Recommendations: Animated Films

Hmm. What animated movie can I watch tonight that everyone will hate my review of tomorrow?

Does anyone have any suggestions?

I highly recommend the Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya but it's one of those films where you'll have no idea what the hell is going on unless you watched the tv show (this case, anime) before it.

Rango
Kung Fu Panda
How to Train Your Dragon
Vincent

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I haven't heard of this one. I'll have to look it up.

I've seen the first three of these already, and I liked all of them. I'll have to look up "Vincent", but I think I remember it being a Tim Burton animation. Is this a full length movie, or a short?

Now that you guys mentioned it, Wrinkles is a wonderful instance. A character-driven drama about old age and Alzheimer with clear influences from One flew over the cuckoo's nest and Make way for tomorrow. It only has a major flaw, and it's more of a waste of resources; the animation and artwork in general is minimalistic, so it could be said that it doesn't really put emphasis on the expressive ability of its medium. Except from a couple scenes, it doesn't add a significant aesthetic effect. It could be made with real actors with no essential changes.

I absolutely love and am scared still by The Sandman, a short stop motion animation by Paul Berry. When I first saw it a few years back all those childhood memories of going up dark stairs came flooding back. It still makes my heart beat a bit faster and the hairs on my arms raise when I watch it

Great watch! I hadn't seen that before.

It is in my top 50 animated films list. I think that you can grasp the film without watching the TV series, you will just lack background information on the characters and miss some references to events in the series but you can fill these gaps with our imagination (possibly making the movie better than it would be for a fan of the series!)

Animated movie you are sure to hate? Strike Witches the Movie. I think it's the least "accessible" of the animated movies in my top 100 for people here. But it also might be the most accessible.

It's actually a work of comedic brilliance. Of course you will never grasp it though.

That one will be on the top 5, almost certainly. It's extremely "robust" film for western audiences, Miyazaki said that he made it thinking it would be super Japanese and completely inaccessible to western audiences, in the end it was the inverse, now being the third highest rated Japanese film on the IMDB after Seven Samurai and The Human Condition part 3.

I'm definitely not alone.

Had the third one in my top 100 animations list for a short while (ranked in the last position). Very good and entertaining film indeed. It suffers from some standard hollywood cliches though.

Did you watch it?

Kill Me Baby achieves excellency because it's extremely aggressive comedy, an unrelenting unmitigated uncompromising slab of pure idiocy, something to behold. I admire it for being unique in that way. It's better than all around mediocre films which don't do anything that I haven't watched before, these include 90% of everything I have watched.

I don't think Gunbuster qualify for this countdown since it was released as a 6 part direct to video animation, but I think it's the 2nd best direct to video animation I ever watched, the 1st is obviously, is LOGH.

Gunbuster was the directorial debut of Hideaki Anno, who is an artistic genius and the perhaps the greatest animation director to emerge after Miyazaki. It contains great artistic designs (spaceships, fliying craft, alien crafts, creatures, etc, in a way similar to Alien in those regards), a very powerful, profound and dark atmosphere and lots of explosions! It's top of the line action/drama science fiction, comparable to Aliens, but more complex in terms of plot and character development (given it is longer) and has a subtle sense of humor. Direction is also excellent and it is much more accessible than Evangelion. I think it is one of the highest ranked non-Ghibli films in my top animations list, I think it's 3rd place cutting Ghibli stuff.

Stop motion animation is really scary stuff. The inhuman/unnatural way everything moves while being more "real" than drawn animation makes it scary.

That was also my favorite part of the movie.

I've got my 25, now I just have to order them. I had to leave off some stuff that I'm surprised I did, but I had to make choices so I just hope it works out and I left off the right ones.

If your are still making up your mind, please give James & the Giant Peach a watch. It's Henry Selick directing a Roald Dahl adaptation. If that isn't a ringing endorsement,
I don't know what is. The stop-motion is fantastic and it's a clever, imaginative and it's Dahl!

I already have the first version of the 25! I still have some movies to watch but it won't change much from what I have now!

Not sure what to go to next, anybody got some must animated movies they can recommend?

Like, movies they would personally put in their top 3 or something. Of course that isn't a guarantee I will like it, but I have a variated taste in movies.