old camera, the only thing he has left from his dead father. The lesson here being that even when life gives you lemons, you can see their beauty when you photograph them in black and white.

OK, I am a bit mean, but the movie is pretty beautiful. Beau Bridges piles on the gravitas of his voice and the nice old man vibe, the kid is actually a pretty good actor - and you know how rare that is, while the supporting characters all show moments of deepness without taking too much screen time. The ending is a bit weak, with some over the top farewell scenes with actors that don't really land them, but the rest of the film does convey that idea that you can find beauty in the most banal and sad moments.

Bottom line: not a masterpiece, but a good dramatic film.

Hard to find something surprising in the film when not only the trailer, but also the movie tags tell you what it's about. But then it's not about that at all. Indeed, the "horror" tag is completely dumb, unless you count psychological horror, which means most films should have it. The Sci-Fi and Artificial Intelligence tags are also misleading, as they refer to a minor aspect of the story. So if you really want to know what this movie is about - mild spoiler alert! - it's about female emancipation from abusive males. Everything else is a pretext.

However, this is not a bad film at all. It's well acted, Sophie Thatcher is delightful, as well as Jack Quaid - playing again a weak hypocritical man, perhaps he should try to get out of that casting hole while he still can. The rest of the cast is small, supporting and mostly secondary to the plot. The story itself is interesting, but nothing new at all and way less than what is needed to sustain a full feature film.

Bottom line: I've seen this film before, in other forms. It's well done, but bringing nothing to the table, to the point where slapping some sci-fi on it almost feels like a bait and switch.