The Ron Diamond-curated 20TH ANNUAL ANIMATION SHOWS OF SHOWS hits theaters

Based upon the fifteen animated shorts seen in this year's (the 20th) rendition of the annual ANIMATION SHOW OF SHOWS, the past 12 months or so (since last year's version made its debut) have perhaps not been the most creative or spectacular for the animation industry, particularly when compared to the general excellence of last year's batch.

Not that there is much wrong with this 20th edition: As curated by Ron Diamond, the films -- 15 of 'em which range in length from one minute to 16 -- are enjoyable, sometimes funny, often charming, and even now and then dark and/or moving, and only occasionally shrug-worthy. Too often, though, too many of them rely on the tried, the true and the sentimental. Here, below, is a brief critical description of each film, from the first on the program to the last.

French and running seven minutes, THE GREEN BIRD offers up an oddly humanistic green fowl that tries to protect its lone little egg -- with colorful and amusing results. It may bring to mind those old Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons. But classier.

From the USA and running eight minutes, ONE SMALL STEP tracks a young girl and her helpful dad (or is it grandad?) as she tries to become an astronaut. Full of hope, joy, disappointment, anger and grief, it's pretty but also fairly standard stuff.

TrustMovies once had a friend and co-worker who told him of the epiphany she had when she realized one day that every single thing ever manufactured first had to have been designed. This came to mind while viewing the French short GRANDS CANONS that begins with the drawing of a pencil and then quickly moves on to just about every useful object you can imagine. Driven along by a jazzy and propulsive musical score, this is one of the more creative and unusual of this year's offerings.

In BARRY (from the USA), the theme of everyone's favorite pig movie, Babe, has been distilled down to four minutes of cute and relatively simple animation that goes by so fast it may barely register as more than a blip.

Faster still is SUPER GIRL (also from the USA), a one-minute-long endeavor about a child's hope and dream that is here and then gone before you even know quite what to make of it.

Germany is represented by one of the more unusual of the shorts -- LOVE ME, FEAR ME (seven minutes) -- using some marvelous claymation (in which the clay seems still moist and ever evolving) and some well choreographed dance, first by a man, then a woman, a warrior and a bird. The animation here is not simply interesting; it's alternately sexual, creepy, and very creative.

What the hell is BUSINESS MEETING (from Brazil and running 2 minutes) even about? Maybe the nonsense of Capitalism? The power/ridiculousness of words? Copycatting?  Your guess is as good as mine. This one also features the simplest black-and-white line drawings of all the shorts.

The Netherlands' example, FLOWER FOUND!, offers some very cute animation in which a mouse teams up with a bird, rabbit, pig, stag and owl (and maybe more) to find a missing flower. Moving from cute quest to horrific mistaken identity, this bit of brightly colored animation turns out to be exceedingly dark.

In BULLETS (from the USA and running maybe 90 seconds), a child's voice over some beautifully colored and conceived animation tells us, "Relax, world!" and commands our attention with a message that's short, sweet/sad and quite timely.

Argentina's A TABLE GAME proves another head-scratcher. It may (or may not) be about the idiocy of sports of all kinds, as viewed by the world's population today, and how we give these way too much attention and importance.

Difference and "the other" get a good and very unusual working out in one of the stronger shorts, CARLOTTA'S FACE (Germany, five minutes). How do you manage when you cannot differentiate faces? You'll find out in this fascinating and often darkly beautiful tale.

At twelve minutes, AGE OF SAIL (USA) is the second lengthiest on the current program. It's a kind of ode to a drunken sailor as he ages and sees his life and work upended and replaced. When he rescues an overboard damsel, everything changes. This one is nicely animated and has a strong narrative pull.

The five-minute-long POLARIS (USA) offers polars bears and penguins and involves a young polar bear who has decided to set off on his own and leave family behind. Pretty animation, sure, and sweetly saccharine as all get out.

MY MOON (USA, 9 minutes) gives us some of the more impressionistic animation of this go-round, as it takes us on a romantic tour of our current world and a way maybe around and/or through it via imagination and fantasy. The widescreen anime is different and often quite lovely but finally perhaps a little too sentimental to soar.

The final (and longest: 16 minutes) selection, WEEKENDS, is also the best of the bunch. Set to Erik Satie's music, a mom bids good-bye to her son, as he leaves in the car with his dad. Clearly, the parents are separated or divorced, and the boy is negotiating his way, via reality, fantasy and dreams, through this difficult passage, as first mom, and then dad, gets a new lover. The usual male activities -- violent games and bad eating habits -- are set against mom's more solicitous leanings, and the animation is beautifully conceived and executed to bring all this to alternately jarring, sad and hopeful life. This one manages to avoid the usual sentimental cliches and is all the stronger for it.

With eight out of the 15 shorts coming from the USA, one wonders why more from abroad were not included. Surely, worldwide, there were some better examples than are seen here via a few of the more ordinary American submissions? Nonetheless, this year's compilation is certainly worth viewing, some of them more than once.

The 20th Annual Animation Show of Shows will open in Los Angeles this Thursday, December 13, at Laemmle's Monica Film Center and then at Laemmle's new Glendale on Friday, December 14, and simultaneously in Chicago at the Gene Siskel Film Center. New York City will see it open at the Quad Cinema on Friday,December 28. To view all current and upcoming playdaytes, cities and theaters, simply click here and scroll down. 

With THE 19TH ANNUAL ANIMATION SHOWS OF SHOWS, Ron Diamond curates yet another cornucopia of styles, art and ideas

“Because animation is such a natural medium for dealing with abstract ideas and existential concerns, the ANIMATION SHOW OF SHOWS has always included a number of thoughtful and engaging films. However, more than in previous years, I believe that this year’s program really offers contemporary animation that expresses deeply felt issues in our own country and around the world.” So states Ron Diamond, founder and curator of this yearly collection of some of the best animation from around the globe, now in its 19th go-round.

TrustMovies would agree with Mr. Diamond's assessment (the curator is shown at left), as this year's program, THE 19TH ANNUAL ANIMATION SHOWS OF SHOWS, offers at least three wonderful and near-great-or-maybe-fully-there examples of the best that animation can currently offer.

If some of the lesser lights on the program may lack what it takes to send them over the top, still, the variety of ideas, moods and animation styles that are present here, when coupled to the brevity of so many of the works, would suggest that viewers will hardly be bored. (And if they are, this will last barely a minute or two.)

Herewith is this year's program, listed first to last (along with my short review of each) in the order of presentation. I would greatly suggest that, should you find yourself growing a bit impatient with things, as did I, please hold on. The program grows better by miles as it moves along, with some of the richest, most provocative work appearing in the latter half.

CAN YOU DO IT, via Quentin Baillieux (France) offers a sleek style and very interesting color palette during its three-minute compilation of horse racing and, I guess, street life -- though the mixture left me mostly appreciative of this animator's style rather than anything he might saying.

In TINY BIG (2017) from Belgium, Lia Bertels uses simple black-and-white line drawings on a white background with now-and-then blobs of bright color to create "nature" scenes that are odd and occasionally compelling. Over five-and-one-half minutes, she takes us on a journey that's definitely her own but might translate to something you can understand, as well.

In just under three-and-one-half minutes, certainly the most famous of our animators, Pete Docter (of Pixar's Up and Inside Out) gives us -- in NEXT DOOR --  one of his noisy little girls, along side her very annoyed neighbor, and shows us how common ground is surprisingly found. It's cute and forgettable, but the animation is colorful, funny and fast-moving.

One of the longer pieces in the program, THE ALAN DIMENSION (2017) by Jac Clinch of the U.K., is also the Animation Show of Shows' most narrative-heavy segment. Offering an oddball "take" on precognition (our hero generally sees/predicts awfully run-of-the-mill events) and how this affects his home life, has some charm and some OK animation (of the mostly colorful, old-fashioned-but-enjoyable sort), but it all seems somehow too little, even at its certainly not-lengthy running time.

BEAUTIFUL LIKE ELSEWHERE (2017) by Elise Simard, Canada, is nearly five minutes of very personal though not terribly comprehensible visuals that seems to be an amalgam of various styles melded into a dark, strange piece that I could not connect with in terms of either theme or content. In fact, this is the one film of the batch -- given the week or ten days between first watching and then writing this review -- that I had to go back and view again just to remember what I had seen. Still, the animation is certainly varied and impressive.

A surprise here is something called HANGMAN by Paul Julian and Les Goldman (from the USA), which was actually created back in 1964 but only restored this past year. Based on a poem by Maurice Ogden that tells a tale of injustice and responsibility, the subject is certainly as timely now as it was then, considering its not particularly subtle references to everything from the Holocaust to Fascism, persecution and guilt. Its main achievement, however, is to remind us of how far animation has come over the fifty-plus years since, for this eleven-minute movie, despite its occasional painterly nod to the work of Giorgio de Chirico, is awfully heavy-handed and obvious -- right down to the "poetic" narration and the musical score.

Classical art lovers will get a kick out of the two-and-one-half-minute THE BATTLE OF SAN ROMANO, (2017) by Georges Schwizgebel, from Switzerland, a short that plays around with the famous painting by Paolo Uccello. The filmmaker animates this art work in so many clever ways, turning it into such movement and action yet without actually changing or demeaning it in any way that he brings the battle to life in quite a new and original manner.

TrustMovies has never been a huge fan of anime, and yet the seven-minute film that proves the most charming, funny and sweet of this whole batch is GOKUROSAMA (2016) by Clémentine Frère, Aurore Gal, Yukiko Meignien, Anna Mertz, Robin Migliorelli and Romain Salvini (from France, not Japan). Taking place in one of those modern malls, and another example that's strong on narrative, it tells the tale of what happens when an old woman's back suddenly goes out, and how the mall's denizens join together to help her. This one is a non-stop delight.

I don't even like basketball, and yet the pencil/charcoal line drawings that spring to wonderful life in DEAR BASKETBALL -- (2017) by Disney veteran Glen Keane (USA) and based on a poem written by Kobe Bryant, as he was about to retire from the game -- moved me to tears. The animation is just splendid, and the musical score, composed by John Williams, is a winner, as well, as the poem takes us through Bryant's early life and success, right through his goodbye to playing professionally, in five-and-one-half minutes of sheer beauty.

ISLAND (2017) by Max Mörtl and Robert Löbel, from Germany, takes a look at the mating rituals of the strange and colorful. Goofy and charming in equal measure, the two-and-one-half minute movie is here and gone before it can even think of wearing out its welcome.

The shortest of all these shorts -- UNSATISFYING (2016) by Parallel Studio, France -- is also one of the cleverest: just 77 seconds of near-misses brought to funny, animated life. Brevity is indeed and once again the soul of wit.

The absolute gem of this year's mix -- THE BURDEN (2017) by Niki Lindroth von Bahr, from Sweden --  is the longest, too: nearly a quarter hour. It's also a musical (of sorts), as fish guests in a hotel sing about their lives, dancing pigs cavort in their fast-food workplace, we meet telemarketing monkeys and a dog in a supermarket, and finally hear them all sing a kind of Swedish "spiritual" of longing, dreams, and lost lives in a slave-wage workplace from which no one escapes. This is both brilliantly conceived and executed -- the likes of which I have never experienced till now. I hope that the great Roy Andersson has seen this wonderful work, as it very much reminds me of his landmark films.

An oddball, two-minute domesticity festival that begins with a visit from The Grim Reaper is a film called Abeilles Domestiques (Domestic Bees) (2017) by Alexanne Desrosiers, from Canada. In a sense this one seems the least "animated" of all these shorts because it simply moves less. And it's an interesting, try-to-keep-up-with-it look at a "human" hive.

For sheer laugh-aloud humor enhanced with eye-poppingly colorful animation, watch Our Wonderful Nature: The Common Chameleon (2016) by Tomer Eshed, Germany. This three-and-one-half minute joke offers a take-off/take-down of those ubiquitous nature documentaries, and it is by turns hilarious, gorgeous and gross -- with a wonderfully clever finale.

In CASINO (2016) by Steven Woloshen, Canada, a little jazz-inflected, loosey-goosey animation and musical scoring goes a long way. Fortunately, the four-minute running time is just short enough so that the jitters don't quite set it before this ode to gambling and casinos comes to a close.

Remember Her, that great Spike Jonze film in which the "Operating System" (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), after exploring the work of Alan Watts, grows and evolves to the point at which she must abandon our hero and light out for "parts unknown"? Well, the words of Mr. Watts figure into the final and pretty-much masterpiece of this year's array -- EVERYTHING (2017) by David O'Reilly, USA --  in which the ideas and the writing of Watts actually overpower even the fine animation that gives visual life to those ideas. Everything's eleven minutes is full of a philosophy that asks you to try to take a different POV from your usual. The experience in an education and perhaps the best one we could get in these current and seemingly end-of times.

In case you hadn't noticed this 19th Annual Animation Shows of Shows gets better and better as it moves along. The movie,  which has a total running time of 92 minutes, opens this Friday, December 29, in New York City at the Quad Cinema, and will hit a number of other venues in the weeks and months to come. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.