Guy Lodge

Cartoons aren’t just for kids, of course. But for most kids, cartoons are where a love of movies often starts. No matter how highfalutin your taste in movies as an adult, chances are, your first cinematic obsession was an animation – whether it was a classic of Disney’s Golden Age or its ‘90s renaissance period, a Pixar heart-tugger or perhaps even a Studio Ghibli masterpiece. It’s a love most of us never never fully grow out of, either. Ask any parent about the joys of early child-rearing and they’ll undoubtedly tell you about showing their kids a cartoon they loved as a young’un. It’s a magical experience you get from few other forms of entertainment.   But the best animated movies don’t just appeal to kids, nor childhood nostalgia. They work on multiple levels, for broad audiences and age groups. In composing this list of the greatest animated movies ever made, we polled Time Out writers and experts including Fantastic Mr Fox’s Wes Anderson and Wallace and Gromit’s Nick Park, and the results run the gamut, from from those Disney, Pixar and Ghibli no-brainers to stop-motion nightmares, psychedelic headtrips, illustrated documentaries and bizarre experimental features that are decidedly for adults only. The movies on this list may make you feel like a kid again – but they may also blow your grown-up mind in ways you never expected.  Written by Trevor Johnston, David Ehrlich, Joshua Rothkoph, Tom Huddleston, Andy Kryza, Guy Lodge, Dave Calhoun, Keith Uhlich, Cath Clarke and M

Birkaç yıl önce olsa ‘Battleship’in (2012) yönetmeni Peter Berg’e gerçek bir terör olayından esinlenen, karakter odaklı bir dram filmini emanet edemezdiniz. Şimdilerde ise bir spor draması olan ‘Friday Night Lights’taki (2004) başarısını geri kazanmış durumda Berg. ‘Deepwater Horizon’ (2016) filminin üzerinden sadece birkaç ay geçtikten sonra oyuncu Mark Wahlberg ile yeniden güçlerini birleştiren yönetmen, 2013 Boston Maratonu’nda gerçekleşen terör saldırısından yola çıkan bir filme imza attı. ‘Patriots Day’in adına aldanmamak lazım, yurtseverlik propagandası yapmak amacıyla çekilmiş bir film değil bu. Saldırıyı yapanların, polislerin ve kurbanların bakış açılarını dengeli bir şekilde yansıtan filmin senaryosunda gerilim ve hümanizm dozunda kullanılmış. Üç kişinin ölümüne, yüzlerce kişinin ise yaralanmasına sebep olan iki patlamanın ardından kendini bitiş çizgisinde bulan, kurgulanmış polis karakteri Tommy Saunders hikâyenin ana kahramanı. Film bombacıları yakalamaya çalışan birkaç yan karaktere de odaklanıyor aynı zamanda; polis memurları ve bombacıların kaçırdığı Çinli göçmen. Alex Wolff ve Themo Melikidze tarafından canlandırılan bombacı karakterler filmde ne derinlemesine analiz edilmiş ne de şeytani bir şekilde resmedilmiş; böylece kararında bir temsil ortaya çıkmış. Tüm bunlara rağmen filmin en provokatif sahnesinde, teröristlerin yaptıklarını savunan karakterin Amerikalı bir Müslüman kadın olduğunun altını çizmek gerek. Filmin asıl gücü aksiyonun geri plana itildiği, k

A few years ago ‘Battleship’ director Peter Berg was not necessarily the filmmaker you’d trust to craft a thoughtful, character-led drama around a real-life terror attack. Recently, however, he’s regained the personal touch of his 2004 sports drama ‘Friday Night Lights’. Just months after ‘Deepwater Horizon’, he reteams with Mark Wahlberg for this muscular, street-level dramatisation of 2013’s Boston Marathon bombings. Balancing the perspectives of perpetrators, policemen and victims with tension and human interest, it’s not entirely the rah-rah flag-waving exercise that the title promise. As the narrative expands across a city first paralysed, then galvanised, by tragedy, ‘Patriots Day’ culminates in a more inclusive celebration of community. As fictionalised headstrong cop Tommy Saunders, who finds himself stationed at the marathon finish line when twinned explosions rupture the event, killing three and wounding hundreds, on the face of it Wahlberg is the hero here. But the film divides its attention generously between a host of participants in the ensuing manhunt – from unglamorous local police sergeants to the courageous Chinese immigrant (Jimmy O Yang) kidnapped by the panicked Chechen bombers. Nervily played by Alex Wolff and Themo Melikidze, they too are characterised with commendable restraint, neither demonised nor over-analysed. Still, it’s the American Muslim wife of one (Melissa Benoist) who carries the film’s most riveting and provocative scene, staunchly defendi

‘Elephant’ (2003) gibi sanat filmlerine imza atan Gus Van Sant, bir yandan da ‘Restless’ (2011) gibi daha ana akım filmler çeken çok yönlü bir yönetmen. Fakat eğri oturup doğru konuşalım: Van Sant, şu ana kadar bu kadar vasat bir filme imza atmamıştı. Japon yönetmen Naomi Kawase’nin şiirsel sinemasının M. Night Shyamalan’ın kurgu mantığı tarafından ele geçirildiğini hayal edin. Üzerine de Matthew McConaughey’nin sulu gözleriyle, büyük ihtimalle bir Oscar daha kazanacağını hayal ederek oynadığı sahneleri ekleyin. Balık daha baştan kokmaya başlıyor. McConaughey’nin canlandırdığı efkarlı bilim adamını havaalanında check-in yaparken görüyoruz. Uçuş görevlisi rezervasyonu bulamıyor ve şefini arıyor. Meğerse teknik bir aksaklıkmış... Eğer bu sahne filmde olup biteceklere işaret ediyorsa henüz bir şey görmediniz. McConaughey, flashback’lerden anladığımız kadarıyla kendini öldürmek için geldiği Aokigahara’ya vardığında işler daha da karışıyor. Eğer hikâye doğrusal bir çizgide anlatılsaydı, belki de karakterin neden bu ormana geldiğine dair bir gerilim yaratılabilirdi. Bu oldukça kasvetli filmin tek kayda değer tarafı, Ken Watanabe’nin canlandırdığı, McConaughey’ye hayata tutunması için destek olan intihara meyilli iş adamı. McConaughey, filmin sonunda hayata dair sorularının cevabını bulduğunda güler misiniz ağlar mısınız bilemiyoruz. Çünkü filmin sonuna gelmeden çoktan uykuya dalmış olabilirsiniz.

If you introduce a loaded gun in the first act of your story, it absolutely has to go off by the end. Chekhov’s tried-and-tested literary advice holds true in ‘Why Him?’ – except the gun isn’t a gun, but a vast, fragile glass tank filled with moose urine. These are the gags in John Hamburg’s charmless, largely laughless spin on the ‘Meet the Parents’ formula, an over-extended sitcom episode that returns Bryan Cranston to put-upon suburban dad territory. When his college-senior daughter Stephanie (Zoey Deutch) invites the family to California for Christmas, buttoned-up Michigan print factory owner Ned (Cranston) is introduced to his worst nightmare of a prospective son-in-law. Meet Laird (James Franco), a vulgar, tattooed tech-bro billionaire whose verbal filter is nil, and who thinks nothing of leering over Stephanie’s mother (Megan Mullally) at the dinner table. Yet the twist in this personality clash is that both men are as appalling as each other: Ned is a possessive, controlling dullard, while Laird is an abject dimwit who makes Franco’s pimp Alien in ‘Spring Breakers’ look positively desirable by comparison. What does smart, sweet Stephanie see in Laird? Don’t hold your breath to find out, since she’s granted as much perspective as a well-spoken ironing board. There could be a thorny dark comedy in this chauvinistic pissing contest. But in trying to get us to like both opponents, the film undercuts most of its sharpest comic potential – leaving us instead with musty joke

‘Once a major, always a major,’ a military official tells Tom Cruise’s Jack Reacher at the outset of his latest adventure, the title of which sounds perilously like its own critical punchline. ‘You're a legend around here.’ One wonders if the line was requested by Cruise himself, since it may as well refer to his own star quality. Even when the chips are down – and as chips go, Reacher's now carry a waft of heavily reused oil – Cruise's major, indefinable magnetism proves constant. Which is just as well, since Cruise otherwise barely lifts a finger to elevate Edward Zwick’s comfortably rote, ’90s-flavoured chase thriller above its station – even when he's throwing punches with the most grimly clenched of jaws. This time, the former army man is on the lam from corrupt elements of his former unit, and out to prove the innocence of a younger, straight-arrow commander accused of treason (played by Cobie Smulders, not quite living up to her surname, but game enough). If Zwick’s film improves on Christopher McQuarrie's inaugural, incoherent 2012 entry in the series, it's not through any special initiative on the film's part. But it's efficient, unfussy, and doesn't try to think any faster than it can run.

Back when the average volcano's work rate put Terrence Malick's own to shame, no grateful film lover could have imagined describing one of his films as 'over-familiar' – a new Malick film was a rare mirage of beauty that you feared might disappear if you looked at it too long. Yet now, with the arrival of the fourth film in six years from the maker of 'Days of Heaven' and 'The Thin Red Line', something of a template has set in: soaring, rapturous camerawork, linked by quasi-spiritual ruminations on nature and grace, delivered via a hushed, reverent voiceover asking impossible questions of an unidentified higher power. Made in collaboration with National Geographic, 'Voyage of Time: Life's Journey' is officially the reclusive director's first wholly non-narrative film. Yet as it begins in darkness, with Cate Blanchett mellifluously reciting, 'Mother... you walked with me in the silence... before there was a world,' it doesn't feel like much of a departure. Which is not to say there's anything idle or dashed-off about 'Voyage of Time'. It's a sincerely ambitious cosmic address that Malick has apparently been working towards for decades, developing new technological means of expression for the dazzling biosphere it presents on screen, from beach-roaming dinosaurs to an advancing army of underwater crabs to an assortment of iridescently exploding nebulae. The celebrated Creation sequence of Malick's 'The Tree of Life' was a mere teaser for the hallucinatory gorgeousness he presen

Amid all the shifting mirrored surfaces and hazy ambiguities of Olivier Assayas's bewitching, brazenly unconventional ghost story, this much can be said with certainty: Kristen Stewart has become one hell of an actress. The former 'Twilight' star was easily the standout feature of Assayas's last film, the slightly stilted study of actors 'Clouds of Sils Maria', quietly yanking the rug from under the feet of Juliette Binoche. Here, Stewart doesn't need to steal the film from anyone: she's in virtually every crisp frame of it, holding the camera's woozy gaze with her own quizzical, secretive stare and knotted body language. Her performance is a galvanising human influence on the film, even as her character, introverted American-in-Paris Maureen, seems forever on the verge of voluntary evaporation. An haute couture clothes buyer and general dogsbody to an insufferable A-list celebrity – shades of 'Sils Maria', then, though Assayas is on a very different thematic path this time – practising medium Maureen is haunted, in all senses, by the recent death of her twin brother. Stalking his former abode at night seeking a final communication, she encounters a spirit or two – but whose? And are they following her, or are the insidiously instructive, anonymous texts that start invading her phone from another amorphous entity? As Maureen's already fragile composure begins to fray, it's hard to tell if she's plagued more by absence or uncanny presence: even her boss is barely visible to he

Olivier Assayas’ın büyüleyici olduğu kadar alışılmadık ve belirsizliklerle dolu hayalet hikâyesi ‘Personal Shopper’da kesin olan bir şey varsa o da Kristen Stewart’ın harika oyunculuğu. ‘Twilight / Alacakaranlık’ serisinin yıldızı, oyunculara dair bir hikâye olan yine Assayas imzalı ‘Clouds of Sils Maria / Ve Perde’de (2014) de dikkat çekmiş ve Juliette Binoche’dan rol çalmıştı. ‘Personal Shopper’da ise Stewart’ın kimseden rol çalmasına gerek kalmıyor, zira neredeyse her karede o var. Stewart’ın gizemli bakışlarını ve karmaşık vücut dilini kamera an be an takip ediyor. Stewart filmde Paris’te yaşayan Amerikalı genç kadın Maureen’i canlandırıyor. Dünyaca ünlü bir yıldızın asistanlığını yapan medyum Maureen, ikiz kardeşinin ölümünü atlatamamıştır. Kardeşinin yaşadığı evde kalarak ondan ruhani bir işaret bekleyen Maureen tanımadığı birkaç ruh ile karşı karşıya gelir. Bu ruhlar Maureen’i gizlice takip mi etmektedirler? Bir anda telefonuna gizli bir numaradan gelmeye başlayan anonim mesajlar bu ruhların eseri midir? Herhalde daha önce hiçbir film cep telefonlarını bu kadar işlevli bir gerilim ögesine dönüştürmemiştir: Ekranda iPhone’a gelen mesajların yer aldığı sahneler kelimenin tam anlamıyla nefes kesici. Assayas’ın üzerine eğildiği konulardan biri de modern iletişim olanakları ve sosyal medyanın bizi karşımızdaki insanlar için birer hayalete dönüştürmesi. Seyir zevkinizi bozmamak adına filmin farklı türler arasında nasıl geçişler yaptığına fazla değinmiyor, Assayas’ın Irma Vep

There was a time, not long ago, when the words 'a Bruno Dumont comedy' were about as alluring to film fans as 'a Holocaust drama by Nancy Meyers'. If you wanted severe formalist meditations on faith and physiognomy, this French filmmaker was your man. But his films were markedly low on the LOL factor. That changed two years ago with his darkly daft, hilarious serial-killer farce 'P'tit Quinquin'. Dumont is still in a mordantly merry mood, as this alternately buoyant, bleak and thoroughly bananas seaside ramble makes delightfully clear. The title refers to a gusty, desaturated-looking beach settlement on the northern coast of France - suitably desolate, the area has long been Dumont's favoured playground for his films - where the well-to-do, parasol-toting Van Peteghem family ill-advisedly chooses to spend their summers in the early twentieth century. 'Slack', however, proves to be unashamedly the key adjective here, as Dumont dawdles at leisure over the addled clan's various quirks and complications. Preening patriarch Andre (the ever-amusing Fabrice Luchini) concerns himself with sand-yachting and ogling local seamen, while his pallid wife Isabelle (Valerie Bruni-Tedeschi) has trouble enough standing upright. They're accompanied by their two young daughters, as well as their roaming, genderqueer niece/nephew Billie (Raph), whose shrill, gussied-up mother Aude (an uncharacteristically loose-screwed Juliette Binoche, not so much hamming it up as serving an entire pork terrine)

French filmmaker Alain Guiraudie has a rare and wicked gift for making films that unfold like dreams: not the zany, extravagant flights of fancy that some filmmakers imagine to be dream logic, but the charged, smudged sequencing of half-banal, half-bizarre events that we muddle through in our sleep. In his hot-and-heavy 2013 Hitchcock riff 'Stranger by the Lake', everyday erotic reverie blurred into shadowy peril. This follow-up, which is marginally more clothed but no less risqué, might have been titled 'Stranger Still'. In its measured, quiet opening stages, it seems Guiraudie's ambling story is more about staying circular than vertical: as gangly, creatively blocked screenwriter Leo (Damien Bonnard) drifts through a scrubby stretch of rural France, personal encounters are alternated and repeated, with subtly varying results. He tries to persuade a sullenly pretty local lad that he has a face for the big screen, but he can't part the young man from his elderly, Pink Floyd-fixated minder. Moving on, Leo courts and knocks up a disaffected female shepherd (the excellent India Hair, calmly projecting inner chaos like a Gallic Michelle Williams) who then wants no part in raising the child. Her schlubby dad has shuttered sexual yearnings of his own, while deep in the forest, a kooky New Age healer only complicates matters. Let's not even get into the wolves prowling the perimeter. Rich fodder for a screenplay, you'd think, though Leo can barely muster a line. Guiraudie fares a bi

Clawing his way up the power ranks of Directors Least Likely To Make A Romantic Comedy, Denis Villeneuve takes on the Mexican drug trade in this stern, robust, abandon-hope-all-ye-who-enter thriller. And during its throat-grabbingly effective opening, it seems he may have the final word on this oft-visited genre. As an FBI team, headed by Emily Blunt's stoic agent Kate, literally crashes an Arizona drug-cartel hideout, a gruesome cache of human corpses is uncovered behind the drywall – and the filmmaking practically gives off its own vivid, indignant stench. Cinematographer Roger Deakins's dynamic camera forces us to look where we'd rather not; Johann Johannsson's score swarms with malevolent foreboding. Even as he borrows from other movies' hellish visions – some of the most arresting imagery here feels lifted from Amat Escalante's 2013 Cannes winner ‘Heli’ – Villeneuve knows how to overwhelm his audience. That panicked pitch, however, is tough to sustain across two hours of beautifully wrought moral turpitude that nonetheless doesn't contain many stunning revelations. Kate is drafted into a mysterious, agency-merging task force established to bait and bring down a key cartel leader, though her requests for information are blocked at nearly every turn: she's not even sure if her rule-bending team leader (Josh Brolin, on strong, non-stick form) belongs to the CIA or not. Still, he's a positive chatterbox compared to Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro, superb), a quietly lethal ex-pr