Tag: children’s film

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Watership Down
(new 4K restoration)

Directed by Martin Rosen
Certificate PG
92 minutes
Released 25 October

Reviewed for Reform magazine.

Now fully restored in a new 4K restoration, this 1978 tale of rabbits on the run proved that an animated film need be neither made by Disney nor sugar-coated for children. Watership Down, although a children’s film, came from the producer of the Oscar-winning DH Lawrence adaptation Women in Love (1969), Martin Rosen. He ended up directing it too.

A prologue details the relationship between the creator-god Frith – represented as the sun – and rabbitkind. As with most creation myths outside the Judeo-Christian, there’s quite a bit of sex and violence. The rabbits breed furiously; hitherto non-carnivorous animals are given teeth to keep the rabbit numbers down. The rabbits are given powerful hind legs to outrun their predators.

Having established rabbits as intelligent creatures possessing a mythology and a world view, the main story… [Read the rest at Reform magazine]

[Read my alternative, longer review for this site.]

Trailer:

Categories
Animation Features Movies

The Iron Giant

Director – Brad Bird – 1999 – US – Cert. U – 88m

*****

1957. A giant robot falls out of the sky and is befriended by a young boy in Maine. However, the US government proves less sympathetic – animated feature is out in UK cinemas from Friday, December 17th, 1999

This has all the hallmarks of classic fifties sci-fi outings – giant monster, small American town, paranoid government agent, mobilised militia. For those demanding still more, it has a single working mum and a sympathetic beat sculptor, neither of whom would be out of place in a period Roger Corman cheapie.

But you shouldn’t pigeonhole The Iron Giant by genre because a further two factors mark it out as very different. Freely adapted from Ted Hughes’ marvellous children’s book The Iron Man but given a decidedly American spin by director Brad Bird (cartoon TV series The Simpsons, 2 eps, 1990-91; creator of Family Dog, 1993), this is without doubt the animated film of the year and arguably the film of the year period. We’ve grown so used to the Disney blockbuster model – cute characters (and merchandise), hit songs – that anything else (this employs neither device) comes as a shock.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Watership Down
(new 4K restoration)

Director – Martin Rosen – 1978 – UK – Cert. PG – 92m

*****

When a young rabbit visionary foresees doom for those who remain, some of the rabbits leave their warren in search of a safer home, encountering many life-threatening perils along the way – new 4K restoration of animated feature is out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 25th, following its World Premiere in the London Film Festival on Saturday, October 12th

LFF: Sat 12 Oct 12:20 World Premiere, Tues 15 Oct 12:15,
both BFI Southbank NFT1.

This opens with a mythological segment involving a powerful God, represented as the sun, and rabbitkind, specifically the archetypal rabbit El-ahrairah. It’s drawn and painted in an arresting, non-naturalistic style involving coloured lines animated against a white background to create the impression of moving, primitive drawings, due in large part to uncredited director John Hubley, whose vision for the film was at odds with that of producer Martin Rosen. The latter ended up firing the former as he wanted something grittier and less lightweight.

It’s arguable this has worked to the film’s advantage: the fable sequence works as otherworldly rabbit mythology, suggesting a race of intelligent creatures capable of constructing creation myths about their species much as human beings do.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Tad
The Lost Explorer
And The Curse Of The Mummy
(US: Tad
The Lost Explorer And The
Emerald Tablet;
Tadeo Jones 3.
La Tabla Esmeralda;
Tadeo Jones 3.
La Taula Maragda)

Director – Enrique Gato – 2022 – Spain – Cert. U – 90m

****

In Mexico, desperate for recognition as a bona fide archaeologist, our hero unearths an Egyptian sarcophagus and unleashes a mysterious power from an Inca temple – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 9th

Gato’s third instalment of the Tad The Lost Explorer franchise is a lot better than it sounds, chiefly because it delivers narrative coherence and picks up and runs with numerous opportunities afforded by character and script where the similarly inventive Minions: The Rise Of Gru (Kyle Balda, Brad Ableson, Jonathan del Val, 2022) failed.

Having agreed with girlfriend Sara not to go public about his previous archaeological discoveries, Tad has with her help got on to the Chicago Museum’s dig in Mexico – as a lowly assistant, even though he seems more clued-up than the three qualified archaeologists in charge. Rashly opening a secret door by pushing a part of a wall frieze, he finds himself in a vast chamber containing an Egyptian sarcophagus, his report of which is pooh-poohed by his three superiors until, after firing him, they discover it for themselves and take the credit.

This rivalry between the ‘amateur’ Tad and qualified but comparatively clueless ‘professionals’ is kept up throughout the narrative, although the professionals remain secondary characters.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies Series Television

Black Cat Detective
(Heimao Jingzhang,
黑猫警长)

Director – Dai Tielang – 2010 – China – Cert. N/C U – 76m

Parental Warning: Although this drawn animation has a (completely legitimate) recommended UK U certificate, it contains a lot of gun and knife violence and, in the subtitles, one swear word.

****

Black Cat Detective and his fellow police protect everyday citizens from nefarious criminal animals including a mouse mastermind – available to rent online in the UK & Ireland as part of the Shanghai Animation Film Studio Retro in the Chinese Cinema Season 2021 from Friday, February 12th to Wednesday, May 12th

A purple mole proudly shows the children sacks of supplies stocked in his granary for the coming Winter. Unfortunately, an evil criminal mastermind mouse (backed by music with a stinger cue ripped off the opening of Bernard Herrmann’s score for Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) has his eye on these stocks and breaks in with his gang who get drunk on red wine and oil before passing the sacks out of the granary window, which action alerts the mother mole whose attempt at stopping them is thwarted by their throwing enough sax onto her to pin her down.

The cops led by Black Cat Detective turn up to shoot at the mice, one of whom they hit, and arrest the mole children on the premises, quickly realising their mistake and releasing the latter.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Pinocchio

Director – Matteo Garrone – 2019 – Italy – Cert. PG – 125m

*****

In cinemas from Friday, August 14th, on BFI Player rental from Monday, December 14th

Impoverished woodcarver Geppetto (Roberto Benigni) decides to make the greatest puppet the world has ever seen, tour the world with it and make his fortune. A wood merchant lets him have a log because it seems to have a life of its own. Unaware of its animate properties, Geppetto begins carving his puppet, a life-sized representation of the son he’s never had.

After he starts talking to it as its “Babba”, he is surprised when the puppet (nine year old Frederico Ielapi) talks back. Geppetto names him Pinocchio. No sooner has he carved the feet than Pinocchio runs out of Geppetto’s workshop to discover the world. In many ways, that defines the character and the story to come. The innocent Pinocchio is forever in pursuit of his own gratification, prey to the perils of the world around him and initially devoid of any sense of morality, something he struggles to learn throughout the course of the story in his quest to become a real boy.

There have been numerous versions of Pinocchio in film, television and theatre since it first appeared as a written serial in an Italian newspaper in 1881.… Read the rest