"Arco"

In the distant future, when humanity lives in houses among the clouds, a young boy named Arco (Juliano Krue Valdi) defies his parents by stealing his sister's time-travel rainbow cape and crystal and flies back in time, despite being too young to do so. He ends up in the year 2075, a world of increasingly extreme weather, robot assistants and a young girl named Iris (Romy Fay), who finds him injured in the woods and brings him home. With her parents away, the two bond. But this peace cannot last: Argo must return to his own time, a strange trio of brothers (Andy Samberg, Will Ferrell and Flea for some fucking reason) are converging on them, and a wildfire looms.

(The Hollywood Reporter)
A charming little film, a lot better than fellow "Best Animated Feature" nominee "Little Amelie and the Secret of Rain", it's a pleasant fable about the gulf of technology between humanity, but also how it can bridge those gaps. Iris only sees her parents (Marky Mark Ruffalo and Natalie Portman, the latter of whom produced it) through holograms, a robot with the voice of both raises her, Arco's parents sleep suspended in the air untouching and detached, and humanity is so used to climate change and how deeply they've fucked the planet that they construct biomes and bubbles around themselves for protection. There's a lot said for connection and humanity in it, be it the central relationship between Arco and Iris, their rather sweet robot protector, or even the reasoning behind the bickering trio's pursuit of them (Andy Samberg's one gets the best line, for my money, when he says that "if you love somebody, you want to make them happy even if they never know it", which leads to the soaring act of heroism for a character): it's an enjoyable enough little film, and ends a tad darkly and poingnantly, whilst never overstaying its welcome.
(Note: I only got the dubbed version)

"Little Amelie or the Character of Rain" - Review

Amelia is born in a vegetative state. As she dreams and wonders, life goes on for her parents and two siblings. One day, aged 3, she awakens.

(Credit: imdb)
Beautifully animated, with parts of Amelie's world looking like crayon drawings done by a child, and with an excellently edited sequence in a kitchen as a parallel to a character's story as she cooks, for example: it's a rather pretty film.
Unfortunately the film succumbs to the worst of its precocious child impulses after straddling two lanes for too long: we open on the child describing herself as God, and how God is a cylinder, then she awakens and is internally furious that her Godlike impulses are not indulged. It's an interesting start to proceedings, and makes one curious about the existentialism which may follow, but then the film settles into a standard coming-of-age story, but with the backdrop of expats in rural Japan. That story doesn't settle or thrive as much as it should, through the eyes of a precocious child, and thus the promised existentialism and longing and loss when people leave their life never soars, and instead comes off as middle class whining. It has a lovely score, and a few nice pieces of symbolism, and the story is clearly personal to the author, but could have been so much more.