Animal kingdom animation movie

With hundreds of animated features being produced annually around the globe, there will inevitably be some cartoon horror shows that pop up out of nowhere with little fanfare. Take, for instance, Animal Kingdom: Let’s Go Ape, which Signature Entertainment will debut next Friday in Vue Cinemas throughout the UK. Details are sparse, but it appears to be a French production funded primarily by Pathé. Although some of the animation was set up in France, the motion capture animation was done by India’s Prana Studios, which also animates Disney films like Planes and Tinker Bell:Legend of the Neverbeast. The film has some known names behind it: French actor Jamel Debbouze ( Amélie, Days of Glory) directed the film, and Didier Brunner ( Ernest & Celestine, The Secret of Kells, The Triplets of Belleville) lent his name as an associate producer. It appears that the project began with good intentions, adapted from Roy English’s cult 1960 novel Evolution Man, Or, How I Ate My Father, which was also the film’s original French title before the producers realized that you can’t distribute a family film to English-speaking audiences with that title. There’s so many poor creative decisions packed into the two trailers above that you almost want to watch the film just to see how bad it gets. According to the only review I’ve found so far, inside of his loincloth throughout the entire film. The decision is not entirely without reason: some years ago the actor Debbouze lost the use of his rig...

PARK CITY — The Australian gangster movie “Animal Kingdom” is a brooding, intimate, clear-eyed look at the precipitous downfall of a family in the Melbourne underworld. This crime film is not jokey like a Quentin Tarantino film, nor an epic romance like a Francis Ford Coppola film. Instead writer-director David Michod opts for a naturalistic drama rich in psychology and attention to details. There’s no glamour here, but one false move by anyone can result in death, so tension fills nearly every scene. The family business is nasty and wet — wet as in blood. Michod brings the viewer into a tacky suburban dwelling where the Cody clan and their friends live and plot their schemes. Seldom has a gangster film shown how utterly mundane evil can be. But the family itself is terrifying: If psychosis is hereditary, the Codys are Exhibit 1. The film’s entry point is young Joshua Cody (newcomer James Frecheville), whom everyone calls “J.” His mother wisely kept him away from her murderous family, but when she ODs on heroin, he has little choice but to be taken in by his grandmother Smurf Cody ( Family head, Pope (Ben Mendelsohn), is in hiding as several rogue cops want him dead. His partner, Baz (Joel Edgerton), would like to lie low permanently, putting his ill-gotten gains into the stock market and steering clear of crime. But Smurf still maintains charge of her family’s business, watching over her boys and giving each lingering kisses full on the mouth. Working in the drug trade ar...