What Did You Watch? 2025-01-04 (Saturday)

On the final weekend of my staycation I did some much needed straitening up while I also continued to make my way through selected animated films in my collection.  I watched:
The Secret of NIMH (blu-ray) 1982 animated film directed by Don Bluth. This was a childhood favorite.  I've been looking forward to watching it again but holding off for either a live action remake (which has been long promised!) or a 4K upgrade.  But I'm going through my animated films this month and couldn't wait any longer.  On the surface the plot is a bunch of talking mice living on a farm.  A mother mouse goes to rats and asks for help moving her house.  I was about 5 when this movie came out.  Watching it as a kid, this movie had blood, cursing, graphic murder.  Sure they were mice, but they weren't messing around.  As a 5 or 6-year-old, this was probably the most hard-core cartoon I'd watched up to that point.  And as adult, the movie continues to hold up great. I was on the fence about listening to the commentary track and started with the commentary, but then Bluth started to talk about the wonderful Jerry Goldsmith score and sound mix and convinced me to turn off the commentary and listen to the audio.  The movie really does have a good Goldsmith score.
The Last Unicorn (4K disc) 1982 animated film directed by Rankin and Bass based on the novel by Peter S. Beagle.  Much like the Secret of NIMH, this is an animated film I watched as a kid that I remember for being much more on the adult side of things.  The plot involves a unicorn that goes on a journey to discover if she is the last one or not.  Another child hood favorite that holds up great.
Heavy Metal (4K disc) 1981 R-rated animated anthology film.  Each segment tells a different story featuring an evil glowing green ball.
Robot Carnival (4K disc) 1987 Japanese animated anthology film.  Each segment tells a different story featuring robots.  Most of the stories are told visually without much dialogue.  I tend to pair this with "Akira" because one of the segments was directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, who also directed "Akira."  This new 4K presentation looks great.
Akira (4K disc) 1988 Japanese R-rated animated film.  This is set in a post world war III future in Neo-Tokyo and follows the leader of a biker gang who winds up having to do battle against his telekinetic friend. The movie holds up great.  But where is Taika Waititi's long promised live-action remake?!?
I burned through my 80s animated movies (the ones I *wanted* to watch) a lot faster than I thought, so I moved up a decade.
Cool World (blu-ray) 1992 live action and animated movie directed by Ralph Bakshi and starring Brat Pitt as a human in a cartoon world who has to figure out Who Framed Roger Rabbit, wait wrong movie.  Pitt plays a human cop living in the cartoon world.  Kim Basinger also stars.  She is basically a Jessica Rabbit rip off who brings Gabriel Byrne into the cartoon universe to have sex with her so she can enter the real world. But once there she threatens to destroy reality.  I don't think I've watched this since I saw it in the theater in 1992.  I don't recall carrying much for it at the time, but after so many years I really just wanted to see it again.  I still didn't care much for it.  But I have a very strong impression this movie was meant to be hard "R" and Bakshi was forced to tone it down for a PG-13 which left it with this weird doesn't work tone.
Titan A.E. (DVD) Don Bluth directed this  2000 animated sci-fi epic starring Matt Damon as one of the last humans after a hostile alien species blew up the Earth.  I have been wanting to watch this again for many years.  I've been holding out because it was never released on Blu-ray and back when it would air on cable it wasn't in the proper aspect ratio.  I finally gave in and went with the DVD.  To my surprise the picture quality was actually pretty good, but I suspect that was probably due to my projector doing most of the heavy lifting.  But most importantly it was in the proper aspect ratio.  The movie held up very well.  I've always liked it and it's a shame it was such a huge flop when it came out.  It flopped so bad they shuttered Fox animation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK7huyUD3i8
What did you watch?