Chickenhare and the Hamster of Darkness (trailer) is a 90-minute 3D kids animated adventure-comedy film. Released in 2022, it's important to note that this is an nWave Studios producion, a Belgian company whose output since 2008 has consistently ranged from "awful" to "thoroughly meh".

It's rare for their average IMDB score to go higher than 6 out of 10. This one was directed by Benjamin Mousquet and Ben Stassen, written by Dave Collard, and was very loosely inspired from graphic novels by Chris Grine.

I think Chickenhare has been the studio's... "best" work so far, but that's not saying much. Their second-best would probably be either The House of Magic (2013) or Son of Bigfoot (2018).

What I find fascinating about Chickenhare is that it's just on the edge of being okay. Most of its elements use well-worn tropes that you typically get in kids films, but other things are... different. Cheerfully absurd. It's not taking itself entirely seriously. It's solidly aimed at a young audience - but there's this odd, subtle undercurrent that only adults might notice, when they're not being bored. It's really difficult to put into words.

"Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was the most disappointing thing since my son."
- Mr. Plinkett

"Zootopia is definitely better than one of the most despised movies of the last decade!"
-some guy

Since we only had five reviews of the first Zootopia movie, you think not much else could be said about it, but, actually, it's been almost a decade, and Disney movies collect bad faith readings like Flayrah collects Zootopia reviews, and I'd like to address a few of those.

First, starting small, there's the "what do the predators eat?" thing which for some reason you still see bandied about like that's a clever observation, despite the movie's climax hinging the main predator character carrying a snack with him. Turns out, they eat food. Moving on, people like to complain about "copaganda", but, honestly, even if you accept all cops are bad, they have jobs that put them in dramatic situations regularly, so people are going to tell stories about them. That, and I've recently seen complaints that the Godfather parody glorifies criminals, so tie goes to the movie. The big one is the assertion that the main metaphor equates specific races (usually African American or black) with predatory species, when the metaphor is about minorities in general, and the movie does not specifically code most characters racially (though you could possibly argue the lead characters are pretty white-coded). An ironically bad faith defense here is that, when Disney racially codes an animal character, it's very noticeable, though they've mostly cut that out (mostly). Which brings me to the final complaint against Zootopia, which is that it is a Disney movie, and to that, all I can say is, well, nobody's perfect.

Zootopia 2 is the sequel to Zootopia, which makes sense. (The movies are also known as Zootropolis in certain regions, which makes less sense.)

Mahavatar Narsimha (clip) is the first in an intended series of 3D animated films from India, with the goal of telling the stories of the ten avatars of Vishnu. Released in 2025, it's directed by Ashwin Kumar, written by Jayapurna Das, and produced by Kleem Productions.

First and foremost, this is a religious film that takes its spiritual roots from Hindu mythology pretty seriously. It clocks in at over two hours long, and honestly I didn't have the patience to watch it from start to finish. I don't think I can objectively review such a film. I don't know the mythology, the religion, the symbolism or the culture that it's based upon.

It's struck a strong chord in India, becoming its highest-grossing domestic animated film in less than two weeks! So that's a positive sign. Whether you should try watching it - I can't say. This review will be a short summary that points out the anthropomorphic beings that appear.

Goldbeak (trailer) is a 90-minute 3D animated kids film. Although it came out in China in 2021 (original title: 老鹰抓小鸡), it's taken an unusually long time to get distributed, sometimes pretending that its year of release is more recent. It was produced by Liang Zi Film and Nigel W. Tierney, directed by Tierney and Dong Long, and written by Robert N. Skir, Jeff Sloniker, and Vivian Yoon.

In a world of mildly anthropomorphized birds, Goldbeak is an orphaned eagle who's raised by chickens in a rural village. He wants to fly, but most of the villagers don't help. They treat him as an outsider and eventually kick him out. Accompanied by his adoptive sister Ratchet (a gadgeteer genius), he makes the journey to the capital, the creatively-named Avian City.

Along the way he finds a mentor hermit who teaches him to fly. It turns out that Goldbeak is the long-lost nephew of the city's mayor. Then he wants to join the Eagle Scouts, an elite flying squad, but their leading member hates his guts. The mayor turns out to have sinister plans...

Furry Halloween recommendation! Night of the Zoopocalypse is a 92-minute film from 2024, co-produced between Canada, France and Belgium by... quite a lot of animation studios (we'll get to that). It was written by James Kee and Steven Hoban, and directed by Rodrigo Perez-Castro and Ricardo Curtis.

This is an animated comedy horror film for kids. It walks the fine line between those genres with perfect precision (specifically zombie apocalypse), and it works! It appeals to adults too; I'm not a fan of horror at all, and I loved it! Rotten Tomatoes rates it 88% / 82%. I'm not linking to a trailer, because I'd like to keep some things a surprise.

If you're looking to introduce kids to the horror genre, this is the film to do it with. In the past I might have said - reluctantly - Coraline, from the Laika studio. Most of their animated films tend to get... dark, but I'd also say they veer into the grotesque, and that's not so fun. Zoopocalypse doesn't do that. It's got slobber and slime here and there, yet surprisingly, no blood. And still, it works!

The basic premise is that a meteor fragment lands in a zoo during the night, turning an animal into a contagious, evil zombie monster who soon converts most of the other animals, except for a small group who must figure out how to survive. There are no humans in the movie, aside from some families and one zookeeper at the beginning, who leave at closing time.

The Bad Guys 2, directed by Pierre Perifel, is the latest theatrical release from DreamWorks Animation, and is the sequel to 2022's The Bad Guys, which has gone on to become very popular with furries. The titular "Bad Guys" are a gang of "scary" animal ex-thieves featuring Mr. Wolf (voiced by Sam Rockwell), Mr. Snake (voiced by Marc Maron), Miss Tarantula a.k.a. "Webs" (voiced by Awkwafina), Mr. Shark (voiced by Craig Robinson) and Mr. Piranha (voiced by Anthony Ramos), plus Diane Foxington (voiced by Zazie Beetz), the current fox governor of the state of California and also secretly an ex-thief known as the "Crimson Paw", who, unlike the Bad Guys, was never caught. Having given up their lives of crime last movie, this movie begins with the Bad Guys living the trials and tribulations of ex-cons.

The movie is already available for digital purchase, despite the movie only being out a little over two weeks. However, DreamWorks Animation has been playing Moneyball recently, spending about half as much as most of the other major studios on their theatrical releases, so they've already made back most of their money domestically, and are in the black (more or less) counting international grosses. It's not a big hit, but it is a "base" hit, and that's what DreamWorks is aiming for. DreamWorks Animation has never gotten past the billion mark (Shrek 2, way back in 2004, was the closest), and the company seems to have accepted this fact. If anything, when they make a "big swing" anymore, it's an Oscar play rather than box office, like last year's The Wild Robot, which ultimately did not win (once again, Shrek is DreamWorks's only Best Animated Feature, despite being the second most nominated studio in the category).

But the point of bringing up this "inside baseball" bit about box office is that this has already been earmarked as a DreamWorks franchise. Ironically, they were bumped by The Wild Robot in the studio's logo sequence this year, but that seems to be more about DreamWorks wanting to avoid having them appear in front of their own movie than lack of confidence. I'm very confident there will be a The Bad Guys 3, and am looking forward to it, because both movies have been a lot of fun.

What furry animated films might be coming out since our last list? (You can find some non-furry films discussed in the comments section.) As usual it's difficult to know for certain what's coming up, since a lot of films show up with unpredictable marketing, or might never reach completion, or might be a Warner Bros tax write-off.

Let's start with a little non-furry news! Ne Zha 2 (China, 2025) now holds the record for being the highest-grossing animated film ever, having earned over $2.2 billion. KPop Demon Hunters (Sony, 2025) on Netflix got over 33 million views in two weeks, and is still going strong.

The news site Cartoon Brew has a new owner and chief editor, who hopefully will be less snooty and won't accidentally create Brony fandom. Director Brad Bird is now over at SkyDance and might finally get to make Ray Gunn, a project he's wanted to do for 30 years.

Laika isn't leaking any information about Wildwood. DreamWorks' The Bad Guys 2 is just around the corner, and Zootopia 2 (Disney, 2025) is aiming at a Late November release for U.S. Thanksgiving and any cinema foolish enough to be in range of Midwest FurFest.

Nimona (trailer) is a 99-minute American animated movie released in 2023. It was eventually directed by Nick Bruno and Troy Quane, with a script by Robert Baird and Lloyd Taylor (plus additional writers), and was adapted from a webcomic/graphic novel by ND Stevenson. Originally it was produced by Blue Sky Studios, whose parent company was acquired by Disney before the project was finished. Disney cancelled it, likely due to its overt LGBTQ+ themes, and closed down Blue Sky to focus on their own, pre-existing animation studios. Luckily, they were willing to let Netflix acquire the rights, and it was completed by DNEG Animation and Annapurna Pictures.

And I am the wrong person to be reviewing this movie.

In my years of writing reviews, this is the second time this has happened. The first time was when Kyell Gold sent me a copy of Green Fairy to review. By no fault of Kyell's, or the story itself, aspects of the book set off multiple buttons in my head due to personal experiences from my past. This caused my brain to mis-map story elements, and it didn't work for me. I tried writing a review, and I couldn't bring myself to publish it at the time. It wasn't fair to the book, nor to Kyell's writing craft.

And so now I'm facing a similar dilemma with Nimona. This time, I'm going to attempt a review, but without all of my internal brain slop. You'll be getting some of it, but believe me when I say I'm leaving a lot out. (Deep breaths. Focus on the positive.) At this point the film is two years old and I'm assuming that most folks here have seen it, so I'm not going to be shy about major plot details.

However, despite my personal opinions, let me be clear: If you haven't watched this film, it's worth a watch. It's good. It's just I'm not the audience it's for. And that's ok! I still appreciate it for what it is. Stop reading here to avoid spoilers.

Reality of Hope, the Sundance Film Festival documentary around a furry friendship founded in spaces for Virtual Reality that turned into a real world life saving procedure of a kidney donation is set to publicly premiere on the weekend of furry's largest virtual gathering, Furality, on Sunday, June 8th.

"We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when, but I know we'll meet again some sunny day."
-Chikn Nuggit, "An episode made for Tik Tok in case the app gets banned for real"

"I missed."
-Pepé Le Pew, "For Scent-imental Reasons"

Animation, at least in America, feels a bit weird right now. Maybe a bit unhealthy, but not in a "sick and dying" kind of way, but in a "your diet is messed up" kind of way. My most recent review besides this one is Flow, a micro-budget independent movie from Latvia made with Blender, while The Day the Earth Blew Up is the latest iteration of major studio Warner Bros.'s most famous IP, featuring marketable characters older than World War II. And yet, somehow, the former review feels like an unnecessary noting of something everyone was already aware of anyway, while this review feels more like a spotlight on a small unknown that deserves a wider audience.

Three reviews today, starting with the trailers for:

The first two can be skipped, and the third is a maybe.

Welcome to my top ten list of movies for 2024. It's pretty self explanatory, and I've explained "the rules" plenty of times in the past, but I think I should explain one qualification for what constitutes a "2024" movie for my list, as it applies to one movie this year and has caused confusion in the past. Basically, I'm going by theatrical release, not festival premiere, like IMDB does.

Other than that, just a reminder that this isn't supposed to be a specifically furry list, even if this is a furry site, but I will award a Best Furry Movie, with this year going to The Wild Robot. At the start of the decade, this had a pretty high correlation with the Ursa Major Award for Best Anthropomorphic Motion Picture, with victories for Wolfwalkers and Raya and the Last Dragon, but in the last two years, I seem to have lost my short status as furry middlebrow tastemaker, as Turning Red lost to Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 lost to Nimona. All four of my picks for Best Furry Movie also ended up being my number one pick those four years, as well (spoilers for this year's list?). I also, just for fun, as a fox fan, give out a Cutest Vixen Award, and this year that goes to Zhen from Kung Fu Panda 4. In less furry accolades, I do sometimes list a movie from the previous year that might have made the list if I'd seen it before publication (not that this is a correction) and for 2023 I'll say The Holdovers was pretty good.

Sirocco and the Kingdom of Winds (trailer) is a 2D children's animated fantasy film, a Franco-Belgian production released in 2023, directed by Benoît Chieux who co-wrote it with Alain Gagnol. Imdb rates it 7/10.

Carmen and Juliette are sisters, whose mother drops them off with her friend Agnes to babysit for a day. Agnes has forgotten they'd be coming, and asks if they can be quiet for a half-hour while she takes a much-needed nap. She's the author of a long-running book series called Sirocco, and had been staying up all night writing.

Unable to sit still, Juliette rifles through one of Agnes' books, weird stuff happens, and the sisters end up in the world of the book, transformed into cats. After Juliette gets them in trouble with the local mayor, they embark on a quest with an avian opera singer named Selma to find the elusive Sirocco, a mysterious, reclusive, and mercurial sorceror.

Flow is about a black cat who lives alone, and then one day, it doesn't anymore. Because one day water came, too much water, and all the land was flooded. The cat ran away from the water, but it couldn't run forever, so it went to live on a boat with a friendly capybara. Together, the cat and the capybara followed the water, which flowed towards a giant pillar in the sky. It seemed like this would be the last dry land in all the world. Along the way, the capybara and the cat met a lemur, a dog and a secretary bird. Did they become friends? Probably.

There is no dialogue in this movie. Nobody explains anything to each other, for the convenience of the audience, because all the characters are animals, and they only say cat things like "meow" and dog things like "woof woof" and capybara things. If man could talk the animals, perhaps they would only find out that these animals don't really know what's happening either. Where did the water come from? Where did all the humans go? This is a world that has passed on.

Chris Sanders has only directed four animated features (plus a live action adaptation Call of the Wild), and the previous three (Lilo & Stitch, How to Train your Dragon and The Croods put him in four way tie for most nominations without a win in the Best Animated Feature category at the Oscars. It feels pretty certain that The Wild Robot will be the movie that finally wins him that Oscar, but we'll keep such speculation to a minimum.

Sanders's first feature, Lilo & Stitch, is probably the only truly great movie to come out of Walt Disney Animation Studios in the first decade of this century. (To be clear, you're allowed to like other movies from that decade, but most were flawed.) Anyway, the upshot of Lilo & Stitch becoming a beloved classic is that its directors, Sanders and his writing and directing partner, Dean Deblois, were driven out of Disney by John Lasseter a few years later (I don't like that guy).

Sanders and Deblois took their talents to DreamWorks Animation, where they delivered How to Train Your Dragon to the studio, often seen as one of the highlights of its output.

I've often seen Sanders cast as the "idea guy" in the Sanders/Deblois partnership, as well as being the guy who brings a lot of unique visual aspects to his projects, while Deblois is the more story-driven member of the partnership, bringing in the emotional aspects. I'm not so sure about that, especially after this movie, which features an emotional story just as potent as Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon, sans Deblois. The Wild Robot also features a visual design that echoes the original illustrations of the book it's based on, by Peter Brown, showing Sanders is more than just a recognizable art style.