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.
Zootopia was one of Disney’s freshest animated works in a decade largely marked only by mediocrity. This is a sequel where the fantastically original world of the first film slips into being just another Disney IP
A really good Disney animated film set in a world that imagines what might happen if animals lived in cities, this is an ingenious reworking of the talking animals premise that overflows with visual ingenuity and warm humour
This nominally tells three slice-of-life tales but in each the principal character is creating a book or film about one of the other characters. This becomes a meta-fiction of considerable cleverness as we see how the problems of one character end up reflected in the other character’s story
A very rare anime film about a fairy who descends to Earth from the heavens and takes the side of downtrodden peasants in standing against a greedy landowner and a demon god
An animated film based on the hit playing card phenomenon, which proves largely incomprehensible to anybody not versed in the game
Makoto Shinkai anime that starts as a light and fluffy piece about a boy and a girl who keep waking up in each other’s bodies but expands out into a wholly different story, gaining unexpected emotional depths
The third of The Beatles films, in this case an animated work that features likenesses of The Fab Four as they trip through some amazing nonsensical psychedelic visuals
Anime involving a superheroic battle for the fate of the world. Dazzling eye candy but too many characters and subplots make things confusing
One of the best Disney animated films in ages. Has the winning concept of the secret lives of the characters inside videogames. Imagine Tron by way of Toy Story. The animators have clever fun with the idea, while the film creates a character arc that become the strength of the film
A spinoff from Pixar’s Cars series (although is not in itself a Pixar film but comes from Disney) that sets out to do the same with anthropomorphic planes. Amiable, even likeable but more a wannabe that seems like it is trying to be than actually hits the cleverness and creative heights of Pixar
The second of the DC Universe Animated Original Movies made as a standalone entry for Wonder Woman, clearly building on the success of the Gal Gadot film
Fine animated version of the DC Comics superheroine that gets the character just right and tells the story in a way that eclipses all previous filmed versions
The third film from Irish animator Tomm Moore, a beautiful Princess Mononoke-like tale of a girl’s friendship with persecuted werewolves in the forest
Mamoru Hosoda proves himself as one of the major directors in anime with this tender, lovely and enormously affecting work about a mother raising two werewolf children.
Ralph Bakshi left behind counter-culture animation to embark on this original fantasy film that comes with a trippily surreal quality, mixing fantasy tropes with a science-fictional rationalisation
On the slight side as a Disney theatrical film, nevertheless this keeps to the essence of the original tales and comes with some appealingly playful fourth-wall breaking visuals
Little-seen but beautifully made anime set in an alternate timeline where a young man becomes the volunteer for the first space launch
A winning animated film about a robot trying to find its way among the animals on an island. Tender and heart-warming, the sort of film that Pixar used to do so well
Likeable animated film about a group of zoo animals making an escape that ended up being overshadowed by the similar, more high-profile Madagascar
Anime from Yoshiaki Kawajiri about a war with a demon dimension that falls halfway between H.P. Lovecraft and a hard-boiled detective thriller and brims over wit fascinatingly pathological sexual imagery
Groundbreaking film that hilariously imagines an alternate world where cartoon characters live alongside humans. The energy and creativity of the film is superlative
A sweet and quite lovely anime where a girl befriends the boy she pines after being offered a mask that transforms her into a cat body – only to then have her own body stolen
Beautifully affecting animated film from Ari Folman in which the imaginary companion in Anne Frank’s diary comes to life in the present day
Powerful and biting animated film from a Raymond Briggs book focused on an elderly couple and their wholly inadequate attempts to cope with the outbreak of nuclear war
A ghost story from Studio Ghibli – although rather than any Western equivalent that sets out to scare the pants off us, this is a sweetly tender story of friendship between two girls. The result more than capably approaches some of Hayao Miyazaki’s best
Juvenile animated film from Amblin Entertainment concerning dinosaurs whose intelligence is raised to human level and they are let loose in the present-day
From Makoto Shinkai who made Your Name., a lovely anime about a girl who can control the weather. An odd premise about orphans that soon develops unusual and unexpected depths
BBC tv mini-series remake of the classic Richard Adams novel about talking rabbits on a quest. To get it over with, the animation is not the high-end quality that we have been spoiled with by Pixar et al. On the other hand, what remains is an excellent faithfully told version of the story
Neglected today, this adaptation of Richard Adams’ classic novel about a quest among rabbits was one of the finest animated films of its era. This is frequently heartbreaking and touches on darker emotions that Disney and most other family films regularly sanitise.
Part live-action, part animated adaptation of a classic Victorian children’s story about an urchin who discovers a secret world underwater
The second part of DC Universe Animated Original Movies’ adaptation of Alan Moore’s classic graphic novel, the most faithful screen adaptation yet
An animated adaptation of Alan Moore’s classic, genre defining comic-book, this is the most faithful treatment to date
Sequel to the H.G. Wells novel that imagines a fascinating alternate history that might have occurred following the Martian invasion. The clear appeal has been creating a series of scenes showing humanity tackling invading tripods in giant Steampunk manned robots
A near-dialogueless story of a lonely robot clearing up junk in the aftermath of civilisation. This is surely Pixar’s most endearing film to date where they are operating at the peak of their creativity
Walking With Dinosaurs was an amazing documentary series that recreated prehistoric life with CGI animation. By contrast. the film spinoff is a cutsie animated film with talking dinosaurs. It is a film that is killed by the decision to let the dinosaurs talk with smartass one-liners and contemporary in-jokes
A unique and very original animated film from Richard Linklater where a character wanders through a dream, encountering various people and their different philosophical outlooks
Animated film about a talking and singing monkey from Cuba that travels to the US on a quest
Anime film about an android-overrun future Japan that resembles another episode of the Appleseed franchise
Yoshiaki Kawajiri, director of Ninja Scroll and Wicked City, steps in to make a sequel(?)/reboot(?) to the cult 1985 anime with visually enthralling regard
Cult anime about a monosyllabic vampire hunter moving across a hallucinatory post-apocalyptic dispatching mutants and vampires
Amiable British animated film set amongst the Allied Resistance during World War II, all cast with talking carrier pigeons
The first of two OVA sequels to the anime classic Legend of the Overfiend, this lacks the perverse imagery of the original
One of the finest works from Pixar, the story about an old man and a boy on an adventure in a film that develops some incredibly nuanced and heart-warming emotional depths
aka The Fantastic Adventures of Unico Japan. 1981. Crew Director – Toshio Hirata, Screenplay – Masaki Tsuji, Based on a Story by Osamu Tezuka, Producer – Shintaro Tsuji, Music – Ryo Kitayama, Art Direction – Akio Sugino. Production Company – Sanrio. Plot The gods are jealous of the young unicorn boy Unico who can bring […]
Animated film based on the popular fantasy wargame. The set-up is a fascinating mix of SF and mediaeval religion but the plot rehashes Aliens without much payoff and the animation is B-budget
Follow-up to the previous animated Marvel Comics film featuring The Avengers, this serves to introduce Black Panther to the screen for the first time
The first of several animated films based on Marvel Comics properties, this does a solid job in adapting Mark Millar’s The Ultimates, a retelling of The Avengers origin story
Amiable British animated film for young children based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale
A likeable and colourful French animated film
Animated film based on the popular comic-books co-directed by the comic-book’s creators René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo,. This is disappointingly weak animation that substitutes slapstick cartoon gags for the comic’s more sophisticated humour
Animated adaption of the comic-book about a Native American warrior stranded in a prehistoric lost world
This was the 25th Pixar film and becomes in effect a Pixar-ised version of The Incredible Hulk about a young girl who transforms into a red panda whenever she gets upset
The 24th film from DreamWorks Animation – the studio that once offered a reasonable challenge to Disney is now starting to slip into the bland formula of competitors like Blue Sky. While passable, this feels like a film substantially lacking in originality and where you can predict its every move
The first film from the inimitable Bill Plympton, a work of bizarre surrealist animation and strange satiric transformations as a man sets out on a journey to find the final line for a tune
Animated film based on a book by Charlotte’s Web author E.B. White about a trumpet-playing swan
A clone of Donald Trump battles The Illuminati and the Egyptian god Anubis on Mars before travelling to Hell to sort out The Devil. The sheer dementia of the premise alone has one sitting down to watch
A perfect example of all the things I hate about modern animation. Based around the popular Troll dolls, this is vapidly designed, content-free product based solely around simplistic storylines, manic slapstick sequences, song and dance numbers, and inane contemporary pop culture in-jokes
Incredibly insipid animated film from Don Bluth about a kind-hearted troll that relocates to Central Park. This feels like a wannabe Disney film that is merely going through the moves.
Splendidly original and completely off the wall work of stylised animation from Sylvain Chomet
Disney animated film that proved a flop, this lazily remakes Treasure Island set in space. The result is bad science-fiction with sailing ships in space, Ben Gumm as a malfunctioning robot and so on
Animated theatrically released spinoff from the original Transformers tv series. The film mostly serves to highlight the considerable number of characters where to the uninitiated it is frequently difficult to tell one side from the next.
Since Michael Bay retired from the series, The Transformers films have been looking for new directions. This ventures into animation to tell a Transformers origin story
Pixar sequelise their very first film for a third time but the surprise is a film that creates a range of eccentric characters and finds the wit and warmth that has been missing through their last few films
After such high standards with the previous two films, there is considerable onus on Pixar when it comes to this third entry nevertheless they manage to wring some strong and effective new twists on the familiar
Pixar’s sequel to their first film and arguably an even better work where they get the plaintive emotion, character arcs and witty humour down perfect
The first film from Pixar and a breakthrough in being the first computer-animated film. Even aside from its technical innovations, this is enormously good fun with extremely well-constructed character arcs
The Tom and Jerry cartoons have the distinction of being considered the most violent ever. The question is why anybody considered why we needed an animated remake of Willy Wonka but with the addition of Tom and Jerry
Animated film that is gore-drenched and certainly not for children. Imagine The Belko Experiment conceived as a videogame where the heroine has to survive an office of people trying to kill her while aliens bet on the outcome
Multiverse films are all the in-thing in superhero films right now. This anime is a treatment of multiverse themes far away from superheroics that works beautifully in its sophistication of ideas
Animated revival of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which brings them back to the screen with a satisfyingly gritty edge and a series of kinetic action sequences
Very nicely made space opera from animator Don Bluth, operating from a Joss Whedon script, that unfortunately proved a big box-office flop
Animated adaptation of the Tintin character that gets the look and details of the characters just right but is ruined by bad dubbing of some of the voice parts and allowing a slapstick element to take over
The first in a series of Disney video-released films based around the Peter Pan fairy who is now reconceived as a contemporary Can Do girl
Fascinating anime about a cafe for androids. Imagine a cross between an Isaac Asimov Robot story and Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes. The film opens up in a series of episodes that tell stories of human-robot relations that hold a lovely tenderness
Rene Laloux, the animator who made Fantastic Planet, collaborates with cult fantasy artist Moebius and the result is a planetary adventure filled with trippily exotic backgrounds and creatures
Animated film from Don Bluth, an insipid adaptation of the fairytale that eventually bogs down as a comic picaresque (*)
Though Marvel Comics have had massive success with their big screen adaptations in the 00s, they have been far less successful with their attempts to spin off animated films. An okay but unexceptional animated prequel released at the same time as the first Thor live-action film
Legendary animated masterpiece from Richard Williams that was butchered in release. Williams’ animation is visually extraordinary
A very nicely animated French Steampunk film about an expedition aboard a steam airship to explore the secret entrance to an underground world in the Antarctic. A computer animated film all made by one person.
Anime about two homeless boys living in an inner city neighbourhood. The background artwork has a stunning degree of detail such that the city almost becomes its own character
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were the pop culture phenomenon of the 1980s. They have not fared so well in the 2000s but this new animated film written by Seth Rogen is a promising start
The first film featuring DC Comics; Teen Titans, a spinoff from the Teen Titans animated series
The Teen Titans get their first solo film in the DC Universe Original Animated Movies. A reasonable adventure based on a classic comic title that works with a good story and characterisation, even if some of it has an adult flavour that makes you wonder who the audience is
Here the less-than-serious Teen Titans Go! conduct an Into the Spider-Verse-type crossover with their serious counterparts from the multiverse
Film spinoff from the animated tv series Teen Titans Go! This hits in with an hilairous barrage of one-liners wickedly spoofing the superhero genre and jokes at DC Comics canon
Animated parody of the Tarzan films made with a very adult sense of humour that was banned in several countries as a result
An animated version of the Tarzan story shot in the motion capture process. Some of the modernisations might have Edgar Rice Burroughs turning in his grave, nevertheless the animation is excellent and the film works well as a technologically upgraded version of the Disney film
This Disney animated adaptation treats the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel with surprising respect and faithfulness for the most part where the addition of talking animals even works for it. Fun and with a great deal of creative energy, one of the better films from the 90s Disney renaissance
Likeable and charming Japanese anime for children about a young boy of hubris who sets out on a series of adventures
Disney fairytale Lite. The story of Rapunzel gets hiply modernised and is now no more than a cute adventure/romance about a handsome rogue and a girl who has magical hair. Eminently forgettable Disney animation.
Grungy low tech anime that comes out like a sarcastic version of Hello Kitty
Hayao Miyazaki’s son Goro more than capably takes up his father’s mantle in a anime beautiful adaptation of one of Ursula K. Le Guin’s later Earthsea books
Studio Ghibli adaptation of a classic Japanese folktale from Hayao Hiyazaki’s mentor Isao Takahata. This is a slower, very different film than Hayao Miyazaki’s, the animation designed like a traditional Japanese woodprint. Never quite soars like Miyazaki’s films do but not without its charms
Appealingly old-fashioned film about chivalry and heroism, much quieter than the other animation out there but this still holds its own
Forgettable Disney animated film telling the story of King Arthur’s boyhood where the Arthurian legends are sidelined in favour of talking animals and slapstick
Nicely animated film from Richard Rich that tells the story of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake in which a princess is turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer
Beautifully made anime from Makoto Shinkai about a young girl and a three-legged chair on a quest to close a series of portals across Japan and prevent unimaginable chaos emerging
Czech Claymation animator Jan Svankmajer embraces the Terry Gilliam cutout animation process in this wackily playful mix of dream and surrealism that emerges similar to The Science of Sleep
This came out several months after Happy Feet and has a similar plot involving surfing penguins. Though the lesser film and far more predictable, it is likeable
This adapts What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice and the American Way?, the highly acclaimed graphic novel that was written as a response to 9/11. Unfortunately, I am not sure condensing the story into a 76 animated film fully does justice to the complex debate of the original