Category: Animation

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Animation Features Movies

The PIRATES!
In an Adventure with SCIENTISTS!

The PIRATES! In an Adventure with SCIENTISTS!

Director: Peter Lord – 2012 – UK – Cert. PG – 87m

*****

Victorian era, stop-frame marvel about… yes… pirates, scientists and adventure – back out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 10th

This latest offering from Bristol-based Aardman Animations is a remarkable feature that pushes the art of stop-frame plasticine animation to new heights. Director Lord, creator of Morph, has been working with the medium for several decades via shorts, music videos and commercials and although the independent studio he co-founded with the David Sproxton (like Lord himself, one of the film’s producers) has made four prior features, this one is Lord’s first feature as director.

Much care has gone into the script by Gideon Defoe, an adaptation of his own book, upon which sure foundation Lord, co-director Jeff Newitt and their team’s artistry and impeccable sense of comic timing has built an impressive edifice. Like other stop frame outings, it looks more impressive still in 3D, a medium which favours shooting on miniature model animation sets.

The Pirate Captain (voice: Hugh Grant) has scant chance of wining the coveted Pirate Of The Year Award because ruthless rivals Black Bellamy (voice: Jeremy Piven) and Cutlass Liz (voice: Salma Hayek) are much more ruthless and have plundered far more booty than he.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies Music

The Czech Year
(Špalíček)

The Czech Year (Špalíček)

Director – Jiří Trnka – 1947 – Czechoslovakia – Cert. PG – 80m

*****

A celebration of Czech peasant life, with a striking Christian element – on the Blu-ray Jiří Trnka: Puppet Master, released in the UK on Monday, August 10th

Originally made as a series of short films which were subsequently edited into a feature, a similar strategy later adopted by fellow countryman Jan Švankmajer making Alice (1988), this opens (after a static title sequence) with a song about musicians wondering how they can afford a dulcimer. There’s a feeling of community among a villagers’ marching band comprising double bass, clarinet, serpent and horn, who are joined for processions and dances by assorted villagers. As the song ends, they are scattered but not dispersed by a death-like scarecrow figure on a cart.

A bear who has joined in their revelry is revealed as an actor whose bear mask has come off and been lost when he has fallen in a freezing stream (it has ice on top), and the season of winter is introduced by a pan along a model backdrop which appears to be painted on layers of glass. There are precedents for this technique, whether you look at Disney’s 2D animation experiments with the many glass levels of the multiplane camera used to achieve the illusion of depth on, for example, Fantasia (1940) or those of special effects animator Willis O’Brien who for such works as The Lost World (Harry O.… Read the rest

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Animation Movies Shorts

The Hand
(Ruka)

The Hand (Ruka)

Director – Jiří Trnka – 1965 – Czechoslovakia – Cert. PG – 18m

*****

A potter’s quiet life is interrupted by a giant hand which wants him to remake his pots in its image – on the Blu-ray Jiří Trnka: Puppet Master, released in the UK on Monday, August 10th

He sleeps peacefully on his simple bed in his room. We hear footsteps as we move around the room – is someone watching him? If so, he’s blissfully unaware of the fact. In the centre of the room is a potter’s wheel. On either side of the door are numerous pots. In the corner, a mirror; below it, a watering can on a little table. Moving towards his bed, we pass a window with a flower in a pot on the window’s interior sill.

He gets up, does some basic exercises, checks his tongue in the mirror, waters the plant on the window sill. Birds can be heard singing. The he gets down to the business of the day: making pots on his wheel. He is absorbed. But, an interruption. A knock at the door. Nothing there.

Eventually, a giant hand pushes its way through the shuttered window, the impact knocking the plant to the floor and shattering its pot.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Coup 53

Coup 53

Director – Taghi Amirani – 2019 – UK – Cert. 15 – 120m

*****

The officially unacknowledged British role in the 1953 coup overthrowing the Iranian government – more timely than ever…

2026 Update: Back out in cinemas until August and early September; to mark the 73rd anniversary of the MI6 / CIA coup in Iran on August 19th, there will be a special anniversary screening + discussion on Wednesday, August 19th at Curzon, Bloomsbury

More dates added daily at https://coup53.com/
Originally in UK cinemas from Friday, August 21st 2020

A documentary begun in 2009 interviewing many people who died before the film’s completion some ten years later, this covers the 1953 coup in Iran backed by President Eisenhower in the US and Prime Minister Churchill in the UK which replaced Iran’s democratically elected, left-wing Prime Minister Mossadegh with the Shah. The UK has never officially acknowledged its role in this coup.

Amirani’s researches lead him to a basement of documents held by Mossadech’s grandson in Paris comprising archive material from the Granada TV 1985 End Of Empire documentary series, for which he gets access to the rushes from the BFI. Iran was included because it had been controlled by British interests for so long (because of its oil reserves).… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Bouchra

Bouchra

Directors – Orian Barki, Meriem Bennani – 2025 – Italy, Morocco, US – Cert. 15 – 83m

***1/2

A queer artist and filmmaker jackal living in New York desperately wants to come out to her mother back in conservative Morocco – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 7th

This opens with a lengthy, bravura shot framing a section of a moving carriage on an urban, New York train. Inside, passengers include our main protagonist, the eponymous, anthropomorphised, leather jacket-clad, female jackal Bouchra, standing. The shot is static in the sense that the camera and the train are moving completely in sync, so that the moving carriage, although clearly moving, is motionless relative to the viewer (apart from the occasional judder caused by the travelling of the train).

As the train travels its route, our moving view of the moving carriage is constantly interrupted by objects between us and the carriage – grids of cabling, sections of barrier and other trackside features. This momentarily recalls the similar urban carriage interior early on in Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, 1997), although there are no reflections here, merely levels, and any similarity between the two films stops beyond this point.

Bouchra is very different from Perfect Blue in intent, with a narrative – such as it is – that feels as if someone is shooting a documentary within New York’s queer subculture, capturing footage on camera and seeing what turns up, then trying to turn the resultant footage into a film.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

PAW Patrol
The Dino Movie

PAW Patrol The Dino Movie

Director – Cal Brunker – 2026 – Canada – Cert. PG – 88m

**1/2

The PAW Patrol, a rescue organisation made up of cute puppies, is stranded on a dinosaur-infested desert island – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 7th

The family are on vacation on the yacht, with dad explaining that fishing takes a lot of time and patience, to the exasperation of his bored daughter. Mum has already caught a couple of fish at the shops, and puts them on the barbecue on deck, only for the family cat to try and seize them, in the process setting the yacht on fire.

Fortunately, the PAW Patrol are in the area on their massive rescue ship, and set out to rescue the hapless family on vehicles (including one with a launch sequence that runs the length of the ship’s hold) inspired by 1960s Gerry & Sylvia Anderson TV series such as Thunderbirds (1965-66) and Stingray (1964-5). The holidaying family seem, unconvincingly, not in the least concerned that their yacht has gone up in smoke. Oops, they forgot the cat, so it’s up to pup Marshall (voice: Carter Young) to enter the burning lower decks and save the kitty. … Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Chicken Run

Chicken Run

Producer-Directors: Nick Park, Peter Lord – Producer – David Sproxton – 2000 – UK – Cert. PG – 84m

*****

Which came first – the chicken or the egg? Plasticene stop-frame animation house Aardman Animations’ debut feature film reconceives The Great Escape with chickens – back out in UK cinemas from Friday, 24th July

Aardman Animations’ A Close Shave (1995), the third half-hour outing for Nick Park’s popular Wallace & Gromit duo, exhibited several danger signs – specifically its close resemblance to brilliant, immediate precursor The Wrong Trousers (1993). Clearly aware of such pitfalls, Park and founding Aards Sproxton and Lord shrewdly signed a five-picture deal with Dreamworks but refused to rush into a first feature. Their caution has paid dividends: this first full length Aardmovie proves an unexpectedly wondrous odyssey.

It’s The Great Escape reconceived with chickens: familiar WW2 prison camp is reconfigured as North of England chicken coop with impenetrable fencing, rows of huts and a motley assortment of portly hen inmates. Ginger (voice: Julia Sawalha) wants to escape, but several disastrous attempts lead to solitary confinement (where she bounces a ball off the wall Steve McQueen style). Other chickens can’t see a problem – Bunty (voice: Imelda Staunton) simply keeps on laying eggs, while Babs (Horrocks) busies herself with constant knitting.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Give It a Shot

Give It a Shot

Director – Vaishali Sinha – 2025 – Canada, India, US – uncertificated – 92m

***

An Indian scientist has created a reversible male contraceptive technique, yet a combination of human greed and bureaucracy has so far prevented it reaching the masses – International Premiere at 6.30 pm at the ICA on Tuesday, July 14th in the London Indian Film Festival which runs from Thursday July 9th to Sunday, July 19th in London, Birmingham and Manchester

A man visits a trade show in Las Vegas of healthcare products and technology. He’s touting a male contraceptive, a field in which nothing much has happened since the introduction of the condom in the 17th Century. His product is an injection into the vas deferens of the male reproductive system which can last for ten years, yet is totally reversible within that time. He has date on its use and safety going back to the 1970s. He is not the original developer, but has been refining the formula since then. The product has been used extensively in India.

The film moves to India. “This for the vagina, that for the vagina,” says a woman cheerfully. “And meanwhile, the penis is just sitting in the corner.”… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Movies Shorts

A Couple Clucking Chickens Were Still Kickin’ in the Schoolyard
(Niwa ni wa
Niwa Niwatori ga ita,
庭には二羽ニ
ワトリがいた。)

A Couple Clucking Chickens Were Still Kickin’ in the Schoolyard
(Niwa ni wa Niwa Niwatori ga ita,
庭には二羽ニ ワトリがいた。)

Director – Seishiro Negaya – 2025 – Japan – Cert. tbc – 19m

*****

Aliens love eating humans, and two humans avoid being eaten by disguising themselves as chickens – plays in the Annecy International Animation Festival 2026 which runs from Sunday, 21st June to Saturday 27th June

It’s just another everyday schoolday for Yohei (voice: Kazuki Ura). He gets out of bed. His mum (voice: Emi Shinohara) makes breakfast and tells him not to keep the cute girl Moemi Kaneda (voice: Kimiko Saito) waiting who wants him to walk her to school. She is twice his height. He’s on animal duty, which means that he must ensure the chickens kept in the schoolyard get fed.

This might sound like nothing out of the ordinary, but Yohei’s strange blue skin and odd face tells a different story, as do Moemi’s mandibles. They are aliens who defeated the humans when they invaded Earth in 2019. And they ate most of the humans, who were particularly tasty to aliens. They would love tto eat more, only, apparently, they’ve eaten all the humans.… Read the rest