Here are reviews of two films that made an impact at the recent film Awards season. "Flow" was both a Golden Globe and an Oscars Best Animated Feature, surprising many. Hailing from Latvia, it bested many of the big studio animated films. The Nickel Boys got numerous nominations for its young director and adapted screenplay/best picture consideration.

"Flow" (Amazon on Demand) - The Academy Awards Best Animated Feature is bragging rights for Latvia and director Gints Zilbalodis. Especially when you factor in how it bested the likes of The Wild Robot and Inside Out 2. With breathtaking animation, especially its depiction of water, and strong visuals, the lack of dialogue does not take anything away from the storyline that pleases, teases us, excites us, and leaves us in suspense. There is emotional depth in this story that eliminates the presence of any humans, and succeeds in part as an ecological fable and warning. Your main characters are a cat, a dog, a capybara, a lemur, a secretary bird - and the cameo of a mutated whale. And the miracle of this film is how it all works in creating cinema magic. There’s a wild flood of tsunami proportions, half submerged cities where people once lived, and other elements that surprise.

The crazy thing is the back story: Zilbalodis worked on this film for five years, using only the free and open source animation software Blender. On top of this impressive feat, no storyboards were used for production, plus no deleted scenes. It also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film, and was co-written with Matiss Kaža. It’s a mature animated feature, and would not do very well with young children, who’ll find the pace too stately and the tone melancholic. Due to the film’s popularity in Latvia, a statue of the Flow cat now stands in Riga, Latvia, and Zilbalodis was feted as Riga Citizen of the Year in 2024. To his credit, while approached by several companies to create a sequel, he’s prioritizing a new animated project that has dialogue. Flow is the real underdog story of this year’s film awards season, and very much worth watching.

"The Nickel Boys" (Amazon on Demand) - Based on the Colson Whitehead novel of 2019, The Nickel Boys is a historical drama centered on two African-American boys, Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson), who end up in an abusive reform school in 1960’s Florida. It’s directed by RaMell Ross, who also co-wrote the screenplay; and was previously known more for his well-lauded documentary filmmaking. He’s also an academic, serving as Assistant Professor of Visual Art at Brown University, and has played professional basketball in Ireland. With this Nickel Boys, the cinematography and the unique storytelling have been noted, with critics raving about the perspective and attack on the material. The main character is Elwood, who in 1962 Jim Crow Florida, avidly follows Martin Luther King, Hollywood star Sidney Poitier, and the nascent civil rights movement.

While hitch-hiking to campus, he’s picked up by a man in a stolen car and when arrested, is mistakenly charged as an accomplice. Sent to Nickel Academy, he befriends Turner, and we follow their lives as convict labor, hired out by the reform school. What’s impressive from the film’s opening is the brave way the film is shot from Elwood’s point of view, and by that, I mean literally from his eyes. It’s an innovative way to present the narrative; it only takes on a special meaning as we follow the events that transpire between the two friends, and the assumption of one’s identity by the other during the storyline. There are flash forwards to 1988, and while this stylistically different approach to storytelling may confuse some at the outset, I considered it a brave choice, and it helps us understand why so many praise the film.