Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Five Massively Underrated Animation Films

Most animation lovers of today consume the commercial, pop culture-laced, colorful artistry of Dreamworks, or the visual and aural poetry of Pixar. Everyone loves Toy Story, Wall.E, Shrek, the Ice Age films, the Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda movies. Lots of folks have seen the excellent Studio Ghibli films and stop motion flicks like Coraline. The recently released Tintin set a new benchmark for visual sophistication rendered by motion capture. Adult-oriented movies like Persepolis, Waltz with Bashir and The Secret of Kells found their audiences thanks to overwhelming critical acclaim and/or Oscar buzz.

But two things are certain - no one likes the princesses of Disney anymore, and not many have seen these brilliant films listed below:


Chasseurs de Dragons (Dragon Hunters)

















Dragon Hunters is a beautiful French computer animated adventure that is as fun and hilarious as it is gorgeous. Set in an otherworldly locale terrorized by dragons, the film revolves around the story of Gwizdo and Lian-Chu, two unlikely friends who hunt dragons and con people for a living. Dragon Hunters works so well because it has very original characters and none of the saccharine of Disney. The imagery is stunning, but some sequences are truly jaw dropping - take a look!


Titan A.E














This one was a box office disaster, thanks mainly to poor marketing, and Pixar's Toy Story 2 completely obliterating the competition that year. But that doesn't mean it was a bad film - it is extremely entertaining. Combining computer graphics and traditional hand drawn animation, Titan AE is a zippy, quirky, exciting Sci Fi adventure. It's not exactly a kids' film, considering the post apocalyptic themes and settings, and that's probably another reason why the film didn't make money.  


The Triplets of Belleville  
















Before director Sylvain Chomet shot to fame with The Illusionist, he made a little film called The triplets of Belleville. Chomet's animation and characters are extraordinarily fresh and unique. The story itself is very interesting - an old woman teams up with a trio of aging Jazz musicians to rescue her grandson from the clutches of the mafia. Chomet abandons straightforward for the trippy, and it makes for an imaginative, witty and delightful adventure. Just watch this scene.


Perfect Blue
















The world lost a genius when director Satoshi Kon passed away last year. His eerie, surreal anime films transcend greatness. Unbelievable as it may sound, Darren Aronofsky's films Requiem for a dream and Black Swan are ripoffs of Satoshi's Perfect Blue. Just like in Black Swan, the central character of this film pursues a career and is increasingly haunted by the distortion of fantasy and reality. To get a better idea of how much Aronofsky lifted the scenes, check here and here. Perfect Blue isn't as famous as Miyazaki's Spirited Away, but it totally deserves to be. I also urge you to watch the director's Paprika and Millenium Actress.


Renaissance















This is the most underrated animation movie of all time. Bad marketing made sure no one heard about the film. That changed when someone decided to upload it on torrents, and it immediately became a cult favourite. Renaissance is a black and white sci fi noir action thriller that grabs you by the balls in the opening scene, and proceeds to pound all your senses with sheer novelty, craft and artistic ingenuity. The visuals are arresting to the point of being utterly intoxicating.
















This French motion capture movie effortlessly mixes balls-to-the-wall action and thrills with intrigue, mystery and science fiction. It offers imagery of a futuristic France, glowing black and white as if under the influence of LSD, complete with saucy gizmos, high tech weaponry, invisible assassins, digital rain - the works. But don't let the visual wizardry fool you - the story is pretty exciting. A cop (Daniel Craig) is assigned the duty to locate a young woman, a key scientist of a huge cosmetics firm, who is kidnapped the day she arranges to meet with a man about some secret documents. Still not convinced? Watch this clip.

Note: I personally feel Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within never got it's due - it was a technological marvel far ahead of it's time. Also, Shane Acker's 9 was another masterpiece that was curiously rejected by most audiences. If you didn't like 9, perhaps you'll dig this short film that it was based on.

More reccos: The Plague Dogs and Princess - both of which are recco'd by Anurag Kashyap.

7 comments:

  1. Out of this entire list I've had the privilege of watching only Titan AE, which I really liked. Will definitely be getting hold of the rest of the films soon.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I wouldn't call Titan A.E massively underrated, considering it was never that good to begin with. Yes, the animation was superb, but the story wasn't. The same with Final Fantasy.

    Also pretty much the same with Shane Acker's 9. Excellent animation, thematic elements and use of music, but a mediocre narrative. Hence, it deserved its rejection.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Watched Renaissance on your recco list , and it was brilliant. Thanks for 2 hours well spent! I'd read about Jumbo, the flying elephant when i was a kid, and I remember thinking then, whether it was adapted on screen too. Now i see there's a 1940 version and it is on 'Total Film top 50 list' too.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sorry , the name's Dumbo and it released in 1941. My bad.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Also, i share your worry for the sorry state of affairs at Disney, seeing as I positively adore only a few of their movies in the past two decades, one being my personal favourite, The Lion King. I doubt whether they can put together such a team again to create the magic they did with that movie. The music was pure genius(mirrored Africa) and the guy who voiced Scar was spot on.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Sreejit, the problem with Disney was they stuck to the formula of princesses and songs. As a result everything that they did post Lion King and Aladin turned out either underwhelming or plain bad. But I do believe they'll bounce back - Tangled was very good.

    ReplyDelete
  7. YoBit enables you to claim FREE CRYPTO-COINS from over 100 unique crypto-currencies, you complete a captcha once and claim as many as coins you want from the available offers.

    After you make about 20-30 claims, you complete the captcha and keep claiming.

    You can click on CLAIM as many times as 30 times per one captcha.

    The coins will stored in your account, and you can exchange them to Bitcoins or USD.

    ReplyDelete