Every year without fail, Hollywood and other foreign markets bring unforgettable cinematic experiences to the masses, feeding our senses with creativity, imagination, and in rare instances, the impossible. In many cases, we’re spoiled when it comes to live-action offerings, but what about animation? Today, we’re looking back on 2009, the year James Cameron’s Avatar made Hollywood history at the box office, Fever Ray’s self-titled album cracked my Top 100 of all time, and Octomom became the ringmaster of a media circus.
Looking back, there are any number of wild pop culture milestones to mark the year Lady Gaga took the Electropop genre by storm. Still, today, we’re setting our sights on the greatest animated films of 2009, with a Top 5 list that’s sure to make you feel nostalgic and appreciative of the leaps we’ve made in the cinematic art form since then.
5) Redline
In 2009, gear heads and grease monkeys everywhere got their chance to come out from under the car to celebrate the arrival of Takeshi Koike’s exhilarating anime Redline, which tells the story of 3 very different street racers who all have two things in common: a lust for the open road and an unquenchable desire to be the very best. Redline is a race held every five years that crowns the galaxy’s fastest driver. Men, women, and aliens alike show up for this momentous occasion in an effort to prove their mettle in the ways of intergalactic death racing. In Redline, there is only one rule: whoever crosses the finish line first wins, by any means necessary.
Described as “Speed Racer on crack”, Redline is indeed a visual assault on the senses, with its inky art style giving the film a dense, angular look that harkens back to Liquid Television’s Æon Flux and Hiroyuki Imaishi’s Dead Leaves. The film positively drips with style, and the kinetic, fluid animation gives Redline a sense of speed that will have your hair blowing like the dude in that classic Maxell commercial. The film took 7 years to produce from start to finish and features 100,000 hand-drawn cells. It’s a work of fast-moving art that brings extreme drama to the race track, and looks damn good while doing it.
4) Coraline
Few first efforts hit as hard as Laika’s first feature-length film, Coraline. Inspired by Neil Gaiman’s horror fantasy children’s novel, Coraline is a stop-motion animated marvel that’s imaginative, mesmerizing, and genuinely scary. Wandering her rambling old house in her boring new town, a young girl named Coraline discovers a hidden door to a strangely idealized version of her life that seems too good to be true. In a stroke of genius, Laika partnered with The Nightmare Before Christmas helmer Henry Selick for Coraline, bringing his stop-motion expertise to this wild, dark adventure into nightmarish territory that made Laika a household name.
I’ll never forget seeing Coraline in theaters with my mom. It premiered on the silver screen at the start of Hollywood’s obsession with 3D filmmaking, and it remains one of the best examples of the technology I’ve seen outside of James Cameron’s Avatar film series. Unlike other animated films intended for all ages, Coraline includes bone-chilling scenes that stay with you long after the credits roll, and the film’s use of color and music is exceptional. If you do some online digging, the movie lends itself to some seriously sinister theorycrafting, with fans sharing dark thoughts about the film’s conclusion and whether the world Coraline visits remains her forever home by the end of the adventure.
3) Fantastic Mr. Fox
Dear Wes Anderson, please, come back to the stop-motion genre. Fantastic Mr. Fox remains one of your most delightful films, and the world needs your unique sensibilities in the animation space. Sincerely, a fan. In Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, an urbane fox cannot resist returning to his farm raiding ways and then must help his community survive the farmers’ retaliation. Co-written by Anderson and Noah Baumbach, based on the 1970 novel by Roald Dahl, Fantastic Mr. Fox is a brilliant exploration of class struggle, gender roles, and coming to terms with your nature.
The film depicts an ongoing war between Mr. Fox, voiced to perfection by George Clooney, and the high-rolling farmers who keep “wild animals” in their place by forcing them to live underground and subsist on scraps. The movie always gives me Robin Hood vibes. Still, it becomes much more than that as Anderson explores the habits, desires, and tenacity of creatures willing to risk everything to escape a life of mediocrity. Fantastic Mr. Fox never loses its appeal or punch because, unfortunately, it becomes more relatable by the day as the real world continues to struggle with the concepts of equality and establishing a society that lifts each other instead of leaving their neighbors to scrounge in the soil.
2) Summer Wars
Also known as my favorite anime ever, Mamoru Hosoda’s Summer Wars is a visual feast for the senses. This emotional, visually splendiferous anime shines with an unforgettable cast of characters, Defcon 1-level danger, and a budding romance that will have you cheering before the credits roll. Summer Wars tells the story of a student who tries to fix a problem he accidentally caused in OZ, a digital world, while pretending to be his friend’s fiancé at her grandmother’s 90th birthday.
Summer Wars is everything I want in an animated feature. Every time I watch it, I discover something new and fall deeper in love with Natsuki Shinohara and Kenji Koiso’s endearing relationship. Summer Wars is a film you surrender to, letting it take you deep into OZ, where its visuals surpass my wildest fever dreams and expectations. I recently watched Summer Wars in 4K on a projection screen with Dolby surround sound and rumble seats. I don’t know that I’ve been the same since. If you’re looking for an anime that packs an uppercut of a visual punch, a story of seemingly ordinary people achieving outstanding things, and a romance that’s as rewarding as it is endearing, Summer Wars will lift your spirits and make you glad to be alive.
1) Up
How dare you, Pixar! How dare you make me feel feelings and confront my own mortality in the span of seven emotionally pulverizing minutes! Pixar’s Up chronicles the epic journey of 78-year-old Carl Fredrickson to South America. Along his journey, Carl confronts a world that’s been waiting for him since the loss of his late wife, Ellie.
Like some of Pixar’s greatest work, Up packs a wallop that feels earned, unforgettable, and unforgivable. While many hail the film’s opening sequence as some of the best animation ever put to film, the rest of the movie takes audiences on a grand adventure as two generations of friends navigate a strange world that threatens to eat them alive if they don’t make peace with their doubts and insecurities. Up never ages, and the story resonates with audiences of all ages for reasons that are both shared and personal. I couldn’t imagine giving the top spot on this list to any other film. Unless it’s Summer Wars, but I know better than to throw chum in the comments section.
There you have it, folks. What do you think about our Top 5 Animated Films of 2009 list? Are your favorite films represented here? Are there any grievous omissions? Leave us a comment and let us know what your Top 5 Animated Films of 2009 are! Until next time. Cheers!
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