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3 Good 3 Bad takes a look at films by actors, directors or by genre, exploring the good and the bad, from way back to present day and everything in-between. This time we’re looking at movies all about the birds, from comedy to horror, these are the best and worst in flicks featuring our winged companions. It’s okay to admit you probably can only think of one right off the top of your head, but in truth, there’s actually quite a few, so let’s take a look at both live action and animated movies full of feathers.[/nextpage][nextpage title=”NEXT” ]
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THE BIRDS
Right. So, yes. Let’s go ahead and get this one checked off the list. Alfred Hitchcock‘s highly-influential and still pretty terrifying shocker is hands-down the predominate movie when talking about birds. Filmed in 1963, it follows wealthy socialite Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) with a penchant for practical jokes who finds herself in San Francisco interested in lawyer Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor). That’s all well and good until suddenly, the city is attacked by a veritable swarm of mad birds of of all size and species with no explanation. Either way, it’s a chaotic fight to stay alive in this classic bit of cinematic suspense. The best birdies gone wild movie ever.[/nextpage][nextpage title=”NEXT” ]
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THANKSKILLING
Okay, sure, director Jordan Downey wasn’t exactly trying to make a masterpiece here. This is one hundred percent intended to be awful, a low budget horror flick that out and out strives to be bad. However, it’s aggressively so as it begins in 1621 where a topless (why?) Pilgrim woman is running through woods being chased by a possessed wise-cracking turkey wielding a tomahawk. It then skips ahead five hundred years where prerequisite college girls find themselves next on the menu. There’s nothing wrong with bad movies, even some that are fun to watch because they are so, yet Thankskilling is just dreadful with no joy or fun in the mayhem. Yes, it’s a real turkey.[/nextpage][nextpage title=”NEXT” ]
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CHICKEN RUN
While the legendary Nick Park is perhaps best known for his immensely popular Wallace and Gromit stop motion films, this 2000 allegorical comedy remains the highest grossing movie in the genre ever, earning high praise for its brilliant animation and story. Set on a poultry farm run like a World War II prisoner of war camp, Ginger (voiced by Julia Sawalha) is a hen desperate to escape. Her efforts constantly fail until one day she sees a rooster fly overhead and then crash into one of the coops. He’s Rocky (Mel Gibson), and she thinks he can train her and the others to fly to freedom, even though how he got there isn’t exactly the way it seems. Always funny, satirical, and fascinating to watch, this is a delightful film that still entertains.[/nextpage][nextpage title=”NEXT” ]
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THE ANGRY BIRDS MOVIE
Sticking with animation, we shift to CGI and a story that is feels very late to the party, adapting a video game into a movie years after the whole thing started to fade. While the idea of birds going to war against pigs might have some potential fun for those who played the addictive mobile game, the movie is an uninspired collection of unfunny site gags and one liners with lame jokes and obvious pop culture references that simply didn’t hit the mark. While it did well at the box office and a sequel is planned, most found it an empty gesture that came up well short of expectations. When Bill Hader as a King pig can’t save your movie, well, it’s time to move on.[/nextpage][nextpage title=”NEXT” ]
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FLY AWAY HOME
Who would’ve thought a movie about Canada geese could be so good? A family drama, it follows the story of a 13-year-old girl named Amy Alden (Anna Paquin), whose mother recently perished in a car accident. She moves from New Zealand to Canada to live with her estranged father Thomas Alden (Jeff Daniels), an inventor and ultralight aircraft enthusiast who isn’t quite sure how to take care of his daughter. Nearby, at a construction site, Amy finds an abandoned nest of goose eggs and hides them in the barn to incubate. When they hatch, Thomas allows her to keep them as pets and the chicks imprint on Amy. Now, as they grow, they need to migrate, but how can a human girl teach birds to fly? This touching and true-to-life inspired story shows you how.[/nextpage][nextpage title=”NEXT” ]
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BIRDEMIC: SHOCK AND TERROR
Ending where we sort of started, filmmaker James Nguyen‘s The Birds-inspired horror film is truly one of the most confounding film ever made, often topping many worst movies ever made lists. With a micro-budget, Nguyen tries to go big, following Rod (Alan Bagh) and Nathalie (Whitney Moore) as they begin a new romance, he a software salesman and she a Victoria’s Secret fashion model. Out of nowhere, one day, birds begin to attack, eagles and vultures spitting acid and exploding on impact. Soon, more characters … er fodder … join the fight as the onslaught continues. Featuring untrained actors and poor dialogue, the story is bad enough, but the film’s ‘highlight’ is its jarring visual effects of terribly animated CGI birds that sort of bob around the screen in wholly unconvincing ways. Not a joke, Nguyen took it seriously and went to make a sequel that was even worse than the first. Splat.[/nextpage][nextpage title=”PREVIOUS” ]
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BONUS: MARCH OF THE PENGUINS
It might seem a bit unfair to toss a documentary on the list but this 2005 Luc Jacquet-directed film is one of the most widely acclaimed nature movies ever made, a deeply emotional and breathtaking experience unlike most anything you’ve ever seen. It follows emperor penguins in Antarctica as they must walk over a 100 kilometres (62 mi) to their breeding grounds, crossing some of the most treacherous terrain on the planet. Narrated by Morgan Freeman, we come in close to the relationships and hazards of living on the ice where dangers are not just the temperatures, but leopard seals and predatory northern giant petrels looking for an easy meal in freshly-laid eggs. You can’t watch this and not be moved.[/nextpage]