Tag: animation

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Animation Features Movies

Early Man

Producer-Director: Nick Park – 2018 – UK – Cert. PG – 89m

*****

Ancient caveman Brits, rabbits, mammoths, dinosaurs, dastardly Frenchmen, and football – Aardman’s prehistoric, stop-frame marvel is back out in UK cinemas on Friday, 21st August

Nick Park and Aardman Animations’ epic is set in a prehistoric world of cavemen, rabbits and mammoths. For good measure it also throws in dastardly Frenchmen and football. Park coaxes great voice performances out of his all-star cast, while physical animation is in the capable hands of Will Becher (who directed the Creature Comforts TV series) and Merlin Crossingham (Creative Director for Wallace & Gromit since 2009 and subsequently co-director with Park of Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, 2024).

At one point a mallard appears in the distance. A caveman hurls a small rock at it. The rock travels an awful long way. Much farther than we expected. Eventually it reaches the mallard, revealed as a gargantuan beast on the scale of a dinosaur. The giant mallard charges towards us and the hapless tribe of cavemen.

This is very much in the spirit of Early Man’s opening sequence wherein volcanoes belch fire and a carnivorous ceratosaurus does battle with a herbivorous triceratops clearly modelled on their counterparts in Ray Harryhausen’s One Million Years B.C.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Holy Days

Director – Nat Boltt – 2026 – New Zealand, Canada – Cert. 12a – 101m

***1/2

Three ageing nuns must save their ramshackle convent from property developers and help a local Maori boy come to terms with his mum’s death and his dad’s new partner – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, Aug 14th

In a wondrously tacky stop-frame parody, giant-sized Brian rides his giant-sized bicycle through the village (cut to live action Brian played by Elijah Tomati) to explain to Sister Agnes (Judy Davis) at the door of his destination building that he’s committed blasphemery. It turns out his exact words were, “Jesus Jumping Christ”. Taking it good humouredly in her stride, she tells him to come in. And, as a penance, assigns him to clean all the upstairs floors.

As a title informs us, it’s New Zealand. 1974.

Upstairs, Sister Mary Clare (Jacki Weaver) explains that the reason for all the baby photos is that the nuns used to take them in. And shows him, thorough the window, Sister Luke’s garden. Which has seen better days. Brian says his mum loved it here. The feeling was reciprocal, apparently. Nun and boy turn floor polishing chores into improvised sports exercise gliding along the floor.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Akira
(アキラ)

Director – Katsuhiro Otomo – 1988 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 124m

*****

Manga artist turned director Katsuhiro Otomo’s cyberpunk classic returns to the big screen in a brand new 35mm print at BFI Southbank, London from Friday 14th August until Wednesday 19th, and will be touring in selected cities throughout 2026

When Akira first appeared in the UK at the start of the nineties, Disney was busy reinventing the animated cartoon as a platform for the Broadway musical (Beauty And The Beast, Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise, 1991; The Lion King, Rob Minkoff, Roger Allers, 1994) and there were debates about whether comics (or ‘graphic novels’) could be created for adults as well as kids.

As so often in technology and media, Japan was ahead of the game. Otomo had published his long-running comic book or manga Akira in 1982 and turned it into a feature six years later, challenging widely held Western notions of what animation was. You could make SF in movies (Voyage To The Moon, Georges Méliès, 1902) and you could make serious SF (2001, Stanley Kubrick, 1968), but animation was strictly for kids, at least in the English-speaking mainstream, and that as what Disney did.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

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 Documentary Features Live Action Movies

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

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

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

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
Features Live Action Movies

Moana
(2026)

Director – Thomas Kail – 2026 – US – Cert. PG – 115m

***1/2

Disney’s live action remake of its Polynesian heroine mythological romp – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 10th

It’s a curious experience watching Disney’s live action remake of Moana (John Musker, Ron Clements, 2016), one of the Studio’s better animated movies of recent years. Of course, some audience members (particularly small children) may never have seen the orginal, or, equally, because Disney are very, very good at marketing their films to a mass audience, they may already be familiar with it. Either way, the film is likely to be enjoyed by both those who know the original and those who don’t.

The original had its roots in Maori mythology, and this live action retread follows much the same path. It’s set on the island of Te Fiti, a resting goddess whose heart (a small, round, green stone) has been stolen from her in order to give humans the power of creation by the demigod Maui, and then lost along with his giant fishhook which bestows shapeshifting powers upon him.

As a small child, the chief of the island Te Fiti’s daughter Moana can’t stop thinking about venturing beyond the reef, a trangression forbidden by her father Chief Tui (John Tui) and his ancestors.… Read the rest