I rewatched this film to see if it would be suitable to show to my 4 year old daughter. And while the answer is a resounding 'no' I did rediscover this rare, beautiful and surprisingly moving animated marvel.

Don Bluth is a genius. He is one of the best animators ever and I'm glad he had enough of Disney, left there fighting and made this. There's a good chance this film would not have existed otherwise.
With Bluth's characteristic animation style, we are given the story of a mouse seeking help from a group of intelligent rats as her son is sick and she has to leave her house. Throw in a wise owl and a host of other talking…

Growing up there were two phrases that my mother would often say to me that I can remember as clear as day - "Why don't you go outside and play.." and "Don't sit so close to the TV, you'll ruin your eyes."

I enjoyed playing with toys, squishing mud between my toes and jumping off picnic tables while flapping my arms, in hopes to defy gravity for just a few seconds, but what I really loved was watching movies. In having three siblings, parents and a grandfather who lived with us, it was a special treat to walk into the living room and have it empty. I would hurry over to the stack of VHS hidden within a cabinet, often…

(2020 Summer Blockbuster Series)

My first time witnessing the spectacular climax of The Secret of NIMH set my imagination on fire as a kid and is a movie moment that I will never forget.

"Courage of the heart is very rare. The stone has a power when it's there."

I have always admired the unique animated style of Don Bluth, and his amazing early work after leaving Disney were some of the first movies I remember seeing. In rewatching The Secret of NIMH, I noticed how simple this story is of a widowed mother mouse named Mrs. Brisby, who goes on an amazing adventure to save her home in order to protect her children including her sick son Timothy. What…

Watched during my Spring of Animation.

The film considered "too dark" for Disney, and it's easy to see why; I adored the dark fantasy aesthetic; looming, monstrous predators, overgrown landscapes, tattered costuming. Every detail is in tune, and the plot goes to some dark and disturbing places, though it always remains hopeful. There were a few moments I was simply mesmerized by; the owl's lair, and the escape from NIMH chiefly.

So I feel bad to say that I didn't quite love this overall, as I'd kind of assumed that I would. Some of the characters just felt a little pointless, and cool as it might be, the abundantly fantastical elements felt too nebulous and ill-defined for me. As a…

𝑾𝒆 𝒄𝒂𝒏 𝒏𝒐 𝒍𝒐𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒓 𝒍𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝒂𝒔 𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒔.
𝑾𝒆 𝒌𝒏𝒐𝒘 𝒕𝒐𝒐 𝒎𝒖𝒄𝒉.

During 1958 - 1962 a series of experiments was performed by John C. Calhoun at the National Institute of Mental Health; during these studies a collection of “Rat utopias” - enclosed spaces with an unlimited access to food and water at the cost of having a limited area to populate - were created and observed over time and would set the groundwork for modeling and making inferences about the possible effects that urbanization and overpopulation might have on humans and their respective social structure.
After seeing an increase in behaviors that could be labeled antisocial or those that would likely put colonies at a risk of becoming extinct -…

The Weekly Animation Challenge 2018
Week 31: Director Spotlight: Don Bluth
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As the 80s & 90s have slipped further away in the rearview mirror, I (like seemingly a lot of people) have let the works of animator Don Bluth fade away with them. Maybe it's because some of those films--the later ones in particular--look in retrospect a bit corny/schmaltzy/too much a product of their time. So I can't say I was really expecting much when I sat down to finally watch the Secret of NIMH. But man did it end up surprising me.

It's set on a farm inhabited by anthropomorphized rural critters that have established a rather nuanced interspecies society in the dark nooks and crannies of this small…

Weekly Film Club Vol. 15

While I did love the animation in a lot of the shots of Secret of NIMH, and am glad I finally got around to watch it, it probably will end up blending together in my mind with so many other hand animated films from the 80s when thinking back on it. I just didn't find anything really distinguishing or special about the film. It was beautifully animated however.

My biggest gripe is probably the voice acting. I have found that there is a lot of pretty bad voice acting in older animated films, and while I don't think NIMH had bad voice acting, it definitely felt pretty generic. The villain sounded like every other villain.…