Ten Great Animated Films

So I have been on a little hiatus from the blogulations. The boy, and work, and school can sometimes be a bit overwhelming and frankly the blog finishes a distant fifth to fishing in spite of my lack of fishing prowess (but more on that tomorrow). We are actually all sitting together watching Snow White so I thought for Motion Picture Monday it might be nice to make a list of ten must see (not to be mistaken with top 10) animated films.

1. Remember this one? Cool World featured Kim Basinger and Brad Pitt as some sort of detective in an animated nonsensical world.

2. Snow White was the movie that proved that animation could work in movies. That wacky Walt Disney had to prove it could be done.

3. See also Cool World but Who Framed Roger Rabbit beat the Brad Pitt entry to the punch by four years in the leggy cartoon, animated mayhem, live action, detective drama.

4. Want depressing cartoons? The Secret of NIMH is a real downer about rats subjected to chemical testing, and there’s a sick kid (well mouse kid) and a cinder block house that’s sinking, or something like that.

5. Pinocchio is one of my all-time favorites. Deep, meaningful, without being to preachy and just spooky enough that you can still let your three year-old watch it.

6. Sticking with the Disney theme (hell they invented the genre) Sleeping Beauty is kind of a standard princess fairy tale with one key exception. Maleficent is hands down one of the best villains in cinematic history (animated or otherwise).

7. A generation of boys (including me) grew up waiting for Transformers and GI Joe the movie, not the cheesy big budget remakes but the 80’s cartoon. I’ll give the nod to GI Joe.

8. A beautiful off-beat love story if it had starred Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan and been set in Paris it would have won best picture. Unfortunately Wall-E starred two robots, was set in space and had the misfortune of being animated so it got screwed.

9. Stop-action animation is still animation and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is one of the best. Emblematic of a half dozen great movies you looked forward to every year Rudolph was always my favorite.

10. The photo-negative of Pinocchio, who only wants to be a real boy, is Peter Pan whose entire motivation is to live in a fantasy world and never grow up. Constantly being redone the Disney one is still the best. On the other side of the coin this is one of Disney’s most textbook stereotypical movies with caricatures of Native Americans, disempowered and denigrated women, and frankly it doesn’t do a whole lot for pirates and house pets either.