2019's Best Screen Animals

Different lists each for our "Year in Review"

We had hoped to put the entire cast of Cats on this list of the big screen's best animal characters but alas... very few of them are worthy to ascend to the Heaviside Layer let alone our year end list of the best big screen animals! This list is dedicated to bunnies as those beady-eyed cuties had a rough year at the movies. They were used solely for unsettling mood, multiplying sybolism and raw meat (gross) in Us and later popped up as an instrument of toxic masculine shaming in Jojo Rabbit. Bunnies deserve better in 2020! Which filmmaker will answer the call and treat them well onscreen?

Without further ado let's talk the screen animals we fell hardest for at the movies this year.  

11 Dumbo (elephant)
Here's the thing. Tim Burton and Screenwriters and (presumably) Disney corporate were so intent on expanding the movie (it's 48 minutes longer than the original Dumbo!) that it keeps pointing to everything but the star mutant attraction. Dumbo is as adorable as his ears are big but he's a supporting player in his own movie. They lost the thread or Dumbo could've topped the list.

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Tweeting to the Heaviside Layer

Amusing movie-related tweets curated for you this week...

The most depressing part of LITTLE WOMEN (1869) is not when Beth dies but when Jo's short story wins a prize of $100, reminding any fellow writers reading the book that freelance rates have remained roughly stable SINCE THE RECONSTRUCTION ERA

— Jennifer Morrow (@jenniferemorrow) December 27, 2019

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How do you solve a problem like "Cats"?

by Cláudio Alves

With Cats horrifying audiences around the world, including possibly you, let's all step into a hot-air balloon and travel to the heavenly lands of speculation. You see, a screen adaptation of the silliest mega-musical in Andrew Lloyd Weber's repertoire (give or take Love Never Dies or Starlight Express) was already a dicey proposition, but it needn't be so doomed. But add to that the deranged incompetence of Tom Hooper and digital fur technology,and we have something for the pantheon of all-time bad movies.

What could have been done to avoid catastrophe? Many psychologically scarred movie-goers may be asking this question from the depths of the madness that now consumes them: Could this have been any different? Could it have been better? Could it have been good, even? Maybe…

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Tweetweek: Feat Old Deuteronomy (...and Burlesque ?)

Some tweets curated for you over the past couple of weeks because they amused us...

Dern v JLo is this year’s Glenn v Gaga, in that Cho Yeo-Jeong will win and gays will all be sad but ultimately not mad.

— Joel Kim Booster (@ihatejoelkim) December 10, 2019

If only Joel, if only. 

AFTER THE JUMP How actors eat food in movies, how people become gay, how Timothée Chalamet was conceived, best of the decade, and more...

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Best Animated Feature Contenders: How to Train Your Dragon 3

by Tim

Only time will tell which five movies are going to receive nominations for the Best Animated Feature Oscar in January, but I can tell you this much with absolute certainty: there are going to be a lot of sequels in the mix. Each of the four biggest American animation studios released a single film in 2019, and each one of those was a franchise entry. Disney had the blockbuster hit Frozen II just a month ago, and their corporate cousin Pixar released the slightly smaller hit Toy Story 4 over the summer. Illumination Entertainment had a rare flop with The Secret Life of Pets 2. Before any of these, though, came my pick for the best major studio animated feature of the year, and a film we really haven't talked about very much at the Film Experience: DreamWorks Animation's How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, third and final film in a trilogy that started in 2010.

The film was greeted without much enthusiasm, whether from critics, fans of the series, or audiences more generally; this seems horribly unfair to me. While it is more than a little bit of a retread of 2014's How to Train Your Dragon 2 in its plot and especially in its generic, forgettable villain (and one should never think "unforgettable" when watching a character played by F. Murray Abraham, but here we are), the emotional stuff is all new...

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