I'm not a huge fan of animated movies, so when I've ever been asked my favorite, I've (only somewhat facetiously) replied "Shrek" — but I've finally got a real answer now, and it's a movie which you can stream from home.
The movie in question is Flow, which first debuted at Cannes Film Festival in May last year but has only slowly been releasing around the world. Case in point, Flow has been available to stream on Max in the US since February (and rent online from before then), but it was only released in UK cinemas a week ago (so you might need a cinema subscription to see it).
Flow is a totally-dialogue-free 84-minute movie about a cat which is pushed on an adventure through a mysterious world due to rapidly-rising water levels. It eventually befriends a host of other creatures as the flood pushes it to the center of the world.
It's hard to explain what's so magical about Flow to someone who hasn't watched it, but its 97% on Rotten Tomatoes and Oscar for Best Animated Feature (beating Inside Out 2, in what I thought was an upset until I saw Flow and understood how the Pixar movie wasn't in with a chance) speak for themselves.
I went in thinking that, as an animated movie, it'd be aimed at younger audiences, but it has a startling amount of depth; it's one of those amazing films that evokes many different themes with its woven subtext, and I came out with loads of different theories about what it means. At times I thought it was a cautionary tale about climate change, a metaphor for the rise and fall of civilizations, an analogy for the story of life or a manifesto for how dogs are bad pets, and I bet other viewers will take away other themes. Its visuals drop you into an addictive dreamlike state, and it peppers in enough humor to keep you going between moments of peril and some heartbreakingly emotional actions.
That's all from a film which, at the end of the day, is about a cat meowing at things.
Like I said, I generally don't enjoy animated movies (that aren't about green ogres), as I often struggle to connect to characters which aren't real, and that's doubly true about animal ones.
However Flow's cat had more personality than most of its contemporary Oscar nominees (and more of a character arc than most of them too!). It also had better cinematography and music than any of the nominees in those categories, but this isn't an article about the Oscars, it's meant to be about Flow!
If you live in the US, Flow is on Max, and I'd be tempted to recommend the $9.99-per-month sign-up just for the movie alone. Otherwise it's available to buy or rent digitally on online store fronts like Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango and more. In the UK there's no word on streaming because it's still in cinemas, and it's definitely worth a trip.
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