This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
No voiceover, no singing, no talking (at least, not in human voices), no cuteness—which isn’t the same as no humor, of which there’s plenty here. With Flow featuring all of the above, it’s tempting to call it an anti-Disney feature, though I think it’s rather that Flow isn’t thinking about the media behemoth at all.
Whereas Disney cartoons use animals as proxies for humans, this movie puts animal behavior at the forefront, and tries valiantly to show us the world…
Ravishing beautiful, with a fully lived-in haunted house, del Toro once again reveals that he’s a better producer and atmospherist than a director. The environment is gorgeous but the story that runs it is faulty. The doomed, demented love story at least makes emotional sense this time (unlike in The Shape of Water, for instance), though its twist can be seen a mile away. The blood and gore are lurid and expressionist, more so than the oft-leaden dialogue and Mia Wasikowska’s flat performance.
Sanaa Lathan should be a megawatt star of romantic comedy, and this is living proof. As with Paula Patton and Gabrielle Union, Lathan isn’t given her due b/c Hollywood has never really known what to do with black female gorgeousness, especially black female gorgeousness matched by black quicksilver wit. Hollywood reduces this to “sass,” and makes the sassy black chick a side character to the less vivacious white girl’s lead. Lathan’s vulnerability, quietly brittle hilarity, & glowing beauty make Something New…
Standard talking-heads biopic about a comic who resists standardization (and the tropes of straightforward comedy narration) at every turn. Mostly a bunch of white Boston comics talking about a black man resistant to Boston. O’Neal was mean, unfair, went too far regularly, and so funny and blistering that he made my sides hurt from laughing so hard. I wish the doc had his wild energy. The fellow black comics give the best truths, admit his flaws, and bust his dead chops—even his mom opens up raw about him. The best parts of the movie are him, obviously.
