Batman: Subzero, 1997. Directed by Boyd Kirkland. Voices: Kevin Conroy, Loren Lester, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr, Michael Ansara.
Direct to video entry in the canon of The Dark Knight's wonderful animated outings. Mr. Freeze returns to Gotham seeking a transplant with which to save the life of his cryogenically preserved wife. The only donor to fit the bill is Barbara Gordon, aka Batgirl. This is all pretty routine stuff, but the animation guys handle it all with such sureness of character and with such meticulous attention to the spirit of the comics that it all works marvelously. There is a great deal of computer animation in this entry, which prompted one of the people with whom I viewed this to wonder if computers are the modern version of "cheating" in animation. The answer is yes and no. Yes, it is cheating if you view anything but traditional hand-drawn cel animation as abberant and impure, and no if you view it as not just a solution to the limited animation that has been the traditional lot of television animation, but as a tool bearing the same relationship to animation as special effect bear to live action films. It's handled pretty well here, so the point is really moot. This is a good-looking project with rousing action and involving characters. What more do you want from a Batman movie?