The stop-motion masters are the elves at Aardman Studios in Bristol, England. (SEE: The all-TIME Top 25 Animated Features) The wonder is that stop-motion directors not only create plausible motion they bring their figurines and dollhouse accoutrements to vibrant life. Will Vinton used the technique for his California Raisins commercials in 1986 (“I Heard It Through the Grapevine”) and Tim Burton for The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Corpse Bride. The craft, also known as Claymation, requires a saintly or masochistic devotion. Artisans devise characters and props made of clay or plastic, shoot one frame of film, then adjust the models 24 times for every second of screen time. Stop-motion animation, the format employed to make The Pirates! Band of Misfits, sounds impossible even if you don’t stop to think about it. He hatches a scheme, consoling Darwin by saying, “It’s only impossible if you stop to think about it.” So when he lands in London, in 1837, in the unlikely company of the young Charles Darwin (David Tennant), and seems trapped by his most formidable foe, the Captain has only one resource left: foolish hope. He and his crew have fallen into a long depression the ships they commandeer turn out to be carrying ghosts, nudists or the plague. Follow Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant), cruising the seven seas in search of the old-fashioned kind of booty, is not so much a ne’er-do-well as a rare-do-well.

The pirate plague of the dead screen