For nearly four decades, Studio Ghibli has been regarded as the gold standard for animation, perhaps even more so than Disney and Pixar (which have unsurprisingly collaborated with the Japanese animation studio on a few occasions in recent years), and the reasons are extremely obvious. Few studios have been as committed to capturing quality over…

The journey to the big screen undertaken by Mario and Luigi – the ubiquitous plumbers that were the heroes of the video game series of the same time – has been a long and storied one. The dismal failure of the attempt to bring these characters to the world of cinema produced thirty years ago…

Few styles of filmmaking have undergone quite as interesting a shift over the past few decades as animation – the nostalgia of classical, two-dimensional animation combined with efforts to increase what is possible with technology and other different styles has made it a formidable industry all on its own, with every year yielding magnificent works,…

There are few franchises that saw as radical a decline in quality as the Shrek series – the first two films are appropriately considered not only masterpieces in their own right, but incredibly influential to the entire medium of animation, the industry being pushed in new directions after what was soon to be seen as…

Why is that of all the genres we can consider, its animation that tends to age the finest? Perhaps we just carry the nostalgia of the films we adored when we were younger into adulthood, refusing to look beneath the veneer of those fond memories in fear of discovering those joyful days were spent with…

Few filmmakers have had their entire careers defined by the quality of possessing seemingly infinite imagination than Guillermo del Toro, who has made a name for himself as one of the true contemporary speculative auteurs, spending decades carefully developing a series of films that draw on his admiration for fantasy and science fiction, which fuel…

“Everyone has demons…mine just have names” It always feels like a major event when a beloved and acclaimed auteur returns to filmmaking after a lengthy break. Whether it was a case of reneging on a previously-announced retirement, or the fact that they couldn’t acquire either inspiration or financial means to make another film for a…

There are few artistic voices I respect more than that of Bill Plympton, a man whose belief in his vision is so strong, that he didn’t even allow studio rejections and stringent conventions of the mainstream industry to deter him from making the films that interested him, instead taking their refusal to produce his work…

Richard Linklater has gone from a director of entertaining but conventional fare, to someone whose work has become so incredible, nearly every new work he produces is seen as an event, especially for those who adhere to his very peculiar brand of off-kilter humour that is often drawn from his experiences as someone who grew…

One of the benefits of being the industry leader in animation is that a more diverse range of stories can be told. I have previously expressed my concerns with the direction Disney and Pixar are heading with many of their films, with much of their recent input being disappointing to say the very least. However,…