Oscar Nominations 2022: 7 of 9 (Animated Features)

 This year's nominees:

Pinocchio

1 Nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Guillermo Del Toro, Mark Gustafson

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Gregory Mann, David Bradley, Tilda Swinton, Christoph Waltz, Finn Wolfhard, Ron Perlman, Burn Gorman, Cate Blanchett, Tim Blake Nelson, John Turturro

I loved this movie, and I think it's the best animated film of the year, but it is a Guillermo Del Toro movie, not a Disney Pinocchio tale. Del Toro's film is a very interesting and constantly surprising meditation on death, grief, loss, and the violence of war. Especially intriguing is the Blue Fairy's opposite, a terrifying and wise sphinx figure whom Pinocchio meets in the afterlife. This is also a film with songs, and I have to say that I think I would have liked it better without the musical elements, but it didn't damage my affection for Del Toro's engaging take on this old story. I am predicting this movie to win best animated feature, but I have to say I'm skeptical of my own prediction. Everyone was expecting Pinocchio to do much better on nomination morning than it did. Nominations were predicted for sound, adapted screenplay, and other categories, but it only managed this one. Even music-branch-golden-boy Alexandre Desplat missed a nomination for his Pinocchio score. All of the nominees for best animated feature this year are only nominated in this one category. This is unusual. I think, in the case of Pinocchio, it indicates that the Academy likes it a lot less than critics did. This might mean that Marcel can pull off a win.

Will Win: Animated Feature

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #13 out of 67

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

1 Nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Dean Fleischer Camp

Cast: Jenny Slate, Fleischer Camp, Isabella Rossellini, Lesley Stahl, Thomas Mann, Rosa Salazar

I really liked this. I liked Marcel when he was a YouTube sensation – I don't know how many times I watched that video – and I liked him again now. This is a very intriguing pandemic movie. It feels like a pandemic movie, like something made to cope with loss and grief. This is what the animated feature category is about this year – coping with mortality and trying to come to terms with grief and loss. Marcel has a very cute way of doing this, and this film is super charming. I was sort of surprised to hear how emotional people got over Marcel, though. It just didn't do that for me. In terms of the academy and its short film and animated feature branch, this movie is quite an anomaly, and it signals a new approach in considering animation. I think five years ago, this movie would not have been legible as an animated feature. This nomination, though, really opens things up for how the branch is understanding and honoring work in animation, and I think this is very positive.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #27 out of 67

Puss in Boots: the Last Wish

1 Nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Joel Crawford

Cast: Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Harvey Guillén, Wagner Moura, Florence Pugh, Olivia Colman, Ray Winstone, Samson Kayo, John Mulaney, Da'Vine Joy Randolph 

This is really fun! It's also gorgeously animated, with a witty and cleverly changing set of styles, used in various ways and for different effects. In case you haven't understood the theme, this too is a mediation on death. Puss is, for the first time, terrified for his life, and the film deals with death humorously for a time (perhaps the way most of us do) before moving into quite serious territory. The Last Wish, unfortunately, moves inexorably toward easy clichés and toward melodramatic solutions to its very intriguing problems, but for most of its runtime this is a fun, handsomely animated film, and Salma Hayek and Antonio Banderas are great.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #38 out of 67

Turning Red

1 Nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Domee Shi

Cast: Rosalie Chiang, Sandra Oh, Orion Lee, Wai Ching Ho, Ava Morse, Hyein Park, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Tristan Allerick Chen, Mia Tagano, Lori Tan Chinn, Lillian Lim, James Hong, Sherry Cola

I've already written about Turning Red. If you follow my Instagram, you probably know that I'm obsessed with red pandas, and so I was very ready to be in love with this. It is, indeed, very good, and I had a pretty great time with it. For me, Turning Red is, like many children's movies these days, about the child who is weird, whose desires and impulses don't accord with those of her parents', and who finds herself strange even to herself. [I explore this concept of the queer child as central to recent animated features in chapter five of my new book – link below.] I definitely liked how this movie was about turning against tradition, about deciding to follow a different path. It does have some weird choices in it, though. I am not sure why it's set in the past, and especially not sure why they didn't draw the red panda to look more like the way a real red panda looks – they have beautiful black bellies and black boots, but the animated character is all red. Mostly, this movie makes a very strange homophobic choice that just didn't sit well with me. The movie's still good, but that moment stuck with me and I had trouble letting it go.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #46 out of 67

The Sea Beast

1 Nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Chris Williams

Cast: Karl Urban, Zaris-Angel Hator, Jared Harris, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Kathy Burke

This nomination was a total surprise, and I really don't know how it came to be, because this movie is a complete retread of How to Train Your Dragon. I've already seen How to Train Your Dragon, and this is the same damn plot as the first one except that they're sea dragons instead of flying dragons. Now, I'm sure that lots of kids like this movie. It's cute enough, and it's harmless. But I was annoyed with it, despite my affection for Karl Urban's handsomeness and my love for Marianne Jean-Baptiste.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #50 out of 67

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Banshees of Inisherin, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Elvis

2. The Fabelmans, Tár, Top Gun: Maverick, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

3. Avatar: the Way of Water, Triangle of Sadness, The Whale, and Babylon

4. The Batman, Women Talking, Living, and Aftersun

5. To Leslie, Blonde, Glass Onion, and Causeway

6. Argentina, 1985, Eo, The Quiet Girl, and Close

More posts coming soon:

8. Animated Shorts

9. Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, Empire of Light, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, RRR, and Tell It like a Woman

I'd love it if you checked out my new book Love Is Love Is Love – out March 24!

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