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What is the Greatest Alternative
Animated Film of All Time?
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SPIRITED AWAY From one of the most celebrated filmmakers in the history of animated cinema,Hayao Miyazaki, is a film filled with astonishing animation and epic adventure; it's a dazzling masterpiece for the ages. Spirited Away is a wondrous fantasy about a young girl, Chihiro, trapped in a strange new world of spirits. When her parents undergo a mysterious transformation, she must call upon the courage she never knew she had to free herself and return her family to the outside world. An unforgettable story brimming with creativity, Spirited Away will take you on a journey beyond your imagination. |
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| COOL WORLD When ex-con cartoonist Jack Deebs was behind bars he found escape by creating "Cool World," a cartoon series featuring a voluptuous vixen named Holli Would. But the toonsmith becomes a prisoner of his own fantasies when Holli pulls Jack into Cool World with a scheme to seduce him and bring herself to life. The flesh proves weaker than ink,as Holli takes human form in Las Vegas, staring in a trans-universal chase that threatens the destruction of both worlds. With a splashy mix of animation and live-action sequences, Cool World delivers the hottest action around. |
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THE HOBBIT The J.R.R. Tolkien fantasy classic set in Middle-earth was adapted into this excellent 1978 animated feature. The Hobbit follows the loveable Bilbo Baggins, a timorous hobbit who grows brave on his adventure with the wizard Gandalf. Bilbo's boring life in the Shire is turned upside down when he encounters Gandalf, a wizard, who is looking for a burglar to help him retake back Lonely Mountain. The Hobbit enjoyed by kids and adults alike. |
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| GHOST IN THE SHELL This skillful blending of drawn animation and computer-generated imagery excites anime fans. Ghost in the Shell is set in the not-too-distant future, when an unnamed government uses lifelike cyborgs or "enhanced" humans for undercover work. One of the key cyborgs is The Major, who resembles a cross between The Terminator and a Playboy centerfold. She finds herself caught up in a tangled web of espionage and counterespionage as she searches for the mysterious superhacker known as "The Puppet Master." |
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WATERSHIP DOWN Much like Richard Adams's wonderful novel, this animated tale of wandering rabbits is not meant for small children. The animation seems to stem from an attempt at realism, something distinguishing the film's characters from previous, cutesy, animated animals. A band of rabbits illegally leave their warren after a prophecy of doom from a runt named Fiver. In search of a place safe from humans and predators, they face all kinds of dangers, including a warren that has made a sick bargain with humankind, and a warren that is basically a fascist state. Allegories aside, Watership Down is engaging and satisfying. |
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| THE SECRET OF NIMH It seems to Mrs. Brisby, the widowed head of a family of field mice, that her youngest son must die, either by the farmer's spring plough or of pneumonia in his flight to safety. In her quest for a cure she frees a young crow from some string in which he has foolishly tied himself, at the mercy of the farmer's cat Dragon. In return for her risking her life to save his, he takes her to the creature all birds know is the wisest: a great owl. Owls eat mice, but when this owl learns Mrs. Brisby's name he sets her on a path to earning a noble solution to her predicament - which is the secret of NIMH. The Secret of Nimh is a true surprise and a rare treat. |
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NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS
Enter an extraordinary world filled with magic and wonder -- where every holiday has its own special land ... and imaginative, one-of-a-kind characters! The Nightmare Before Christmas tells the heartfelt tale of Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, and all things that go bump in the night. Bored with the same old tricks and treats, he yearns for something more, and soon stumbles upon the glorious magic of Christmas Town! Jack decides to bring this joyful holiday back to Halloween Town. But as his dream to fill Santa's shoes unravels, it's up to Sally, the rag doll who loves him, to stitch things back together. |
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NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND
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HEAVY METAL As long as there is a need for adolescent male sexual fantasy, there will be an audience for Heavy Metal. Released in 1981 and based on stories from the graphic magazine of the same name, the film has since become the most popular single title in Columbia/TriStar's entire film library. The move is compiled of an aimless, juvenile amalgam of disjointed stories and clashing visual styles, employing hundreds of animators from around the world with a near-total absence of creative cohesion. It's all quite fun in its rampantly brainless desire to fuel the young male libido, and for all its incoherence Heavy Metal remains impressive for the ambitious artistry of its individual segments. |
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| FRITZ THE CAT Advertised as "X-rated and Animated," Fritz the Cat earned an impressive $25 million in 1972. Screenwriter-director Ralph Bakshi based the film on three of Robert Crumb's stories about a superficial college student who tried to seduce anything in a skirt. The gritty, often gross film shocked U.S. audiences accustomed to innocent flirtations and slapstick comedy in cartoons. The violence grafted onto Crumb's innocent stories feels gratuitous, and the racial imagery tasteless. As dated as a Nehru jacket, the film will interest students of animation history and American pop culture. |
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ROCK AND RULE Set in a post-apocalyptic world inhabited by mutants, Rock and Rule centers on the rock star Mok and his efforts to summon a demon from another dimension. Only the voice of aspiring singer Angel can cross the dimensional barrier and free the monster. Mok pursues Angel through series of chases and concerts that produce complications involving her true love/singing partner Omar and his band. Rock and Rule reflects the confusion of the animation industry in the early '80s. |
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| AKIRA Artist-writer Katsuhiro Ôtomo began telling the story of Akira as a comic book series in 1982 but took a break from 1986 to 1988 to write, direct, supervise, and design this animated film version. Set in 2019, the film richly imagines the new metropolis of Neo-Tokyo, which is designed from huge buildings down to the smallest details of passing vehicles or police uniforms. Two disaffected orphan teenagers: slight, resentful Tetsuo and confident, breezy Kaneda, run with a biker gang, but trouble grows when Tetsuo starts to resent the way Kaneda always has to rescue him. Meanwhile, a group of scientists, military men, and politicians wonder what to do with a group of withered children who possess psychic powers, especially the mysterious, rarely seen Akira, whose awakening might well have caused the end of the old world. |
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FANTASIA Disney animators set pictures to classical music as Leopold Stokowski conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra in Fantasia, a collection of animated interpretations of great works of classical music. "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" features Mickey Mouse as an aspiring magician who oversteps his limits. "The Rite of Spring" tells the story of evolution, from single-celled animals to the death of the dinosaurs. "Dance of the Hours" is a comic ballet performed by ostriches, hippos, elephants and alligators. "Night on Bald Mountain" and "Ave Maria" set the forces of darkness and light against each other as a devilish revel is interrupted by the coming of a new day. |
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| WIZARDS A simplistic distillation of fantasy tropes, Wizard's scenario is millions of years after nuclear war wipes out civilization. Middle Earth fairies, elves, and magic emerge from the "good lands," while dimwitted mutants with poor comic timing emerge from the nuclear wastes. In the ultimate confrontation between good and evil, a hippie-ish wizard named Avatar defends his utopia against the technological and neo-Nazi revival of his bad-seed twin, Blackwolf. Includes volleys of jokes, elves with Brooklyn accents, and a dubious climax that sees the kindly old wizard using one of the hated machines of war to triumph over evil. |
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PRINCESS MONOKOKE This epic animated fantasy has made history as the top-grossing domestic feature ever released in Japan. Princess Monokoke's combination of mythic themes, mystical forces, and ravishing visuals tap deeply into cultural identity and contemporary, ecological anxieties. Set in medieval Japan, the march of technology threatens the natural forces explicit in the kindly Great God of the Forest and the wide-eyed, spectral spirits he protects.When Ashitaka, a young warrior, kills a boar-like monster, he discovers the beast is in fact an infectious "demon god," altered by human anger. Ashitaka's quest to solve the beast's fatal curse brings him into the midst of human political intrigues as well as the battle between man and nature. |
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| GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES Isao Takahata's powerful antiwar film, Grave of the Fireflies, has been praised by critics wherever it has been screened around the world. When their mother is killed in the firebombing of Tokyo near the end of World War II, teenage Seita and his little sister Setsuko are left on their own: their father is away, serving in the Imperial Navy. The two children initially stay with an aunt, but she has little affection for them and resents the time and money they require. The two children set up housekeeping in a cave by a stream, but their meager resources are quickly exhausted, and Seita is reduced to stealing to feed his sister. |
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