Director: Tim Burton
Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures
The Lowdown: Tim Burton's best film in a while is also his most personal since "Edward Scissorhands." Based on his own 1984 short, "Frankenweenie" is a big nod to the director's genre and cinema upbringing, a film with heart and imagination, visual beauty and, however briefly, thematic substance. It faces interesting competition from a similar stop-motion project in "ParaNorman," but the striking black-and-white photography makes this one quite singular in the field. Lowly box office showing or not, it could easily register with a club that welcomed Burton long ago. His roots, after all, are in animation, and they still revere him.