Board 8 > Board 8 Watches and Ranks Animated Movies 4 - The Results Topic

(+) Yeah! (+)

oh dang I just realized I finally needed my disclaimer.

Anyone that has hosted one of these knows I always included a disclaimer that if the list portion of the file I send doesn't match the order of my writeups, the writeups are the intended order(As I tend to realize how I really feel about things when writing about them and use the list for sorting purposes first).

Glad Karo caught it(I had my 30th as 29 on the list). Had never made that mistake before but I knew it was possible.

1-7) ???
8) Vivo (2021)
9) DC League of Super-Pets (2022)
10) ???
11) Turning Red (2022)
12) ???
13) Sing 2 (2021)
14) ???
15) ???
16) Early Man (2018)
17) ???
18) ???
19) ???
20) The Girl Without Hands (2016)
21) Sita Sings the Blues (2008)
22) Lightyear (2022)
23) ???
24) The Willoughbys (2020)
25) Ne Zha (2019)
26) Strange World (2022)
27) The Hobbit (1977)
28) The Angry Birds Movie
29) Yellow Submarine (1968)
30) ???

Also I believe that made me the last one to have a 30 remaining.

16. The Sea Beast

Ermine: 9
Suprak: 9
Mythiot: 14
Red: 14
Johnbobb: 15
Plasma: 16
Evillord: 18
Karo: 22
Inviso: 24

Total: 141

Ermine: This is a very average film with some cute and fun moments... but not much else.
One thing that stuck out to me is how poorly written the main kid character was. Maisie? Was that her name?
Anyways. When we first start the film and are introduced to this child, she's kind of a brat and full of herself. You know, like all annoying kid characters are, at least to start... and then she stows herself away on the ship.. and within maybe a couple minutes? Her character COMPLETELY changes and all of a sudden she just knows everything and is the perfect little child, having the answer and doing the right thing at all times.
What the hell happened? Have we heard of writing character development? Because I don't think the writers have! You don't introduce a character like that and then INSTANTLY, for NO REASON, have her completely change and be perfect in every way. The whiplash I got from this stayed with me throughout the whole film.
Also, I was waiting for the little Blue beastie to have some importance in any way, but nope, he did nothing but just be cute the whole time. Wow, what a let down.
A lot of negative here but there's really not much else to focus on. The good stuff was fine. Movie looked good and was overall pleasant to watch. I think it could have done a whole lot more to stand out, but eh, it was fine.

Suprak: *no writeup submitted*

Mythiot: *no writeup submitted*

Red: Little girl tags along with mr bland to discover that surprisingly the sea beasts werent all evil all along. Seriously, our captain to be might be the most generic "hero" on the entire list. Hes got the most generic look, hes destined for greatness but has to learn something new(From a child of all things) to eventually reach his destiny or whatever. With a predictable plot, this movie really drags itself out to unnecessarily close to 2 hours long. We open with this competition between traditional hunters and a ship decked the fuck out with cannons. Spoilers the cannon ship is worthless and cant serve its purpose. So our "hunters aren't needed" plotline was a waste. The hunters need to go to a creepy poison vendor to apparently in bad form kill the beast which is supposed to bring bad juju or whatever that will never really materialize in meaningful form. Our two split off heroes learn quickly the beasts aren't bad, except you know some of them are kind of murderous but lets gloss over this because its convenient. There was just a habit to gloss over details for what ultimately was a basic plot that we've seen before.

Johnbobb: It's How to Train Your Dragon, but with a bigger dragon, and also the typical adult man/young girl friendship that, while cute, is always weirdly common in movies. Seriously, how often do you see the opposite, with an adult woman hanging out with a little boy as unlikely friends? Anyway, this movie is very good, even if it's definitely no HTTYD.

Plasma: The animation was fantastic, but the story was meh, and the ending was so ridiculous that I thought I was watching Training Day.
The core problem with this movie, however, is how generic it feels. I mean, what distinguishes this particular group of pirates from others? They dont have a unique code or special style or anything like that. Theyre just people playing dress-up on a boat. Then you have Jacob and Maisie, your typical cynic-idealist duo that gets stranded on a deserted island until the not-so-nasty Sea Beast bails them out. From there, the movie is a snoozer until the Sea Beast gets captured and dragged back to the evil king and queen. In the finale, the Sea Beast proves nonviolent, and thats enough to convince every dedicated beast-hunter to immediately abandon their hostility toward all other beasts. Yeah, okay, sure.

Evillord: An interesting near-miss of a movie. It has a lot of the ingredients for a solid animated flick - the narrative is interesting with some complex characters. There's a heroic sea captain and father figure turned misguided Captain Ahab analog. The two central leads have a nice progression as initially-enthusiastic sea monster hunters who learn the error of their ways, then fight against the monster-killing culture they were born into, through an unlikely friendship with the sea beast on the poster (though I do feel they decide the monster is friendly a little TOO easily). There's an emotional conflict between the Captain Ahab guy and his adopted son over what to do with the monsters and a cool first mate lady who also goes through self-doubt regarding whether she is doing the right thing and if it's too late to change. The setting is also realized with a lot of love for old-timey nautical and pirate aesthetics including funny yo ho ho dialog. It just doesn't quite come together to make an actual good movie. Part of this is because the story is a little too big even for a two-hour movie (with twelve minutes of credits). The ending wraps things up WAY too quickly and neatly without exploring the specifics of how the huge culture shift the heroes cause might really change the world. Was the monarchy abolished or reformed, and if the former what became of the King and Queen? What did all the hunters do with their lifelong career rendered invalid? What did the curse the Captain Ahab guy took on himself to get a big gun to shoot the sea monster with actually end up doing? The viewer is left without any answers to questions like these that could've made the narrative feel more complete and more interesting.
Secondly, the presentation just isn't very good, especially the audio. Captain Ahab doesn't have a commanding or intimidating voice, the fight scenes fail to convey a sense of excitement or urgency because the music is super bland and neither the actors nor the stiff CGI models can sell it. Some stormy seas with dark skies would've also helped create a much more captivating and moody atmosphere - Moby Dick itself was melodramatic as fuck to its benefit with long descriptions of sailors struggling against the wrath of whales and the sea at once. In contrast, most of the fight scenes in this movie take place on sunny days with calm seas. The atmosphere just doesn't match the mood of a hectic battle against an awe-inspiring aquatic colossus. It ends up being best in the brief underwater scenes where almost all the shitty audio is muted - there's a great image of a wounded, colossal sea monster sinking into the black depths of the ocean and threatening to drag the shadow of a tiny man down with it near the start, and another cool shot of the two main characters noticing the unblinking eyes of Red staring up at them when they're underwater with her, but apart from these moments the emotions the film was shooting for never transferred themselves over to me because of the presentation issues. I'm actually tempted to suggest that someone, someday, should try and remake it, but alas this version just isn't very good.

Karo: A kindhearted youngster seeks to end centuries of bloodshed between humans and monsters by befriending a creature and showing all the adults how wrong they are. Whoa whoa, wait, doesn't this all sound awful familiar to you? Yup, I just described to you the literal plot of How to Train Your Dragon. This movie doesn't even try to hide the shame of plagiarism, I mean, even the design of the main sea monster is highly reminiscent of Toothless the dragon.
It was very hard to get emotionally invested in the story when it is just exactly the same thing I've seen already only inferior, and the only question remaining in my mind is who the hell did Chris Williams have to suck off to get this nominated for best animated feature.
They may be nothing really wrong with this film from a technical standpoint, and indeed, it checks every box and crosses every t in regards to animated movie production. But it ultimately ends up forgettable and soulless and devoid of any reason to ever watch it for the first time, let alone again.

Inviso: First off, this movie had such a weird animation style for me. I know its hard to explain, but it just felt like 3D animation from like a decade ago. It wasnt outright TERRIBLE, but like, it just didnt feel like it was up to par with other major studios. Disney and Pixar and Dreamworks have kinda reached this point where they can at least design human characters that look crisp and clean, and look polished in their animation stylewhile this animation gave me vibes of an early effort by a bigger and better studio.
With that out of the way, this movie just didnt do a whole lot for me. Its way too long for an animated filmor at least, its way too long for an animated film with as straight-forward and bare bones of a plot as this movie has. Its basically Moby Dick, except its a kids movie, so the monster is actually quite pleasant if you give her the chance, and the plot revolves around showing the world that the monsters are good. Thats fine, and it CAN work, except that was just so little in terms of comedy aside from like, a few pithy scenes. Instead, the lightheartedness of the film was largely contained to cute child/monster interactions between not just the titular Sea Beast, but also this weird and honestly unnecessary blue mini-monster that was JUST in the movie to be a cute animal sidekick.
But the BIGGEST flaw, like I said, is that the movie is too damn long. And I think you can attribute like half an hour of the runtime to a completely hamfisted political statement from the writers. The movie spends a ton of time world-building how theres a war going on between humans and sea beasts and there are whole crews of hunters that are essentially mercenaries who go out and wage war for the king and queen. And then a subplot comes up where the royalty decides they dont think the hunters are getting the job done, so theyre instead going to bring in this MASSIVE warship to handle things moving forward. This leads to a competition between Captain Crow (essentially Ahab) and the soldiers.
This subplotgoes nowhere. The warship shows up again VERY briefly and is utterly destroyed by Red (the main sea beast), and its only purpose seems to be that it exists to needlessly cause harm to Maisie? Now, I might be overanalyzing this kids movie, but that whole subplot feels like it exists ENTIRELY to critique likethe military industrial complex. Its this big, flashy ship that harms innocents and is ultimately useless. It serves no other purpose in the plot of the film.
But thats not all. Youd think that the big climax of the film would be Red versus the hunters or versus the soldiers or SOMETHING. And while thats a part of itduring the final sequence, Maisie has this moment where shes been reading tales of hunter heroism all movie long, and after interacting with Red, she kinda realizes the tales are exaggerated. But then she sees the royal quest and notices that the crest is printed on every one of the history books that paint the sea beasts as irredeemable monsters. So, the true climax of the film is Maisie calling out the king and queen for lying and forcing anti-sea beast propaganda on the peoplefor reasons? Its not well-explainedits just that the king and queen were lying to manipulate the population? Again, it just feels like a hamfisted political statement that doesnt contribute anything to the plot. Its SO bizarre the more I think about it.
This should have been the easiest possible story to tell. You have two options, really. First, Maisie and Jacob learn that Red isnt the monster they believe, and then they need to face Captain Crow and defeat him in his single-minded obsession with revenge. They KINDA did this, but its such a brief moment that it doesnt feel like a fully realized conclusion. OR, the hunter crew goes after Red, and as a collective they realize Red isnt so bad, so they need to team up with her against the soldiers and their warship. But instead, the conflict just feels so surface-level, and it all wraps up far too easily or quickly.
Ultimately though, I will give one bit of praise, in that I was never outright BORED watching this film. I may have started flagging in my attention towards the end, but for a two-hour movie, the fact that managed to maintain a JUST steady enough pulse to keep me engaged is something worth praising.

Outlier:

Inviso: 147
Evillord: 106
Plasma: 103
Ermine: 103
Suprak: 93
Johnbobb: 87
Mythiot: 81
Karo: 80
Red: 72

God DAMMIT. I was going to predict that the SECOND Ron's Gone Wrong went out and clean up from the casino. FRICK!

Huh, I honestly assumed The Sea Beast was going to place in the top 10

I guess I'll stick with Ron for now, but I'm feeling less confident

Pretty much agree entirely with Ermine/plasma's write ups. Thoroughly fine. I liked the animation style and the movie itself was inoffensive but didn't really get to that next level for me.

I wasn't really around to defend Vivo when it fell, but I do agree it is a flawed movie. For all of its flaws though, it is one of the few movies on this list to get an emotional response out of me so it was doing something right. The songs are better than almost any other musical entry on this list, and that examination of the family structure is done much better than a couple of other movies on this list (including Turning Red) which really fumbled the concept in my eyes.

It isn't the perfect movie in my eyes, but there are a ton of flawed entries on this list. I think my top four are ones I'd say I really enjoyed with very few complaints and then beyond that basically everything has something that rubbed me the wrong way to varying degrees. Vivo was just one I looked back more fondly on after I was finished after a lot of other movies on this list.

I'm a little surprised that one dropped.

But generic really does describe most of it.

Wow. That dropped here? Yeah, that's really odd.

To be fair, I suppose the next 6 movies are all within like 10 points so the difference between them all is very minimal, at least in terms of this group of rankers.

The Sea Beast fooled Vegas. And everyone else.

Vegas Odds on #15:

+650 Ron's Gone Wrong (2021)
+650 Wendell and Wild (2022)
+1000 Birdboy: The Forgotten Children (2017)
+1000 My Father's Dragon (2022)
+1000 The House (2022)
+1250 Waltz with Bashir (2008)
+1250 The Big Bad Fox & Other Tales (2017)
+1250 Flee (2021)
+1500 The Little Prince (2015)
+1500 Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood (2022)

+200 ANY UNLISTED MOVIE (+2000 if guessed correctly)

Vegas Leaderboard:
1) Johnbobb $4450 (The Angry Birds Movie 700, The Hobbit 1000, Yellow Submarine 750, Sing 2 650, Vivo 500, Turning Red 850)
2) Red $2750 (Ne Zha 2000, Yellow Submarine 750)
3) Inviso $2000 (Ne Zha 2000)
3) Mythiot $2000 (Ne Zha 2000)
5) Evillordexdeath $1300 (The Angry Birds Movie 700, Strange World 600)

The House Won On:

• Sita Sings the Blues (+500)
• Lightyear (+1000)
• The Willoughbys (+850)
• DC League of Super-Pets (+2000)
• Early Man (+1000)
• The Girl Without Hands (+850)
• The Sea Beast (+2000)

5. The Sea Beast/15

Looks like I would have brought this one up a bit.

So when I first learned of this movie I thought... "Oh! It's gonna be like How to Train Your Dragon but with sea monsters. And it was almost exactly that. But even a diet version of HTTYD was significantly better than quite a bit of the uninspired cash grabs based off existing IPs and lackluster and/or poorly executed original ideas. I liked Masie's character development, but at times it feels like it's happening way too fast. Like she went from respecting her parents as heros to thinking the entire system was corrupt for holding them to the standard of heros over the course of like five minutes? The hell was up with that? The precocious wise-beyond-their-years kid trope can be good if done well, but I think the writers must have forgotten how to do that well here. Still this was a fairly enjoyable film, but really it just reminded me that I should rewatch the superior version.

There was no development. It was just two different characters.

15. Wendell and Wild

Johnbobb: 3
Inviso: 11
Evillord: 13
Mythiot: 13
Suprak: 14
Karo: 17
Red: 17
Plasma: 21
Ermine: 28

Total: 137

Johnbobb: This is the kind of movie where despite its flaws I know for a fact I'm gonna be watching it on Halloweens to come. It's funny and weird and just an absolute joy to watch start to finish

Inviso: Its weird, because normally, I feel like the last movie I watch on these lists tends to be like, either extremely good or extremely bad, just to truly cap off a long list of movies. But Wendell and Wild is likeits middle of the road for this list. Its definitely on the weirder side of things, and it has that Coraline style, but with Key & Peeles comedic sensibilities. As such, theres a certain level of jankness and griminess to the animation itself, and I acknowledge that my opinions on grossness are impacting this ranking. But at the same time, I appreciate the humor and blatant on-the-nose nature of making a villain who looks exactly like Donald Trump as a greedy, evil, capitalist land developer (with his bitchy wife), but I also liked Raoul, and how Siobhan came across as vapid, but she was really a good person at the end of the day. It was a decent movie overall at least.

Evillord: An aesthetic fusion between Nightmare Before Christmas/Coraline director Henry Selick and the Key & Peele duo, whose voices and likenesses are also used for the titular comically inept demon brothers. The story focuses heavily on criticism of systemic American issues like the school to prison pipeline, private prisons, and corporate greed in general, centered on a company with the rather on-the-nose name of Klaxon Korp. Things end up resolving so neatly and perfectly, with Klaxon ruined, its CEOs in prison, and the communities they've destroyed rebuilt, that it feels naive, though, more like a guide for kids on protest and lobbying than an affecting portrayal of these heinous manifestations of capitalism and the damage they cause. There are definitely a few too many lore ideas to fit into a single movie, leading to some anti-climactic resolutions like the fight against the demon daddy who quickly and peacefully agrees to go home. It also suffers from the presentation quality issues that are apparently common to Netflix animation - the voice acting is just not up to snuff in that opening trauma sequence. It's definitely not as clever as Get Out or as captivating as Coraline. Still, it's a fun, energetic, and inclusive movie with likeable main characters, especially the badass demon nun.

Mythiot: *no writeup submitted*

Suprak: *no writeup submitted*

Karo: A troubled orphan randomly discovers she is a 'hell maiden' who can do a lot of weird shit that wasn't explained too well, and thus she decides to engage in a spot of necromancy with the help of her new demon friends.
The titular characters in question are not only annoying and unfunny, but they are irrelevant as well. They have no purpose in the film other than being a convenient way to bring dead characters back to life and feel more like Kay and Peele unnecessarily inserting themselves for kicks into a movie they were producing. They put as much of a strain on the movie as the dipshit gargoyles did to Hunchback of Notre Dame, and I am constantly like can we please just enjoy Kat's compelling story without you two herping and derping all over the place?
The human children are wonderful, I feel great care was take not to make their characterization cliched or stereotypical based on their backgrounds, and also features what I believe to be the first transgender character in a mainstream animated movie from this country so hurrah for that.
A lot of zombies and evil corporate fuckery later, the plot climaxes in an incredibly stupid and forced friendship is magic moment where there's this demon hunter who was imprisoning and torturing Satan's children for decades but decides to give them up because Satan seems like such a caring dad. Satan is then like oh you're such a nice guy and everyone is buddies now for some reason? Are they all fucking high or what.
Anyway the gist of this movie is it needed more scenes with the kids, less scenes with the demons. Making the supernatural elements more mysterious and unexplained would have honestly served the narrative better anyway.

Red: Not sure in the slightest why they decided to title this "Wendell and Wild", they are easily the worst part of the film, two annoying demons that conveniently get high on suspicious looking, umm, hair cream, that they discover can also raise the dead. I think this movie ends up being surprisingly fun with the zombies and the evil corporate messaging, but also severely misses the mark when it comes to consistent characterization. So many characters flip flop their personalities or just get reduced to "not as bad as they seem" without necessarily being given enough justification or notification. But Wendell and Wild being both annoying, incompetent, along with being tied in with the aforementioned inconsistent, really drag this down. Hell the whole of the endgame plot is setup because they happened to dig sideways instead of straight up. They succeed at being intentionally infuriating. The hellmaiden plot or whatever, it isn't done well. So many things you just have to accept for plot convenience. There is some oddly good messaging baked in here, but you have to look over a lot of garbage to see it.

Plasma: There are a lot of creative ideas heretoo many, in fact. At times it felt like the writers were trying to set a Guinness World Record by cramming in as many storylines, characters, and wacky concepts as possible. It made for a messy movie, but thankfully the stop-motion animation was well done and Kats journey had heart.

Ermine: This is one of those films where all of the characters just feel a little bit off and are all unlikeable. The plot is so... I wouldn't say confusing, but it just doesn't make any sense at all and oftentimes you are just like "what?".
So you have these two idiot demons who use this weird hair cream stuff to bring things back to life and want to make an amusement park for some reason or another. That's never really elaborated on because it's such a weak plot and motivation point.
Except this cream works completely differently in nearly every scenario... for no reason at all. It completely revives a bug, no issues at all. But then when it revives people, it's different each time? Kat's parents get off scott-free, they get to look and act almost like normal, except when it revives the dead Klaxon members, they look and all act like zombies? For some reason? I don't get it. Why? Why wouldn't they act like their normal selves like literally everyone else who got revived did?
Because ZOMBIES FUNNY HAHA SO FUNNY! Fuck off.
Once again, the humor falls so incredibly flat for this film, I don't even think I chuckled once, and at nearly 2 hours of runtime, god this was a slog to get through.

Outlier:

Inviso: 151
Ermine: 116
Plasma: 109
Evillord: 108
Johnbobb: 99
Suprak: 94
Mythiot: 83
Karo: 82
Red: 74

I am SO far ahead in outlier, holy shit.

Finally. And now my bottom 5 are all out. Took far too long for this and Girl to drop, but I'll take it.

Baaaah lame

I'll actually switch to 10 1/2 for the bonus points

Sticking with Ron's Gone Wrong, because it has to drop eventually.

I'm incredibly surprised Ron's still in this. I don't hate the movie or anything, but like. There's a grouping of 4 people that I definitely all expected to have it in their bottom 10.

(This is the Mythiot, Suprak, JB, Evil grouping.)

Ron's Gone Wrong was surprisingly cute from the 20% I saw of it on a dead shift.

HOUSE.

Vegas Odds on #14:

+500 Ron's Gone Wrong (2021)
+1000 Birdboy: The Forgotten Children (2017)
+1000 My Father's Dragon (2022)
+1000 The House (2022)
+1250 Waltz with Bashir (2008)
+1250 The Big Bad Fox & Other Tales (2017)
+1250 Flee (2021)
+1500 The Little Prince (2015)
+1500 Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood (2022)

+200 ANY UNLISTED MOVIE (+2000 if guessed correctly)

Vegas Leaderboard:
1) Johnbobb $4450 (The Angry Birds Movie 700, The Hobbit 1000, Yellow Submarine 750, Sing 2 650, Vivo 500, Turning Red 850)
2) Red $2750 (Ne Zha 2000, Yellow Submarine 750)
3) Inviso $2000 (Ne Zha 2000)
3) Mythiot $2000 (Ne Zha 2000)
5) Evillordexdeath $1300 (The Angry Birds Movie 700, Strange World 600)

The House Won On:

• Sita Sings the Blues (+500)
• Lightyear (+1000)
• The Willoughbys (+850)
• DC League of Super-Pets (+2000)
• Early Man (+1000)
• The Girl Without Hands (+850)
• The Sea Beast (+2000)
• Wendell and Wild (+650)

Zigzagoon posted...

I'm incredibly surprised Ron's still in this. I don't hate the movie or anything, but like. There's a grouping of 4 people that I definitely all expected to have it in their bottom 10.

(This is the Mythiot, Suprak, JB, Evil grouping.)

Is this the snobby art jerks alliance?

I'll have you know I had Vivo in my top 6 and during the last horror rankings I had Halloween very high and Babadook very low! I don't dislike fun movies and I don't like all art movies. WILDCARD BABY

23. Sing 2
Suprak: 13
Johnbobb: 27
Mythiot: 28
Evillord: 29

21. DC League of Super-Pets

Suprak: 16
Johnbobb: 25
Mythiot: 29
Evillord: 30

19. Vivo

Suprak: 6
Johnbobb: 23
Mythiot: 23
Evillord: 24

Oh wow that JB, Mythiot, Evil alliance is pretty strong though.

Mega_Mana posted...

Ron's Gone Wrong was surprisingly cute from the 20% I saw of it on a dead shift.

Do you also work at a movie theater!?

Wendell and Wild was a movie I was really looking forward to watching with my best friend (who is also a black goth chick like me and the main character in this film), but then she watched it without me and I lost my motivation to watch it. Some friend huh?

This is the kind of movie where despite its flaws I know for a fact I'm gonna be watching it on Halloweens to come. It's funny and weird and just an absolute joy to watch start to finish

This is sort of where I was at too, although not quite on the "absolute joy to watch" level. It was funny and weird and hey, that was enough. Sometimes weird but in like a good kinda weird way resonates with me and I know this wasn't great but I found it immensely watchable. Probably a Halloweentime watch again for me as well.

I'm sticking on Waltz

Sticking with Ron's Gone Wrong at this point for the sunken cost fallacy.

Boy, I am really behind with these write-ups. Let's add a couple now.

Early Man is pretty cute, if definitely lesser Aardman. I can definitely understand why the central premise of the prehistoric origins of soccer, excuse me, football was left out of the American ad campaign. It's both too British to get Americans to buy tickets and also the least interesting part of the film. The story pretty much runs out of surprises once it fully commits to being an underdog sports film, but I'd say it's still worth a watch just for Aardman's signature charm, gags and great stop-motion animation.

As even (or especially) the people who hated Vivo said, the first ten minutes are superb. Great music and singing via Lin-Manuel, vibrant animation with occasional switches to 2D, and tragic story of the old musician who died before he could be reunited with his long-lost love. Unfortunately, Vivo just settles for being a mediocre adventure story after that. I didn't hate Gabi, but her introduction did coincide with the film's drop in quality, so go figure. All said, it's still a decent watch, it still has its moments afterward and I did really want to see Vivo deliver that song just to bring closure to that first ten minutes. Michael Rooker also has a fun bit as an evil snake with a gigachad jawbone that almost devours the annoying girl scouts, so there's that.

More to come soon.

Suprak_the_Stud posted...

Is this the snobby art jerks alliance?

I'll have you know I had Vivo in my top 6 and during the last horror rankings I had Halloween very high and Babadook very low! I don't dislike fun movies and I don't like all art movies. WILDCARD BABY

I would not call it the snobby art jerks alliance! I do not have a name for it!

Mythiot posted...

The story pretty much runs out of surprises once it fully commits to being an underdog sports film

Oh see it got you. It was never not an underdog sports film. It was always on formula.

Zigzagoon posted...

I would not call it the snobby art jerks alliance! I do not have a name for it!

Well its too late because I already made the four of us matching T-shirts.

Leafeon13N posted...

Oh see it got you. It was never not an underdog sports film. It was always on formula.

How many other sports films star cavemen who find out they're actually in the Iron Age? That said, it does wear out its novelty after the "I challenge you to a game!" scene and they take their premise in the least interesting direction they could have.

Maybe I could've bumped Turning Red up a few spots, I think when I was making my list I just thought "Well it was better than Lightyear for sure, I'll just stick it on the spot immediately above that one". Still a movie I have to try to feel anything about though. Pixar dropped off big time after having two movies in the top 5 last time we did this.

The Girl Without Hands was such a bad bitch that even Satan couldn't fuck with her. I thought it was kinda interesting to see how much focus there was on the breast milk aspect in the writeups. I'm not sure if that was fetishistic so much as the film is just European, North America has a really puritanical culture so it probably comes off as more weird to us over here.

I'm not too shocked Ron's still in, I thought it and Sea Beast would be the most likely sleeper hits of the list but I expected Sea Beast to do better, I also kinda thought that one had a shot at top 10.

Suprak_the_Stud posted...

Oh wow that JB, Mythiot, Evil alliance is pretty strong though.

We are still considering inviting you to our secret artsy-movie snob club but if you turn out to have ranked Ron's Gone Wrong too high you're out

Mythiot posted...

I can definitely understand why the central premise of the prehistoric origins of soccer, excuse me, football was left out of the American ad campaign. It's both too British to get Americans to buy tickets and also the least interesting part of the film

lol yeah when I was watching the movie and it turned out Football was a secret part of mankind's earliest history I thought "This would probably resonate a lot more with my if I lived in Europe."

We are still considering inviting you to our secret artsy-movie snob club but if you turn out to have ranked Ron's Gone Wrong too high you're out

https://giphy.com/gifs/mylabbox-key-nervous-peele-3oz8xLlw6GHVfokaNW

Supraks Gone Wrong

Mythiot posted...

How many other sports films star cavemen who find out they're actually in the Iron Age? That said, it does wear out its novelty after the "I challenge you to a game!" scene and they take their premise in the least interesting direction they could have.

Its a common trope to build your underdogs out as primitive or like beer league amateurs.

They just took this a little literally. It was very cleverly hidden by the book.

Oh yes, I will say Apollo 10 1/2 for Vegas

14. Waltz With Bashir

Mythiot: 3
Suprak: 5
Evillord: 8
Johnbobb: 8
Inviso: 18
Karo: 20
Plasma: 22
Ermine: 23
Red: 30

Total: 137

Mythiot: *no writeup submitted*

Suprak: *no writeup submitted*

Evillord: An animated documentary in which Israeli soldiers reflect on the 1982 Lebanon War, and especially the Sabra and Shatila massacre, with themes about the nature of memory and dissociation as a coping mechanism. This was one of the more disillusioning war movies I've seen in terms of how clearly it communicated that most of the soldiers had no idea what was going on at basically any point in the war, and that even those with years of training, including officers, were driven mostly by fear and panic during the real fighting.

Johnbobb: This was a difficult one to watch, and the emotional whiplash of going from Sing 2 and The Angry Birds movie to this is hard to even quantify. I was expecting sad, dark and even deeply depressing indie films to show up on this list, but what I wasn't prepared for was an animated documentary depiction of a real massacre shown and explained in full violent detail. I'm simultaneously glad I watched it but it's hard to really explain how I feel about it in a way more than just "I'm very sad now, and my view of the world is just a little bit worse than it alreadty was"

Inviso: On the one hand, its hard to classify this as an animated film, because its only animated in terms of providing scenes that would otherwise not be possible in a straight-up documentary. You cant capture someones memories or internal thoughts in a live-action documentary. Sure, thats the point of a documentary and the talking heads and all that, but still. But yeah, its still animated, and enters into realms of magical realism for those memories, in ways that might not work otherwise. Now, Id never heard of this particular conflict before, so seeing it play out in vivid detail, with people recounting the horrors and trauma they lived through, was bad enough. But then that ending. Like, everything was building up to it, and stilljust seeing it play out, and the wails of wives and mothers, suddenly VERY REAL in news footageI started crying. This movie just kept getting more and more intense as it went along, and I appreciate it for that.

Vis Cry Count 1: Like I said above, I started UGLY crying at the end of this movie. Just the dissolve from animated wailing to news footage was horrifying.

Karo: So this is like a semi-documentary about an Israeli soldier who lost his memory due to PTSD and goes around hearing the war stories of his old military buddies in an effort to remember.
They did a good job of finding an art style that could capture the horrors of war, but something about the animation itself just seems... off. The reason for this is simple: Waltz with Bashir is not the rotoscoped film that it pretends to be, but is instead largely animated in Adobe Flash. The thing is, Flash is a shitty animation method with immense limitations, and to try and use it in a serious film with realistic human characters is just asking for trouble. The uncanny valley is strong with this one, I'm afraid.
It is a compelling story with an astoundingly powerful anti-war message that is hobbled by some terrible production choices that prevent it from reaching its full potential, and that is quite a shame.

Plasma: Love the art style, and some moments were truly gripping and horrifying, but overall this didnt click with me. I wish I had come into this one with better context. When it started bouncing around between different characters/storylines, my attention blipped.

Ermine: This film was too long and it's only an hour and a half. Not that it ever was going to do that well for me, but I was at least a little bit interested in Ari's tale of recovering his memories to remember what happened during the war. It just kept going on and on and never really felt like it was building up to anything.
Also nudity, because we gotta have nudity in these types of movies. It makes them more realistic, y'know! Every single time with one of these films there's always parts where they have to focus on it for some reason. I'll never understand it.
Yeah, not for me. And even for the people that it's for, I can't really see it being that incredible for them. Next.

Red: Are we anti-war? Are we trying to show the horrors PTSD inflicts on soldiers? Are we trying to be sympathetic to a bunch of Israeli soldiers that likely would have also done horrible things if they were in the wrong place at the wrong time instead? Some of them that did do horrible things. Am I supposed to feel sympathy for you when you tell me you couldn't go kill a human but have no problem slaughtering a bunch of innocent dogs? I've got a lot of problems with the messaging in a lot of these movies but Waltz with Bashir and its attempt to garner sympathy for horrible people just doesn't sit right with me. I don't want to pretend to know the intent here, but at worst there is a decent argument to be made that this movie is trying to absolve Israeli soliders of the horrors they were in fact a part of just because they weren't directly involved. At best, we're trying to say they were indirectly involved but still deserved sympathy because they were young and naive. That still isn't a good message. Don't try to make me feel sympathy for people that don't deserve it, because it isn't going to work.

Outlier:

Inviso: 155
Ermine: 125
Plasma: 117
Evillord: 114
Johnbobb: 105
Suprak: 103
Mythiot: 94
Red: 90
Karo: 88

That's, uh, that's definitely a take, I guess

Sticking with apollo

Mythiot: 3
Suprak: 5
Evillord: 8
Johnbobb: 8

Evil art snob alliance strikes again!

I do agree with the criticisms here that the animation was ugly though. I thought the film itself was powerful enough though that I was willing to overlook that.

I knew the alliance was real!

Suprak sent me a a secret invite to the alliance

So, despite being 2nd in outlier at the moment.

1. ???
2. ???
3. ???
4. ???
5. ???
6. ???
7. ???
8. ???
9. The Sea Beast
10. Vivo
11. Early Man
12. DC League of Super-Pets
13. ???
14. ???
15. The Hobbit
16. ???
17. The Angry Birds Movie
18. ???
19. ???
20. Lightyear
21. Sing 2
22. Yellow Submarine
23. Waltz with Bashir
24. The Willoughbys
25. Sita Sings the Blues
26. Turning Red
27. Strange World
28. Wendell & Wild
29. Ne Zha
30. The Girl Without Hands

I'm really doing quite well. Top 8 untouched and all of my bottom 10 are out.

1. ???
2. ???
3. ???
4. ???
5. The Sea Beast
6. ???
7. DC League of Super-Pets
8. Turning Red
9. ???
10. Sing 2
11. The Willoughbys
12. The Angry Birds Movie
13. Lightyear
14. Vivo
15. Strange World

1. ???
2. ???
3. ???
4. Sing 2
5. Early Man
6. Turning Red
7. Strange World
8. ???
9. DC League of Super Pets
10. ???
11. Wendell and Wild
12. Lightyear
13. Vivo
14. ???
15. ???
16. ???
17. The Willoughbys
18. Waltz with Bashir
19. ???
20. ???
21. ???
22. The Angry Birds Movie
23. The Hobbit (1977)
24. The Sea Beast
25. ???
26. Sita Sings the Blues
27. Yellow Submarine
28. ???
29. The Girl Without Hands
30. Ne Zha

Yeah, this list hasn't been going great for me. >_>