A movie marathon night when you are giddy with nostalgia
For your next move night theme, here are handpicked mainstream successes to evoke childhood innocence with a tinge of melancholy
The cartoon caricatures of the Beatles are chicly portrayed in Yellow Submarine, a brilliant animation from 1968 with the legendary songs perfectly fitted into the frames. The work has been archived and restored with much adoration and reverence.
In the years following its release, the film had garnered a lot of craze for the wacky characters and live-action sequences, all hand-drawn animation revamped with CGI and motion-caption technology evident in Beowulf and A Christmas Carol. The restored version has sixteen original Beatles songs as you partake in the psychedelic trip to Pepperland. Yellow Submarine is a time capsule if you are in the mood.
My Neighbour Tortoro, a Studio Ghibli production, has dazzled its audiences and left them awestruck with the outstanding puppetry that waves its magic wand and extends to the farthest realm of a fantasy ride. The film breathes a whiff of fresh air to inflate the imagination bubble deflated with Western fairytales by infusing Shinto and Japanese folklore. Witty and authentic in craft, the film involves some engulfing physical comedy to help you savour the genuine taste of fantasy animation. A few minutes into the film you realise why for generations it has been hailed as Disney’s finest implementation of magic realism irrespective of the average, good-to-go special effects.
For many, Charlotte’s Web is a resistance to crony capitalism and a binge-watch reinforces faith in simplicity, human relationships, contentedness, and gratitude. An adaptation of EB White's barnyard classic, the musical achieves more than plainly preaching how to defend half-term boredom; life’s blues. Among the multiple versions, the 1973 release with Debbie Reynold as the barn spider Charlotte, stays with audiences.
Its take on the unlikely friendship between the little piggy and spider fills your heart with an odd and compelling warmth, quite a rarity when talking about children’s films. The pathos in Charlotte Web is humane without for even once resorting to melodrama or misery.
The Lewis Carroll cult classic has been adapted on screen countless times. Few can level up to the sheer genius of Jonathan Miller’s 1966 film which epitomises the disturbing, dreamy, and odd aspects of the original novel and magnify the Victorian notions of childhood. Miller’s film dares to diss the fantastic and whimsical of Disney’s animated adaptation to opt for a more sombre and naturalistic vibe with Ravi Shankar’s sitar as the bgm.
Another curious execution is the corridor as the trap through which Alice falls into the Wonderland instead of the age-old rabbit hole. If you are in for a mind-boggling pantomime, Miller’s Alice in Wonder is as cerebral as a children’s book adaptation could get.
The musical is a breezy ride with all singing, hearty prancing, and hurrahing to blow off some steam. The exhilaration might exhaust you but what is worthwhile of your time is the song sequences. Alisha Weir does justice to Ronald Dahl’s bookish Mathilda who lives in the world of Bronte and Dostoevsky. Mathilda is quite posh and chic in its execution of a stage musical with all its funky colour palette and hyperreality, not uncommon in Paddington films.
This sugar rush of a film is a hybrid live-action animation from 1964 and is highly capable of bestowing a calm enchantment on the viewers as they croon to The Life I Lead. The gentle silliness of Mary Poppins is why people keep on returning to it, overlooking the other lapses and trivialities.
