The Boxtrolls

Creatures who live underground, wear cardboard boxes and scavenge at night are raising a human child. Above them, the pest exterminator Archibald Snatcher is trying to wipe them out so he can join the white hat wearing gentry. The villain is a man obsessed with climbing a class ladder. Laika's stop motion moves puppets one frame at a time and uses 3D printing for facial expressions, a technique that is hard to watch without doing the arithmetic on how long a single scene took. Ben Kingsley voices Snatcher and won an Annie Award for it, with another Annie going to the production design. It was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards, plus Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations. On a 60 million dollar budget it grossed 108.2 million worldwide, so it made money. The Rotten Tomatoes consensus is fair: far from Laika's best, but still packed with enough offbeat wit and visual splendour to work. Who it is for: viewers who love handmade animation and dark children's stories. Who it is not for: anyone looking for depth in the story. The script lags behind the images.