January 6

4. Rise of the Guardians (2012)                                                                          IMDB Rotten Tomatoes

Rise of the Guardians, directed by Peter Ramsey, and including an all-star cast of Chris Pine, Alec Baldwin, Hugh Jackman, Jude Law, and Isla Fisher. I have to say this film is fantastic. In my recent post I talked about the lack of quality in so many of the animated movies coming out these days, but this film is not one of them. I could not believe how well this film was made. For one, it is absolutely gorgeous. It took me a solid 20 minutes of the film just to stop drooling over the absolutely beautiful character and environment renderings.

The film also has an absolutely fantastic concept, and proved to be one of the best family Christmas movies that I've seen in a very long time. It has the right balance of emotion, awesome-ness, impeccable acting and story-telling, and holiday cheer. I walked away completely amazed by this film and would definitely watch it again. I rank this film amongst the great animation successes of Pixar, though it was made by Dreamworks, and definitely think it should have won the Golden Globe for "Best Animated Film", as opposed to Brave. What a masterpiece.

9/10