Like many movies before it, Anima places two strangers together in a car and sets them on a course fueled by mutual dependence, disconnection and bottled-up emotion. It’s as tried-and-true a story template as you can find, and one that writer-director Brian Tetsuro Ivie gently twists, to magnificent low-key effect, with a dash of icy sci-fi and a soulful retro yearning.
Indispensable indie actors Maria Dizzia and Lili Taylor, filmmaker Tom McCarthy and Marin Ireland all contribute well-etched supporting turns, but essentially this is a two-hander, with Takehiro Hira (Shogun) and Sydney Chandler (Alien: Earth) superbly unsentimental as unlikely travel partners: a dying man and the person hired to deliver him to his final appointment. Set about five minutes in the future, Anima revolves around the possibilities of virtual reality and is, at its essence, a story of more age-old concerns — namely, the parent-child bond and the transcendent power
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