If you’re not big on collecting exclusive toys, you might not be familiar with the Be@rbrick series of collectible anthro-bear figurines, created by the MediCom Toy Company of Japan. Well now, they’ve stepped things up even further by teaming with Dreamworks Animation to bring us the new Be@rbrick CGI series, which premiered on Apple TV+ this month. According to Animation World Network, “Be@rbrick follows Jasmine Finch and her bandmates as they pursue their dreams and inspire others to do the same. But it won’t be easy to do when living in a world where everyone’s role is chosen for them and where the painted-on look you receive when you graduate from high school determines who you’ll be for the rest of your life. Jasmine realizes that in order for her world to change, she and her friends will have to make it happen themselves.” More interesting stuff: “Meghan McCarthy (My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Centaurworld) serves as developer, showrunner, executive producer, and writer. Alex Almaguer (TrollsTopia) is the supervising producer, with Taylor Orci (Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts) serving as story editor, and Athena Hofmann (Amateur) serving as line producer. Timbaland serves as executive music producer.” That’s a serious line-up of experienced talent for a new show.

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.

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.

I've already seen this movie twice, paying full price both times. Kung Fu Panda 4 is the first movie I've watched multiple times in theaters since Zootopia. I liked it, is what I'm saying. It is part of the Kung Fu Panda series of movies, which would be important to furry movie fans even if they weren't very good. No other fully-anthropomorphic-animal-populated movie franchise out there has gotten to four movies. Fortunately, the series has consistently been one of the better animated franchises, furry or not.

In this fourth instalment, directed by Oklahoma's own Mike Mitchell (with co-director Stephanie Ma Stine), the titular Kung Fu Panda, Po (voiced by Jack Black), first Dragon Warrior of the Valley of Peace, is tasked with finding his replacement by Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffmann) – explicitly identified as a red panda for the first time in the series. Unwilling to accept giving up his role as protector of the Valley, he instead joins sneaky fox thief Zhen (voiced by Awkwafina, Zhen is not one of the "big three" fox species of red, Arctic and fennec, but a rarely-seen Corsac fox) on a quest to defeat the Chameleon (Viola Davis; no bonus points for guessing her species), an evil sorceress with the ability to shapeshift and steal kung fu powers, like a PG funny animal version of Mortal Kombat's Shang Tsung.

"Can a robot turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?"
"Can you?"
-The one good part of I, Robot

Bogged down in all the recent controversy about "generative AI" is that one of the reasons the research began was, in creating a program that can "create" a painting, we are theoretically trying to answer the evergreen science fiction question of whether a machine can become, well, perhaps not "human". Maybe a better word would be "anthropomorphic".

DreamWorks Animation's The Wild Robot will be coming to theaters September 20 of this year. Pretentious preambles aside, this movie is not just of furry interest because it has a robot that can be described as anthropomorphic; the trailer reveals plenty of animal characters who can also be described as anthropomorphic.

After 16 years since his first movie and eight years since his last, in Kung Fu Panda 4, the titular panda Po will return March 8 of next year. He's been holding something back for a while now, and as this trailer shows, he's finally going to get it all out of his system. (People might have been expecting it to be bit bigger, actually.)

The results of the eighth once in a decade Sight and Sound "Greatest Films of All Time" poll were released last year, which kind of puts my list in its place. The number one movie there was Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles; haven't seen that one yet. Catchy title, though! Hey, my top pick for 2017 did make top 100 (in a five way tie for last)! Well, let's see how influential my picks for this year are in 10 years for the next poll.

So, this is a year end top ten list of my picks for favorite movies of the year. Pretty simple premise, and I've written what counts and what doesn't before, and this is the internet, so I can just link to older lists if you want the nitty gritty details. I don't need to rehash them. Though Flayrah is a furry site, this is not a furry list. However, I will pick out my favorite furry movie of the year, which was Turning Red this year, as well as a Cutest Vixen Award, just for fun. This year's prestigious CVA goes to Diane Foxington, a.k.a. the Crimson Paw, in The Bad Guys. It was an overall pretty good year for movies, so much that I actually feel like giving away a few honorable mentions, listed here in no particular order other than alphabetical; Beast, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Three Thousand Years of Longing and The Woman King. Also, shoutout to Prey, which was streaming exclusive, and which I didn't consider for the list, but was worth a shoutout anyway.

Well, let's get to the list proper. The film's title and posters link to IMDB or a Flayrah review for more information than the short blurb here could give you. Enjoy!

Let's start at the beginning.

Before Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, even. How about DreamWorks Animation's new studio bumper? It's a bit ostentatious, even a bit overly pleased with itself. Maybe goes on a little long. But, then again, what studio bumper doesn't, nowadays? But, being a celebration of DreamWorks past triumphs, it's interesting to note what franchises were chosen to be spotlighted.

Right out the gate, the Bad Guys are getting quite a vote of confidence, despite being the new guys with one movie under their belts. So I think it's safe to say we're getting a sequel. Also for furries, the Kung Fu Panda series is featured, and we already know that's got a fourth movie coming. The How To Train Your Dragon series is also represented by Toothless, despite the fact that the last movie came to a very decisive story end. It's one of the more acclaimed franchises of DreamWorks, so it has to show up, and even if there are no more movies, smaller screen spinoffs are still happening. There are also appearances by the Trolls and Boss Baby franchises, but they aren't furry, so who cares?

There are some notable absences, however. Despite featuring four movies, the Madagascar franchise is ignored. Spirit, you know, the one with the horse? That somehow managed two movies, but is apparently not an ongoing concern. And obviously, the Shrek franchise is prominently featured, but the star of the movie we're about to actually start reviewing is not. Maybe he'll show up in the bumper for movies he's not the star of?

The Bad Guys, a DreamWorks Animation film directed by Pierre Perifel, should be a slam dunk, right?

With a voice cast of personal favorites such as Sam Rockwell, Awkwafina and Craig Robinson? Full of anthropomorphic animal characters in a kid-friendly Tarantino take-off? And there's even a furry vixen in the mix? What, is it my birthday? (Actually, that's Saturday.) [Happy Birthday! --The editors]

Featuring a criminal gang of five predatory animals, meet Mr. Wolf (Rockwell), Mr. Snake (voiced by Marc Maron), Miss Tarantula (Awkwafina), Mr. Shark (Robinson) and Mr. Piranha (Anthony Ramos).

After a television interview with the local governor, a vixen named Diane Foxington, Mr. Wolf is goaded into carrying out a ridiculously difficult heist. Which correspondingly goes ridiculously wrong. The gang are put in the care of Professor Marmalade (Richard Ayoade), a guinea pig who tries to teach them how to be good guys.

Though it’s the baby of Oscar categories, the Best Animated Feature Academy Award will turn 21 this Sunday, meaning it would be old enough to drink alcohol in America, if it could actually do that. Encanto, Flee, Luca, The Mitchells vs. the Machines and Raya and the Last Dragon will compete to become the next recipient of the award.

First introduced in 2001, Best Animated Feature is the only “new” category to be introduced this century so far. Like many new categories, a few animated features had earned "Special Achievement" Oscars, starting with the original American made animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, with another going to 1997’s Toy Story, as well as one to the live action/animated hybrid Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Other movie awards followed the Oscars, adding their own animated categories, though the Annies, which are for animation, had obviously been awarding Best Feature for a few years.

Since 2001, 20 movies have won the award, which is a nice round number for doing a countdown, worst to best. The following ranking is based on my opinions, and my opinions only. But, even if you think my rankings are horrible, no good, absolutely wrong, well, I’ve also included a lot of factoids and trivia, so that might be worth reading. Also, not all of the winners have been particularly furry, but most have something of interest to furries going on in them.

Update: The original list was through 2021 only, but has been updated to include the 95th Academy Awards' winner on March 2, 2025, the day of the 97th Academy Awards. The plan is to make this traditional.

Exciting news from the world of streaming. “DreamWorks Animation has shared a teaser trailer for the all-new CG animated series Dragons: The Nine Realms. Inspired by the hugely popular How to Train Your Dragon movie franchise, the show premieres on Hulu and Peacock December 23. Set 1,300 years after the events of How to Train Your Dragon, dragons are now just a legend to the modern world. When a geological anomaly opens an immense, miles-deep fissure in the Earth’s surface, scientists from all over the world gather at a new research facility to study the mysterious phenomenon. Soon a group of misfit kids, brought to the site by their parents, uncover the truth about dragons and where they’ve been hiding — a secret they must keep to themselves to protect what they’ve discovered.” Find out more and see the teaser trailer over at AWN.

image c. 2021 Dreamworks

And now a rather different take on Dreamworks’ How To Train Your Dragon universe, this time in a new Netflix TV series for young viewers. Animation World Network gave us the scoop: “DreamWorks Animation has just unveiled the high-flying trailer and cast of its new animated preschool series, Dragons Rescue Riders. This all-new chapter in the Oscar-nominated How to Train Your Dragon franchise follows the adventures of twins, Dak and Leyla, raised by dragons, who share a unique ability to communicate with them. The brother and sister lead a team of five young dragons, Aggro, Winger, Summer, Cutter, and Burple, with whom they spend their days rescuing other dragons and helping people in their adopted town of Huttsgalor. All 14 episodes of the new series debut September 27 exclusively on Netflix.” Check out the preview trailer as well.

image c. 2019 Dreamworks Animation

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019) is the latest film in the HTTYD series, the first of which came out in 2010 and was followed by a second film in 2014. Now, after a four-and-a-half-year gap, we have a third one, presumably (?) the last, but even if DreamWorks decides to keep the film franchise going, The Hidden World feels like the completion of a trilogy, all of which have involved Dean DeBlois as screenwriter and director.

I'm going to try and avoid major spoilers, so I'll summarize the plot points introduced in the early part of the film. I won't be linking to trailers, because they give away some of the locations and scene gags that are better kept a surprise. I watched a 2D screening, and I haven't kept up with any of the franchise spinoffs or shorts. I'm not a fan of most of the dragon designs or of several secondary characters, but regardless, I've happily enjoyed Hiccup and Toothless' adventures together.

So here’s what we just found over at Slash Film: “Variety reports that [Dreamworks Animation] is in final negotiations for the movie rights to Jerry Hawthorne’s board game Mice and Mystics. The role-playing game, which was our No. 1 pick for games that should be adapted to film, follows mice heroes who must race through a vast castle to break the curse of the evil Vanestra, fighting rats, cockroaches, spiders, and the castle cat, Brodie. Its complex, deeply involved story seemed perfect for a big-screen adaptation, and it seems that DreamWorks thinks so too. If talks go through, The Hills Have Eyes and Horns director Alexandre Aja is set to direct a script by Aquaman scribe David Leslie Johnson. Vertigo Entertainment’s Roy Lee and Jon Berg are producing.” Sounds like there is some serious talent behind this project, yes?

image c. 2018 by John Ariosa

Well, they aren’t human. The first “real” trailer for DreamWorks’ Trolls has just been released.