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Best and worst animated films of 2023

In the 80s, I started a magazine called “Animato!” that later grew quite large and popular. I got to meet and interview great animators like Chuck Jones and Ralph Bakshi but later sold the magazine, and it went on to even bigger successes until the internet killed all magazines.

So I’m still an animation fan, but it’s basically impossible to see all the films and all the animated TV shows these days unless you’re a full-time animator or animation historian, I guess.

These days, with so much CGI, we can debate what an “animated film” even is, but generally the accepted definition is that the main characters must be animated — not just the monsters or effects. (And “motion capture” doesn’t count.)

So here’s my annual end-of-the-year list of best and worst animated films (based on their Rotten Tomatoes score). Ties are broken by number of reviews, and you have to have at least 10 reviews to make my list.

Interesting year: No one film dominated, and most received at least 50% (unlike previous years where a lot of films got very low scores). And look what’s at the bottom: Disney’s latest “Wish,” which was the poorest reviewed Disney film since 2005’s “Chicken Little.”

  1. The Boy and the Heron (97%)
  2. Suzume (96%)
  3. Merry Little Batman (96%)
  4. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (96%)
  5. Spider Man: Across the Spider-verse (95%)
  6. Nimona (95%)
  7. The Venture Brothers: Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart (92%)
  8. Leo (82%)
  9. Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (80%)
  10. Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham (77%)
  11. The Inventor (76%)
  12. Elemental (73%)
  13. Migration (72%)
  14. Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie (71%)
  15. Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken (66%)
  16. The Magician’s Elephant (65%)
  17. They Shot the Piano Player (65%)
  18. Trolls Band Together (60%)
  19. The Super Marios Brothers Movie (59%)
  20. The Monkey King (59%)
  21. The Canterville Ghost (55%)
  22. Mummies (53%)
  23. Miraculous Ladybug and Cat Noir (50%)
  24. Wish (48%)
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NiKKKi

Clay Bennett
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Black and white distinction

Republicans: “Those protestors blocking the road and kneeling during football games while saying ‘Black Lives Matter’ are unAmerican and should be arrested!”

Also Republicans: “Look at those tourists entering the Capitol on January 6th to express their views to Congress! What patriots!”

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Never satisfied

Ward Sutton
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Picking a side in the Israel / Gaza war

It is possible to support Israel’s right to exist — especially when they’re surrounded by non-democratic countries, many of which want them exterminated — while still disagreeing with their leadership and the way the Palestinians have been treated.

I support the US but I constantly criticized Trump when he was President for the things he did. The United States is not always the good guy either.

This is not an “all or nothing” game. This is not a sporting event where you cheer on your team and ignore their terrible plays while booing the other team even if they’re doing a great job.

Israel was attacked by terrorists whose goal is not to live peacefully next to Israel but to destroy them completely. Yes, Israel may treat those in Gaza awfully, but this has been a fight that has been going on since long before I was born and to an atheist like me, it just seems to be a stupid religious argument over whose land it is when if calmer minds prevailed, perhaps they could share. I mean, Palestinians can become citizens of Israel if they want, right?

The way Israel treats those in Gaza is terrible, yes, and the way they have bombed and killed innocents is a war crime in my mind — but that doesn’t excuse the attacks from Hamas. They’re BOTH bad in that regard.

But what I can’t understand, as I’ve said before, is how some of my liberal friends are supporting a group of terrorists who don’t give women rights, who kill gays, and who support everything we fight against. One has to wonder if there is some anti-Jewish thought not very well hidden there.

But then I’ve also seen anti-Muslim posts from people, too, as if it’s the Muslim religion that is the problem instead of these terrorists. They don’t represent Muslims any more than the minority of Christian haters we see these days represent Christianity. It’s like this has given bigots an excuse to spout their hate while hiding it from being too obvious.

I don’t have a solution. I am not a foreign policy expert by any means. But I support a democratic country to exist over dictatorships any time. I will call out Israel for killing innocents just like I will call out Hamas, but I am just constantly surprised that some people seem to be taking the side of the terrorists here.

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Very white Christmas

Gary Markstein
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Who gets upset with “Merry Christmas”?

To those people sharing memes that say things like “I don’t care what people say, I’m going to say ‘Merry Christmas’ even if it makes people upset!”

Have you ever met one person who was upset when you said “Merry Christmas”? Even one?

You’ve been suckered by Fox News, which has managed to convince people that if you say “Happy holidays” then you’re against anyone else saying “Merry Christmas” if they want to. As if the two are opposed to each other in some way.

Don’t be so gullible, angry, and ridiculous.

Getting angry if someone says “Happy holidays” to you is the most anti-Christian and anti-Christmas attitude you could have at a time where you’re supposed to be loving each other and promoting good will. “I’m a Christian who believes in good will to everyone at Christmas UNLESS YOU SAY HAPPY HOLIDAYS IN WHICH CASE I HOPE YOU ROT IN HELL” …. Because that’s exactly how Jesus would act, right?

Nobody is stopping you from saying “Merry Christmas” and no one is upset at you if you do say it.

So get into the holiday spirit and accept all greetings of goodwill for the intent in which they are given.

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Trump’s new sign

Tim Campbell
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Trump and the 14th Amendment

The 14th Amendment was passed just after the Civil War and has a provision that no one ever thought would be relevant any more:

“No Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

This is now an issue because many groups are fighting to keep Trump off the ballot for this very reason.

It’s clear that he has “engaged in insurrection” — and if you don’t believe that, just stop reading now because you’re a hopeless cause. But that isn’t the end of the discussion. There are lots of unanswered questions, and decisions haven’t been consistent.

The Supreme Court in Colorado recently said that Trump would be removed from the primary ballots because of this, but they acknowledged that the US Supreme Court will ultimately make that decision — something that doesn’t fill a lot of us with hope, especially given that one of the chief architects of the insurrection is the wife of one of the justices.

But this certainly raises some interesting legal questions, such as:

Does this apply to the President? The amendment doesn’t say specifically, although you’d have to ask why would they leave the President out? Is the President an “office of the United States”? If so, then the President is included. But we don’t know for sure, and as you can guess, Trump’s lawyers are doing everything they can to argue this loophole.

Can the Courts tell parties how they can run their primaries? Parties set their own primaries and primaries aren’t mentioned anywhere in the Constitution. Maybe because the states still run the primaries (state employees are the ones who sit at the polls, after all) the argument is that therefore the states can regulate the primaries — but that is also not clear.

Who decides someone is an insurrectionist? As I said before (and as Biden said today), it’s blatantly obvious that Trump was trying to illegally overturn an election. He clearly fits the profile. But he has not yet been found guilty of that. Perhaps we need Congress to officially declare him as an insurrectionist.

Who defines what it means to “engage in insurrection”? The Colorado Supreme Court pointed out that Trump gave a speech and encouraged the actions, did nothing to stop them, and hasn’t backed down since. Giving a speech to encourage violence is not protected under the 1st Amendment no matter what the idiots who Trump hires as lawyers say. But who knows what the Supreme Court will say?

Remember, the bottom line is this (as I emphasized in my book about the Constitution): The meaning of that document is whatever the current Supreme Court says. A different court could read the exact same document and come to a completely opposite decision (see Roe v. Wade).

So to get the answers to these questions, we’ll just have to wait and see what our corrupt, awful Supreme Court majority of members who were appointed by Presidents who lost the popular vote have to say about it.

I am not optimistic, no matter how clear it seems to me.

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A gift to Putin

Rob Rogers