Thursday Movie Picks (Oscar Winners Edition): Best Animated Feature

 

For the 44th week of 2021 as part of Wandering Through the Shelves' Thursday Movie Picks. We return to the subject of Oscar winners in the award for Best Animated Feature. An award created in 2001 as it was an overdue category that needed to be created ever since animated feature films were created. Here are my three picks as they’re winners who aren’t from Disney/Pixar:

1. Spirited Away

From Hayao Miyazaki and Gibli Studios is a fantasy film that explores a young girl trying to find her parents in a fantasy world where she is forced to grow up and deal with dark magic and other strange spiritual creatures. It is a film that is rich in its imagery as it play into Miyazaki’s love of fantasy and monsters but also childhood innocence as it is a coming-of-age story of sorts yet is filled with a lot of heart about growing pains and a girl having to deal with changes in her life.

2. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

From Aardman Animations and the duo of Nick Park and Steve Box is the feature film series featuring their star duo in Wallace and Gromit as it play into the respective man-and-dog duo who deal with a horde of rabbits for an upcoming giant vegetable festival. Yet, things start to go wrong as it involves a giant rabbit and Wallace becoming a were-rabbit in this homage to the Hammer Horror films of the 1960s where there is a lot of hilarity but also some amazing stop-motion animation.

3. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

From Marvel and Sony Animations under the direction of Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman is an animated film that definitely raises the bar of what animation could be. Even in the realm of the super-hero films as it tells the story of Miles Morales and how he would become the next Spider-Man under the tutelage of other Spider-Mans. Filled with an array of different animation style, there is an element that also explore so much more in terms of its character development as well as emphasizing on diversity in the fact that Morales is an African-American-Hispanic kid from Brooklyn who has his own ideas of what he can be as Spider-Man.

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