MOVIE THOUGHTS - 'April And The Extraordinary World'

There are moments in April And The Extraordinary World, including shots of a secret city smothered in overgrowth and even a walking mansion, where you'll swear you're watching a Studio Ghibli feature. But this is French import from Je Suis Bien Content, the studio behind 'Persepolis', who gives us a new graphic novel adaptation that freely borrows Miyazaki-inspired imagery but substantially tones down the sentiment in favor of riveting pulp fiction.

It's an alternate timeline where the Bonapartist empire has survived into the 1940s, and technology has not evolved beyond the Industrial Revolution due to the disappearance of the world's most pivotal scientists. The titular April is the daughter of two such scientists who are illegally developing electricity and an invincibility serum that can cure all illness. One imperial pursuit later, April is orphaned and forced to spend her teenage years attempting to recreate the serum and locate her parents, all with the aid of her talking cat Darwin, romantic sidekick Julius, and grandfather Pops.

The mystery-laden plot is tight as a drum, and co-writer Benjamin Legrand (co-author of the graphic novel series that became 'Snowpiercer') knows how to keep things moving, though the narrative jam-packs an awful lot of exposition into not one but two prologues. When the second act does slow down, however, it is for choice throwaway images that reveal bonds between characters (there is a brief shot of a closet full of differently-sized pink dresses: Pops is prepared to die waiting for his granddaughter to return).

Directors Christian Desmares and Francke Ekinci have adapted April And The Extraordinary World from a graphic novel by Jacques Tardi, who's 'ligne claire' (clear line) style of drawing recalls Herge's 'Tintin' (another universe rooted in pulp). That style is digitally enhanced here, and the production design lends an inspired steampunk look to a vintage Paris that gives automobiles their own boilers and the Eiffel Tower a twin. And Valentin Hadjadj's score, a fairly seamless combination of real and synth orchestration, provides a main title overture that oozes adventure from the get-go.

I caught a very early screening of this film, though the GKids logo in front of it indicates wider U.S. distribution is on the way. GKids is rapidly becoming the face of independent feature animation in the States (they've acquired all of Ghibli's filmography), and more power to them: they're guaranteeing a standard of quality characterized by uniqueness. I have no clue what I'm going to get when they release a foreign animated film, and April And The Extraordinary World is no exception.

MOVIE THOUGHTS - 'Boy & The World'

Eyes have been crucial to the last several animated features I've seen. The eyes, and the action going on with the skin (or wool) around the eyes, clearly communicate exactly what the character is feeling, no matter how complex. In the case of Boy & The World, a 2013 Brazilian import only now hitting American cinemas, two thick, simple, greasy slashes communicate a permanent state of wonder on the round head of the titular Boy, but look weary on the languishing heads of overworked adult characters desperate to exude confidence toward their children.

It's an expressive choice, as are most of director Ale Abreu's aesthetic decisions for this gorgeous, feature-length explosion of color. The prologue is enchanting. First a dot of color. Then we pull back from a circle inside a circle and past endless patterns and textures to the exterior of a rock the Boy finds. He then plays with a bucket. And sticks his head in a stream. He might as well have just been born.

We discover more and more of the World, which is largely rendered in crayon and colored pencil, right alongside the boy. Then a sheet of grey mist. And the departure of his father. The Boy lives with his mother on a prosperous field on the outskirts of a city his father is starting work in. As the Boy chases down his father, he spends time in the company of an aged cotton field worer and a twenty-something cotton factory worker who both bear subtle, suspicious resemblance to the Boy.

The factory worker also plays for money on a makeshift drum set that recalls the kitchen appliance cabaret from The Triplets of Belleville. Ale Abreu also shares that film's disdain for Americanized privilege: after witnessing the fate of processed cotton, we watch rolls of it being delivered to giant metropolises floating in giant, disc-shaped snow globes marked by gleaming eagle insignias. Abreu is crystal clear in his environmental message, which at one point turns over completely to a live-action montage of a polluted Brazilian city.

I appreciate Abreu's boldness, but this yanked me right out of the film, and I felt he made a much stronger case for anti-industrialization with animated sequences like a battle between a colorful bird fueled by a Brazilian street band, and a black one powered by the city (the film emerged out of Abreu's research for what would have been Canto Latino, an 'animadoc' about protest music that was performed in opposition to a 1960s Brazilian military dictatorship).

The key song 'Algeria', however, cements the bond between the Boy and his father, and as we rejoin an old character defeated by the cotton industry, we hear this song on a flute and are invited to remember why we held onto such a pure, optimistic view of an uncorrupted world in the first place. This is most visually arresting film nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar this year, and it is a shame it will lose to Pixar, which will take home another deserved but unnecessary win.

SHORTS THOUGHTS - '2016 Oscar Nominated Short Films - Animation'

During any given year, we'd be lucky to see even two truly spectacular animated features in mainstream cinemas. Meanwhile, this single program of animated shorts gives us at least three masterpieces that are gratifyingly impossible to choose from. If you're near a theater showing these shorts, go let the Academy know you want to see more of these (which you do, trust me).

Oscar-Nominated Shorts

Sanjay's Super Team - Animator Sanjay Patel helms Pixar's boldest visual endeavor: a TV-worshipping boy compromises with his Hindu-worshipping father by way of a supernatural battle between Hindu gods.  The look of the second act is something special, with one foot in the Meander-based look of Disney's Feast, and another in the pop-art-inspired use of flat colors in Waltz With Bashir.  The story, while strong, calls for a tidier resolution than those of previous Pixar shorts. On One Man Band, director Mark Andrews ditched an obvious pay-off and favored comical retribution over predictable morals.  A win for Pixar on this short would be deserved but unnecessary.

World Of Tomorrow - The maker of "My spoon is too big!" brings us the program's first masterwork. I've seen it three times: its satisfactions take time to bloom. Don Hertzfeldt's first foray into digital stick-figure animation depicts a future where people live forever by transferring their consciousnesses to digital storage or impregnated clones of themselves. It's droll and quirky in equal amounts, especially when a third-generation clone named Emily, while trying to break the bad news of Earth's demise, is singsonged-over by her toddler-aged Prime. Hertzfeldt throws some delicious abstract backgrounds into the mix, and gives us a sobering reminder that we have far less time than we think.

Bear Story - The grandest visual treat in the program, director Gabriel Osorio Vargas weaves a tragic but sweet tale of CG bears via wind-up mechanical miniatures. On one level it is the simple story of a father striving to escape his imprisonment in the circus to reunite with his family. Fortunately, a friend familiar with Chilean history informed me going in that the presence of cold military figurines clue us in on the Pinochet regime setting, when families were separated, tortured, and murdered following a coup in 1973. The short's multitude of toned-down colors is extravagant, and rock duo Denver supplies an aching music box theme to accompany our glimpse into melancholy memories.

We Can't Live Without Cosmos - Unlike World Of Tomorrow, the satisfactions of this Russian import are immediate and beguiling. Like that film, however, it combines the morbid and the comical to great effect. I first saw it in the Animation Show of Shows in late 2014, and still remember the best sight gag: an astronaut sheds a bead of sweat underneath his helmet over an impending mission and instinctively tries to wipe it off. The story follows two brothers who ace their way through aerospace training together, only to meet with tragedy upon liftoff, as well as indifference from the higher-ups toward their communal spirit. Konstantin Bronzit is a shrewd visual storyteller, efficiently moving the story forward without insisting on it, and Tuyara Tikhonova's and Eugeny Zhebchuk's sound effects are collectively subtle yet all stand out and keep your focus from moment to moment.

Prologue - This very well may be the swan song of legendary animator Richard Williams, who worked for 25+ years on The Thief And The Cobbler only to have it taken away from him in the mid-'90s. This piece represents his desire to master, "the whole whammy," and Prologue is certainly one of the greatest displays of pure technique in recent memory. Unfortunately, it is needlessly gratuitous. The story depicts gruesome, bloody Roman combat (red is the most saturated color in the piece) and I wonder why this story was personal to Williams. But it proves he has mastered the human form, and whether he wins or not, he can go out on a high note.

Highly Commended

If I Was God... - Director Cordell Baker channels his inner Tim Burton - right down to the striped black-and-white shirt - and delivers a fanciful tale of maniacal classroom daydreams. The daydreams are a fun blend of cut-out stop motion elements that recall this past year's The Bigger Picture, but the narrator's deadpan readings don't match the underlying menace of the film's preteen protagonist.

The Short Story Of A Fox And A Mouse - The better of the two widescreen French entries in the Highly Commended category, a fox flirts with his potential rodent dinner, only to form a bond with him and join forces to keep one another safe in their snowy terrain. The designs are pleasingly naturalistic, but it adds little to the frenemy trope.

The Loneliest Stoplight - The best of the Highly Commended shorts, Patton Oswalt narrates Bill Plympton's latest short about a stoplight's up-and-down career at a barren four-way intersection overshadowed by the interstate. Though there are a couple of PG-13 elements thrown in, the watercolor images coupled with Oswalt's narration together lend a storybook-like quality to the piece.

Catch It - The weakest of the Highly Commended shorts, this many-hands French short is as basic and mainstream as it gets: a group of meerkats chase down a vulture who has stolen their fruit. I suppose the widescreen images of the saturated desert are nice, but the character designs are unappealing and the character animation too clunky. It's easy to see why it lost the nomination.