Animated Creatures: ILX's top 100 animated films (results thread)

If memory serves, Ninja Scroll didn't make the official nominations list for the poll, so that's an impressive showing for a write-in! Haven't seen it in 15 years, but the borrowed VHS copy from a coworker functioned as a terrific gateway to further anime discoveries, as well as pulpy shit like OTT wire-fu and Riki-Oh. Good times.

Lots of animals coming up in the next batch...

#67: Princess Mononoke
dir. Hayao Miyazaki
1997, USA
116 points, 4 votes
http://i.imgur.com/dqY1W.gif
trailer

i love the gif; trippy.

Mononoke was my first Miyazaki -- didn't love it (the violence in the opening scene stunned me a little bit, maybe I didn't recover), sort of a remix of Nausicaa.

Remix of Nausicaa is exactly how I remember it. Haven't seen this since the US theatrical run. Remember it being great-looking but weirdly cold, with all of the characters feeling strangely distant and wooden. Would be down for watching this one again if just to marvel at the forest ghost stuff and things like that gif above.

saw it just recently; it holds up fairly well. "marvel" is the right way to enjoy it.

#66: Rabbit Fire
dir. Chuck Jones
1951, USA
116 points, 4 votes
http://i.imgur.com/k9R1L.gif
film

A+ gifs, Leee

seconded.

I know I've seen the one with that scene, but I couldn't tell you anything else about it. Most of the LT/MM shorts blur together for me.

LT/SS rather (looney tunes/silly symphonies)

no, i was right the first time. aaargh

Just watched that one, thanks for the link. It's about like I remember it from when I was a kid, maybe a little slower and less completely nutso? In my mind these things are always Daffy and Bugs just upping the ante continuously, getting closer and closer to berserk but it's a little more evenly paced than that. Not a negative, though, this thing has some great gags.

God, I'd forgotten what a delicious MORON Elmer Fudd was! He wouldn't be funny at all except that he really is simple-minded enough to be fooled by these jokers and their terrible costumes and tricks, it makes him sympathetic in a way that, say, Yosemite Sam never is. Great character.

Don't get your hopes too far up with the gifs, chums.

DC, the less-zany-than-I-remember thing happens to me with other WB toons.

#65: Porco Rosso
dir. Hayao Miyazaki
1992, Japan
120 points, 4 votes
http://i.imgur.com/NQ21g.gif
trailer

the pacing in chuck jones cartoons is always really deliberate -- the 'zany' stuff's more early '40s, when it was more explicitly cartoonish and crazy. there's at least three cartoons with that same basic plot but the one that always reduced me to hysterics was 'you keep out of this! he doesn't HAVE to shoot you now!'

Remember really enjoying Porco Rosso except for extended brutal fist fight in the middle.

just rewatched porco rosso last week; it's gorgeous and i love it but i ALWAYS fall asleep during the dream sequence

Have never seen! Need to keep my eye out for that one.

#64: Sledgehammer (Peter Gabriel)
dir. Stephen R. Johnson
1986, UK
123 points, 4 votes
http://i.imgur.com/YprzW.jpg
film

#63: Beep, Beep!
dir. Chuck Jones
1952, USA
125 points, 5 votes
http://i.imgur.com/PbdGs.jpg
film

http://api.ning.com/files/e9HWZjeuNesQRncKm8YlvkhZRzlajLwKhI75LDcXiHobRSRcyZJjgEiV16Zdpw1YTk8dCujQ0ehCCkNoGrlt6ovP*MCO*6eQ/Animal_Man_5__Jan__1989_Closeup_A.jpg

I need to re-read Animal Man.

Next batch: loads of Disney.

Animal Man is great.

I love Roadrunner cartoons. That one in particular feels a little funky; I think it's an early one before the formula got exactly refined, and before some of the iconic bits (like the super-slow fall) were even in place. But they're all basically the same in some sense. The format does have the problem of being fundamentally episodic, with each gag setting up, ending, and then fading to black before another one starts. In that sense, you could basically stick every Roadrunner segment in a computer and tell it to spit out a five-minute cartoon and you'd never know the difference except for changes in animation style and background painting. The cartoons don't really build and they rarely have much momentum or payoff; watching that one, I was surprised that the ending actually bothered to pick back up a thread that was teased much earlier in the episode.

Thing is, if the gags are inventive, the whole thing works. It's just enough of a premise on which to hang whatever bonkers sight gags and surprise pratfalls the writers could think of. You never are in any doubt that the coyote will fail, so they genius is coming up with a way that the latest ACME invention can fail that doesn't occur to you before it happens. Some great ones in that short, especially the one with the boxing-glove. And no matter how many times you see one, a well-made "imaginary train is real" gag will still do it.

Yes, the copy/paste nature of Roadrunner shorts is very formulaic, and hasn't aged particularly well for me (and "Beep, Beep" is the only one that I voted for). I also get the vague sense that as a child, I in fact rooted for Wile E. Coyote for some reason (partly because of my love of nature documentaries, which rarely featured actual roadrunners).

Sledgehammer is total classic of course.

Well, of course you rooted for Wile E. Coyote! He's the protagonist as well as the underdog. It's just like wanting the rabbit to finally get a bowl of Trix.

#62: Lilo & Stitch
dir. Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders
2002, USA
127 points, 4 votes
http://i.imgur.com/H4Ib8.gif
trailer

This is a great movie. I'm not sure why I saw it in the theater, in my twenties - might have been the only appealing thing playing while I was home for the summer. Anyway, it just charmed the bejeezus out of me. Loved how anarchically destructive and nutso Stitch was, and how convincing the human cast was...Lilo is maybe a little precocious but it played well IIRC. "Oh no, that's from my blue period!!" I remember not liking it as much on the second viewing but I might have just not waited long enough in between.

xp For whatever reason "Beep Prepared" was up for an Oscar http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/66470/photos/PHOTO_12462082_66470_18660554_ap.jpg

xp Apologies if the gif is not from the right movie, which I've never seen.

Well, of course you rooted for Wile E. Coyote! He's the protagonist as well as the underdog. It's just like wanting the rabbit to finally get a bowl of Trix.

TBH never thought of him that way! Mostly because there seems to be an unwritten rule that predatory animals typically figure as villains (and the corollary, that herbivorous animals are the protagonists), and the novelty with RR+WEC then would be that this rule gets inverted.

idk that's like considering Tom the protagonist of Tom & Jerry films, or Elmer Fudd.

Lilo & Stitch way way too low, obv.

Wait, which one's Tom and which Jerry? Anyway, I considered the mouse the protagonist, at least!

I think Tom & Jerry and Roadrunner both do kind of interesting things with the protagonist/bad guy formula, but I am not really going to claim expertise here since folks here have voted for single episodes whereas I'd struggle to single out any.

But as a kid I always thought it was pretty evenly spread out whether you felt sorry for Tom or Jerry (though I am a crazy cat lady so I bring my own special variety of insanity bias), and while Wile E. is more obviously a Bad Guy he's more or less the focus of the show while Roadrunner doesn't do anything interesting except dash through making annoying noises and foiling plans - I mean maybe you don't exactly root for WEC, there's nothing about RR as a character to root for - whether you are invested in the coyote or the coyote's comeuppance, he is the character

(Wacky Races does this too, I guess, and probably many other things. anyway, like I said, it's been a while, so this may all be crazy talk. also pls excuse typos as I am too lazy to go and look for my glasses)

maybe daffy duck is a character who is more neatly placed right in the middle of the protagonist/antagonist continuum?

my son just discovered Lilo & Stitch so i have watched it maybe 50 times in the past month. great flick, holds up.

#61: Pinocchio
dir. Norman Ferguson, T. Hee
1940, USA
127 points, 5 votes
http://i.imgur.com/XkOo9.gif
trailer

Probably my favourite Disney.

Only 61?!

(I didn't vote)

I should see that again - I definitely haven't seen it since the 80s, and it's pretty hazy. Same story with Bambi, Snow White, all the classics really.

Warning: it's pretty fucked.

2nd most terrifying disney movie, only surpassed by fantasia.

http://la.gopride.com/c/I/22771-68318.jpg

i have to admit, i just got really scared for a second.

yeah i rewatched pinocchio a few years ago and found parts of it horrifying. can't really remember which parts though, besides when i was thinking about how much it would suck to turn into a donkey forever just for a little boozing and smoking.

semi-inspired by this thread i watched grave of the fireflies last night, now that's what i call horrifying. but also beautiful. the scene with the fireflies inside their mosquito net especially. in my retroactive vote for this poll i put it top 10 somewhere i guess.

#60: Transformers: The Movie, The
dir. Nelson Shin
1986, USA
129 points, 4 votes
http://i.imgur.com/ZIJnV.png
touch
film (have at it nerds)

I liked the toys, but I never cared for Marvel's space alien war story.

what about Furman?

i've never enjoyed transformers but i'm open to conversion. if i'm going to blaze and watch one transformers flick, is it this one?