Isle of Dogs (2018)

Nominated for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Score    I'm going to say this right from the jump, this is not a kids movie.  It's PG-13 so you can let your kids watch it but I would suggest you not just throw it on for your small children and wander off secure in the knowledge that they won't be traumatized by a stop-motion film about adorable dogs.

The Kobayashi clan, preferring the superior qualities of cats, has tried for many years to eradicate dogs from the confines of Megasaki City.  The current mayor (Kunichi Nomura) has implemented a policy where all dogs must be removed to Trash Island because of rampant disease, a claim disputed by the opposition leader, Dr. Watanabe (Akira Ito).  Mayor Kobayashi proceeds and the very first deportation is that of security dog to the mayoral household, Spots (Liev Schrieber).  Soon all of the city follows suit and Trash Island becomes home to feral, abandoned, and sick dogs banding together to fight for scraps of garbage.  One such band of dogs are first on hand when a young boy, Atari Kobayashi (Koyu Rankin), the mayor's distant nephew, crash-lands on the island in search of his lost dog, Spots.  The dogs decide to help Atari in his search, except for Chief (Bryan Cranston), a stray, who is consistently outvoted. 

If you're familiar with Wes Anderson's other foray into stop motion, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, you probably didn't need the warning at the beginning.  Thematically, this is pretty dark with themes of genocide, animal testing, political corruption, assassination, and grief.  That is balanced out by the whimsy of the animation, managing to strike a fairly decent balance on the whole.  The voice cast is Anderson's usual stable of talent with Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, and Edward Norton providing most of the comedy.  Anderson usually has at least one major quirk within his films and this time it was that the dogs' speech was in English while the human speech was in Japanese with no subtitles, translations being provided sporadically by diegetic means.  It's not as jarring as it sounds. 

The stop-motion is very good but I don't see this winning the category.  Alexandre Desplat is a perennial favorite with the Academy so it might have a shot in Original Score.