Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Top Ten Animated Films

So, remember that whole year-end write-up I did? How a few folks I knew wrote up their lists as well? How about that "Movie Badasses" list we did a two-person perspective on? Well, judging from my page views, y'all seem to like that. So Josh, Tom and I decided to weigh in on a new Top Ten. This time around? Animation. (Sorry for the brief intro, folks. 4 am shifts at work sorta fry the brain). So, without further ado, you can read Josh's picks here, Tom's here, and mine below. Leave a comment with your thoughts.

10) Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

Well, what better way to start off a list like this than at the very start of the genre. Decades before Belle danced in the ballroom, only two score years shy of a century before Buzz and Woody took flight, and only 5 years before Warner Brothers would offer their own regrettable, and almost impossible to find (for good reason), take on the classic tale; Walt Disney had a dream. Having several hit cartoon shorts under his belt, and introduced the world to the most iconic mouse of all time with the classic Steamboat Willie, Walt decided to create the first ever feature-length cell-animated film. His wife and family tried to dissuade him, the papers all predicted a flop, decrying it's exorbitant $250,000 budget (remember, this is the Depression, folks). Well, two things happened: One: Through Disney mortgaging his home, and kicking off a rich Disney legacy of insanely ballooning budgets, Snow White's costs shot up to around $1,488,422.74; Two: None of that mattered, because the film became one of the biggest successes in history, quintupling its budget in its initial run (holding the record for highest grossing sound film of all time until a little Civil War epic came along), it made Disney an absolute household name, laid the foundation for the most innovative and beloved motion picture company in history, and broke the mold of motion pictures forever. And speaking of molds, this is also the origin of the "Disney Princess movie". The seminal public domain tale, pumped full of color and song, brought to life in a style many have imitated but none have matched. How does the film stack up against the Little Mermaids and Tangleds of the later years? Honestly, it's a lot like watching the first outing of the now definitive secret agent, 1962's Dr. No. The sound quality leaves a lot to be desired, and certain moments feel very dated, even slow at times. Techniques that appear fairly rough here have been polished and perfected over time, and a few of the iconic traits of the franchise haven't come to be yet; but the most surprising thing is how much stays the same. The film strikes gold in discovering a perfect formula Disney has rarely successfully wavered from, and the blueprints mined from this classic have yielded a pantheon of classic cartoons. Though, to her credit, the old girl holds up brilliantly on her own, and for 76 years old, the girl still looks damn good.

Best moment:

The introduction of the dwarfs, by far. Until this point, the film is gorgeous, its flawless, but for the kids? Honestly, it ranges from spooky to boring. That is, until Olaf, Timon & Pumba et al.'s seven grandaddies show up with a ditty and some sight gags to prove that there are certain things only cartoons can do. This is the scene that shows what Disney was, could be, and should be.



9) Fritz The Cat (1972)

Alright, folks. Put the kids to bed. We had a nice moment with Snow White singing to the birds, but things are about to get weird. Though the character of Fritz The Cat had existed for several years prior in the underground comix world, created by icon R. Crumb, Bakshi brought him to the big screen, and for many, to the forefront of the conversation about what film could do. The 70's were a time to experiment, and for new voices to be heard. Black cinema, pornographic cinema, independent cinema, all took off in this decade, and Fritz combined all three, while daring to be something else: social commentary. Using Crumb's character to express his own loathing for the times (much to Crumb's distaste), Bakshi broke down every boundary Disney hadn't, and changed the conversation about animation, and proving it didn't have to be for kids. Fritz remains one of the most successful independent films of all time (and by far the most successful animated film). It failed to top the box-office due to a little flick called The Godfather, but it didn't do too bad for an X-Rated cartoon turned down by every studio and distributor short of the guy that put out The Black Godfather. Most "scandalous" films of the 70's look astoundingly tame now (I'm looking at you, Midnight Cowboy. X-Rated on release, and would now probably be a PG-13 at best). Fritz is not one of those films. It's still as raucous, vulgar, pornographic and utterly scathing as it was in its day. Without it, we'd have no Heavy Metal, no Simpsons or South Park. Disney would be the only folks producing cartoons, and the underdog would have one less way of thumbing its nose at the world. Does the film hold up? Well, if you're into that sort of thing. And certainly, rock music-set sequences of triply animation work better if viewed under, well, similar circumstances to those who shuffled out to the grind house theaters back in the day. If you're the type who thinks Frozen is scandalous for its "lesbian themes" (because if a woman would rather be an individual than be with a man, she's a gay, apparently), than put down the DVD, or Fritz the Cat is gonna put you in the ground. On second thought, that might not be so bad.

Best moment:

It's hard to decide on one. The film is such a scatter-shot of sensations and stimulations, it all comes down to a matter of personal preference. And while the first utterance of the word "nigger" in a post-Song of the South flick might be the first hint this ain't a trip to a fairytale kingdom, and the bathtub orgy minutes later confirms it, my pick (the motorcycle ride of Blue, the biker junkie bunny) pretty much sets the tone of the film for any Bakshi virgins, and crams about as much rebellion and angst into one animation cell as humanly possible.



8) Up (2009)

What can be said about the second-ever Best Picture nominated cartoon that hasn't already been said? Lovingly crafted? One of Pixar's finest? Thrilling? Hilarious? Fun for the whole family? Vibrantly colorful? Visually stunning? Yeah, critics have covered all of these things a thousand times. Though those terms have been applied to countless films in the past as well. What praises have set Up apart from the pack enough to earn it a place on the list? Emotional. Honest. Raw. Human. Brutal. In trying to evoke emotion in their audiences in the past, Pixar (and admittedly, every other family film), played with kids stuff. The nostalgic, "growing up" moments in the Toy Story trilogy (ranging from the heart wrenching "When She Loved Me" in the second film to the blatant, joy-less "Fuck you, millennials, cry!" dreck of the third), the powerful but childishly simplistic environmental message of Wall-E, and the "family forever" tones on The Incredibles and Finding Nemo. Here, they changed it up. They made it real. This wasn't a film about talking cars, or cooking rats. And though they flew around in a house on balloons, there would be no doubt in anyone's minds that the characters in this film were humans. The first ten minutes of the film introduce us to a young boy named Carl, and an adventurous neighbor girl named Ellie. From a sweet scene of them becoming fast friends and discussing plans to see the world, we see them grow up, get married, and plan to start a family, and are then made to watch, helpless, as Ellie is cruelly (and slowly) ripped away from Carl by time, God or what have you, in a montage even more heartbreaking than the Kleenex-box-depleting Six Feet Under finale; all of this to say nothing of the boldness of briefly but powerfully addressing the pain of being unable to have children. And where most films might try and "recover" from that by having Carl take a magical journey that might restore life to his lost love, or even have him "meet someone new" (as though that heals everything), Up keeps things surprisingly grounded. No "ghost of Ellie" shows up to tell Carl to move on. Instead, it all comes back full circle in an unexpected way towards the end of the film, and the gut-punch it delivers is both infinitely sad and astoundingly life affirming. So what can be said about the second-ever Best Picture nominated cartoon that hasn't already been said? It should have won.

Best moment:


SPOILERS

Technically two moments, which some Youtube user kindly cut together, the most memorable and powerful moments of Up have not a frame of the kid or the talking dog. Rather, its the aforementioned opening montage (a masterclass in animated storytelling in itself) and its "follow-up", where a weary Carl sits defeated, gazing at Ellie's scrapbook, crushed when he sees the section for "Stuff I'm Going To Do", and realizing she never would, before turning the page and showing us what the whole film was really all about. I don't like to give ultimatums, but if you don't cry at the thought of the words "Thanks for the adventures. Now go have a new one.", you know nothing of love and loss.


Spoiler-ific link here


7) Grave of the Fireflies (1988)

Probably the most notable non-Miyazaki film to come out of Studio Ghibli (Japan's answer to Disney, who actually distributes the Ghibli films here in the US), Grave of the Fireflies originally shared a bill with My Neighbor Totoro when it was first released, and that might be why it took a while for most folks to warm up to it. You see, while the iconic Totoro (you've seen him. Even if you're cinematic tastes don't branch beyond the American, he showed up in Toy Story 3) is a large, fluffy, magical forrest creature in a delight children's film,  Seita and Setsuko, the brother and sister at the heart of Grave of the Fireflies, are two real kids, forced to try and survive in a post-Hiroshima Japan. Harrowing and heartbreaking, the story lilts in the air, never really going for the gut, which makes the inevitable end all the more powerful. Grave of the Fireflies is not an easy watch, for sure, and most would prefer the comfort of "safe sadness" provided by less grounded flicks (I promise to leave Toy Story 3 alone soon), it's an undeniably brilliant film, and the best incite we can get into the post-World War II world from the perspective of some of those most affected by it.

Best moment:

SPOILERS

Not "best" as though any joy could be taken from it, but the sad, slow passing of Setsuko, marked not with outcries or overbearing score, but rather with somber acceptance of something a long time coming, sets a high watermark for humanity in anime not met until Miyazaki's swan song The Wind Rises.




6) The Lion King (1994)

In the middle of the "Disney Rennaissance", generally agreed to have begun with 1989's The Little Mermaid, Disney broke away from the format of "fairy tale with a pretty princess who is spunky enough to appeal to post-modern feminists, with a cool guy for boys to like too" to take on a less family-friendly piece of public domain literature. Yes, Disney was finally going to take on The Bard. In something that would sound familiar to those who read above about Snow White, detractors were instantly pessimistic about a film that might break the streak of quality Disney was having. A movie about lions, that's basically Hamlet, and *gasp* no Alan Menken music? Heresy. What came about is considered by some to be the greatest film Disney ever made. Elton John's music is some of the best and most unique in the Disney canon, the death of Mufasa might be the most powerful and explicit death in Disney since Bambi, and the visuals (sweeping, hand-drawn shots of the African landscape) amazed, to say nothing of Disney finally acknowledging black actors without having them sing "Zipidee-Doo-Da" (even though we didn't get black people until 2009, in Disney's last-hand-drawn-film-to-date The Princess and the Frog). The film remains a spectacle; its been spun into sequels, TV shows and even a Broadway musical, all of which retain and thrive off of the vibrancy of the original.   The Lion King was and remains not only one of the greatest animated films of all time, but one of the greatest films period. Plus, the film gets bonus points for reuniting the parents from Coming to America. And now that's all you'll be able to think about the next time you watch it.

Best moment:
Picking just one was literally impossible, (edit: And considering some of my friends have already bent the rules, Mr.direct-to-DVD-Flashpoint) I've allowed myself to tweak things a little and include three. There's the visual brilliance of the opening scene, kicking off with that jolting vocal wail as the sun rises and beings the classic "Circle of Life"; the childhood-scarring death of Mufasa; and of course, the infectious joy of "I Just Can't Wait To Be King" (this writer's personal favorite number from the film, though as a child it was "Be Prepared", which worries me some). These three clix show the three radically different tones that beautifully blended together to make this modern classic.


5) Akira (1988)

I first saw Akira at a midnight screening at a (sort of) local theatre, and that's truly the way it was meant to be scene. During the scene wherein the character of Tetsuo has a hallucinatory nightmare, a man a few seats down from my loudly exclaimed "Yo, this shit is crazy". Now, this is a man living now, in an age where anime is widely known and distributed, and the internet exists to expose even the most mildly curious to the most extreme examples of Japanimation that could make Liquid Television look like Arthur. Imagine those lucky and unsuspecting Americans who plunked down way less than we pay now for movies, whose only experience with Japanese cartoons before had been Astroboy, Kimba and maybe Gigantor, none of which come close to the mind-bending darkness and intense action of Katsuhiro Atomo's stellar manga adaptation (adapted from his own manga, of course). Set in Neo-Tokyo in 2019, the city is in turmoil leading up to the 2020 Olympics that will be held there (which, if it's predictions of the city's conditions are as accurate as its predictions of it being the host city in 2020, or its prediction of the internet, then Sochi's gonna look like paradise in hindsight), and biker gangs roam the streets. It's part cyber-punk, part sci-fi, part action film and part triply hallucination. In short, its everything we now expect anime to be, but this (at least for Americans) did it first, and it's still the best.

Best moment:

You know what"shit" is even crazier than Tetsuo's nightmare? A certain character's climactic transformation. I'd post an all-caps "Spoilers" above, but I'm gonna just be vague here, though I warn you, the below clip is the film's ending, so do try and avoid watching it unless you've already seen the full film.




4) Toy Story (1995)

At the peak of the Disney Renaissance, you could already see the torch being passed to the folks who would take it to new heights while their parent company put out Home on the Range. Much like how Walt's mad ambition pid off with the first feature length cell-animated film, the first feature length computer-animated film blew the doors off of cinemas everywhere with a combination of wit, whimsy and weepy-eyed sentimentality that had Disney in its veins but had a voice of its own. Pixar may have existed as a company before this film, but it was here that the brand known as Pixar was born. Students of film and animation were blown away with what could be done so stunningly (and efficiently) by a computer, and filmgoers were impressed to find a film that played to kids while still having a great deal of entertainment value for their baby-boomer parents (though the later films would target the kids who grew up toy owner Andy, the shift in interest between a cowboy and a spaceman seems very much directed at the now adult toy owners who made the same shift in their mid-60's childhoods). Countless lists of the "Greatest Animated Films" list this as number one, and its easy to see why. It has a very broad appeal that's smart without being challenging, sentimental without being sappy, and the film holds up brilliantly, remaining a damn good time that one can't help but leave on whenever you pass it by on one of the 30 Disney channels there seem to be these days. Really, who doesn't love the Randy Newman classic "You Got A Friend In Me"?

Best moment:


From the claw-worshiping aliens in Pizza Planet's vending machine to the horrifying Freaks-esque toy torture chamber that is neighbor Sid's room, this is the point where Toy Story set itself apart from the pack, being unafraid to push the boundaries that had been put in place once the original animator who pushed them had passed on. From here on out, it was Pixar's world, and everybody else was just animating in it.


3) Spirited Away (2001)

For any Japanese director to make a film so good it challenges the works of Kurosawa and Ozu in polls asking which was the greatest Japaenese film ver made is impressive. For an animator to do it is unheard of. Then again, Studio Ghibli founder Hiyao Miyazaki didn't get dubbed the "Walt Disney of the East" for nothing. Films like Kiki's Delivery Service and Princess Mononoke made a name for Miyazaki as a daring, unique and masterful animator, but it all built up to his masterwork, Spirited Away. The first and only anime to win the Best Animated Feature Oscar (and thus far the first and only hand-drawn film as well. Daring, bold and fanciful at a time when American animation was getting more than a little predictable and formulaic, the story of Chihiro Ogino stumbling into a magical world and having to work for the witch Yubaba at a bath house for spirits was both totally accessible and radically new. Parents not fatigued by years of seizure inducing, wallet draining Japanese imports like Dragon Ball Z and Pokemon took their kids to the theatre for this, and got to marvel at a world rich in color and texture, a cartoon that was truly a work of art. Spirited Away is a thing of pure wonder, and arguably the greatest fantasy film of my lifetime.

Best moment:

The Susuwatari Arrive: Yes, there are more visually stunning moments, but the Susuwatari are the most famous Miyazaki creation after the Great Grey Fuzzy One. 



2) Beauty and the Beast

A tale as old as time, true as it can be. Barely even friends, then somebody bends unexpectedly. The summary of nearly half the stories ever told, it seems, and the opening line of the title song to one of Disney's crowning achievements. The first animated film ever nominated for Best Picture, and some argued in a close race with a different story of a man and a woman "barely even friends" who connected: The Silence of the Lambs, Disney's take on the Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont borrows a lot of its style from the classic 1946 La Belle et La Bete (an adaptation so good it's rumored to have put Walt Disney off from his intentions of adapting the story back in the 40's), and adds the kind of visual beauty Cocteau was technologically incapable of in his time. To argue which is the superior version is a matter of opinion, but to argue that Beauty and the Beast, with its innovative animation, gorgeous music (Angela Lansbury famously had reservations about recording the Oscar-Winning title song because she felt it was "too beautiful" for her, and that she would ruin it. Needless to say, she didn't), and relatable characters, the film is a stone's throw away from being the greatest film of the 1990's (were two pop-culture fluent hit men and a cannibalistic doctor not in the way), and remains a beloved classic to this day.

Best moment:

"Beauty and the Beast"; for the historical (Disney's successful use of the innovative CAPS system for the dolly shot in the ballroom convinced them of the viability of computer animation. Without this, there would be no Pixar, no Frozen, and computer animation would mostly be a throwaway fad without the Mouse's money backing it up), for the cinematic (the scene has been parodied countless times, ranging from The Animaniacs to Family Guy and the cult classic The Critic), and for the personal (the spiral dolly shot is the first shot I remember from any film). It's sincere, sweeping and beautiful, and proves that, like it or not, Disney is the master of their craft.


1) Fantasia (1940)

If people thought Snow White was ambitious, just imagine how they felt when Walt announced that he was truly going to explore the "art of animation", and was going to create an entire film bereft of dialogue, that would feature classical music, with animated segments to accompany it. And no Merry Melodies gang to fool around. Donald, Goofy, Pluto, they'd all be staying home for this. Only the mischievous Mouse that made Walt's name would show up, once to talk in silhouette with Walt at the start of the film, and again in what would wind up being one of his most beloved outfits, in the segment "The Sorcerer's Apprentice". Viewers probably expected a visual delight, as the films leading up to it had been, but they could not have expected a film that did for animation what 2001 did for sci-fi. Fantasia redefined what a cartoon could be, brought the artistry of animation to the forefront, and brought the classical songs to life the way only animation fueled by unbridled imagination could. Colorful, magical and wonderful, Fantasia is still the high watermark for animated art towards which many have scrapped, perhaps a few might have even risen to, but none have surpassed. The Beatles get credited for the "first music video" with 1964's A Hard Day's Night, but here, Disney did it 24 years sooner, and with more than a little more style. And if you can "out-style" the Beatles, well, you my friend have just won.

Best moment:

"Night on Bald Mountain" might be the ballsiest moment of the film. Until this point, while it was a cerebral film, the kids could still enjoy the bright colors and happy images. Then this. The predecessor to the demons of Heavy Metal. The darkness and despair of this giant demon rising has been the cause of more than a few nightmares, and likely inspired more than a few 80's hair metal album covers.



Honorable Mentions:


Slimming it down to 10 was a challenge, and has made the list extremely Amerocentric, so I just wanted to throw out a few more it pains me to ignore below. I implore anyone to check out these in some cases more obscure films, and have hyperlinked the trailers to wet your appetites.

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