Something to watch tonight: Thursday 20 June

Robot Dreams (Berger, 2023)

The delight­ful anim­ated love let­ter to New York (and to best friends) is now avail­able to rent. At least it is in New Zealand.

I reviewed it here when it was briefly in cinemas back in April but it was below the pay­wall line so a few of you may have missed it:

Robot Dreams is a very sweet little film about a dog (named “Dog”) who lives in an anthro­po­morph­ised 1980s New York City.

He’s lonely and sees an ad on late night TV for a kit­set robot com­pan­ion, so he sends away. This robot is the per­fect friend and Dog’s life is trans­formed. But a trip to the sea­side goes wrong and the robot is stran­ded, unable to move, just as the sum­mer sea­son is end­ing and the beach is locked away.

For a year we fol­low Dog’s attempts to res­cue his new friend, con­tras­ted with the con­tents of Robot’s ever-hopeful imagination.

As time goes on, any expect­a­tion that they will be reunited recedes and the story becomes one of new begin­nings and mov­ing on. Except, you nev­er really leave that first love behind, do you?

I hadn’t real­ised until this week that Robot Dreams is writ­ten and dir­ec­ted by Pablo Berger who was also respons­ible for anoth­er lovely movie, Blancanieves (which I reviewed when it came out in 2012).

Where to watch Robot Dreams

Aotearoa: Digital rent­al from Apple or AroVision

Australia, Ireland and UK: Digital rental

Canada and USA: Not avail­able online

Further reading

The DocEdge film fest­iv­al opens in Christchurch today (mov­ing on to Auckland and Wellington from 3 July) and I pre­viewed four titles for the RNZ website.

Editor’s note

Just a remind­er that I am trav­el­ling for the new job tomor­row so the weekly sur­vey of new releases will appear on Monday instead. We apo­lo­gise for any inconvenience.