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Still. It's no Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, as you'd do on a PC. Copy-pasting on a phone is extremely tough.
Pitch in! Let us reach page 200 together, in the next few hours. What say?
Next up, let us look into some of the most famous animated movies of all time. Let's goo!!!
ANIMATED MOVIES
The Triplets of Belleville (2003)
There are at least cinquante reasons to see The Triplets Of Belleville, French animator Sylvain Chomet's astonishing debut. For starters there's the practically dialogue-free plot (a club-footed grandmother mounts a rescue mission to save her grandson from the Mafia during the Tour de France), the set-pieces (the opening musical number, a pedalo chase, a last reel getaway), a great supporting cast (sad-faced cyclists, larger-than-life mobsters) and the titular ageing music hall stars who steal the show. It spices up a silent movie look with surrealism but thrives on daring to go to a place most animation doesn't dare: it flits between sadness and satire (Belleville is a thinly-veiled America) and nostalgia to become a paean to times gone by. Somehow it also manages to be funny as hell.Read the Empire review.
ANIMATED MOVIES
Fantasia (1940)
It's not exactly an easy-watching favourite, but Disney's third animated feature is a blockbuster in so many senses. Marrying the Mouse House's signature sweeping animation to a series of beloved classical music suites (the 'playlist', as it were, includes bangers from Bach to Beethoven) results in something largely spectacular. The best-remembered sequence is the escalating broom nightmare of 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice' (a rare appearance from Mickey Mouse himself in a mainline Disney movie), but there are astonishing apocalyptic visions to be found in the Big Bang-centric 'Rite Of Spring' (aka, the dinosaur one), and the sturm-and-dranging 'Night On Bald Mountain', featuring the spectral devil Chernabog. The presentation is playful too, with sequences showing the talents of conductor Leopold Stokowski in silhouette and a bit dedicated to the 'soundtrack' itself. A two-hour feast for the eyes and ears – but maybe skip past the weird centaur bit.Read the Empire review.
ANIMATED MOVIES
It’s Such A Beautiful Day (2012)
Not a U2 song, It's Such A Beautiful Day is film as flicker book. A feature version of indie cartoonist Don Hertzfeldt's short film trilogy, it follows stick-and-circle figure Bill – round head, oval body, dots for eyes, cool hat – through his life in short vignettes, all filtered through a blurrily-framed iris. For such a thin character, Bill has a surprisingly rich inner life. As Hertzfeldt provides wall to wall narration, the story zeroes in seemingly random small details — Lion King slippers, leaf blowers — that coalesce into a huge exploration of our place in the universe. The animation is the scratchiest black and white imagery imaginable, so the effect is hand-crafted, charming and, somehow, strangely moving. A 62-minute doodle to savour, it just makes you wish you'd done more with those absent-minded scribblings you did during Double Maths.
ANIMATED MOVIES
Loving Vincent (2017)
The stats surrounding Loving Vincent are off the hook. Over a period of six years, a team of 125 painters from 20 countries painted over 65,000 frames of film in the style of Vincent Van Gogh (you know, the sunflowers guy). Employing a rotoscope technique favoured by Richard Linklater in Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, directors Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman create a living breathing tribute to Van Gogh's art wrapped in a detective story to discover the true nature of the painter's death. It has its oddities — you get to see what the likes of Saoirse Ronan and Chris O'Dowd would look like if they posed for VVG — but it's intricately designed as a tribute to Van Gogh's craft, both in overview (the gentle pastels, the inky blacks) and the details (the end credits point out the exact paintings that have been homaged). It begins with Van Gogh's quote – "We cannot speak other than by our paintings" – and by the end Loving Vincent becomes a vivid insight into the artist's life by letting the form become the content.Read the Empire review.
ANIMATED MOVIES
Cinderella (1950)
After reverting to anthology-style package films through the Second World War, Disney bounced back with a bibbidi-bobbidi-banger – their second princess movie, which evolved and redefined the archetype they began with their very first feature. It's a classic tale of misery, magic and mice, as the pure-hearted Cinderella is treated like dirt by her evil step-family – until her Fairy Godmother (finally) intervenes and sends her to the ball. For all its wonky pacing (the open 20 minutes consist of mouse antics in the kitchen), it's a pure Disney fairytale through-and-through – with spritely songs, an iconic dress, and an underrated villain in Eleanor Audley's formidable Lady Tremaine. If the animation itself isn't Disney's most daring, it still boasts some gorgeous flourishes from legendary concept artist Mary Blair – and finds the studio's signature charm in full flow.Read the Empire review.
ANIMATED MOVIES
How To Train Your Dragon (2010)
While DreamWorks Animation has been criticised for chasing the franchise dragon (pun entirely intended), this trilogy is a soaring example that the company can point to as to why it's not always the enemy of creativity and charm. Originated by Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders (with the two subsequent films mostly on DeBlois' watch), How To Train Your Dragon boils down to a boy and his dog story – where the boy is a nerdy, gawkward Viking, and the dog is a powerful Night Fury dragon that has natural camouflage and can shoot plasma blasts from his mouth. Rather than letting the characters run (or fly) in place, the series (and its small-screen spin-offs) make the smart choice to evolve the story and deepen the emotion, and the look of the movies is a painterly, often spectacular use of CGI.Read the Empire review.
ANIMATED MOVIES
Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Few would claim it as their favourite Disney film, but without Snow White no other movie on this list might even exist – it's that simple. The first American feature-length animated film set the template for, well, everything that followed – Walt's team of animators using pioneering multiplane camera techniques to take audiences inside an old German fairytale with all the usual elements (an innocent young princess, a jealous old queen, cute forest creatures, the looming spectre of death). If it's narratively episodic, stitching together several sequences that were devised like the Silly Symphonies shorts the studio was long known for, it still plays like a contemporary animated feature – not bad for a film that's nearly 100 years old. With its distinctive characters (each Dwarf has its own flair), brilliant design (the dripping poisoned apple is iconic), and ear-worms like 'Heigh Ho', there's no wonder it caught audiences' imaginations and changed the course of Hollywood forever.Read the Empire review.
ANIMATED MOVIES
Shrek (2001)
Twenty years on, Dreamworks' side-swipe at Disney's dominance of the animated landscape might not feel as fresh as it once did – but if it ain't the sharpest tool in the shed anymore, it's still a raucous, colourful blast. Right from its opening moments, Shrek rips up the fairytale rulebook and quite literally wipes its arse with it – centering a giant green ogre as our hero, making the princess a monster at heart, and depicting the villain as an oppressive ruler of Disneyland-alike kingdom Duloc. If Mike Myers' Scottish (emphasis on the 'ish') accent is an inspired touch, it's Eddie Murphy's Donkey who enlivens the whole film – the legendary comedian in full freewheeling form. As a buddy-comedy that liberally swipes at an entire Magic Kingdom's worth of tropes and characters, and that (for better or worse) ushered in a new era of pop-culture references galore, it remains game-changing, and very, very funny.Read the Empire review.
ANIMATED MOVIES
The Mitchells Vs The Machines (2021)
The Midas touch of producers Lord and Miller continued with Mike Rianda's adventure about a dysfunctional family battling an AI-assistant uprising – a sci-fi-infused action-comedy that feels faster, funnier, and more freewheeling than the work of any other current animation house. Mitchells is a film buff's delight – central hero Katie (Abbi Jacobson) is a budding moviemaker whose deep-cuts references (there are Celine Sciamma and Agnes Varda in-jokes) and bountiful imagination spills onto the screen in the form of cartoonish scrawls, a distinctive maximalist visual identity bolstered by the 2D-3D hybrid textures pioneered by Into The Spider-Verse. It's relentlessly witty, boasts eye-popping action beats, and in its best moments – a raucous mall set-piece complete with kaiju-sized sentient Furby – manages both simultaneously. Best of all, its central father-daughter relationship packs real emotional punch, hitting the feels while it sizzles the eyeballs.Read the Empire review.
ANIMATED MOVIES
Grave Of The Fireflies (1988)
For most people, Grave Of The Fireflies is the sort of masterpiece you'll probably only watch once. The first film from Isao Takahata, the other pillar of Studio Ghibli alongside co-founder Hayao Miyazaki, is a harrowing, heartbreaking World War II story – both a tribute to the lives lost due to the ripple effects of the conflict, and an indictment of the societal failures that led to the tragic deaths of so many lives away from the frontlines. It follows teenage boy Seita (Tsutomu Tatsumi) and his little sister Setsuko (Ayano Shiraishi) who are displaced after bombs destroy their home city of Kobe. They go to live with their aunt, until they're forced to leave when rations run low – and from there, the two struggle to survive in the wilderness, cherishing the time they're able to spend together while starvation kicks in. Vividly animated, with stirring imagery – the titular fireflies offer a faint glow in the evenings as the pair huddle in an abandoned bomb shelter – it's a masterful, emotional work. But be warned: it's really, really sad (as its subject matter demands).Read the Empire review.
ANIMATED MOVIES
Waltz With Bashir (2008)
Israeli filmmaker Ariel Folman's feature is a mash-up of animation and documentary, of the personal and the political – and as such emerges as a film like no other. In essence, it's a confessional account of Folman's experiences as a rookie soldier during Israel's 1982 invasion of the Lebanon. Only it's a period of his life 'Ari' – the director's animated avatar – can't remember, so he interviews ex-Israeli soldiers to piece together the experience. The filmmaking is extraordinary – the opening featuring a pack of 26 snarling dogs bombing through a city under a mustard gas sky grips from the get-go – mixing telling moments of introspection, surreal imagery (the waltz of the title danced by a single soldier) and combat footage that still scars. Cinematically, intellectually, emotionally, Waltz With Bashir is that rare film that pushes the medium on to greater heights.Read the Empire review.
ANIMATED MOVIES
The LEGO Movie (2014)
In true Lord & Miller style, it shouldn't have worked – but a movie spun off from an inanimate toy somehow became way more than a cynical cash-in. The LEGO Movie smartly zones in on the creative ethos of the building-block toy to tell a story about imagination and the power of play, that's also about the dangers of conformity and the need for self-expression – all wrapped up in rapid-fire pop culture gags. While the film centres on basic-minifigure worker drone Emmet (Chris Pratt) and his 'chosen-one' journey to defeat Lord Business (Will Ferrell) and become a Master Builder, it's the madcap cameos that steal the show – especially Will Arnett's hilarious take on Batman, shortly thereafter given his own film. Best of all, the CGI animation imitates the look and feel of stop-motion, presenting the whole film as a real-life (imaginary) LEGO adventure, complete with marks and scratches on every brick. Read the Empire review.
ANIMATED MOVIES
Tangled (2010)
Disney putting a different spin on classic fairy tales is not a new phenomenon, but Tangled represents a successful example of the Mouse House switching up the format while sticking to some tropes along the way. Our heroine Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) is a long-locked dreamer stashed away in a tower by crone Mother Gothel (Donna Murphy), who covets the magical powers stored within her daughter's flowing hair. Everything changes when charming thief Flynn Rider (Zachary Levi, on good, wise-cracking form) stumbles across the tower. There are jokes, songs, adventures and some strong visuals, but to be truly honest, it's Maximus the haughty horse who steals the show – a breakout star who criminally never got his own spin-off film. He does at least show up in both Tangled-spawned TV series.Read the Empire review.
ANIMATED MOVIES
Anomalisa (2015)
When Charlie Kaufman entered the world of stop motion animation, it was never going to be a cookie-cutter effort. Starting life as a one-act play and funded by Kickstarter (there are 1070 special thanks in the end credits), Anomalisa, co-directed by animator Duke Johnson, is a tiny heartbreaker of a picture. It's basically a study in mid-life ennui, as demotivated motivational speaker Michael Stone (David Thewlis) checks in to a Cincinnati hotel for a conference. He meets Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh, playing multiple parts) and what follows is a beautifully-observed first encounter, laced with insecurities and regrets, building up to puppet sex and Lisa's heart-breaking rendition of Cyndi Lauper's 'Girls Just Want To Have Fun'. Of course, the last act enters its own zone of bat-shit craziness (hello, antique Japanese dildo) but, perhaps more than any other Kaufman work, what you are left with is a tender take on what it means to be human.Read the Empire review.
ANIMATED MOVIES
Moana (2016)
Riding high off the success of new-wave Princess movies like Tangled and Frozen, Disney delivered another contemporary classic, packed with earworm songs from a fresh-outta-Hamilton Lin-Manuel Miranda. If Moana herself belongs in a lineage that stretches right back to Snow White, she's firmly in the 'Disney Princess 2.0' mould – the daughter of a chief, a brave seafaring warrior seeking a better future for her people, without a love-interest in sight. The film shines from beginning to end with its loveable characters and vibrant Pacific island imagery – all gleaming blue seas and lush vegetation – and boasts a Ghibli-esque approach to good and evil, savouring balance and harmony in favour of traditional battle-won victory. Factor in a stack of outright Disney-bangers, Jemaine Clement channelling Bowie as a giant glam monster-crab, and a Mad Max-style action sequence with warrior coconuts, and you've got a modern great.Read the Empire review.
ANIMATED MOVIES
My Life As A Courgette (2016)
In between essential coming of age drama Girlhood and the all-conquering masterpiece Portrait Of A Lady On Fire, Céline Sciamma – one of the most exciting filmmakers in the world today – wrote a stop-motion comedy about a kid named Icare with blue hair and a nose like a (you guessed it) courgette. Yet, as strange as it may seem, the Claude Barras-directed film has Sciamma's fingerprints all over it, from Icare's alcoholic abusive mother — it is she who nicknames him Courgette — to suicide, to the lives of damaged kids in an orphanage. If it sounds grim, it is, but the darkness is balanced out with warmth, humour and wisdom. It's also full of vibrant animation – a punk-disco thrown for the kids by the teachers is a delight – that remains relatable, allowing the story's empathy, sensitivity and hope to make the biggest impression.Read the Empire review.
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ANIMATED MOVIES
Dumbo (1942)
It's true that some elements of Dumbo have aged incredibly poorly – not just the infamous racially-caricatured crows, but the less-well-remembered 'Roustabouts' song that reduces the film's only people of colour to cheery, faceless slaves. In all other regards, it's a masterpiece. It's achingly melancholic and deceptively dark – a tale of exploitation, misery, and eventual metamorphosis, as big-eared baby elephant Jumbo Jr. is bullied by his peers, separated from his 'mad' mother, forced into dangerous circus acts, and eventually discovers his biggest difference can become his super-power. It has a tear-jerker of a song in 'Baby Mine', the circus sequences are vividly realised, and 'Pink Elephants On Parade' remains one of the boldest, barmiest bits of animation ever to emerge from Walt Disney Animation Studios. All these years later, Dumbo still soars.Read the Empire review.
ANIMATED MOVIES
Hercules (1997)
A charming combination of mythically-inspired animation and screwball-inspired comedy makes Hercules a comfortable entry in the '90s Disney Renaissance, even if it went a little under-appreciated at the time of release. Studio stalwarts Ron Clements and John Musker made their follow-up to Aladdin another underdog story, this time about the son of Greek gods Zeus and Hera, who becomes a human outcast with godly powers after Hades' henchmen fail to turn him completely mortal. Voice cast standouts include Danny DeVito as, well, Danny DeVito in satyr-form, and Susan Egan as the Barbara Stanwyck-inspired anti-damsel-in-distress Meg. Throw in a soundtrack of gospel bangers – not to mention Michael Bolton's rousing rendition of 'Go The Distance' – and you've got an energetic, slyly funny romp.Read the Empire review.
ANIMATED MOVIES
Toy Story 2 (1999)
How do you follow-up the most game-changing animated movie in decades? You expand the character roster with more toys that audiences will fall in love with (hello, Woody's Round-Up gang), deepen the emotional pull (who doesn't cry at 'When She Loved Me'?) and pile on the Empire Strikes Back references. If it could never hope to recapture the surprise of the original, Toy Story 2 proved Pixar was no flash in the pan – a sequel originally destined for straight-to-video was simply too good not to hit the big screen. In true Empire style, it expands the world and splits up our gang – sending Woody into the big bad world of retro toy collectors, and dispatching Buzz and co to save him in a jaunt that takes in a hilarious Barbie-centric trip through Al's Toy Barn. It's a sequel that showed there was plenty of life yet in these toys – and this time, everyone was looking.Read the Empire review.
ANIMATED MOVIES
One Hundred And One Dalmatians (1961)
Slap-bang in the middle of Disney's silver age came an adventure that looked unlike any other film from the studio before it. The lavish, expansive vistas of Sleeping Beauty were replaced with textured sketchbooky scrawls thanks to the new cost-cutting Xerox animation process – resulting in a film that feels properly hand-crafted and full of life, simpatico with its jazzy score. Adapting Dodie Smith's novel, it was (at the time) a rare contemporary Disney film, bringing 1960s London to life in the tale of a loved-up couple, their doe-eyed dogs, and a maniacal fashionista intent on dog-napping their litter of newborn puppies to make a fur coat. If the dalmatians themselves are adorable, it's Cruella De Vil who steals the movie – a properly iconic villain, a scrawny creature in a hulking fur coat, with green-smoke-spewing cigarettes, and that damning screech of "imbeciles!" All in all, it's a dog-gone delight.Read the Empire review.
ANIMATED MOVIES
Bambi (1942)
Both visually and emotionally, Bambi is a strong contender for Disney's most beautiful animated film. Right from its extended opening multi-plane shot through layers and layers of dense forest, it's a lush pastoral coming-of-age story that revels in recreating the sense of life, love and loss inherent in the natural world. The plot is minimal – particularly in its opening half, more intent on immersing viewers in the forest's flora and fauna – but ultimately hugely moving, as newborn fawn Bambi makes friends, loses his mother (in a sequence that's now traumatised multiple generations of children) to hunters, falls in love, and grows into a stoic Great Prince Of The Forest like his father before him. The narrative's maturity sometimes clashes with more kid-friendly characters like hyperactive bunny Thumper and skunk Flower, but its closing cyclical imagery is properly stirring.Read the Empire review.
ANIMATED MOVIES
Wallace and Gromit In The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit (2005)
It's not every film that can take two beloved stop-motion characters from a series of shorts and TV specials and put them up on the big screen for a rollicking, Hammer horror-inspired comedy. But Were-Rabbit is just one reason why no one should underestimate the Aardman team, who were able to bring their British sensibility to a (relatively) big-budget American animated movie. The larger canvas doesn't short-circuit the charm of inventor Wallace (the late, great Peter Sallis) and his silent, smart canine chum, and this is stuffed with the sort of sly winks and fun characters we've come to expect from the duo's outings. The film itself may not have set box office records (we have noticeably not seen a second film featuring the pair), but it won the Animated Feature Oscar in 2006 – and good thing, too, if only for all the gardening puns. Read the Empire review.
ANIMATED MOVIES
Song Of The Sea (2014)
The second film from Irish animation house Cartoon Saloon is breathtakingly gorgeous – painterly and ethereal, blending stylised character models with finely-detailed backgrounds that glow with a bioluminescence befitting its subaquatic selkie-centric story. If Song Of The Sea plays to kids as a straight-up adventure, for older audiences it's a delicately drawn fable about grief and family, as stoic dad Conor (Brendan Gleeson) is left to raise his son Ben (David Rawle) and newborn daughter Saoirse (Lucy O'Connell) after his wife dies in childbirth – and there may be more to Saoirse than meets the eye. Pulling from Irish folklore and steeped in a sense of cultural specificity, Song Of The Sea confirmed Cartoon Saloon as a major new voice in the medium – one whose artistry, storytelling and charm matches up to the greats of Ghibli, Disney, and Pixar.Read the Empire review.
ANIMATED MOVIES
Your Name. (2016)
Makoto Shinkai's record-breaking body-swap anime glitters and gleams – light bounces off surfaces in glorious shimmers, refracts through the sky, reflects from buildings and iPhone screens with breathtaking beauty. It's a film of two halves – the first is sweet, charming and witty as small-town girl Mitsuha (Mone Kamishiraishi) and Tokyo boy Taki (Ryunosuke Kamiki) find themselves waking up in each other's bodies, perhaps thanks to the cosmic interference of a passing comet. And once their growing metaphysical relationship hooks you in, the second half of the film shifts gears into high-stakes melodrama with major emotional punch. If there's plenty of subtext about Japan itself – the push and pull between rural traditions and buzzing cities, its history of natural disasters – it's the dazzling visuals, soaring soundtrack by band Radwimps, and that central pairing that make Your Name. an instant classic. Fittingly, it's a body-swap film that gets under the skin.Read the Empire review.
ANIMATED MOVIES
The Prince of Egypt (1998)
A continuation of DreamWorks Animation's early mission to become a competitor to Disney while bringing animation to older audiences, The Prince Of Egypt masterfully blends CGI with traditional 2D animation; a first for the studio. An army of animators were summoned to make this biblical epic, pitched by studio co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg as an animated adaptation of The Ten Commandments. Alongside its stunning Egyptian vistas and finely-drawn, expressionistic characters – not to mention a giddily tense chariot race sequence – it boasts gargantuan '90s star power, with Michelle Pfeifer, Sandra Bullock and Jeff Goldblum amongst the voice cast, with Val Kilmer in a dual role – lending his rich timbre to both Moses and God himself. As if that weren't enough, Hans Zimmer's staggeringly cinematic soundscape and an Oscar-winning accompanying duet from vocal powerhouses Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey makes this ambitious venture a rewarding entry at a time when DreamWorks became a viable Disney rival. Read the Empire review.
ANIMATED MOVIES
Wolfwalkers (2020)
Cartoon Saloon (and co-director Tomm Moore) wrapped up its Irish Folklore Trilogy with this latest release, a fantastical tale set against the very real issue of English colonial destruction in Ireland. Robyn (Honor Kneafsey), the daughter of a hunter dispatched to wipe out the local wolf population discovers a kindred spirit in a pack and fellow youngster Mebh (Eva Whittaker), who embodies a wolf when she sleeps. Together, the pair sets out to save the wolves and the forest from the schemes of the Lord Protector (Simon McBurney). Moore and the Saloon gang have always trodden their own animated path, and Wolfwalkers is no different, mixing boxy woodcut style for the townsfolk with loose, flowing line work for the creatures of the woods. Both sweet and powerful, it's a crime that the pandemic meant it was predominantly released online.Read the Empire review.