Watership Down (1978)

Recommended

UK

Animated Feature Film

Director: Martin Rosen

Writers: Martin Rosen, Richard Adams

Animation Director: Tony Guy

Composer: Angela Morley

Cast: John Hurt, Richard Briers, Michael Graham-Cox, John Bennett, Ralph Richardson, Simon Cadell, Harry Andrews, Hannah Gordon, Nigel Hawthorne

After one of their number has a premonition of impending doom, a group of rabbits leave their warren and go in search of a new home; along the way, they face numerous dangers (men, birds, cats, dogs, foxes, and their fellow rabbits), in this surprisingly violent, sensitively voiced, and expressionistically animated allegorical gem. Iain.Stott

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Only Yesterday (1991)

Highly Recommended

Japan

Animated Feature Film

Original Title: おもひでぽろぽろ

Writer/Director: Takahata Isao

Composer: Hoshi Masaru

Cast: Imai Miki, Yanagiba Toshirō, Honna Youko, Ito Masahiro, Terada Michie, Masuda Yuuki, Minowa Yuki, Yamashita Yorie

Nostalgic without being sentimental, and winsome but not wincingly so, Takahata’s gentle film – in which a 27-year-old unmarried office worker from Tokyo spends a ten day holiday in the countryside, working on a farm and reminiscing about her childhood – proves to be, as it paints a rather moving portrait of the inconsequentiality of adulthood and the monumentality of youth, a film of great beauty. Iain.Stott

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Metropolis (2001)

Recommended

Japan

Animated Feature Film

Original Title: メトロポリス

Director: Rintaro

Writers: Ōtomo Katsuhiro, Tezuka Osamu

Cinematographer: Yamaguchi Hitoshi

Composer: Yamaguchi Hitoshi

Cast: Yuka Imoto, Kei Kobayashi, Kouki Okada, Tarō Ishida, Kousei Tomita, Norio Wakamoto, Junpei Takiguchi

The nefarious leader of Metropolis hires a mad scientist to build a life-like robot to replace his dead daughter Tima, whom he wishes to help him with his plans to rule the world; but an arson attack on the laboratory in which she is being built leads to her meeting with a kindly Japanese boy instead, in this visually stunning and surprisingly moving animated film, which contains at least one sequence (of lyrical destruction, scored to an ironically mellifluous Ray Charles ditty) that will leave an indelible mark upon all those that see it. Iain.Stott

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