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Directors: Nick Park & Steve Box
Release Date: September 4, 2005
Stars: Wallace & Gromit
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
After three excellent two-reelers British animation heroes Wallace and Gromit were ready for their first feature film.
‘The Curse of the Were-Rabbit’ elaborates primarily on the themes of ‘A Close Shave‘: love and horror. This time Wallace and Gromit are after a giant rabbit threatening the crops breeds for a vegetable contest in the village.
The stop motion animation in this film is practically flawless, elevating the century old technique to the highest standards possible. Indeed, both this film and ‘Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride‘, another stop motion film, were far superior to any computer animated feature film released in 2005 or 2006.
‘The Curse of the Were-Rabbit’ is not only a great animation film, it is great cinema, with excellent camera work, a flawless story, wonderful characterization and lean storytelling that builds to a spectacular climax. Especially the animation of Gromit is stunning, because his acting is completely silent throughout the picture and uses only the eyes to suggest emotion.
Watch ‘Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Directors: Kaspar Jancis, Ülo Pikkov & Priit Tender
Release Date: March 25, 2005
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
Probably one of the weirdest animated features ever made, Frank & Wendy belongs to the most commercial films ever produced by the Eesti Joonis film studios.
It features plenty of action, loud rock music, and a weird sense of humor, while it lacks the disturbing qualities of earlier films produced in this studio. Despite clearly being pure entertainment, it nonetheless retains the strong absurdism and surrealism typical for the Eesti Joonis studio, thanks to the screenplays and storyboards by Estonian animation master Priit Pärn. Frank & Wendy was originally conceived as a television series, and the feature has retained its episodic character, being divided into seven rather unrelated episodes.
Frank and Wendy are American FBI agents living in Estonia, saving the world from the most bizarre evil schemes, like a fast food chain selling hamburgers, which transmit a hunger message, and an amusement park designed to let live polar bears eat American elderly tourists. Also featured are politicians Vladimir Putin and Tony Blair, while several characters from other Eesti Joonisfilms have a cameo. The plots are very hard to re-tell and make even less sense on paper than on the screen.
Frank & Wendy is an entertaining movie, but due to its lack of plot and its episodic nature, watching it becomes a bit tiresome. In the end it fails to be a masterpiece.
Watch an excerpt from ‘Frank & Wendy’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Director: Bruno Bozzetto
Release Date: 1983
Rating: ★★
Review:
‘Sigmund’ is a very short cartoon, commissioned for the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
The cartoon consists of one scene in a blue room in which a bespectacled little boy imagines himself as the sport stars he watches on television. The little boy’s imagination is shown by metamorphosis: we watch him change into the sport stars, growing with every metamorphosis.
‘Sigmund’ is a sweet short, but neither memorable, funny or one of Bozzetto’s best.
Watch ‘Sigmund’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Director: Bruno Bozzetto
Release Date: October 31, 1968
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
‘Vip mio fratello superuomo’* is Bozzetto’s second feature, and it a great improvement on his first (‘West and Soda‘ from 1965).
The designs are bolder, the pace is higher, the timing sharper, and the story more original. The film starts rightaway with a hilarious history of the VIP superheroes through time. It then introduces our heroes, the superhero SuperVIP and his weak little bespectacled brother, MiniVIP. They end upon an island where a super-villain plans to turn mankind into brainless consumers.
The result is a very nonsensical superhero story, told to a great effect, with the minimum of means and very limited animation. It also shows Bozzetto’s aversion against consumerism, a theme he would expand upon in his masterpiece ‘Allegro non troppo’ (1976). Unlike that latter feature, ‘Vip mio fratello superuomo’ remains virtually unknown. This is a pity, for this funny film deserves a wider audience.
Watch and excerpt from ‘Vip mio fratello superuomo’ yourself and tell me what you think:
* also known as ‘My Brother Superman’
Director: Bruno Bozzetto
Release Date: 1967
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
The title of this cartoon can be translated as ‘life in a tin can’ and this is an apt title.
In this cartoon Bozzetto reduces a man’s whole life to several minutes. The main character’s life takes place in and between depressingly tall grey buildings. He is only allowed brief episodes of sheer joy: during is boyhood, when he falls in love, and when he becomes a father. These short episodes are depicted by colorful pictures of nature, accompanied by lyric music.
‘Una vita in scatola’ must be Bozzetto’s most perfectly timed cartoon, and it is his first real masterpiece.
Watch ‘Una vita in scatola’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Director: Alain Ughetto
Release Date: June 10, 2013
Rating: ★★½
Review:
After ‘Persepolis’ (2007) ‘Jasmine’ is the second animation film about the Iranian revolution of 1979.
In his strongly autobiographical film Ughetto rediscovers his love relationship with Jasmine, a young woman from Iran, whom he visited during the turmoils of 1978/1979, and whom he left behind, to return to France, alone.
Ughetto doesn’t spare himself, and realizes leaving her was a big mistake on his part. To tell his story he uses love letters from the time, 8mm film images he shot during the Iran revolution and clay animation. He also shows the clay animation process, his elaborate sets made from styrofoam packaging material and collections of clay figures.
Unfortunately, Ughetto’s clay animation is very limited. His plasticine figures are devoid of any facial expression, and they all look the same. The only difference between the Alain and Jasmine puppets is their color (caramel vs. blue – reflecting the color of her eyes). There’s only a limited amount of animation, and little of it is expressive.
Because of this, the film relies heavily on the voice overs, Alain telling his story, a woman reading Jasmine’s love letters. Without the soundtrack the film becomes utterly incomprehensible. Only at one point in the film, the animation images leave a strong impression themselves: when the oppressive forces of the new Islamic regime strike down and kill the former revolutionaries. This is shown by giant floating turbans suddenly falling down and crushing discussing people.
‘Jasmine’ is an intimate, very personal and honest film, and the story of the Iranian revolution and its effects on the everyday lives of people remains moving. But ‘Jasmine’ is no ‘Persepolis’ and in the end falls short as an animation film. It could easily have been a live action film, a documentary, or even a novel, instead.
Watch the trailer for ‘Jasmine’ and tell me what you think:
Director: Rémi Vandenitte
Release Date: June 8, 2013
Rating: ★★★
Review:
‘Betty’s Blues’ is Vandenitte’s ode to the country blues, and its origins in the South of the United States.
The film is a frame story, with two distinct styles. The framing story is told in stop-motion. We watch a young black blues singer perform in a small and empty bar near a metro line (we hear the cars rattling by from time to time). The singer tells his audience the story of Betty’s Blues. Enter the drawn animation.
The story itself is about a blues singer who loses his girl to the K.K.K. and becomes blind himself. In return for his blindness he receives the gift to make everybody dance to his guitar playing. When he meets the K.K.K. again, his revenge is sweet. The film ends with the audience shocked with horror by this rather violent story.
Both Vandenitte’s stop-motion and 2D animation are of a high quality. His stop-motion puppets have a delightfully gritty texture, and Vandenitte’s animation of guitar playing is wonderfully convincing. In the 2D sequences Vandenitte makes use of a technique simulating wood carving, combined with bold and evocative coloring, sometimes mimicking the color palette of that great cinematic ode to the musical South, ‘O Brother Where Art Thou’. The result is a gorgeous film, if a little shallow in the end.
Watch the teaser for ‘Betty’s Blues’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Director: Alexandre Alexeieff
Release Date: 1933
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
Predating Disney’s film to the same classical piece by seven years, this ‘video clip’ to the music of ‘Night on Bald Mountain’ by Modest Mussorgsky is an impressive mood piece.
The Russian-French artist Alexeieff animated ‘Une nuit sur le mont chauve’ on a so-called pinscreen, a device he invented himself , and which consists of a screen with numerous pins, which can be pushed further in or out, to produce a shadowy image together. This technique is highly original, and the images produced are totally unique.The film’s imagery has more in common with surreal paintings from the era than with any other animation film from the 1930s. ‘Une nuit sur le mont chauve’ was Alexeieff’s first film on the pinscreen. Together with his wife Claire Parker he would animate five more, of which ‘The Nose’ (1963) is arguably the best.
The film does not tell a story, but shows us a string of expressionistic images of animal and human forms, floating through air, and morphing into disturbing creatures. The animation is sometimes excellent (with a human figure circling through the air as a particular standout), but at times primitive, too, and the film suffers a little from the crude montage. Both shortcomings are a direct result of the limitations of the pinscreen. However, Alexeieff’s vision overcomes the film’s drawbacks, and ‘Une nuit sur le mont chauve’ is rightly considered an animation classic.
Watch ‘Une nuit sur le mont chauve’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Une nuit sur le mont chauve’ is available on the DVD ‘Alexeïeff – le cinéma épinglé’
Director: Ruth Lingford
Release Date: 1997
Rating: ★★★★★ ♕
Review:
When death takes away her child, a mother gives up everything to get her back.
‘Death and the Mother’ is Ruth Lingford’s re-telling of a classic fairy-tale by Hans Christian Andersen. It’s an animation masterpiece: its strong and gritty animation, the beautiful string quartet music by Nigel Broadbent, the subtle sound effects – all add up to a very strong, dark and emotional film. Lingford makes clever use of the computer to create a very graphic film that looks like an animated woodcut. In an age in which computer animation almost equals 3D animation, this is a refreshing technique, with a stark impact and an imagery unparalleled in the animation field.
Moreover, Lingford captures Andersen’s tale of grief, love and sacrifice very well, without trying to update it. Just by staying true to the essence of the original story she has made a timeless classic. Her wordless film is as universal as it can get, and capable of communicating to audiences worldwide. It’s a welcome antidote to the Disney fairy tale retellings, which get more and more watered down, and which lose a lot of the originals’ charm with it.
Watch ‘Death and the mother’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Death and the Mother’ is available on the DVD inside the book ‘Animation Now!’
Director: Nick Mackie
Release Date: 1999
Rating: ★★
Review:
‘Minotaur & Little Nerkin’ is a curious 2d computer animation, which looks like it is designed for children.
However, its story is rather black. The film features a minotaur who lurks a duck into his home to eat a captivated human hand, only in order to eat the duck himself. Remarkable for its morbid humor and original technique, it is nonetheless an ugly and unfunny film, that fails to entertain, let alone impress the viewer.
Watch ‘Minotaur & Little Nerkin’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Minotaur & Little Nerkin’ is available on the DVD ‘Aardman Classics’
Director: Mark Brierley
Release Date: 1998
Rating: ★
Review:
‘Al dente’ is another film by computer animation pioneer at Aardman, Mark Brierley.
This short film looks even more primitive than ‘Owzat’ from the previous year. It doesn’t feature any backgrounds of notice, and the main character, a grumpy waiter who has to serve a vegetarian meal at a meat restaurant, looks primitive and unimaginative. The film is utterly mediocre and, like ‘Owzat’, probably would never have been released were it not an Aardman production.
Watch ‘Al dente’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Al dente’ is available on the DVD ‘Aardman Classics’
Director: Mark Brierley
Release Date: 1997
Rating: ★
Review:
In a graveyard a skeleton plays cricket with some unwilling ghosts.
‘Owzat’ is Aardman’s first endeavor into computer animation and it pales when compared to Pixar films from the same period. The designs look hopelessly primitive, the animation is stiff and the colors are rather ugly. As the film is quite incomprehensible, slow and unfunny, one wonders why it was made in the first place. It looks like a study, and it probably wouldn’t have been released if it had not been an Aardman production.
Watch ‘Owzat’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Owzat’ is available on the DVD ‘Aardman Classics’
Director: Boris Kossmehl
Release Date: 1993
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
When she hasn’t paid her washing machine, a girl’s aunt has to go to hell.
However, she soon returns as a zombie to fetch her handbag. The devil tries to take her once again, this time disguised as the handbag.
Atypical for the Aardman studios, ‘Not Without My Handbag’ features puppet animation and hardly any clay animation. It’s a highly designed film, using stark colors, extreme camera angles and expressionistic decors. Its unique style is somewhat akin to that of Tim Burton, but is even more idiosyncratic. Despite its horror theme, the film is more lighthearted than the earlier Aardman films ‘Adam‘ (1991) or ‘Loves Me, Loves Me Not‘ (1992), because of its zany humor and matter-of-fact dialogue. For example, when her aunt returns as a zombie, the girl suddenly turns to camera and says proudly: “My auntie is a zombie from hell!”.
‘Not Without My Handbag’ is a modest masterpiece: it’s unpretentious, but it combines originality with virtuosity. The animation of the evil handbag is particularly good. Director-animator Boris Kossmehl later moved to 3D computer animation, performing character animation for Dreamworks’ ‘Antz’ and ‘Shrek’.
Watch ‘Not Without My Handbag’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Not Without My Handbag’ is available on the DVD ‘Aardman Classics’
Director: Jeff Newitt
Release Date: 1992
Rating: ★★★
Review:
A gentleman uses a flower to determine whether his girl loves him or not.
The contrasts between happiness (she loves him) and pain (she loves him not) get more and more extreme during the film, providing unsettling images of terror.
Like ‘Adam‘, ‘Loves Me, Loves Me Not’ is an example of dark humor, typical for the Aardman Studios at the time. The dark humor is typified by the screams of pain the flower exclaims, when its petals are removed, by the highly disturbing soundtrack and by the images of suicide and threat.
Combining virtuoso clay animation with some cel animation, the film is a technical masterpiece. It also features some great silent comedy, and especially the deft gestures of the Clark Gable-like gentleman are nicely done.
Watch ‘Loves Me, Loves Me Not’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Loves Me, Loves Me Not’ is available on the DVD ‘Aardman Classics’
Director: Peter Lord
Release Date: 1991
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
A giant hand creates a man on a tiny planet.
His creator orders the man around, but the man soon discovers his barren sphere is too small to do anything, and that he is stuck to it. Luckily, in the end the creator grands him a companion, which turns out to be a penguin (iris out).
‘Adam’ exploits the dark humor typical for the early Aardman films. Its claustrophobia feels real and disturbing, and the film raises inevitable questions about existence and purpose of life. And though ‘Adam’ contains great silent comedy gags, the film is rather unsettling overall. Unfortunately, the film’s comedy is hampered by Stuart Gordon’s rather ugly electronic music. However, Lord’s animation is superb throughout, and a prime example of the more comedy-driven animation style the Aardman studio took from 1989 on.
Watch ‘Adam’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Adam’ is available on the DVD ‘Aardman Classics’
Director: Osvaldo Cavandoli
Release Date: 1991
Stars: La Linea
Rating: ★★
Review:
Trazom, A.W. Is W.A. Mozart spelled backwards and it’s Cavandoli’s hommage to the composer.
We watch La Linea dressed like an 18th century composer playing Mozart’s K545 sonata on the grand piano. Meanwhile he encounters several animals and people.
Unfortunately, the cartoon is slow, repetitive and rather unfunny. La Linea’s irresistible voice is hardly heard and this cartoon lacks the brazen humor of the earlier entries. And it completely pales when compared to classic piano concerto cartoons like ‘Rhapsody Rabbit‘ (1946) or ‘The Cat Concerto‘ (1947).
‘Trazom, A.W.’ is available on the DVD ‘La Linea 3’
Director: René Laloux
Release Date: 1988
Rating: ★★★★½
Review:
‘La Prisonnière’ is a short, rather surrealistic science fiction film about two children.
They visit an extraterrestrial monastery and witness a rescue of a prisoner by naked women who step out of a stranded whale.
The film looks like an animated version of designer Caza’s source comic, Équinoxe (which can be found here), and contains only a limited amount of animation. In his designs Caza’s style is very reminiscent of that of his fellow french comic artist Moebius.
‘La prisonnière’ seems like an etude for Laloux’s and Caza’s much bigger project, the feature film ‘Gandahar‘ (1988). The atmosphere of the short is poetic, if completely incomprehensible.
Watch ‘La Prisonnière’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘La Prisonnière’ is available on the DVD ‘Gandahar’
Director: Peter Lord
Release Date: 1989
Rating: ★★½
Review:
With ‘War Story’ the Aardman studio returned to their original lip-synch experiments with real dialogue.
This time they use an interview with one Bill Perry, an old man who tells his memories of his life in Bristol during World War II. Unlike the ‘Animated conversations’ series, however, there is room for goofy images exaggerating the tall tales of the voice over, which involve a slant house and lots of coal. The film’s images are very tongue-in-cheek, yet this film once again suffers from a bad soundtrack, and the old man’s mumblings are at times very difficult to follow, indeed.
The blending of real interviews with original and humorous images would be perfected in ‘Creature Comforts’ by Nick Park, who also animated on this film. In this sense ‘War Story’ is an important step towards Aardman’s mature style, which was to become less serious, and more cartoony, and consequently, more commercially successful.
Watch ‘War Story’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘War Story’ is available on the DVD ‘Aardman Classics’
Director: Richard Goleszowski
Release Date: 1989
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
‘Ident’ is a surrealistic film about how we change our identity over the course of a day according to the people we meet.
The film uses highly original and very stylized designs, and jabbering dialogue to an alienating effect. Its claustrophobic labyrinth setting alone is unsettling. The film is not heavy-weighted, however, but keeps a light sense of humor. It also features a flat dog that was to become the direct ancestor of Rex the Runt.
Watch ‘Ident’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Ident’ is available on the DVD ‘Aardman Classics’
Director: ?
Release Date: 1987
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
‘My Baby Just Cares For Me’ was Aardman Studio’s second video clip, after ‘Sledgehammer’ for Peter Gabriel (1986).
‘My Baby Just Cares For Me’ is not quite as elaborate, however. It’s a sweet little video in mostly black and white. It’s set to Nina Simone’s 1958 recording of the song, which was reissued in 1987 after being used in a successful commercial for Chanel No.5.
The clip features cat characters, including a black female cat singer, and a white cat who’s in love with her. It also features some live action footage showing details of a piano, brushes on a snare drum, and a double bass.
The smoky nightclub atmosphere is captured very well, and the animation, joyful if a little crude, matches the song perfectly. The result is one of the most enjoyable little stop motion films of the 1980s.
Watch ‘My Baby Just Cares For Me’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘My Baby Just Cares For Me’ is available on the DVD ‘Aardman Classics’
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 