Category: Animation

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

Beetlejuice

Director – Tim Burton – 1988 – US – Cert. 15 – 92m

***1/2

A recently deceased couple hire a bio-exorcist to rid their former house of its new, yuppie occupants – review originally published in Samhain, 1988

Whilst its opening shot recalls the aerial opening of The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980) segueying into that of The Witches Of Eastwick (George Miller, 1987), this film has been described as a reworking of Ghostbusters (Ivan Reitman, 1984) and The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973) (!) from the ghost’s point of view. The plot concerns a couple (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin) who die and then find that their house – which they have to live in as ghosts – is bought by an horrific collection of yuppie trendies.

The couple try to carry on as normal, picking up the occasional useful tip from a weighty tome entitled ‘The Handbook for the Recently Deceased’ (or diseased, as they first pronounce it!) and despite warnings from their afterlife caseworker Juno (played by veteran Hollywood actress Sylvia Sidney) they decide to employ the self-styled bio-exorcist Beetlegeuse (Michael Keaton) to frighten off the new occupants.

The single most memorable image of Beetlejuice is that of a desert landscape peopled by sea monster-like worms, reminiscent of nothing so much as a surrealist version of Frank Herbert’s Dune.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

A Greyhound
of a Girl

Director – Enzo d’Alò – 2023 – Luxembourg, Italy, Ireland, UK, Latvia, Estonia, Germany – Cert. U – 88m

****1/2

A young, cookery-obsessed girl with a fear of dogs must come to terms with the fact that her beloved granny is dying – animated feature is out on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital Monday, August 26th

Ireland. Faced with an unsympathetic interview panel for the Ballymaloe Cooking School when she unwisely makes a tatty tart with bananas, young girl Mary (voice: Mia O’Connor) finds she has an ally in her granny (voice: Rosaleen Linehan) who gives the judges a friendly talking to when they reject her granddaughter. The girl can always come back next time. She and granny are driving home on a minor coastal road and granny is refusing to talk about her own childhood – apparently there was an incident involving a dog and a well – when granny swerves to avoid a dog and dents the car. Mary doesn’t like dogs, although she’s a caring child who stopped granny accidentally running over a hedgehog earlier.

Granny has been coughing all day. With the news that Mary’s bestie Ava (voice: Amelie Metacalf) is soon be leaving as her dad has got a job in England, it’s not a great time for the young girl, and it gets worse, when she discovers her gran has a fever and her mum calls an ambulance.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Art Exhibitions Movies

LAIKA
FRAME x FRAME

Pic: Toby Lewis Thomas, courtesy LAIKA and BFI

*****

Exhibition shows at BFI Southbank from Monday, 12th August to Tuesday 1st October 2024 (free to visit, but booking essential – click here) accompanied by the Stop Motion animation season including all five LAIKA feature films and much, much more

In the best part of two decades, US-based Laika Studios – named after the first dog in space – has carved itself a niche as arguably the foremost producer of stop-motion animation puppet films. That’s distinctly different from the other leading company in the stop-motion field, UK-based Aardman Animations, who specialise in plasticine animation. The difference is that plasticine is a malleable substance that can be reworked and remodelled one frame at a time, whereas although puppets can be moved a frame at a time, they can’t be remodelled.

Laika have consistently (and deservedly, in this writer’s opinion) picked up Oscar nominations for each of their five features, a remarkable achievement that speaks of the high quality of their work. Their five features (with a sixth forthcoming) are:

  • Coraline (2009): A young girl is lured into a darker, parallel world.
  • Paranorman (2012): A boy who can speak with the dead, ostracised by his local community, must save his town from dark forces by righting centuries-old wrongs.
… Read the rest
Categories
Animation Features Movies

Noah’s Ark
(Arca de Noé)

Directors – Alois di Leo, Sergio Machado – 2024 – Brazil, India – Cert. U – 96m

**

Two musical performing mice attempt to board Noah’s Ark, where a despotic lion and his thuggish entourage attempt to lord it over the other animals in a singing contest –animated feature is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 23rd

Two mice – Tommy (voice: Marcelo Adnet) who sings and his accompanist pal Vini (voice: Rodrigo Santoro) who plays a four-string guitar – appear to be at the pinnacle of success, but when the lights go down, they are revealed to be playing the empty bar of Mrs Ferret (voice: Rachel Butera), from which they’re unceremoniously ejected.

On the lam, one of them overhears an old man in the desert wilderness remonstrating with a voice in the sky at its wits end – “I tried my best, it says, but what’s a God to do?” – and being instructed as per the Biblical myth to build an ark and fill it with male and female members of each animal species. “How do I tell the animals?”, asks the bewildered Noah (voice: Ian James Corlett), for it is he. “Well,” says God (voice: Luis Bermudez) in a rare moment of wit uncharacteristic of the screenplay overall, “I can get the invitations out.”… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

Coraline (3D)

Director – Henry Selick – 2009 – US – Cert. PG – 100m

UK release date 08/05/2009

Originally reviewed for Third Way in 2009; republished to coincide with not only the 15th anniversary cinema reissue of the film on Thursday, 15th August 2024, but also the LAIKA: Frame x Frame exhibition which shows at BFI Southbank from Monday, 12th August to Tuesday 1st October 2024 (free to visit, but booking essential – click here) accompanied by a stop-frame animation season including all five LAIKA feature films and much, much more

Selick has successfully positioned himself as Hollywood’s stop-frame puppet animation film-maker (as distinct from plasticine animation film-makers Nick Park and Aardman). His The Nightmare Before Christmas suggested leanings towards horror and the macabre; Coraline goes further in the sense that one’s immediate reaction after viewing was to question whether this was a film suitable for children (on reflection this may be a grown-up reaction and kids may in fact love the film, in much the same way that as a child I enjoyed hiding behind the sofa during the scary bits of Dr. Who.) The source material is an acclaimed children’s book by Neil Gaiman. Anyway, you have been warned.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Ozi
Voice of the Forest

Director – Tim Harper – 2023 – US – Cert. PG – 87m

**

An orangutan girl becomes a social media influencer to stop corporate exploitation of palm oil after her forest habitat is burned in a forest fire – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 16th

The fate of orangutans in countries such as Borneo is dire in the sense that, to facilitate the extraction of palm oil, rainforests are being cleared and burned (in some cases leading to forest fires removing further areas of rainforest). The problem is that the rainforest is the habitat of the orangutan, and they are being left with their natural home severely depleted. It’s a disaster for this species and needs addressing urgently.

Enter this film, which laudably seeks to place that idea in front of family audiences.

Don’t get too excited, though, because having set out to raise consciousness, it attempts to do so with a script that’s overly simplistic and laughable. It starts off well enough, with carefree, small orangutan girl Ozi (voice: Amandla Stenberg) leaping from branch to branch, pulling old orangutan’s tails to knock them off their branches and being rescued from falling into the expectantly gaping jaws of a hungry crocodile by her watchful dad (voice: Djimon Hounsou).… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Art Features Movies

Kubo
and the Two Strings

Director – Travis Knight – 2016 – US – Cert. PG – 101m

*****

The following review originally appeared in Funimation UK; republished to coincide with the LAIKA: Frame x Frame exhibition which shows at BFI Southbank from Monday, 12th August to Tuesday 1st October 2024 (free to visit, but booking essential – click here) accompanied by a stop-frame animation season including all five LAIKA feature films and much, much more

A Hollywood film inspired by the Far East.

Western cinema in general and animation in particular has long held an interest in all things Oriental. Every so often, a film made in the West pays homage to one aspect or another of Eastern culture. The animated fantasy Kubo and the Two Strings is the latest entry in this curious Western sub-genre. It’s a dark fairytale about the quest of a boy named Kubo for his late father’s long-lost suit of armour to protect himself from the evil spirits of his grandfather and two aunts.

The company behind the production are US stop-frame outfit Laika who previously made Coraline, ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls. All three like Kubo are dark visions far removed from the upbeat fare that constitutes much contemporary Hollywood animation.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

My Neighbour Totoro
(Tonari no Totoro,
となりのトトロ)

Director – Hayao Miyazaki – 1988 – Japan – Cert. U – 86m

*****

Two young girls, whose mother is hospitalised, move to the country with their dad, where they encounter a friendly tree spirit – one of the greatest movies ever made, animated or otherwise, is back out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, August 2nd

There’s something about rewatching and reviewing a favourite film you’ve watched numerous times because it’s coming out again in the cinema. And so it is that I dug out my Japanese release DVD (containing those all important, on/offable English subtitles), from those far off days when those seemingly few of us who knew about extraordinarily talented filmmaker Miyazaki thought none of his films would ever see a UK release, and rewatched his wonderful film for the umpteenth time.

The deceptively simple storyline involves two girls, Satsuki (10 – Japanese voice: Noriko Hidaka; English voice: Dakota Fanning) and Mei (5 – Japanese voice: Chika Sakamoto, English voice: Elle Fanning) who move with their father (Japanese voice: Shigesato Itoi, English voice: Tim Daly) to the countryside to be near the hospital which is looking after their mother (Japanese voice: Sumi Shimamoto, English voice: Lea Salonga).… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Hundreds
of Beavers

Director – Mike Cheslik – 2022 – US – Cert. 12 – 108m

***1/2

A ruined drinks purveyor reduced to hunting beavers (played by actors in onesies) attempts to kill the amount required to buy a trader’s daughter’s hand in marriage – visually astonishing slapstick comedy is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Tuesday, July 9th and on Blu-ray from Monday, August 5th

Opening with what is essentially a music video extolling the bibulous virtues of the booming, farm home of Jean Kayak’s Acme Applejack, this shows a simplistic caricature of a prosperous nineteenth century business when the wooden supports of one of Kayak’s gigantic barrels of beverage is nibbled by a beaver causing it to roll down a hill on which it’s situated into his house at the bottom of the hill, causing it to burn down his hillside apple orchard.

Leaving aside such questions as, why store the huge barrel on top of a hill above your house? – the answer, so it can roll down a hill, catch fire and burn down your orchard to get the plot going, proving less than satisfactory – this leaves the ruined Jean Kayak (co-writer Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) homeless in midwinter and forced to survive by hunting animals.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Kensuke’s Kingdom

Directors – Neil Boyle, Kirk Hendry – 2023 – UK – Cert. PG – 85m

***1/2

A British boy and his dog are stranded on a desert island alongside a Japanese man looking after a colony of apes – animated adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s book is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 2nd

With his parents having lost their jobs, Michael (voice: Aaron McGregor) is sailing round the world with his family. They are somewhere in the Pacific. Mum (voice: Sally Hawkins) is the skipper, with dad (voice: Cillian Murphy), Michael’s elder sister Becky (voice: Raffey Cassidy) and Michael himself as crew. He is homesick, missing his dog Stella. Well, not missing her, actually, because he’s secretly smuggled her on board and has her holed up in the cupboard at the front of the deck. Which is why the ship’s supplies appear to be dwindling – he is sneaking her food out of them.

Michael is the misfit of the crew; you sense that the other three family members are enjoying the experience of the trip, but he’d rather be back at home. Mum and dad try to make him feel better – mum ordering him about as skipper but giving him time with her as “mum” to talk about anything that might be bothering him.… Read the rest