Animation is the king of quality

Rotten Tomatoes posted this list of the worst-reviewed movies of the last ten years the other day. It's kind of depressing to remember that someone paid money to make those movies. Also included, though, is the best reviewed movie of each year. Those, to me, are a lot more interesting. If you don't care to click on the link, here's what they are:

1998: The Truman Show
1999: Toy Story 2
2000: Chicken Run
2001: Monsters Inc.
2002: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
2003: Finding Nemo
2004: The Incredibles
2005: Murderball
2006: The Queen
2007: Ratatouille

Look at that list - according to the collected opinions of the nation's film critics, the best movie in six of the last ten years has been animated. And not even just animated, but a big-budget studio cartoon feature. It's not that other big-budget studio movies never get positive reviews - Lord of the Rings is represented on this list, and The Dark Knight might very well end up as the best-reviewed champion for 2008 - but they don't get them as consistently as animation.

Now, five of these six movies are Pixar, of course. Other studios simply don't put out the same kind of quality product that they do. But Chicken Run is an Aardman movie - their first feature of, thus far, three.

I don't know what I'm trying to say with this post. Animated movies are the best, I suppose. And Aardman should make more movies.