Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (2023) 
Director: Sam Fell
Screenwriters: Karey Kirkpatrick, John O’Farrell, Rachel Tunnard
Starring: Bella Ramsey, Thandiwe Newton, Zachary Levi, Imelda Staunton, Lynn Ferguson, David Bradley, Jane Horrocks, Romesh Ranganathan, Daniel Mays, Josie Sedgwick-Jones, Peter Serafinowicz, Nick Mohammed, Miranda Richardson

On the surface, the original Chicken Run (2000) was a fantastic children’s movie and a feat for animated films. It was 90 minutes of pure feathery fun and righteous chicken anger. The movie had impeccable comedic timing akin to Aardman Studio’s other works like Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep. These movies have a beating heart and soul that has stuck with children and adults alike because of their ability to wrap us in the warm hug of their respective worlds. And still, beneath it all lies something even deeper, something profound. For many millennials and cuspers, Chicken Run was an introduction to Marxism and revolution itself. 

As rebel chicken, Ginger (played by Julia Sawalha in 2000) rallies the hens against tyrannical farmers, she dares them to imagine a world governed only by their own will. “Don’t you get it?” she clucks, “There’s no morning headcount, no dogs, no farmers, no coops and keys, and no fences.” It’s a powerful cry for revolution – a call to rise up against injustice, no matter the cost. Though the film is filled with slapstick humor, its demand to rage against oppression transcends the children’s animation genre, cementing it as a powerful allegory for World War II and universal demands for human (and chicken) rights. 

Needless to say, the sequel, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, was highly anticipated by audiences and critics. Nearly 20 years after the original, the follow-up had big shoes to fill. What lessons would the new Chicken Run teach us? Perhaps something about the rise of fascism? Environmentalism? Maybe it would lead us to the answers we’ve all been searching for in these tumultuous times? Unfortunately, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget takes more of a formulaic follow-up approach than broaching anything remotely groundbreaking. 

In this rendition, Ginger (Thandiwe Newton) and Rocky (Zachary Levi, replacing Mel Gibson) return, now living in an idyllic, poultry utopia. Though they are happy in their new homes, they are closed off from the rest of society. Their daughter, Molly (Bella Ramsey), takes after her mother and dreams of life bigger than their confined existence on the island. Soon, Molly escapes to the mainland and finds herself trapped in a chicken factory called Fun-Land Farm. Now, it’s up to the other chickens to break into the factory, a subversion from the previous film’s breakout. 

Dawn of the Nugget isn’t completely without charm. The animation is beautiful and bright, stepping away from the original film’s muted color palate to favor a more vibrant chicken paradise. Fun-Land Farm is garishly bright, showcasing the false promises of the deceptively named poultry plant. Even the heist-like stunts feel higher stakes and more elaborate. There are more hijinks, slipping, falling, and scrambling than ever. 

Though the scale feels dialled up to 11, the film is missing its original creativity and simplistic but resilient spirit that made it an instant classic. Dawn of the Nugget is much more concerned with simple tropes like breaking away from tradition and marching to the beat of your own drum than anything revolutionary. Its simple premise and resistance to taking risks – both thematically and comedically – make the 101-minute run feel like a bit of a slog. 

It’s a lot to ask of a film – to be both a succinct manifesto about the state of modern politics and revolutionary movements and a hokey comedy about chickens falling on their heads – but it has been done before. Perhaps the reason Dawn of the Nugget felt so flat is the enormous shadow its predecessor casts upon the film. And, in the 20 years in between the first and second editions of Ginger and Rocky’s story, we’ve had plenty of time to fill in the gaps on our own. Dawn of the Nugget is a fine movie to turn on for the kids on a Saturday afternoon, but turn on Chicken Run (2000) and you might just have a revolution on your hands. 

Score: 12/24

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The films that have been selected are, I believe, the peak of cinematic mastery. They span nearly the length of cinema’s existence, and are deliberately chosen to reflect a wide range of genres, countries, and times. One major reason for this is to force myself to list films that are not exclusively 1980s horror movies, which I could quite easily do. The second is because that list would be wrong, as although they could be peak horror, some would undoubtedly be worse than films outside the genre.

Therefore, for better or for worse, at the time of writing, listed from oldest to youngest and with no system of ranking, here are my picks for the 10 Best Films of All Time.

Follow me on X (Twitter) – @KJudgeMental

10. La Voyage dans la Lune (1902)

It is impossible to understate how important this film was.

From the grandfather of special effects, Georges Méliès, come fifteen minutes of sheer adventure, adapting the Jules Verne novels “From the Earth to the Moon”, and “Around the Sun”, along with H. G. Wells’ “First Men on the Moon”, it is a film which pushed the limits of the medium, bringing thrills beyond the stars to the screen for all to see.

Hand-painted frame by frame to add a splash of colour, employing all of Méliès’ stage magic knowhow, it still has the power to captivate to this day, despite being created only seven years after the Lumiere brothers demonstrated their kinematograph at the 1895 December World Fair. The rocket splatting into the eye of the moon is an image almost everyone in the world has seen, despite rarely knowing where it comes from.

It is fun and joyous and, thanks to restoration work and new scores, able to keep its legacy going over 120 years later. Not a single cast or crew member from this film is alive today, yet A Trip to the Moon lives on.

9. Psycho (1960)

We could argue over Hitchcock’s best film for decades. Indeed, many have done, and we still never will agree. Vertigo famously dethroned Citizen Kane in Sight and Sound magazine as the best film ever in 2011, a title the Welles film had held for many decades. Yet Psycho takes my vote for numerous reasons.

Not only is its story iconic – the shower scene one of the greatest sequences in cinema history – and its production history something of legend, but it is supreme mastery of cinematic craftsmanship.

Every shot is glorious, every moment timed to perfection. Suspense is at an all-time high, mystery around every corner. Yet perhaps what is most startling is its efficiency, Hitchcock’s most underappreciated skill. If a scene required 50 cuts, he’d have it. If it required a simple shot/reverse shot with the most subtle of powerful, timed camera cuts to a tighter or a lower angle (see the dinner between Marion and Norman), he did it. It is an exercise in extreme precision, in efficiency of storytelling, and it cuts deeper than almost any other film.

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Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2022)
Director: Dean Fleischer Camp
Screenwriters: Dean Fleischer Camp, Jenny Slate
Starring: Jenny Slate, Isabella Rossellini, Dean Fleischer Camp

You might be mistaken for thinking that 2023 Oscars Animated Feature nominee Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is a film aimed at children, as you follow a small, animated shell wearing tiny little shoes. But regardless of its PG rating and heart-warming story, it is far more than just a kid’s film: Marcel feels about as human as it possibly gets. Based on a series of shorts of the same name written by Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer Camp, this film deals with feelings of loss, pain, grief, and loneliness – it is incredibly humanistic, and from the very first minute the love that will soon blossom for this little guy becomes enchanting.

Marcel (voiced by Jenny Slate) is a 1-inch-tall anthropomorphic shell, with a big googly eye and a lovely little pair of trainers that are far too big for his body (which is what people have been saying to him for so long). Marcel lives in a large house (although, that could be anything from the size of a matchbox) with his Nana Connie (voiced by Isabella Rossellini). The two of them are the last remaining residents of a community of shells and other items that mysteriously disappeared two years prior. Their house now acts as an Airbnb, and after successfully avoiding many of the former guests that have stayed there over the years, one particular guest called Dean (Dean Fleischer Camp) discovers this tiny new friend and decides to make a short film about Marcel’s life and post it online. Marcel’s hopes are that this nationwide coverage will reunite him with his family and friends at long last.

There’s something about stop-motion animation that other forms of the craft cannot compare with. It has a real warmth to it; you can feel the hours of painstaking patience that go into the movements with each frame. This film blends stop-motion with live-action to create a merging of worlds that becomes so real and authentic that you almost forget that this tiny shell is fictional. Marcel is very intuitive and has created hacks to get around the house to make his and Nana Connie’s life that little bit easier, like moving around in a tennis ball, or creating zip-lines from ledge to ledge, and what might possibly be the best of the lot, a dusty record which now acts as an ice-rink – this is a fantastic example of the flawless coalition between filmmaking techniques that really elevates the film’s magic.

There is a whimsical charm to Marcel the Shell with Shoes On that makes the overall experience exceptional, and one of the outstanding aspects that evokes such mysticism is the film’s soundtrack. It is a mix of gorgeously subtle sounds and music consisting of original compositions, ambient synth music, diegetic and natural sounds, and even character noises – it’s incredibly poetic and the romance that blossoms between sound and image throughout is as perfect a combination as fish and chips. But with music setting the scene and taking it to a special point, it’s down to the characters themselves to take over and run the anchoring leg of the race.

The characters are so endearing and the relationships that develop are key for maximum adorableness. Marcel and Nana are the sweetest little duo in existence (yes, that’s right, it’s a fact), but Marcel and Dean’s connection is that of an odd couple who are consistently teasing one another, but ultimately care for each other’s wellbeing. The voice acting is a huge factor in the two shells’ likability though. Although you don’t like to say it, Jenny Slate might have found her niche as a voice actor, cultivating her vocal cords for use in these extraordinary characters and offering them so much potency and vigour. But the brilliant Isabella Rossellini adds such a fantastic aspect to the role of the courageous but fragile Nana Connie that it feels personal, as if they are intertwined.

It’s a difficult task to obtain the perfect amount of realism with an animated film and then inject those emotions into its characters – you know, with them not being real humans and all. But this film manages to capture the pain of real-world problems while portraying them with the utmost care. Whether it’s capturing the shyness of Marcel, or the slow deterioration of Nana, Marcel is quite harrowing at times, and it will knock you off guard with a giant punch to the gut if you’re not careful.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is a film that has the potential to make the toughest of people weep like never before. It is so profound and poignant; it consists of such heart that it becomes far more than just a nice little story with a quirky animated protagonist. The messages it successfully instils in you are so great, that this very fictional film begins to evolve into one of the most human experiences of recent times.

Score: 22/24

Written by John McDonald

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Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022)
Directors: Guillermo del Toro, Mark Gustafson
Screenwriters: Guillermo del Toro, Patrick McHale
Starring: Ewan McGregor, David Bradley, Gregory Mann, Christoph Waltz, Tilda Swinton, Ron Perlman, Finn Wolfhard, Cate Blanchett, Burn Gorman, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson

“Pinocchio” adaptations are like buses, apparently; you wait for one for ages and then three come along at once.

Guillermo del Toro has often spoken of a few key formative texts that have influenced his storytelling through the medium of film from the very beginning. One is Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and another is Carlo Collodi’s “The Adventures of Pinocchio”, which he brings to striking life in stop-motion animation for Netflix here.

In a reimagining of the classic children’s story re-staged to take place in the lead up to WWII and the rise of Mussolini’s fascist Italy, Sebastian J Cricket (Ewan McGregor) recounts the tale of woodcarver Geppetto (David Bradley) who makes a puppet to replace his beloved son Carlo (Gregory Mann) whom was lost to a bombing raid. Hardly any time at all after Pinocchio (also voiced by Mann) is brought to life by magic, he is separated from his father and exploited by many parties interested in the potential of an immortal wooden being. 

“No art form has influenced my life and my work more than animation, and no single character in history has had as deep of a personal connection to me as Pinocchio.” – Guillermo del Toro

The sheer amount of detail packed into every hand-crafted frame is truly staggering. Every environment buzzes with life, every incidental background character seems to be on a journey of their own taking place just off-screen. From the moment we see the meticulousness of Geppetto’s craft, how much love he puts into every stage of shaping an unremarkable lump of wood into something useful, or something beautiful, we get the unmistakable sense that the team of animators working on the film are putting just as much of themselves into their own craft.

This Pinocchio definitely feels of a piece with del Toro’s other period pieces that discuss the innocence of childhood ended by warfare, The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth, and it’s no wonder as he has said in interviews that he considers them a thematic trilogy.

You find yourself thinking of such dark satires as Jojo Rabbit in the terrifying scenes of fascist soldiers preparing child recruits with war games while extolling the virtues of fanatical nationalism. This is the very creepy substitution for the boys being kidnapped and transformed into donkeys seen in most versions of the story. 

Del Toro famously loves his monsters and he isn’t afraid of making his Pinocchio monstrous to an extent. The horror-tinged spidery way he moves when he first wakes up and springs at a terrified Geppetto (he just wants a hug), and the manner in which he is broken down and rebuilt multiple times throughout the film, is rather disturbing and at odds with his positive, affable personality. The wooden boy is understandably confused and saddened at the reaction he provokes at church when the congregation are proclaiming him as something unnatural and sinful with one breath, and worshipping a wooden Jesus on the cross the next. 

About 40 minutes into this latest take on Pinocchio you might be feeling like it’s a pretty standard re-telling of the story using the most labour-intensive form of animation there is. But then the wooden boy ends up in a kind of limbo, escorted by undead rabbits to an audience with the sphinx-like Angel of Death (Tilda Swinton), and you realise that only del Toro would tell the tale quite like this; Gothic and metaphysical. All versions of “Pinocchio” are about love and what it means to be human, but no other version is as explicitly about death and living with grief.

A debate that went semi-viral recently with the release of Henry Sellick’s Wendell & Wild was how little credit stop-motion directors receive compared to their big name collaborators who have also made live-action films. It’s known as Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas because he conceived it and produced it, but many forget that Sellick was the director and was there every step of the way. While there’s little doubt that del Toro was more hands-on here than Burton ever was, you have to give credit to his co-director Mark Gustafson for the day-to-day guiding of the project and being an essential part of making the animation come to life.

As per usual with del Toro’s work, humanity is far more monstrous than anything otherworldly. The characters are a mixture of those from Collodi’s story (Pinocchio and Geppetto, the Cricket, Candlewick) and new creations to fit the time and place this version is set in. Ron Perlman’s sinister fascist officer Podestà not only serves the same story function as the Coachman from Collodi’s story but could also conceivably be the Italian cousin of Vidal from Pan’s Labyrinth, and Christoph Waltz’s creepy Mangiafuoco/Stromboli stand-in Count Volpe (a gleefully entertaining vocal performance) evokes every exploitative charlatan that profits in times of turmoil.

If there’s one major criticism you could level at this new Pinocchio, it’s that it tries to keep too many plates spinning in the air at once. Thank heavens that it’s not the bland, mass-produced product that was the recent Disney/Robert Zemeckis version, but it also occasionally loses sight of the pure heart and the sheer magic of the thing in its eagerness to make this version darker and more relevant to contemporary society. It is admittedly stronger when it’s being bleak and thoughtful as some of the jokes and certainly most of the songs don’t quite work (Sebastian’s is so bad it becomes a running gag that he keeps getting cut off right until the end credits).

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is a vivid and hard-hitting reimagining of a classic story that can’t be faulted for its boldness, ambition and beauty, but loses some of the story’s pure, timeless simplicity and childlike sense of wonder. It’s in a completely different league to the latest Disney version, but it is still Matteo Garronne’s authentic Italian take from 2019 that is the most definitive of the recent adaptations.

Score: 20/24