The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Animation refers to films in which the films are drawn individually by hand, each frame moved slightly to give the impression of movement. Animated films from the mid-1990s onwards have been increasingly drawn by computer to the point that today the art of hand-drawn animation is a dying art form.
The first animated film was Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and the success of this has spread until animation now covers a sizeable percentage of contemporary box-office earnings.
Animation in the American mainstream is almost always sold as being for family audiences (although there is a reasonable amount of animation for grown-ups, particularly outside the US, this has by and large not been financially successful). Content frequently deals with fantastic topics such as fairytale adaptations, the lives of anthropomorphic talking animals or adventures featuring young protagonists.
See also: For animation from Japan see Anime. Films in which animation is blended with live-action are discussed under Toons. For animation using three-dimensional models see Stop-Motion Animation, for animation that uses models molded in clay see Claymation. For films that remake prior animated works in live-action see Animation in Live-Action.
One of the best among the incredibly underrated animated DC Comics films. A beautifully character-driven venture into the Superman mythos where Brainiac gets a magnificently theatric airing, while Supergirl undergoes some astonishing revisions
Pilot for the excellent Bruce Timm Superman animated tv series of the mid-1990s. This retells the Superman origin story, keeping great faith to the comics, while adding some fantastic action scenes
A very different take on the Superman story that asks What if Superman had grown up in the Soviet Union rather than in the US and become a paragon of Communist virtue
Fine animated film that traces Superman’s early years – Superman: Year One if you like – as we see pieces of the mythos coming together
A condensed animated adaptation of the top-selling DC comic-book of all time The Death of Superman that comes with some massively exciting animated action set-pieces
Spinoff of the 1990s animated Superman tv series, made as tie in for Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns Some good action, negligible use of the characters unlike the DC Universe Animated Original Movies that began the following year, at best a routine episode of the tv series
An animated film that seems premised on not much more than bringing various obscure DC Comics characters out of mothballs for one giant-sized punch up
One of the best of the DC Universe Original Animated Movies under the greatly underrated Lauren Montgomery. This serves to introduce Supergirl and Jack Kirby’s Fourth World
Sequel to the animated The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which was the second highest grossing film of 2023. From the people behind the Despicable Me films, this exists as little more than eye candy for five-year-olds
Illumination Entertainment, the company behind the Despicable Me films, make an animated film based on the popular videogame franchise. The result was the second highest grossing film of the year
Beautifully made Mamoru Hosoda film about a rogue A.I. taking over a social media network. A film that is also a heartwarming work about family togetherness
A DC Universe Original Animated Movie given over to Suicide Squad. Clearly inspired by the live-action film, this goes overboard on the super-villains present, having three entire teams running around to general confusion, while striking a very odd tone in its pitch for an R-rating
French animated film that is about as far from children’s entertainment as it is possible to get – a mordantly dark comedy that operates in similar territory to The Addams Family in its tale of a family that operates a shop selling items of despatch to the suicidally minded
The third of the Stuart Little films, this one animated instead of its live-action predecessors
Disney’s 61st animated film. A lost world adventure that emerges as Fantastic Voyage by way of Avatar
George Lucas’s venture into animation was critically pilloried. It’s not bad, just no different from a formula film like Rise of the Guardians or Epic. From the man who made Star Wars, you had higher expectations
This did nothing for me in the pre-release. Watching it, it proves far more enjoyable than expectation. It is very baby-centric but it does have a frequently off-the-wall sense of humour that is rather appealing
Cheaply made video-released sequel to Lilo & Stitch, which is only a rehash but does surprisingly reunite all the voice talents
Sixteen years after making Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo returns to direct a full-length anime, making a Steampunk work that is dazzling in its epic quality and vistas of mass destruction
The fifth of the films in the series begun with Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers. The best of the series was the previous entry Starship Troopers: Invasion where they turned it over to anime director Shinji Aramaki. This is a sequel to that, although the same mix fails to work again
The importation of anime director Shinji Aramaki to helm the latest Starship Troopers film provides dazzling animation and hardware, along with some hard, furious military action that easily outstrips all the other films. On the other hand, the film never goes beyond being about soldiers shooting up bugs
The first animated film in 3D, a blatant copy of Star Wars that proves occasionally engaging
Theatrical spinoff from the Star Wars prequels, released to introduce the popular animated series. This shows it is time for George Lucas to move beyond recycling something that was successful three decades ago
The tv special that George Lucas would have all copies destroyed, a work of legendary badness – a Star Wars Thanksgiving special featuring most of the original cast and a series of variety performances that are mind-boggling in their ineptitude, not to mention complete and utter fumbling of everything that Star Wars was
Katsuhiro Otomo overseen anime about the discovery of Noah’s Ark, an alien artifact that gives a child vast psychic powers in a swathe of destruction not dissimilar to Akira
Spongebob Squarepants was a sleeper hit on the Nickelodeon Channel that crossed over to find an adult following; this is the first of the film spinoffs. The film comes with a zanily surreal sense of humour that ran through the series that is frequently downright hilarious
One of the masterpieces of Hayao Miyazaki, a gentle, beautiful work of anime set in an afterlife bathhouse where Miyazaki’s range of extraordinary creatures and quiet tenderness finds something that Western fantasy rarely ever comes near
Beautifully animated DreamWorks film that tells the life of a horse on the Western frontier. For once, anthropological realism is maintained and the animals do not talk
Surprisingly good animated sword and sorcery film, made with a darker edge and definitely not for children
Animated film that has the madcap premise of a top spy (voiced by Will Smith) transformed into a pigeon. A film that comes with such a level of comedic energy that it makes you think all hope is not lost for Blue Sky Studios, the makers of the interminable Ice Age films.
Sony, the holders of the Spider-Man copyright, squeeze more out of the property with a madcap animated offering that mixes up a host of alternate takes on Spider-Man in what visually resembles an explosion at a pop art exhibition
The animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse proved an unexpected success. This sequel builds on that ups the artistic quality of the original to something quite extraordinary
The brooding space pirate Captain Harlock is one of the famous anti-heroes in manga and anime. Harlock gets a big screen revamp here from Shinji (Appleseed) Aramaki, one of the most amazing of modern anime directors, who delivers a series of epic space battles with a breathtaking beauty
Anime film spun off from a popular Japanese tv series. Despite crude animation, this has a colourful vigour and taps the same space opera vein as Star Wars, which came only three months earlier
An animated film about NASA experimental chimpanzees. Not quite up there with Pixar but an amiable and unpretentious and amiable outing
The great Osamu Dezai makes a colourful anime that jumps aboard the Stars Wars space opera fad
A theatrical release spun off from tv’s cult absurdist/scatological show. Not as sophisticated as later seasons of the tv series but with a raucously wacky bite that is frequently hilarious
Pixar film with a head-scratchingly odd plot but also one of the better efforts of the divided post-2010 period that goes a long way towards recapturing the things they did so well in their heyday
If you don’t know who Karel Zeman is, you need to check out his films – he is quite one of the most extraordinary directors in his blend of live-action and animation. Zeman’s later films are pure animation and tend to be overlooked but are not uninteresting.
Disney film that is difficult to see these days due to its controversial treatments of race issues. Controversies aside, this is undeniably likeable, in particular in its telling a series of tall tales and finding a folk vernacular
An Oscar nominees for Best Animated Film – a unique and exquisitely drawn dive into Celtic mythology that comes with wit, humour and the emotional tenderness of a Hayao Miyazaki. This deserves to be seen far more widely than it ended up being
The title is misleading as this features no Bigfeet but is an animated film about a family that sprouts all-over body hair and big feet. This quickly falls into the usual formulaic inanities of the modern animated film
Another of the DC Universe Original Animated Movies, this devoted to the character of Batman’s son Damian. Solid action, a well moving plot that makes good use of its characters, adding to a decent entry even if it is not up among the best of these animated DC films
The first full-length animated film ever made and the beginning of the Disney tradition. A superlative effort, full of an adorable anthropomorphism where Disney instinctively grasps all the elements of the formula
Lightweight British animated adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale made for children
For their third Smurfs film, Sony have dispensed with the live-action/CGi animation mix of the previous two films and made a wholly animated film. Its’ the Smurfs in their more natural element but the film is never more than 3D eye candy for the moppet audiences
Animated film based on the original Belgian Smurfs comics made prior to the hit of the Hanna-Barbera series.
An animated revival of The Smurfs. This was greeted with a very negative reception. With a massive celebrity voice line-up packed into almost any corner of the film the casting director can manage
One of the finest of all Disney animated films, an adaptation of the fairytale made with the full artistic resources that studio could bring to bear
From Mamoru Oshii of Ghost in the Shell fame, an anime that seems a mix of Biggles and Never Let Me Go, all taking place in an alternate world. The film is exquisite in its detail
I have lowered expectations of animated films these days but was surprised what an effortlessly engaging film this is. Essentially a version of American Idol but recast with talking/singing animals, it is a film that bursts with confidence and its own natural energy from every pore
Sing had the cute idea of American Idol-like competition conducted with talking animals. This equally likeable sequel expands the scale of things and takes the show to the talking animal equivalent of Las Vegas
DreamWorks animated Sinbad adventure by the numbers that seems to go out of its way to tell a Sinbad story divorced of its Islamic cultural background
An early CGI animated film conducted on a cut-price budget that tells further adventures of Sinbad
Film spinoff from the long-running animated tv series. The familiar gags are there but show feels awkward extruded out to a full-length plot. You keep feeling the film should have been more than it is.
The third of the Shrek films settles in with a formulaic blandness where the characters turn up more because everyone expects them to than the film finds much for them to do
The fourth of the Shrek films. By this point, the freshness and originality of the first film has been buried under animated film formula, while the plot is a tired rehash of It’s a Wonderful Life
Shrek was a fresh and original hit. The first of four insipid sequels, this seems to merely coast by on our liking of the characters while upping the fairytale parody
Before this was spun out into a series of ho-hum sequels, the original was an animated film that burst with a freshness and a series of winning voice characterisations
An anthology of short anime pieces from various directors, including creator Katsuhiro Otomo, the cult creator of Akira. The four episodes vary from historical to fantasy to futuristic warfare and, as with any anthology, vary in quality from the okay to the watchable
Sequel to Gnomeo & Juliet, which retold Shakespeare with garden gnomes. This for some reason adds a garden gnome Sherlock Holmes to the mix. The high speed whirring you hear is probably Arthur Conan Doyle rotating in his grave,
DreamWorks animated talking fish film that was dismissed in the shadow of Pixar’s earlier Finding Nemo but is perfectly likeable in its own right
German animated film about the adventures of Snow White’s Seven Dwarves. Lightweight and trivial, this feels like it has come along ten years too late to the fad for fairytale parodies and mash-ups we had in the mid-2000s with films like Shrek and Hoodwinked!
Train to Busan was a massive breakout hit from South Korear. Overlooked in the buzz was this animated prequel from the same director released at the same time. The zombie film and animation are an uneasy mix but this works well, if not with the same kick as Train to Busan
The first film from Don Bluth, a Disney animator who formed his own company vowing a return to the studio’s classic tradition. The results are beautiful and quite magical
Beautifully made animated film that won surprise recognition at the Academy Awards. More a festival film than necessarily a box-office one
Illumination’s The Secret Life of Pets came with a winning concept – a Garfield like series of wry observations on humanity by pets – and this is one amongst the current plague of animated sequels that emerges equally likably
I really enjoyed Illumination Entertainment’s debut film Despicable Me but thereafter they just seemed to slip into formula and following what every other animation studio is. Despite low initial enthusiasm, they regain their form here, doing nothing radically out of the ordinary but producing a modestly engaging work
An animated film revival of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? This also makes an misguided attempt to build a shared universe among assorted Hanna-Barbera characters
Mamoru Hosoda conducts the bizarre notion of an anime version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It is a Hamlet that Shakespeare would barely recognise, following a heroine as she makes a journey across the afterlife
Richard Linklater conducts an animated adaptation of the Philip K. Dick novel with extremely faithful results. Keanu Reeves is a police officer assigned to investigate what he realises is himself
The most demented premise of the year – an animated film about the lives of the talking produce in a supermarket. This is crude, rude and guaranteed to offend (as might be expected from a Seth Rogen penned vehicle); it is also one of the funniest and cleverest films of the year
The novelty of an animated Disney travelogue. Pitched to the South American market, the four stories see Donald Duck and Goofy visiting various locations
The first film spinoff of the popular animated tv series Rugrats about infants observing the adult world
The second entry in the ultra-annoying animated franchise spun off from the animated tv series that only seems to centre around poo and pee jokes, this is marginally more enjoyable than the first film
Comedian Rodney Dangerfield writes, produces and voices the role of a dog in this surprisingly charming and likeable animated film, the best and lest recognised film Dangerfield ever made
Katsuhiro Otomo written anime that functions as a parody of the school of Transformer robots as the artificially intelligent hospital bed of a geriatric becomes a giant ramshackle colossus rampaging through the city
Forget about movie melodrama like A Beautiful Mind , this may be one of the best, most credible films about mental illness … Essentially a surreal animated family history of a Latvian animator, this distils some incredibly bleak anecdotal material with a wittily and biting incisive brilliance
Promisingly ambitious animated SF film that tries to catch some of the trippy qualities of Heavy Metal where the impressive quality of animation is let down by a juvenile story about a rock band in a post-holocaust future
The worst of Don Bluth’s animated films in which a young boy is sent on a quest to find a rooster that does Elvis impersonations
Enjoyably likeable animated film from Blue Sky Studios set in a world inhabited by robots. Lots of visual invention and madcap slapstick
An utterly charming film, all told without dialogue, about a dog living in 1980s New York who purchases a robot as its new best friend
One of the earliest works from Katsuhiro Otomo, the cult director of Akira, although he only contributes one episode to an anthology of anime tales with the common theme of robots. The collection contains some impressive and visually striking episodes
Robinson Crusoe is a classic adventure story about a man shipwrecked on a desert island. It has no fantastic content but this is a bizarre animated version where Crusoe is aided by the talking animals that inhabits the island amid much slapstick shenanigans
Disney animated film produced during the studio’s creative slump between the 1960s and 80s, the main conceit is recasting the story of Robin Hood with talking animals amid much slapstick
Good-natured DreamWorks animated film set during the Conquistadors arrival in South America. Aztec culture undergoes some modern rewriting but this remains modestly enjoyable (*)
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are resurrected in a new animated film that feels like a watered-down fix designed for Ritalin-deprived youth
The concept – sort of akin to
I hate the utterly formulaic films of Blue Sky Studios, the ones behind the endless Ice Age sequels. That said, this is one of their more enjoyable – despite a plot that is amazingly busy trying to reintroduce characters from the first film, the screen overflows with colourful exuberance
A Blue Sky Studios animated film set around a talking macaw and his journey to the wilds of Brazil for the first time to mate and repopulate the species. Familiar cliched story arcs conducted with a good deal of colour
Among the cheap video-released sequels to their classics Disney made during the 00s, this Peter Pan sequel emerges as halfway reasonable
Way back before Peter Jackson, there was another whole era of Tolkien adaptations, including this animated adaptation of the third book, which is a peculiar oddity if nothing else
A weak video-released spinoff of Disney’s Aladdin that began Disney’s habit throughout the 90s/00s of generating cheap sequels to their animated classics
The first in a series of anime films that were produced by Capcom, the creators of the Resident Evil videogames, and intended to run parallel to the live-action films. I was never a big fan of the live-action films. The question is – does Resident Evil work better in the anime format?
The second of the Resident Evil anime films. This is set before the release of the T-Virus and focuses on origin stories for some of the characters
Dazzling French animated Cyberpunk film shot in the performance capture animated process and then rendered in striking two-tone black-and-white
One of the more obscure films in the Disney catalogue. A part live-action, part animated dramatised tour of Disney Studios, showing how the studio runs and screening several animated short pieces
Second half of the two-part animated adaptation of The Death of Superman, which depicts the aftermath where Metropolis is puzzled over the appearance of four impostors all claiming to be the real Superman
Studio Ghibli’s first ever international co-production. A desert island castaway fantasy, this makes interesting comparison to the recent Robinson Crusoe/The Wild Life, even if both films are poles apart in style. This is dialogueless, spare and contained with a minimalism of plot and drama
Surprisingly good animated revival of Robert E. Howard’s warrior woman with a script by comic-book writer Gail Simone that gets the character just right