Ten Stop Motion Movies

The Fantastic Mr. Fox
Just an all-round brilliant example of how stop motion can give a true auteur like Wes Anderson the room to create something wonderful and unique. In practical terms, his tableaus and blocking translate to the medium perfectly, and his inventiveness (like the use of cotton-wool for smoke) makes it a great experience. This is a traditional stop motion story with adult-level subtexts... Anderson keeps the darkness of Dahl's work intact whilst injecting his own themes and interpretations; philosophising about why Mr. Fox (George Clooney) does what he does and offering in-depth analysis of other characters as well. I loved the wonderfully scary farmers and all the running jokes (such as fox years vs. human years). I think this is Anderson's best film to date.

DIRECTOR: Wes Anderson
WRITER/SOURCE: Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbuch. Based on the novel by Roald Dahl.
KEY ACTORS: George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Eric Chase Anderson, Wallace Wolodarsky, Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, Owen Wilson, Michael Gambon, Helen McCrory, Jarvis Cocker, Brian Cox, Adrien Brody
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Harvie Krumpet
Director/writer Adam Elliott tackles a wide range of themes and breaks new conceptual ground for stop motion animation in this Oscar-winning film. Harvie Krumpet is a Jewish migrant with tourettes syndrome who escapes the Holocaust to live in Australia, tries to assimilate, falls in love and eventually winds up in a retirement home. Elliott amazingly manages to say more in his 21 minutes than most filmmakers accomplish in up to 5 times that amount, depicting the entirety of a life that encompasses love, death, disability, nudism, alzheimers, and mediocrity. Underlying all this is a message of universal humanity, Elliott champions those marginalised by cultural background and mental or physical disability by expousing a 'never say die' mentality ("Life is like a cigarette. Smoke it to the butt"). Part of the film's appeal lies in the director's purist aesthetic, Elliott painstakingly worked with analog technology and a minimalist palette to create a life-affirming tale that doesn't shirk away from the horribleness of life despite its alarmingly child-friendly veneer.

DIRECTOR: Adam Elliot
WRITER/SOURCE: Adam Elliot
KEY ACTORS: Geoffrey Rush, Kamahl
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Coraline
I'm not sure how much this film was 'assisted' by computers but the stop motion in Coraline is amazingly fluid. I couldn't get over how slick it was, it really came alive for me. Anyway, this film captures the essence of Tim Burton's better films without becoming the outright parody that a lot of his recent work is. It's like director Henry Selick is better at being Tim Burton than Tim Burton is. Coraline is a girl whose parents don't have time for her and so she travels into a parallel world where she finds button-eyed alternatives to her parents who seek to cajole her into a new life in this new dimension. It's rife with symbolism and visual motifs, and works as a great fairytale-ish allegory about negligent parenting and relocation. Shades of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (but in a good way). Also, look out for the arrestingly gothic title sequence involving the deconstruction and reconstruction of dolls.

DIRECTOR: Henry Selick
WRITER/SOURCE: Henry Selick. Based on the novel by Neil Gaiman.
KEY ACTORS: Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, John Hodgman, Keith David, Jennifer Saunders, Ian McShane.
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A Town Called Panic
This marvellously bizarre and kitschy action-figure adventure is based on a French TV series of the same name. Imagine if a gorilla or a dog with above-average intelligence was given creative control of a film and you're halfway to understanding the miraculously silly and inoffensive sense of humour that permeates this movie. Every frame made me laugh joyously. The plot concerns three figurines that live together; Horse, Cowboy and Indian. Horse is quite sensible and responsible, but Cowboy and Indian have a nose for trouble. Things go wrong, complications pile up, and the three of them embark on a crazy adventure to the centre of the Earth and beyond. Some of it is so unashamedly and innocently juvenile (like a giant snowball-throwing robot penguin) that it reminded me a little of the classic newspaper cartoon The Far Side. The stop motion used is crude but it's completely part of the film's unique charm and sense of fun.

DIRECTOR: Stephane Aubier, Vincent Patar
WRITER/SOURCE: Stephane Aubier and Vincent Patar. Based on their television of the same name.
KEY ACTORS: Jeanne Balibar, Stephane Aubier, Bouli Lanners, Benoit Poelvoorde
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Vincent
This early short film from Tim Burton features Vincent Price's silky tones narrating the rhyme-laden story of a seven year-old boy who idolises Vincent Price. Throughout the course of the short the boy's imagination gets the best of him while he plays a variety of games based on Vincent Price films, the last of which leads to him digging up his mother's flowerbed and earning her wrath. It's filmed in a creaky style of cheap black and white, and the stop motion comes across as a bit archaic in comparison to Burton's later attempts, but it all suits the tone completely. The protagonist actually looks like Tim Burton (I'm unsure if this is intentional or not) and from this macabre and self-contained little vision you can see all the branches of Burton's future career... films like Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Corpse Bride, etc, germinating from this one seed.

DIRECTOR: Tim Burton
WRITER/SOURCE: Tim Burton
KEY ACTORS: Vincent Price
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Mary and Max
In a list of films that includes A Town Called Panic and $9.99, this is still probably the most unique and original film of the lot. Mary and Max takes claymation well and truly into adult territory; a bittersweet and fable-like black comedy about two unlikely penpals on opposite sides of the world. Mary is a young Australian girl growing up in poverty, whilst Max is an overweight New Yorker with Asperger Sydnrome. We follow their lives into loveless marriages, loneliness, depression, closet homosexuality, agoraphobia, and winning the lottery, amongst other things. Director/writer Adam Elliot creates a strangely affecting world of grey tones (literally) as he explores the neuroses and tragedies of both characters and the highs and lows of their international friendship. It might sound depressing from what I've told you, but it isn't, it's quite funny in a non-exploitative way and the vocal talents of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Toni Collette, etc, really help make the characters come alive despite their odd looks and the idiosyncratic nature of the story.

DIRECTOR: Adam Elliot
WRITER/SOURCE: Adam Elliot
KEY ACTORS: Barry Humphries, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Toni Collette, Eric Bana, Ian 'Molly' Meldrum, Renee Geyer
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The Nightmare Before Christmas
The modern wave of cinematic stop motion films started with this Tim Burton-produced (but not directed) musical of gorgeously twisted proportions. Jack Skellington is the bored superstar of Halloween Town... whilst moping around after yet another successful Halloween, a chance discovery leads him to Christmas Town where decides he wants to take over Christmas as the new Santa Claus. It's kind of an anti-Christmas film told from the perspective of the villain, but unlike the Grinch, Jack actually has good (if misguided) intentions. It's all so vivacious and cheeky that it's hard not to like... The Nightmare Before Christmas is darkly joyous in its acknowledgement that kids loved to be scared, and a whole range of inspired horror archetypes are given life through a combination of pathos and cute psychosis. I loved the gambling-crazy Boogie Oogie in particular. A modern classic, and a success that Burton later tried (and failed) to repeat with his own stop motion directorial effort, The Corpse Bride.

DIRECTOR: Henry Selick
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Caroline Thompson, with story input from Tim Burton and Michael McDowell
KEY ACTORS: Chris Sarandon, Catherine O'Hara, William Hickey, Paul Reubens, Glenn Shadix, Ken Page, Danny Elfman
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James and the Giant Peach
I wouldn't put this in the same class as a lot of these other films. Whilst I love the way that Dahl takes dark everyday topics and turns them into fantastical tales of childhood triumph, I don't think this film really captures the essence of his style as well as it could've. The stop motion story is actually framed by some live action sequences, and I think these bits are the key to the film's overall failure. The live action production design is garish and expressionistic, and feels cheap and over-laboured compared to the animated sequences, which are a lot more attractive and remniscent of '30s and '40s-era art deco. I liked the stop motion design, but I loved the brief traditionally-animated sequence (if only the whole film had been like that). There's some witty character interplay, and Pete Postlethwaite even shows up as a mysterious unnamed character that I interpreted to be Roald Dahl himself (he certainly seemed and looked a bit like him), though I could've done without the forgettable piecemeal songs. Anyway, it's a fun enough adventure for kids, but there have been better Dahl adaptations.

DIRECTOR: Henry Selick
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Steven Bloom, Karey Kirkpatrick and Jonathan Roberts. Based on the novel by Roald Dahl.
KEY ACTORS: Paul Terry, Miriam Margoyles, Joanna Lumley, Pete Postlethwaite, Simon Callow, Richard Dreyfuss, Jane Leeves, Susan Sarandon, David Thewlis
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Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Disliking Aardman's Wallace and Gromit is like disliking a soup kitchen for homeless people; it just makes you a joyless arsehole. In case you're unaware, Wallace is a homely British eccentric with a love for cheese and inventing things, and Gromit is his faithful and sensible dog. Together they find themselves investigating some mysterious village attacks by a fabled Were-Rabbit, while further plot stuff happens. Anyway, the plot isn't important, the balance between quirky humour and claymation spectacle is perfect. There's something so loveable about Aardman's stuff that makes the Wallace and Gromit film a really fun and watchable experience. I was expecting something well-cut but relatively routine, but I actually found myself surprised by a lot of the plot twists and the places the film went. I hope to one day see at least one more Wallace and Gromit film - in comparison to Tim Burton's stop-motion stuff this film is criminally underrated (yeah, yeah I know it won a lot of awards, but it doesn't seem to have the fan following it deserves!)

DIRECTOR: Nick Park, Steve Box
WRITER/SOURCE: Nick Park, Steve Box, Bob Baker and Mark Burton. Based on characters created by Nick Park.
KEY ACTORS: Peter Sallis, Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham-Carter, Peter Kay, Nicholas Smith, Dicken Ashworth, Liz Smith, Edward Kelsey
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$9.99
Another Australian stop motion film, and one that's even more adult than Mary and Max. $9.99 embraces a uniquely distinctive visual style of animation and design in order to distance itself from more child-aimed forms of stop motion. $9.99 is a multi-character drama in the mould of critic-aimed live action films like Lantana, Crash, 21 Grams, etc. The key difference between $9.99 and those films though is that the animation allows for a more open-ended tone that encompasses satire, fantasy and tragedy. Amongst the characters is a homeless man (Geoffrey Rush) who kills himself only to come back as a bitter angel who tells people Heaven is just like the Sunshine Coast. There's also a variety of aimless city-dwellers who share the same apartment block, each one looking for some kind of validation or meaning in their life. It's sarcastic, epiphanising and even occasionally horrifying; a dark comic fantasy of the urban mind that inspires incredulous laughter and twinges of the heart. A hugely underrated film.

DIRECTOR: Tatia Rosenthal
WRITER/SOURCE: Tatia Rosenthal, Etgar Keret
KEY ACTORS: Geoffrey Rush, AnthonyLaPaglia, Samuel Johnson, Claudia Karvan, Joel Edgerton, Barry Otto, Leeanna Walsman, Ben Mendelsohn
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For more stop motion, see reviews of Chicken Run and The Corpse Bride.