Oscar Nominees 2015: Part 8 of 12 (Animated Features)

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7.
Part 8 of 12:

How to Train Your Dragon 2

1 Nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Dean DeBlois

Cast: Jay Baruchel, Cate Blanchett, America Ferrera, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Djimon Hounsou, Kristin Wiig, T.J. Miller, Kit Harington

This was just so dang cute, and the dragon who is the star of these films is so gorgeously designed that when he's on screen it is impossible to look at anything else. He's sleek and lovable and charming and who wouldn't want one for her very own? The movie itself is exciting, too. There are hundreds of new species of beautifully drawn dragons, and the plot is moving and sweet without being cloying or absurd. I expect this to win this year, even though I liked Big Hero 6 slightly more. For those of you who want me to say something about The Lego Movie's big snub here, read on.

Will Win: Animated Feature

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #26 out of 80

Big Hero 6

1 Nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Don Hall, Chris Williams
Cast: Ryan Potter, Scott Adsit, Maya Rudolph, Daniel Henney, Alan Tudyk, James Cromwell, T.J. Miller, Genesis Rodriguez, Damon Wayans Jr., Jamie Chung

I loved this movie. It's smart and exciting, and beautifully shot. It is also a straight-up action movie, even though it is a movie for kids. And it's filled with science, so that kids can understand just how much fun science can be – and even more, how great it would be if we were using science to do good in the world instead of simply attempting to make more money. The characters are wonderful, and the main creation (his name is Baemax) is lovable and huggable (see above) and is perfectly voiced by Scott Adsit. This is an excellent film. I should say that my favorite animated film of the year was Ari Folman's The Congress, which isn't animated for its entire length, (so I guess it doesn't count?), but this is my favorite of the nominees for sure, and one of my favorite films this year.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Animated Feature

My Rating: #17 out of 80

Song of the Sea

1 Nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Tomm Moore

Cast: Lucy O'Connell, David Rawle, Brendan Gleeson, Fionnula Flanagan, Pat Shortt, Lisa Hannigan, Jon Kenny

This is the first of this year's nominees that I haven't seen. Ho hum. It just never played up here in the hinterlands, and it was in Los Angeles too early for me to have seen it there. This was animated by the same folks that brought us The Secret of Kells (also a nominee, for the 2009 season), and by all accounts it is beautiful and everyone loves it. Its appearance on nomination morning was a surprise to many (although not to me), because almost everyone was betting that The Lego Movie would get a nomination for Best Animated Feature. Why everyone liked The Lego Movie is a bit of a mystery to me, but it should have been quite clear that it couldn't have gotten a nomination. It isn't stop-motion animation at all. It's a kind of hybrid thing that pretends to be stop-motion but is actually traditionally animated. The Animation Branch does not value strangely animated pictures: remember The Adventures of Tintin? Or Waking Life? It does love traditional, beautiful, and especially hand-drawn work, which Song of the Sea certainly is. This could win in an upset.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Animated Feature

My Rating: Not Yet Rated

The Boxtrolls

1 Nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Graham Annable, Anthony Stacchi

Cast: Isaac Hempstead Wright, Elle Fanning, Nick Frost, Richard Ayoade, Tracy Morgan, Ben Kingsley, Jared Harris, Dee Bradley Baker

I was sort of bored by this. Its themes are very similar to last year's Ernest et Célestine, and it just wasn't as visually intriguing as I wanted it to be. It's cute and charming in a grotesque sort of way (its grotesquerie is definitely part of its attraction), but it is never really more than that. And its plot is sentimental and clichéd. I was disappointed. It's a shame because I really liked Jorge R. Gutierrez's The Book of Life, and it could have had this slot. It was imaginative and beautiful, and the plot was intriguing and clever and had a healthy ironic perspective on itself. Oh well.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #60 out of 80

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (かぐや姫の物語)

1 Nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Takahata Isao

Cast: Chloë Grace Moretz, James Caan, Mary Steenburgen, Darren Criss, Lucy Liu, Beau Bridges, James Marsden, Oliver Platt, Dean Cain, Daniel Dae Kim, George Segal, John Cho

This was another bit of a disappointment. I've written about this movie already here; its animation is lovely, but the story just isn't that intriguing. One sort of knows how it is going to go before we ever get anywhere. It's an old tale, so that makes a kind of sense, but it just reiterates old clichés about living in the woods and not living in the city, and that we ought to let our children be what they want to be instead of forcing them to be what we want them to be. Important sentiments, no doubt, but not sentiments that need to be told in a film that is longer than two hours.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #53 out of 80

The Congress

Here's one you probably haven't heard of!

Ari Folman's The Congress is a quasi-science-fiction movie that is really an animated movie more than it is anything else. Hm. Maybe this is not the best way to start. Things get confused easily when I think about this movie, so I'll start with the plot.

In 2013, we follow the actress Robin Wright (played by Robin Wright). She is 44 and the studios want her to sign one last contract. She will be scanned by the studio so that they can put her into any movie they want without having to deal with the real actor's objections to things – no human problems. They will make her permanently 34 years old and she will be a movie star again, but it won't actually be her. It will all be computers. She will be animated. Wright signs the deal for various reasons, and they go about scanning her, but she stops the scanning in the middle unsure if she wants to continue – the whole thing is just too weird for her. This is the first 40 minutes of the film.

I originally thought this was going to be a movie about dehumanization, about the difficulties of being a person who is also a commodity, produced by studios and consumed by moviegoers everywhere. And it is that, but The Congress is about the future more than it is about anything else. And so it is about consciousness and drugs as well as consumption and commodification.

After the first 40 minutes, The Congress flashes a title card: Twenty years later. It's a shocking thing to do, and I feel bad for spoiling this moment here, but there's no other way even to begin to explain what comes next in the movie, and I still haven't even explained the title. Twenty years later, Robin is in her early sixties, and she drives to a "restricted animated zone" where she drinks an Alice-in-Wonderland-style vial and becomes animated. (At this point maybe you'll remember that the director, Ari Folman, first hit it big with the animated documentary Waltz with Bashir (ואלס עם באשיר).) I won't tell you what happens next, but Robin is attending an event in an animated world called "the futurological congress" where everything is in one's head (or at least it would appear so).

The rest has been described by others as psychedelic, and that is a very good technical description, I think, but The Congress is a representation of what living through chemistry might be like, of an imaginary world made to seem very real through ongoing drug use. As a film, The Congress is less of a nightmare than it is a kind of Rousselian pageant of wonders: things are amazing in this animated world, and much is possible that is impossible in the real world. It is mind-boggling and scary as well as beautiful, and the future that The Congress shows us doesn't seem that far away, to my mind. This is also an entirely different take on The Society of the Spectacle, by a filmmaker that uses animation to its fullest. If The Congress is like anything, it is like the animated universes of Oshii Mamoru's Ghost in the Shell (攻殻機動隊), Kon Satoshi's Paprika (パプリカ), and Richard Linklater's Waking Life (although it is nowhere near as soporific as Linklater's movie). This is smart, challenging stuff that imagines a possible future for us in critical, non-ironic ways.

Some other stuff: Robin Wright is superb. She has been doing the most challenging, interesting work of her career these last couple of years (did you see last year's Adore?) and she is a joy to watch. Harvey Keitel also gives an excellent performance in The Congress: his best in many years. And Max Richter's score is gorgeous and contemplative. This is great filmmaking, and Ari Folman is proving himself a real philosopher of media and human interaction with media. The Congress is one of my favorites of the year.