Category: Animation

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

The SpongeBob Movie
Search for SquarePants

Director – Derek Drymon – 2025 – US – Cert. PG – 96m

*****

SpongeBob is duped by a ghostly pirate into undertaking a quest in the underworld which will have disastrous consequences for him – anarchic and inventive animation is out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 26th

The big day has arrived. SpongeBob SquarePants (voice: Tom Kenny) has finally reached the height of 36 clamshells. This means he can fulfil his dream – going on the fairground rollercoaster ride. As he bottles out, an opportunity presents itself: the chance to become a certified swashbuckler like the employer he so admires, Mr. Krabs (voice: Clancy Brown).

Thus SpongeBob joins ghostly pirate the Flying Dutchman (voice: Mark Hamill), the curse of the seven seas, on a quest into the underworld resembling the numbered stages of a computer game. However, our hero has been duped; the Flying Dutchman can only rid himself of the curse which traps him in the state of a ghost by transferring it to someone else – and SpongeBob is the fall guy. Can our hero’s friends Patrick (voice: Bill Fagerbakke), accompanying him on his quest, and Mr. Krabs and Squidward (voice: Roger Bumpass), who set out in hot pursuit, save him?… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

Our dirty questions
to Nikolaj Nikitin

The man at the helm of the highly successful Critics’ Picks strand at the Tallinn Black Nights shares his secrets with Jeremy Clarke, who covered every edition of the new section since its inception in 2022

Article originally published on DMovies.org

Nikolaj Nikitin (more widely and affectionately known as “Niki”) started the Critics’ Picks competitive section of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival just three years ago, in 2022, making this year the fourth edition of the strand. Every year 10 to 12 films vie for multiple prizes; Best Film, Best Director and Special Jury Mention. These movies have been amongst the strongest that we encountered in our many years profound wide coverage of the event

Your interviewer Jeremy Clarke is a member of the prestigious London Critics’ Circle and DMovies writer since our establishment 2016. He stepped in immediately in 2022 in order to cover the section. He has reviewed every single film in every edition (you can read Jeremy’s full coverage of last year by clicking here). This year he is being exceptionally replaced by Victoria Luxford (also a member of the London Critics’s Circle), however he remains close to our heart and ready for a return next year.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride

Directors – Tim Burton, Mike Johnson – 2005 – US – Cert. PG – 77m

*****

When his arranged marriage preparations go badly wrong, a young man inadvertently marries a dead woman from the underworld – stop-frame animated marvel is out on 4K Ultra HD and Digital, and in UK cinemas on Friday, October 10th

It is a grey world, and everything must go… according to plan. For there is to be a rehearsal today for a marriage that will take place tomorrow. The son of nouveau riche couple the Van Dorts (voices: Tracey Ullman, Paul Whitehouse) is to wed the daughter of penniless aristocrats Lord and Lady Everglot (voices: Joanna Lumley, Albert Finney). The bridegroom Victor (voice: Johnny Depp) has yet to meet his bride Victoria (voice: Emily Watson) and, left in the vast Everglot vestibule, the young man plays the piano. The tune floats up the stairs and is heard by Victoria who is drawn to it and its performer. She descends the stairs to listen and, against the odds, the pair fall in love.

Three hours into the marriage rehearsal, presided over by Pastor Galswells (voice: Christopher Lee) and poor Victor can’t seem to get his lines right.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

The Glassworker
(Sheesha Gar,
شیشہ گ)

Director – Usman Riaz – 2024 – Pakistan, Spain – Cert. 12a – 98m

*****

The son of a pacifist glassblower learning his father’s trade falls for the violin-playing daughter of an army colonel in wartime – complex, anti-war drama from the 2024 Annecy International Animation Festival in the Contrechamps section, released in Pakistan on Friday, 26th July 2024 and out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 19th

If you knew nothing about this animated film beforehand, you’d assume it to be Japanese. Love it or hate it, most animation made in Japan falls within very distinctive, stylistic, visual parameters. According to the press blurb, director Riaz is an admirer of Studio Ghibli directors Miyazaki and Takahata as well as more recent directors Mamoru Hosoda and Satoshi Kon. Visually, the film feels more like a Miyazaki than anything else, and of comparable quality too. Yet it’s also highly original, and Riaz, here directing his first feature after a number of shorts, clearly has his own voice.

It opens with a frame story about youthful glassblower Vincent Oliver (voice: Sacha Dhawan) who, with the help of his father, is preparing for the opening of his debut glassware exhibition. He rereads a letter from a girl which his father (voice: Art Malik) had told him years ago to destroy in their workshop’s furnace.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

Diplo,
The Mighty Dinosaur
(Smok Diplodok,
original title:
Diplodocus)

Director – Wojtek Wawszczyk – 2024 – Poland, Czechia – Cert. U – 84m

****

A young diplodocus must save the comic book in which he lives from being erased by the artist who created it – from the 2024 Annecy International Animation Festival in the Annecy Presents section, out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 19th

Animation. A bookworm (English voice: Wayne Greyson; Polish voice: Tadeusz Baranowski) appears, a “respected devourer of picture stories”. His function is not exactly that of a Greek chorus, more like a comic interlude who occasionally wanders into the narrative as light relief, to leaven the whole. Not that this likeable romp, is any need of leavening, but it’s a nice touch which nicely sets the tone for the whole piece. It’s about characters in a comic book whose very existence is threatened by the originating artist’s run-in with his commercially driven but artistically clueless lady publisher.

Beyond a vast, bubbling, primeval swamp in a crater, an inventive and adventurous, male diplodocus child (English voice: Julian Wanderer; Polish voice: Mikołaj Wachowski), Diplodocus as the credits calls him, nicks snails off a frog to use as climbing suckers. A butterfly flies past. Diplodocus gets sent to his room by his essentially conservative parents (English voices: Alyson Leigh Rosenfeld, Marc Thompson; Polish voices: Monica Pikuła, Grzegorz Pawlak) for wanting a life of adventure.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

Can I Get a Witness

Director – Ann Marie Fleming – 2024 – Canada – Cert. 12a – 100m

The subject matter *****

The film itself *

Can I fast-forward through the boring bits? Dystopian SF outing with good intentions may be the least watchable film of the year – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 19th

Here’s a movie about one of the most important subjects there is which manages to turn itself into mind-numbingly tedious narrative. It’s hard to imagine more of a missed opportunity.

It’s the first day on the job for gifted sketch artist Kiah (Keira Jang), and before her experienced co-worker comes to pick her up, she’s already having misgivings. She doesn’t want to wear the old-fashioned dress her mother Ellie (Sandra Oh) has picked out for her (her mum bigs the item up as ‘vintage’). Her mum, meanwhile, takes delivery of a mysterious (and apparently equally vintage) fridge, plus a bottle of champagne (which she puts straight in the fridge), along with a mysterious wooden box for which she signs the obligatory paperwork without hesitation (she used to work getting people to sign these herself, so she knows the contents backwards).

Kiah is still getting herself ready when her co-worker turns up co-worker Daniel (Joel Oulette) turns up, so while he’s waiting, Ellie treats him to a piece of her special pie, which he finds delicious.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

Savages
(Sauvages)

Director – Claude Barras – 2024 – Switzerland – Cert. PG – 87m

French with English subtitles.

*****

An indigenous pre-teenage girl stands up to loggers destroyingthe local rainforest – stop-frame animated feature from the director of My Life as a Courgette is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 1st

From its opening moments in darkness following unsettling creature noises suggesting a jungle forest, followed by jungle forest establishing shots – a frog jumping across a river via a series of stones, a snake slithering around a tree, a baby orangutan (non-verbal voice: soundtrack composer and co-sound editor Charles de Ville) swinging on a branch – it’s clear that this has high ambitions indeed. All the above would be one thing to execute in live action – a few location natural history shots… possibly library footage. In model – or stop-motion – animation, you need to physically build everything in terms of miniature model sets, so to achieve such images is a major undertaking.

Having already set the production bar high, this then pushes it up further with the rasping sound of a chainsaw, as the tree heights on which the baby orangutan and its mother (voice: de Ville again), who has just rescued the infant from the attentions of the deadly snake, are resting suddenly topples into a camp of workers who are going about their allotted task of destroying the creature’s natural habitat.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

The Bad Guys 2

Director – Pierre Perifel Co-Director JP Sans – 2025 – US – Cert. PG – 104m

****

A criminal gang of animals led by a wolf mastermind attempts to go straight but are extorted into doing one last job – animated feature sequel is out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 25th

Like its predecessor, The Bad Guys 2 manages to successfully parody the meanness and violence of the gangster movie genre in a children’s animated film without any of the meanness and violence normally associated with that genre. You might wonder where you could go with what is essentially a sequel to five bad guys turning from bad to good. This skilfully implements its answer: introduce a rival gang, as bad as the original protagonists, who force our reformed heroes into that old gangster movie trope: they want to go straight, but before they can get there they have to do one last job. 

Here’s the twist. The Bad Guys, like most gangsters, are (mostly) male.  Their new rivals, The Bad Girls, are all female.

Thus, the eponymous, anthropomorphised animal gang Mr Wolf (voice: Sam Rockwell from (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Martin McDonagh, 2017; Seven Psychopaths, Martin McDonagh, 2012; Lawn Dogs, John Duigan, 1997) the leader of the pack, Mr.… Read the rest

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Animation Movies Shorts

Phil Mulloy
Extreme Animation

Director – Phil Mulloy – 2001 – UK – Cert. 18 – shorts of various lengths, total running time 2 hr 33 mins – Original Aspect Ratios (various) – Dolby Digital 5.1

*****

To mark the recent passing of Phil Mulloy (29 August 1948 – 10 July 2025), my review from 2001 of the BFI DVD of his work.

About as far from Disney animation as it’s possible to get, British animator Phil Mulloy’s short films, produced on a shoestring, employ crude paint brushstrokes on paper with violent, sexual and explicit subject matter. But far from being sensationalist, Mulloy is a brilliant satirist, deluging us with graphic imagery to hit his targets with a vengeance, underscored by voice-over, occasional words of dialogue, and background music by one or two musicians (among them pianist Keith Tippett, Angels & Insects composer Alex Bălănescu and Taiko drummer Joji Hirota).

He first came to prominence with six Cowboys shorts (1991) featuring gunfights, lynchings, bestiality (with horses) and much more. In Outrage, a man and woman are pilloried for having sex outdoors. For ten long years, The Conformist captures and tames a stallion, only to be ridiculed on his return as the only man whose horse has freestanding legs not a wheeled trolley base.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

Flow
(Straume)
(2024)

Director – Gints Zilbalodis – 2024 – Belgium, France, Latvia – Cert. U – 84m

*****

A cat must survive rising water levels as they engulf both the countryside and cities – remarkable, dialogue-free, computer animated feature is out now on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD

Like his earlier Away (2019), Zilbalodis’ new CG animated movie features characters who don’t speak. The central character is a cat, and you’d be forgiven, after years of animated films about cats in which they talk, for expecting the same here, but Zilbalodis isn’t interested in anthropomorphised talking animals. He’s clearly interested in animals, and in characters, but the cat here has been derived from watching and studying cats in real life and their behaviour in the real world. There’s a long history of this in drawn animation, typified by the classic Disney films, where it was all about what you could achieve with a paper and pencil, studying from life, making drawings of characters move.

These days, the medium has moved on, and unless one is being purist and working with pencil and paper for the sake of making drawn animation the way it was made roughly a century ago (and there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with doing that), you would use computers as Zilbalodis does.… Read the rest