Board 8 > Board 8 Film Ranking Squad Ranks Animated Movies 5 - The Rankings

(+) Yeah! (+)

It's true. If you are an asshat in real life and take advantage of your friends to get ahead, you'll probably be successful.

And that's why life sucks!

One of many reasons!

The depiction of real animal death in film is a difficult subject. I'd rather it not happen, but it's been done in some of my favorite films of all time, including Apocalypse Now and Andrei Rublev. Arguably, Luis Bunuel had a better reason to do it than most filmmakers, to show the harshness and brutality of life for Spanish peasants. And it's just a fact of life both then and now that animals die for human benefit. I can't judge Bunuel too harshly while I regularly eat beef.

I could never have done what Bunuel did to that poor donkey though, I wanted to give it a hug knowing what was coming. Thank God we have CGI now.

I was very tempted to stop that movie and just put it last at multiple points.

Ah fair enough, for me the fact that the film didn't actually perpetrate the animal cruelty it showed made it not too big a deal but I can at least understand why one would find it distasteful. If we were gonna drop one of my beloved art films this early on I'm glad it was this on and not something from my top 10.

I guess I'll change to guessing Prince Achmed is next, I feel like it's hard to be passionate about and that might be its downfall.

Yeah to me the fact that it is archive footage from Buuels real film puts the footage at a remove which is not the case if it is done for the film. It was more like watching historical footage which is basically what it was. By contrast, with another film that was in one of these projects, Friday the 13th, I found the snake death there to be much worse because the snake was killed for the film. Maybe this doesnt make sense but to me the difference between presenting existing archival footage and something that is a part of the film itself lessens the impact to me personally. As I said the objections are totally understandable and reasonable, it is not pleasant watching either way.

Suprak_the_Stud posted...

This is a crazy take and now were quarreling.

(jk not really but Inside Out has Bing Bong and because of that alone I cant agree with you)

IO2 would contend for my #1 with Spiderverse most likely. I'll elaborate more when it drops, which had better not be for a long time. It's the first animated film since Coco I watched theatrically more than once.

Yes please do! Im very interested in the take because even though I like Inside Out 2 having it on the same level as Inside Out or Coco is fascinating.

I will say that I like both Inside Out films to a roughly even degree

But I also only watched the first Inside Out like 2 months ago to give context to the second film for this project, which might color my opinion compared to watching it back in 2015.

I honestly didn't think Wish was THAT bad. Like, it wasn't really good, but I don't think it deserves the amount of sheer vitriol it gets.

Bunuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles (2018) B

Man it feels kind of weird to do this write up after the fact. Hopefully you guys dont kill any of the rest of my top ten (well, nine as I did get one other write up done) before Im back from vacation. SHOW SOME MERCY. It is weird because it feels a bit more reactionary and everyone else here pretty much hated this one. Reading through the other write-ups, I do get where most of you are coming from, but I dont completely agree. Bunuel is a very important figure and theyre covering this well-known work of his where these bad things did happen. This movie didnt do them. You could argue it was gratuitous but even that Im not sure of. If you asked me to name a film in this list with a gratuitous scene, this absolutely would not be the first one that comes to mind. I thought the use of real footage of the documentary interspliced throughout the fictional story covering it was great and really interesting and added actual context to what the original graphic novel and this film were about.

The first two thirds of this movie were great . You see this slow descent Bunuel is going through, and the line blurs between what he is doing for the cause and what is is doing out of pure vanity. The opening scene where all these artists are discussing how important they are in combating fascism you get that immediate context for why Bunuel is focused on this thing that is this intense critique of the Spanish government. But then the cracks start to form. Things he heard are either fictionalized or taking too long and he has to put his thumb on the scale to make this honest-ish examination in the life of the most impoverished part of Spain. He has this unhealthy obsession with Dali and his father and you have to start to wonder which of his actions is he doing because he thinks this work is important, and what he is doing because he thinks HE is important. Hes this sort of charming genius but then the longer you look at him, the worse he is. To his crew, to the people hes supposed to be helping, to his best friend. It is interesting and well made and funny a couple of my hardest laughs in this whole list were at this film. I was absolutely on board with what they seemed to be building to.

With that being said though, where the movie does fail for me is in the way it treats Bunuel. You get the distinct impression the creator here has fallen in love with Bunuel, and as such I dont think the resolution really feels satisfactory. You see this sometimes where an author falls in love with a character and theyre almost blind to this monster they made. I dont care how much you like the character youve made, you cant provide excuses for them or ignore the worst of their behavior, and I think that sort of happens here in the third act. Bunuels friend is right. Hes right to freak out and hes right to throw a temper tantrum and he's right to end the movie. Bunuel has lost it. It is this really interesting portrait of an artist that has sacrificed every shred of integrity and decency in the name of his art and it feels like it is going to crescendo into something truly catastrophic and thenwell, I dunno. Bunuel says oops I went a little overboard there right haha good thing Im not as bad as that douchebag Dali and thats kind of it. Its his friend who dies. His friend is killed by the fascists and Bunuel lives happily ever after and that kind of sucks.

But, I guess, thats sort of how it happened. Sometimes life sucks and the person who is being decent dies and the one who tortures a donkey becomes beloved by an entire country. It is a biographical film focusing on a real event that uses real footage from the movie it is focusing on. I agree Bunuel is a bad person here, but he is also an important figure in Spain and in filmmaking, and to gloss over the bad things he did would almost be more offensive, to me. I thought this was a fascinating examination of a very flawed person, and the mix of real footage used through some very solid animation made this stand out amongst the slurry of animated films we were buried under. The bits of surrealism were fantastic and I just wish they leaned into that even more. Had Bunuel had more of a reckoning or had they really leaned into the surreal motifs, this wouldve made its way to my top tier. As it stands though, it falls a bit short but remains a very worthy watch.

Suprak List Update: I think some of the points raised here were fair and doing my write up made me think a bit more about them. If I was to rank these movies right now, Id drop this down to ten. Which still puts me as top outlier! Sadly my fellow art snobs ABANDONED ME on this one but I expect I shall get my revenge on them soon enough.

Suprak_the_Stud posted...

Sadly my fellow art snobs ABANDONED ME on this one but I expect I shall get my revenge on them soon enough.

Hey, I had it in the top half of my list at least, don't rub it in too hard when my #2 inevitably drops in the bottom 10.

Don't worry Evil, I'm worried about my #3 dropping in the bottom 10.

Am I an art snob? I liked the film anyway I just liked eleven others more.

I cant remember who originally coined the term art snob alliance, but I think it was either Inviso or plasma (RIP plasma we miss you and your Vegas leaderboard dearly). But I think they were teasing me, Mythiot, Johnbobb, and exdeath.

But wed love to have you onboard!

25. Piece by Piece

Johnbobb: 13
Karo: 16
Suprak: 18
Paul: 19
Lightning: 20
Ermine: 21
Inviso: 22
Mythiot: 22
Evillord: 23
Red: 29

Total: 203

Johnbobb: never thought I'd see Lego police brutality riots, and definitely didn't think I'd see them done as part of a music documentary

Favorite 1/2 star Letterboxd review:
1) the number of Lego minions in this movie is nonzero and thats frankly a horrible reality to grapple with

Karo: I came into this expecting to loathe what looked to be the biggest attention seeking appropriation of a franchise since Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, but well, after watching it I can't see this movie NOT being Lego.
So this is basically a biopic of composer/songwriter Pharrell Williams, and his rise to stardom in the music industry. Now. the ultimate quality test for a documentary is if it can hold the attention of someone who has zero interest in the subject matter, and considering I had never even heard of Pharrell Williams before watching this yet was never bored with hearing his whole life story I'd say it passes with flying colors.
It's a music biopic with that weird Lego charm, and it never feels forced or arbitrary with its depiction of its brick imagery.

Suprak: *no writeup submitted*

Paul: I enjoy the look of Lego movies, but Im not much of a Pharrell fan so it wasnt really for me. I did really enjoy the Get Lucky sequence though.

Lightning: Because Im happy!

This is quite an interesting take on an otherwise fairly standard music documentary. Instead of doing it with actual footage, the whole thing is recreated with animated Lego pieces. Which makes things a bit more exciting and fun than they otherwise would be. As this is all animated, it allows the filmmakers to use more visual flourishes in the musical sequences for instance, and pepper it with gags. While there are a lot of amusing touches, the best is definitely replacing cannabis with PG Spray. It is also quite fun to see assorted celebrities in Lego form, undeniably.
Honestly I have never had much of an interest in Pharrels music. This is not out of dislike or anything, I just never really engaged with it. On this note I think the film does a great job of selling his idealism and more lighthearted nature than a lot of contemporary musicians. The Lego aesthetic gives everything a sense of lighthearted fun that emphasises the persona he has put across and his outlook on life. In that way, as documentaries ultimately are not just displaying the facts but also expressing a point of view, this one is succeeding by using its visual language to better get that point across. In this way the film is really quite effective as I and a lot of people never would have engaged with it otherwise.
Unfortunately the actual content of the documentary is just not that interesting or unique on its own. It feels fairly by the numbers, and its attempts at hitting the standard emotional beats towards the end do not land. Personally I thought that the opening sections through his childhood and early career were the best parts of the film and afterwards it became more expected. As far as animated documentaries go this works but is not one of the greats. Still, that is something I would like there to be a lot more of.

3/5

Ermine: I dont like Lego.
I dont like Hip Hop.
I dont like Rap.
Still, this movie does a well enough job at being watchable? I wouldnt say enjoyable because honestly I was rather bored for pretty much all of it. But I enjoyed the color and vibrancy of the film. It just had so much dang energy and any scenes depicting music were just fun to look at. Maybe documentaries just dont do it for me because I felt it impossible to become emotionally connected to this film. Unfortunately, there wasnt even really any humor either. I smirked one time. The rest I was dozing off or just straight faced.
Its fine for what it is. Just completely not for me.

Inviso: This is going to rank relatively low, but I didnt HATE this movie. I feel like it definitely benefitted from the animated format, because otherwise its just a talking head style music documentaryabout a musician whoisnt the most interesting persona. Thats not a dig at Pharrell, mind youits just that the events of the documentary are very calm and pleasant for the most part. He has a brief moment of sadness when his grandmother dies (and that impacts his career), but for the most part, its just a straight-forward telling of his life and his numerous musical successes over the years. I didnt realize Pharrell was so prolific though. Granted, I dont follow hip hop that well, but I knew a bunch of the songs that he helps to create, even if the only one I knew specifically as HIS was Happy. So yeah, nice enough movie, but just not the MOST compelling story in need of telling.

Mythiot: 7

Evillord: A documentary about the life and times of Pharrell Williams animated in the style of the LEGO movies. I enjoyed the early parts of the film that told the story of a group of imaginative, energetic kids trying to make it big in the music industry, and the style is cute and well used to illustrate certain parts of the documentary, such as Pharrell's synesthesia experience listening to music as a boy, but as it went on I felt myself start to get a little bored of the film. I think, ultimately, that this one kind of falls into the Bohemian Rhapsody category of documentary where it glosses over anything that isn't flattering to the subject and forces their life story into a standard three-act film structure. The musical sections are consistently fun, but the talky parts weren't holding my attention too well and despite the novelty of seeing weed smoke and racialized violence in LEGO form I don't know if I took anything away from this besides facts about Pharrell's life. And indeed, the more time passes since I watched it the less positively I see it - this does feel like a project that mostly serves to massage the ego of a wealthy celebrity rather than express anything meaningful or deeply felt, and even its visual style does little to stand out among a litany of other LEGO movies. It's hard to imagine myself wanting to revisit it.

Red: Lets make a lego movie documentary because??? I don't know. Why is this legos. The lego movies were all fun and at least loosely about making things via legos with more fantastical concepts. This...has no reason to be a lego movie, it serves no purpose. I don't care about anything here. We go through a literally explanation of why its a lego movie and someone should have said no.

Outlier:

Suprak: 51
Paul: 50
Inviso: 28
Ermine: 28
Evillord: 26
Red: 26
Lightning: 24
Johnbobb: 23
Karo: 22
Mythiot: 11

Uh wow. I didn't expect this to drop already.

Piece by Piece (2024) C+

Not every famous person needs a biopic about them is what Piece by Piece really helped me understand. Sometimes a person can be very talented and kind of boring, and thats fine. Every time I do one of these I try to organize as many of the do not want to watch movies first because I dont want to get into a rut at some point and have movies I dont want to watch afterwards. This was the very first movie I picked to watch for this project. If you had told me to make a list of the top five musicians I was least interested in learning about, I think Pharrell makes the list among such other talented but boring people like Ed Shereen and Kelly Rowand. A LEGO biopic about Pharrell was very easily penciled in as my number 1 in the least want to watch contest. And I should at least say this is better than I thought it was going to be.

I do like how multiple characters in this movie said essentially the same thing as I did when I first looked it up, which was why the hell is this movie in LEGO? Im not sure the movie really answers that question, other than the very obvious fact that a non-LEGO telling of Pharrells life would be boring as hell. This movie cant be a standard biopic because it never wouldve been released with the editors repeatedly falling asleep mid-scene. Here is Pharrells great mid-career struggle that is a key ingredient in all musician biopics: Pharrells grandmother dies of natural causes at a ripe old age when he himself is like in his late thirties and also there is a couple of years where he is not internationally as famous as he used to be and hes kind of sad in his billion dollar mansion. Im guessing more interesting parts of his life are sanitized here to get the movie a rating LEGO would agree to, but I also wouldnt be surprised if this is as interested as Pharrell gets even in an unedited version as hes just kind of a boring dude.

There is some novelty here in this being LEGO though, and it at the very least makes the movie watchable. Theres so much different stuff here that caught me completely offguard. I would not have guessed Pusha T would be adorable or selling drugs in the middle of a LEGO film. You get multiple bleeps and a couple of swears and Snoop Dogg with a cloud of PG spray following him wherever he goes. Theres stuff here that is just kind of funny or charming because it is in LEGO, and they at least do a good job giving it that same sort of charm youd expect from other, non-Pharrell biopic LEGO movies. The subject matter here is kind of dull but the presentation isnt and I found myself more drawn in than I was anticipating because everything was LEGO-ized. Visually, the movie is a lot of fun and a lot of the scenes are funny or interesting because of the visual effects accompanying one of the least interesting musicians of our time.

Thats sort of the most interesting dichotomy of this movie. They give these really fun animations to Pharrells beats and there are some fun visual gags and these really cool scene transitions. That scene where Pharrell is just sliding from hit to hit and you see LEGO forms off all these music videos he worked on in quick succession as he slides through them is great and creative and visually striking and really unique. But you have all that juxtaposed with Pharrell talking and Im just not interested. At one point someone tells a funny story about him dealing chicken nuggets and he is immediately like no that would be funny and I do not approve of funny. LEGO Jay-Z is just like oh yeah hes kind of a dork and a nerd and you kind of get that just from listening to him talk. He doesnt have this magnetic personality when hes talking about stuff and a lot of the stories here they choose to focus on dont really make for interesting watching. Him crying during Oprah because people liked posting videos to Happy is not really the compelling penultimate scene you expect from a lot of these kind of movies but thats what we get here.

Im still kind of torn about this one. It wasnt bad. I definitely didnt hate it. But I went back and forth between being mildly amused and mildly bored and I now know way more about Pharrell than any single person should know. There are a lot of scenes here where stuff just kind of happens and the movie is like this is cool, right? and I was always like kinda. You know that scene where LEGO Pharrell is asking LEGO other guy I cant remember his opinion on these songs and he gives him a sideways thumbs up? That was me with this movie. I liked this movies interpretation of creativity and how it gave these cool visual flares to all the auditory based creativity that Pharrell is known for. It is actually kind of interesting from an experimental standpoint. Can a team of good animators take incredibly boring subject matter and make it worth watching? The answer is kind of. I look forward to the next LEGO documentary on watching paint dry.

Zigzagoon posted...

Uh wow. I didn't expect this to drop already.

A puff-piece music documentary with an admittedly well-used Lego gimmick doesn't seem like the kind of film anyone here would really love, so I'm not surprised.

I really hope Pharrell doesn't have any reputation destroying controversies in his future cause this film lives or dies by by his image as a Happy likable guy who Got Lucky.

I couldn't really tell what kind of placement to expect from Piece by Piece, since I didn't necessarily expect anyone to love it but it's agreeable enough that I thought people might rank it kind of high just due to disliking it less than many others on the list. Its elimination feels like a surprise to be sure - but a welcome one.

Suprak_the_Stud posted...

I cant remember who originally coined the term art snob alliance, but I think it was either Inviso or plasma (RIP plasma we miss you and your Vegas leaderboard dearly). But I think they were teasing me, Mythiot, Johnbobb, and exdeath.

But wed love to have you onboard!

I think it was Ermine who originally described these four as a voting bloc and one of the guys in the group then coined that it was the "snobby art jerks alliance."

Membership is definitely open to applications however I would say rating the pre-2010 films (except LotR lmao) and the ones with no dialog in at least the top half is a prerequisite ;)

Evillordexdeath posted...

Membership is definitely open to applications however I would say rating the pre-2010 films (except LotR lmao) and the ones with no dialog in at least the top half is a prerequisite ;)

Mild spoilers for my list, but one of those remaining 20th century films missed my top half, but just barely. Am I being kicked out of the art snob alliance? I'd have to defect to the furries if so.

24. Son of the White Mare

Evillord: 2
Mythiot: 6
Karo: 14
Johnbobb: 19
Lightning: 21
Paul: 25
Red: 27
Inviso: 29
Ermine: 29
Suprak: 29

Total: 201

Evillord: If anything has ever been a good summary of my taste in animated films, it might be the fact that Fantastic Planet, Flow, and Son of the White Mare were the only entries on the list I had seen when we started. This definitely feels like the type of film best experienced on LSD, and the narrative is nothing to write home about, simply a straightforward mythological story of a hero saving princesses from dragons. Treeshaker isn't the kind of complicated and intriguing character we see in Kohjot from the other Hungarian take on mythology of this project, and if this story came out today instead of being derived from ancient Uralic oral tradition, people would complain about what a Gary Stu he is. He's never even so much as challenged by anything in the film, even having two brothers whose main role in the story is to humiliate themselves by failing at things before he can do them properly.
I think the uniqueness of the audiovisual experience carries this amazingly though. The bright trippy visuals and the booming soundscapes added up to a very captivating film for me. It's a deeply abstract style, full of phallic symbolism and ephemeral characters, including a man made literally of mist, and I think this serves well to portray, if not the epic nature of these old myths, then at least the way their original meaning and significance has probably been obscured as they passed further away from the cultures that first told them. Its at its best once Treeshaker makes it to the underworld, with the way the personalities of the three princesses he's rescuing are so immediately apparent through their designs and the way they move, and the super creative visual interpretation of the three "dragons", as a stone golem with truck-nuts, a living tank covered in extraneous guns that eats by morphing into a trash compactor, and a sort of cross between a mobile fortress and a 1984-style TV display. It is kind of a difficult movie to summarize because it is such a unique and immersive experience, something that has to be witnessed to be understood. But it's an undeniable classic of the medium and one I'd recommend every animation enthusiast give a shot.

Mythiot: 9.5

Karo: A bizarre art film based on Hungarian folk tales, which apparently involve a lot of drugs, naked butts and ritualistic spanking. Hmm, maybe I need to look into these a bit more.
So anyway three human boys are born from a magical horse mother following what I assume was a wild night at a brony convention, and after they grow up they journey to hell to rescue a trio of princesses from dragons who do not look at all like dragons.
Without a doubt the animation is the real draw here. The movie is presented in this strange ephemeral style that eschews the use of traditional ink lines in lieu of bold splashes of color that seem to burst from the very screen. It is unlike anything I have ever seen before, and I have seen a LOT of animation.
As for non-animation elements... well... yeah.
The hero is this guy who is just too cool and unbeatable with zero weaknesses, while his siblings are mostly just useless buffoons. This leads to a dull, one-sided dynamic between the brothers, until two of them are basically just forgotten about entirely. The story is nonsensical and repetitive, with plot elements copy pasted multiple times in multiple places. Oh yay we're gonna save another girl from another spinning castle and fight another monster! This is certainly not a movie you watch for the plot.
Anyway, it is a pretty unique experience, and even if you don't want to sit through the whole thing it deserves a look at least to see the visuals.

Johnbobb: LOUD. COLORS. BIG SWINGIN BALLS. LOUD. CRASH BANG. TRIPPY VISUALS, MORE LOUD, FIGHTING, LIGHTS, BANG BANG CRASH WOOOORRAAAAAAA.

Favorite 1/2 star Letterboxd review:
mom can you come pick me up everyone is doing drugs and im scared

Lightning: And they lived happily ever after until the day they died.

This film is a trippy and highly stylised take on creation myths of the steppe peoples. The almost abstract visuals are truly stunning, with long sequences that use the imagery to tell the story without dialogue. There are even no lines at all for nearly seven minutes from the start of the film. These sequences were my favourites, and felt truly atmospheric and unique. The character designs also really work.
All of the aesthetics of this film are very finely tuned to create a feeling like watching an ancient painting or carving depicting mythological figures come to life. This of course includes the beautiful animation, but also the unique sound work that has been stuck in my head after watching it. The editing is also very impressive, especially the way it is used to punctuate the appearance of the dragons in the opening sequence.
Despite those very strong elements however, unfortunately I did not connect much with the story or characters. The story very closely follows a typical mythology or fairy story structure and feels repetitive, with diversions such as everything to do with the goblin that feel a little slow. The characters are accordingly all quite thin, Treeshaker is a typical hero, the white mare referred to in the title dies very early on, the brothers are typical archetypes of a friendly buffoon and an arrogant blowhard, and the princesses are not good depictions at all. For this reason while it is well made and I recognise its importance including resulting in, of all films, The Emperors New Groove, I was never quite as engrossed as I wanted to be. This one is a case of appreciating it more than I like it.

3/5

Paul: This was a weird one. Probably some of the weirdest and trippiest animation Ive seen in a movie.

Red: Do we want to ask ourselves why the sons of a horse are people? No, don't think about it. Just a weird one, we drink and eat magic food, it makes everyone super strong, our main character kills some "dragons" to rescue some princesses who now marry him and his brothers as reward. There really isn't much to this one.

Inviso: This was not a fun watch. It wasnt the WORST film on the list, because at least the art style and character designs were abstract ENOUGH that I wasnt made squeamish just by watching itbut that doesnt mean it was good. Even though this was an 80s movie, it feels like Hungary just lagged behind by a decade and created some over-the-top, trippy 70s film instead. The constant flashing colors and abstract designs were unpleasant, and the sound design was AWFUL, with everything being loud and often times industrial for seemingly no reason. Also, there are MULTIPLE scenes where two guys pants their buddy and spank himthats not something I needed to see, and it makes me wonder what the fuck is wrong with Hungarian folklore. This just wasnt a fun watch, and it all felt nonsensical in a way that didnt do a decent job of making me give a shit about previously unknown folklore from a part of the world I havent followed extensively.

Ermine: That was one of the most difficult times Ive ever had watching a movie. There isnt much to HATE per se, but holy shit, was I bored out of my god damn mind. The movie clocks in at about an hour and 25 mins but I honestly felt like I was watching it for five hours.
I dont give a shit. I dont care about how artsy it is. The story is shit. The characters are shit. There. Is. Nothing.
Want to see the same thing happen three times in a row? Lets do it!
Want to see the same thing happen three times in a row again? Here we go!
Want to see the same thing happen three times in a row once more? Helllll yeah baby!
I enjoyed when the other brothers were getting their asses spanked because thats honestly how I felt during the entire course of the whole film.
Why were the monsters called dragons? They looked nothing like dragons.
???
What a god damn waste of my time.

Suprak: *no writeup submitted*

Outlier:

Suprak: 56
Paul: 51
Evillord: 48
Inviso: 33
Ermine: 33
Karo: 32
Red: 29
Mythiot: 29
Johnbobb: 28
Lightning: 27

RIP half the art snob membership

Aw maaaan, I knew this wouldn't have mass appeal, but I thought it would be pretty enough to get a similar rank as Girl Without Hands, another uncompromising adaptation of a fairy tale.

Two top six rankings and five bottom six rankings lol

Happy to be one of the ones in the middle for this one! Very much appreciated the style but my issue was mot the artsyness but instead the story just being kind of basic.

Also this film really did result in The Emperors New Groove by the way! After watching it Roger Allers hired the director of Son of the White Mare, Marcel Jankovics, to work on Kingdom of the Son which became The Emperors New Groove. In fact Jankovics is still credited on the final film!

LightningStrikes posted...

Happy to be one of the ones in the middle for this one! Very much appreciated the style but my issue was mot the artsyness but instead the story just being kind of basic.

Also this film really did result in The Emperors New Groove by the way! After watching it Roger Allers hired the director of Son of the White Mare, Marcel Jankovics, to work on Kingdom of the Son which became The Emperors New Groove. In fact Jankovics is still credited on the final film!

Jankovics also vehemently hated ENG and called it 'ruined' and 'stupid', stating that basically nothing he worked on survived.

So lets put blame where it is due.

Evillordexdeath posted...

I think it was Ermine who originally described these four as a voting bloc and one of the guys in the group then coined that it was the "snobby art jerks alliance."

Not me!

Marcell Jankovics, for all his talents, was admittedly a fascist weirdo who thought everything about modernity was evil, that's what the dragons turning into modern machinery and cityscapes was all about. The film was supposedly going to go even harder in this metaphor, but the Communist government ruling Hungary at the time told him to dial it back, probably to the film's benefit.

So while I love the film and admire Jankovics' incredible skills as an animator, I'm actually not weeping too hard that his film ranked so low here.

PrinceKaro posted...

Jankovics also vehemently hated ENG and called it 'ruined' and 'stupid', stating that basically nothing he worked on survived.

So lets put blame where it is due.

Interesting, I didnt know he said that but its not too surprising, and he sounds like a pretty bad guy besides! Kingdom of the Sun is definitely a big what if in animation for me and such an interesting point in Disneys history.

Yeah I figured Son of the White Mare was gonna be on that Yellow Submarine type beat for this project, it actually placed one spot higher than I guessed on my predicted list. It's a beautiful exercise in animation but feeling left out by the narrative is unsurprising.

Mythiot posted...

Mild spoilers for my list, but one of those remaining 20th century films missed my top half, but just barely. Am I being kicked out of the art snob alliance? I'd have to defect to the furries if so.

Hmm... I'd say once you're in you don't need to prove yourself, that type of elitism is on brand for an art snob alliance.

I would like to be part of my own alliance called "The So Cool." I'm the only member.

Not part of the Furries group due to ranking Fritz the Cat in the top 10 last time while the actual furries all had it in their bottom 3.

LightningStrikes posted...

Interesting, I didnt know he said that but its not too surprising, and he sounds like a pretty bad guy besides! Kingdom of the Sun is definitely a big what if in animation for me and such an interesting point in Disneys history.

O yeah, I really like Emperor's New Groove but I would love to take a trip to the alternate universe where Kingdom of the Sun got made. Just going on what Son of the White Mare is like, it does feel like the original epic vision would fit a lot more with his contributions than the irreverent comedic styling of Cats Don't Dance/Chicken Little director Mark Dindall, which characterize the released film.

Zigzagoon posted...

I would like to be part of my own alliance called "The So Cool." I'm the only member.

Not part of the Furries group due to ranking Fritz the Cat in the top 10 last time while the actual furries all had it in their bottom 3.

lol, the dichotomy it as furries vs. art snobs does end up being flawed since multiple members of the art snob group also identify as furries. Maybe it would be better to just call them the art snobs and the "anti-art" snobs.

Piece by Piece is one of the few animated theatrical releases of recent times I neglected to see. Just never struck me as interesting no matter how many times I saw the trailer in front of other movies. The new Smurfs movie was much the same. Got close to going out to see it, but at the end of the day it didn't make the cut.

Oh no my art snob credentials. I am so sorry exdeath. I hate to see anyone's number 2 drop this early.

Son of the White Mare (1981) F+

It is always nice when you get five minutes into a film and you can just be like oh yeah, this is awful. So many movies suck you in for a long time before revealing theyre bad, so I very much appreciate Son of the White Mare devolving into boring nonsense almost immediately. This movie looks like what happens if a historic literature professor and an experimental avant-garde artiste go on an acid trip together and try to make a movie. Ive heard a lot of people describe a bad trip before, and it is nice that now I can just point to this of an example of one without having to go through it myself.

This is a profoundly weird film. At one point in this movie, a gnome uses his magic beard to get a brother in trouble over porridge rations, and the other two brothers pin him down and spank his bare butt. In the next scene, a gnome uses his magic beard to get a brother in trouble over porridge rations, and the other two brothers pin him down and spank his bare butt. This is one of the scenes that made the most sense to me. I was at least like mm yes, incestual butt spanking for lack of porridge, I can follow the logic here. I legitimately didnt know what was happening or why it was happening for large chunks of the film. Why does this work this way or why are they doing this? are absolutely pointless questions because the answer is always shut up I cant hear you over all the psychedelic substances I just ingested.

So much here is just utterly bizarre and not even in a fun way. In fact, it is bizarre in the least fun way possible. Im worried Hungarians dont know what dragons are. They kept talking about dragons and I was like hell yeah dragons and then theyd show them and they look like what happened if someone tried to turn a mid-tier skyscraper evil. Im also worried Hungarians dont know what wrestling is. Wrestling to Hungarians is you take turns picking someone up and throwing them directly back down and whoever gets stuck in the Earth first loses. There are so many weird, insane things here that get resolved in the most boring way possible

Something the movie loves doing is the exact same thing, again. Hey I am the princess with big boobs and my husband the five headed dragon lives here so you have to fight him by wrestling him Hey I am the princess with the big butt and my husband the nine headed dragon lives here so you have to fight him by wrestling Hey I am the princess with the big boobs and the big butt and my husband the thirteen headed SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP PLEASE DO NOT MAKE ME WATCH THIS SAME THING AGAIN. Almost every single plot point in this movie is repeated two times, usually three, and none of it is even interesting the first time. I cant take another part of the movie where it is like hey this one brother sucks and does things suckily and then the other brother sucks less and does things slightly less suckily and then the son of the white mare is awesome and perfect and does everything right the first time because he is awesome. That is 75% of the movie.

Im guessing some of this is because theyre staying true to the old Hungarian myths and legends, but I dont care because the old Hungarian myths and legends suck. I dont mean that as a slight against Hungary (although fuck you Hungary your dragons are awful), but really all these old folklore myths and legends tend to be kind of boring things to base movies on if you stay too authentic because theyre all pretty basic and simplistic. It doesnt lead to good storytelling, and you wind up with something like this that is just one of the most boring fantasy adventures ever told. I simply cannot care about an interesting art style when the movie around it is so profoundly simplistic. The script is bad and there structure is bad and there is too much brother butt spanking. I havent finalized my rankings yet, but this is definitely in a group of three or so that could easily take last place as there was absolutely nothing I liked about it.

v-charon posted...

Piece by Piece is one of the few animated theatrical releases of recent times I neglected to see. Just never struck me as interesting no matter how many times I saw the trailer in front of other movies. The new Smurfs movie was much the same. Got close to going out to see it, but at the end of the day it didn't make the cut.

I will say that as someone who had the exact same thought as you did and only watched it because Karo FORCED ME TO, it was not as bad as I was expecting. It is a puff piece for the world's most boring musician, but it is very well done and the way they tie visuals to music is interesting, at the very least.

Favorite 1/2 star Letterboxd review:
mom can you come pick me up everyone is doing drugs and im scared

Amazing. I continue to love your cultivated bad reviews for these projects.

I appreciate Mythiot's added information here because that at least puts one of the very weird elements of the film into more context.

Suprak's writeup is almost exactly like mine, except WAY longer.

The moment you stop to think at all about the plot of that one is when you go "goddamn this really was a piece of trash".

Suprak_the_Stud posted...

Oh no my art snob credentials. I am so sorry exdeath. I hate to see anyone's number 2 drop this early.

Well if it helps I expected it. My #1 went out around in the exact same spot last animation list, and the time before that my #1 was 26/40. While I loved Son of the White Mare, I didn't feel that invested in it doing well here, maybe because I figured it was a foregone conclusion that it would place really low. I feel a lot more invested in my first place film's performance so if that one drops soon that is when I'll be devastated. But with any luck this will be the best placement a film I ranked #1 achieves on one of these animation lists.

I bet Exdeath's #1 is Flow! Now that was an arthouse film I actually loved, and I expect it to do well with this crowd.

23. Migration

Ermine: 3
Suprak: 13
Red: 13
Inviso: 15
Karo: 21
Lightning: 23
Paul: 23
Evillord: 24
Mythiot: 24
Johnbobb: 30

Total: 189

Ermine: Say what you want about Illumination, I think this movie is just plain good, cute fun. It does exactly what it sets out to do with plenty of charming characters, great music and sweet moments.
Whilst Dax is my favorite of the mallard family, I really enjoy Mack as a character and his development throughout the film. You rarely get a movie focused around an overprotective dad so even though Migration doesnt take risks or steps out of Illuminations comfort zone, you have refreshing and fun characters to fall back on.
In a list full of movies that completely lack any character, Migration stands out to me as something that just makes me feel warm and happy inside. I wanna see more adventures with these silly ducks.
Just a grand time. If you dont like Migration, maybe you just need to let yourself have a little fun. Give me more of this, Illumination, and soon Ill honestly be calling you better than whatever has become of Pixar and Disney.

Suprak: *no writeup submitted*

Red: The story of ducks trying to avoid divorce as the dad is incredibly boring and literally trying to traumatize his kids so that they will do absolutely nothing in life. The family dynamic ends up working much better as move along. But you know how the title is migration? And they are going from the northeast US to...Jamaica? for some reason. Well, that may seem like a long way, but over the course of the movie all it is going to encompass is basically two stops along the way. We hit new York because its big and familiar, then randomly a duck farm, then boom Jamaica. They really didn't want you thinking about that.

Inviso: This was a perfectly acceptable movie by Illumination standards. Its a very basic story of an overly-cautious father learning to be more adventurous, which leads to a family road trip-style plotline. It hits all the beats you would expect, and it doesnt really drop the ball in that regard. Plus, theres the random introduction of this douchey chef as the main villain of the film, constantly trying to catch and kill the ducks because chefs cook duck, dontcha know. It was a very cute plot overall, Id say, and I enjoyed watching it all the way through, even if its not necessarily the most amazing cinema Ive ever watched or anything like that. The chef plot I think makes the movie stand out though, because at first you think its just another minor set-piece (like the earlier creepy heron segment), but then the chef just keeps coming back and becoming more and more cartoonishly evil in his utter HATRED for these ducks. Its goofy enough to leave a positive feeling for this ranking, as a result.

Karo: A family of stay-at-home ducks decides to migrate south for the first time in this rather adequate Illumination production. In a bunch of rather episodic escapades along the way they become closer as a family and then they all dance randomly to pop music. If you say hey wow that kinda sounds familiar that is because that depicts like half of the mainstream American animated movies of the past three decades. The typical 'bunch of silly characters on an arbitrary journey' template has been around since the dawn of the CGI era, and honestly it is getting really old at this point.
It is Illumination's first original movie in a very long while, but like just about every other thing they put out it is incredibly safe and formulaic. It's like the studio takes the wisdom of Yoda a bit too literally and does basically nothing while not even trying. Even with Dreamworks, a lot of times they strike out, but sometimes they hit it out of the park, and sometimes they even trip over their own feet and decapitate themselves with the baseball bat. But Illumination? They don't even step up to the plate. They just sit in the dugout jerking off all game.
None of the characters are offensive, nor are they super memorable. The story has a beginning, middle and end, and things happen along the way. It's like the cinematic equivalent of a bowl of lukewarm oatmeal.
Even the presence of notable French director Benjamin Renner is not enough to save the film from acute corporate mediocrity, his whimsical drawings reduced to generic CGI slop that evoke zero emotions the way the rest of his work does.
As a whole it is still watchable, but I struggle to muster any sort of strong feelings towards the story or anyone who inhabits it. Will anybody care about or even remember this movie in 20 years? Not a chance.

Lightning: Whats duck a lorange? Its you with lorange on top!

When reduced to its base elements this is a pretty straightforward kids animated story. The overall story structure and progression is almost hilariously clich, you have a family of talking animals, ducks in this case, with one adventurous parent and one cautious parent, they go on an adventure and the cautious parent learns to be more adventurous while the adventurous parent develops slightly more caution, the end. It also doesnt have much in the way of a propulsive throughline, the story is basically a series of lightly connected vignettes with the main element tying it together being a quite thinly drawn villain.There is a celebrity cast featuring very standard lead performances from Kumsil Nanjani and Elizabeth Banks with a supporting role by Awkwafina. So far it sounds like typically generic Illumination fare.
Thankfully Migration does have some things going for it that set it apart from other Illumination films. First of all, its so weird that this was written by Mike White, the creator of The White Lotus. Although he doesnt add a deep narrative, what he does add is some humour that is genuinely quite funny and often blackly comic, the opening story got a big laugh from me and I chuckled throughout. The heron sequence with Carol Kane heron and her husband Grandpa from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a particular highlight. The director, Benjamin Renner, is pretty impressive too. He is responsible for a lot of very impressive French 2D animation, and he brings not just a good eye for scene composition but also a painterly style for the backgrounds that makes this a lot more visually impressive than other Illumination films. Of course the ducks look great too. This is a genuinely great looking film despite having a lot less resources behind it than usual.
Overall while this does not do much new it does do it all quite well. This is probably the best Illumination film I have seen since the original Despicable Me but that isnt saying much. Also, what was with December 2023 animated films and herons?

3/5

Paul: I don't really have much to say about this one. It wasn't bad or anything, just kinda generally boring and I didnt really care much about it.

Evillord: The director on this one is Benjamin Renner, who also did Ernest & Celestine and The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales, two movies I enjoyed greatly and that shared a delightful traditionally animated style. I was aware of this movie ever since the last Animated ranking because of this, and I can't help but pronounce the title as if it's in French because of the director's nationality, but I never particularly wanted to see it. I was very much concerned that Renner's comedic skills would get steamrolled over by corporate American family comedy and the animation style just isn't nearly as attention grabbing. Then I got jumpscared by the Illumination logo in the opening and started feeling very concerned indeed... but you know, I thought this one was alright. It definitely has more fun or memorable sections than my bottom five films: the scene where the birds fly among the clouds above NYC and you see the tallest buildings begin to emerge among the mist, the part where the mom and dad birds have to navigate a dance floor and start their own slow dance to get through, the image of the son bird swooping in on his wax wings to save his parents, the joyful first moment where the Macaw gets released from his cage... but I don't know how much of this will stick in my memory in even a week's time. I think the film successfully conveys a fun and breezy mood but it does err into tacky territory with some of the celebrity voice roles and jokes that overstay their welcome, like the part where the Awkwafina pigeon keeps getting hit by a car.
These are some middle-class ass ducks. I'm pretty sure the reason birds migrate is that their regular habitats become too cold for them to survive in the winter, but this never comes up in the opening scene where the helicopter parent of a dad duck is hesitant to bring his family on an expensive Caribbean vacation. The only thing that convinces him to go is that getting out of the house (or rather the pond) for once makes him feel less like his lazy bachelor uncle voiced by Danny DeVito, who I wish they didn't decide to bring along on the trip. Later on in the film there is a nice story beat where the son duck loses some feathers from his wings fighting the villain, rendering him unable to fly. I started to think they might be boldly including actual consequences to a story event that would affect the character in the long term, however the duck quickly overcomes his injury by culturally appropriating the plumage of the Jamaican Macaw who is played by Keegan Michael-Key (Illumination always wants him in the film it would seem) doing a stereotypical comedy accent. In the post-credits scene, we see that the daughter duck has been holding a crocodile hostage and keeping him on a leash against his will while the family stays in Jamaica, which could be argued to have unfortunate implications when you consider that all of these animals are portrayed as being equally sentient. Also when they meet the pigeons led by Awkwafina the fat uncle tries to take food from them and the mom duck has to Karen her way out of the situation with her White Woman Powers. Well, it's no surprise that this is the type of audience an American animated film is trying to cultivate, but it did give me an underlying desire to see the whole family end up as foie gras.
I think my biggest sticking point with this one is the recurring presence of an evil chef who looks like he belongs in the Hotel Transylvania films. His introduction when the ducks are trying to rescue the Macaw from him actually looks cool, and I like that while all the animals talk he never says a word, but his repeated appearances start to become a little eye-rolling and take away from the chill road trip vibe that characterizes the film at its best. Oh well, this one was alright and probably takes the title of my favorite film where Illumination was involved.

Mythiot: 6.5

Johnbobb: This was probably the animated movie I was least looking forward to, a movie about talking ducks getting into goofy hijinks, Illumination style just didn't sound like a fun time. As it turns out? Yeah, eh, it wasn't great. Pretty one-dimensional characters and hyped kid-friendly animation meant to keep their eyes on the screen without much deeper substance. Which isn't even really to say I'm against movies putting style first, but when your "wow" factor is just animated birds flying around, there's not much overly impressive in that department either. And just the goofiest nonsense villain with one of the most appallingly ugly character designs. I didn't hate the movie, but I'm doing the write-up immediately because I feel like I'll have forgotten what happened by tomorrow.
Except that awful, Apple Jacks-esque stereotyped Jamaican accent, what the hell was that

Favorite 1/2 star Letterboxd review:
This movie is just travel propaganda. Travel isnt everything. Travel is not necessary to life. Travel sucks! Seeing new places sucks. No point to it.

Outlier:

Suprak: 66
Ermine: 53
Paul: 51
Evillord: 49
Inviso: 41
Red: 39
Johnbobb: 35
Karo: 34
Mythiot: 30
Lightning: 27

My favorite part of mi.a.sj is saying the name.

GenesisSaga posted...

I bet Exdeath's #1 is Flow! Now that was an arthouse film I actually loved, and I expect it to do well with this crowd.

Well I do love movies with animal characters so that is a good guess. I do think Flow will get a good placement though I feel like the lack of talking might disadvantage it.

Whatever, I expected this. You are all just wrong.

I was hooooping it could break top 20, but too many art snobs!