Review: Missing Link

by Chris Feil

Laika is back with another idiosyncratic stop-motion wonder and its their most chipper effort yet. Missing Link follows the animation house’s unique imagination down a rabbit hole of globe-trotting legend, delivering a buddy comedy that’s also about self-love and self-respect. As ever, Laika serves us such spectacular visuals and winning charm that it’s easy to overlook what is more familiar in the film. But this one finds the studio at their most unfettered, giving us a breezy treat that rings of a new level of confidence.

Hugh Jackman leads a surprisingly delightful voice cast as a seeker of rare creatures named Sir Lionel Frost. Attempting to join an elite society of beast hunters that mocks him, he sets off to America in search of Big Foot. What he finds is the gentile apeman Mr. Link, who in turn enlists Frost to guide him to the other side of the globe in search of  a storied tribe of yetis that could be Link’s closest biological kinfolk. With those uppercrust poachers pursuing them to usurp Frost’s discovery, Frost and Link are joined by the widowed Adelina Fortnight, and the three set off on a self-actualization journey into the unknown.

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Open Thread & Random Buzz

What movies are you thinking about right this very second?

I've got four movies playing in my head at the moment, two still imaginary and two just screened. The still-imaginary ones are, first, the Bill Condon / Sir Ian McKellen / Dame Helen Mirren thriller The Good Liar which got strong buzz out of the industry promo event CinemaCon. The second is the film adaptation of Cats which sounds Titanic-like (the boat not the movie) in its possibly epic high profile sinkability. Apparently the cats are not fully mocapped creatures but still look like the actors with fur digitally added but they're cat-sized (but why would they mention the cat-sized bit unless they shared scenes with humans which Nooooo).

As for the real movies that already exist in competed form, Laika has another winner with Missing Link (they've yet to make a stinker!) which we currently have in the 'most likely to be nominated' spot in the Best Animated Feature race. It opens in just one week so more on that one real soon. The other is Sebastian Schipper's Roads which we can't talk about yet because it doesn't premiere until later this month at Tribeca but let it be known that we love it. Oops. We weren't supposed to talk about it! But it's from the German director who made that exciting 'how'd he do that?' entirely continuous shot movie Victoria a couple of years back. This new film Roads could, like Victoria, be categoried in the subgenre of "Protagonist having dangerous and unexpected soul-shaking adventure whilst travelling abroad" movie but its much different so Schipper is no one-hit wonder or one-trick pony. The leads Fionn Whitehead (Dunkirk, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch) and Stéphane Bak (Elle, Farewell to the Night) have terrific chemistry. If you're planning to hit Tribeca, schedule it.

What's on your cinematic mind? 

10th Anniversary: Laika's "Coraline"

by Timothy Brayton

Coraline, which opened in theaters ten years ago today, was groundbreaking in all sorts of ways. It was the first feature made by Laika, soon to become a cultishly loved, critically praised animation studio with an Oscar nomination for every one of its four films (a fifth, Missing Link, is set to open in April). It was one of the first films in the most recent 3D fad to demonstrate a real sense of the emotional and narrative possibilities of using stereoscopic effects, and it was only rarely equaled in the years following. It represents an extraordinary leap into a brand new mixed-media animation style that I refrain from calling "revolutionary" only because nobody else but Laika seems to be interested in experimenting with it.

The truly special thing about Coraline is not that it achieved any of these things. Plenty of films invent new stuff. What's special – downright miraculous, even – is that Coraline feels just as fresh and bold in 2019 as it did in 2009...

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16 days til Oscar. Ranking the 16 Animated Feature Winners

by Nathaniel R

which movies willed this category into existence?

With just 16 days to go until Coco wins Pixar its 9th Academy Award for Best Animated Feature let's look back over the first 16 years of the category. (Yes, that's right math geniuses, Pixar has won a full 50% of the animated Oscars thus far.)

The History, Chronologically

1988-2000 The category didn't exist until 2001 but it wasn't just created on a whim. The previous dozen years which included the renaissance of Disney, the sizeable popularity influence and beauty of what was happening in Japanese animation, the explosion of new animation studios all over the map, and the rise of Pixar in particular, all led us to the inevitable: an Oscar category for animated features...

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Today's 4: Auntie Mame, The Breakfast Club, In the Realm of the Senses, and Laika

Another day, another chance to boost your spirits by celebrating showbiz history whilst you go about your here and now. Only four today since we decided the fifth would be better off in a beauty break style post later today. 

May 18th Showbiz History

2018 Okay this is future history but Laika has claimed this date for their next movie. We don't know what it is yet but who cares, it's Laika!

In their honor today: Rank Laika's releases thus far in the comments. They are in chronological order Coraline (2009), Paranorman (2012), The Boxtrolls (2014), and Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)

Blockbusters of 1985, Auntie Mame and more after the jump...

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