Animatorium

SamuraiFrog comments on Entertainment Weekly‘s list of the 20 Greatest Animated Movies, and I figure I’ll do the same thing. EW is pretty good for generating lists for bloggers to talk about, after all.

20. Ghost in the Shell

Haven’t seen it.

19. Waltz with Bashir

Nor this one. I’m not off to a good start here….

18. Pinocchio

Only #18? This is really one of the greats: it’s Exhibit A for the existence of the seriously dark side of the Disney of old.

17. Kiki’s Delivery Service

I love Kiki, but it’s simply not as good as My Neighbor Totoro, and it’s nowhere near as good as Laputa or Princess Mononoke. I suspect this one’s cited on the basis of accessibility: it’s the kind of anime people can watch if they don’t want to deal with all that weird Japanese stuff.

16. South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut

Haven’t seen it. I’ve never been able to figure out if I like South Park or not.

15. The Iron Giant

Why the hell is this so low? Probably because it still isn’t that well known.

14. Akira

Haven’t seen this either, although I should.

13. Chicken Run

Huh. I’d forgotten about this movie, although it’s really pretty terrific.

12. The Triplets of Belleville

Geez…haven’t seen it.

11. Dumbo

Hmmmm. I like Dumbo. I like it a lot. But I’m not sure I like it more than Pinocchio, and I sure as hell don’t like it more than Snow White.

10. Coraline

OK, doing this list was a bad idea. Haven’t seen it. I liked the book. Although I’m not sure the movie’s been around long enough to warrant this kind of reverence.

9. Bambi

I was just thinking about Bambi today, while listening to guys at work talking about their success or lack thereof in their hunting exploits. (Hunting season just opened up.) It’s one of my favorite of all Disney movies, and it’s certainly deserving of this list.

8. Toy Story 2

Really, really good movie. I love its resonance — every adult I know remembers some long-lost toy they wish they hadn’t dumped in a box somewhere — and I love the little digs it makes at the collecting hobby world, the little pop culture references (especially to Star Wars), and…well, everything.

7. The Incredibles

If Pixar had to do a sequel for their next one, I’d rather see an Incredibles II than Toy Story 3. It’s a terrific superhero movie, and it’s so sure about itself. The sequence where Mr. Incredible is sitting at the computer console, scrolling past the history of the bad guy’s development of his evil robots, is utterly chilling.

6. Beauty and the Beast

This should be higher. It’s a great, great film, full of magic and brilliant characters and outstanding songs and music. Yeah, it’s too low.

5. Persepolis

Haven’t seen it. But I assume it’s roughly as good as the book, and since the book is brilliant….

4. The Lion King

I’m sorry, but I have to call foul here. The Lion King just isn’t this good. It’s very entertaining and fun and all, but I’ve never seen it as the classic everyone else seems to think it is. I can name probably a dozen Disney films that I think are better than this. It’s not a bad movie, but there’s no way it’s the supreme Disney achievement.

3. Up

WAY too soon to be on a list like this. I just saw it last week and will post more about it later on, but I loved about two-thirds of it. Roughly until it set aside its magic and wonder in favor of another villain who needs to be defeated.

2. Spirited Away

This movie isn’t high enough. It’s just so, so, so brilliant.

1. WALL-E

Have I ever blogged about this movie? I’m of mixed mind on it, and generally, I view it as I do The Lion King: a generally good movie with some wonderful parts (WALL-E and Eve’s “dance” in space is as amazing a piece of imagination as I’ve seen in a film) but also some parts that left me cold. To be honest, I felt a lot of the air of the film go out when the humans showed up. It almost felt to me as if the filmmakers didn’t quite have the courage of their convictions and had to have something conventional happen sometime. (The same problem afflicted Up.) I wouldn’t have this movie this high up, and I in fact might not even have it on the list.

What other movies do I miss from this list? Well, there’s not room for everything and I’m not about to re-write the whole thing, but…Fantasia. Snow White. (That one’s omission is just weird.) Finding Nemo (still my favorite Pixar film). Princess Mononoke. The Emperor’s New Groove. (Yes, I’m serious. It remains the only Disney film that’s ever come close to channeling the spirit of Chuck Jones.)

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