The Iron Giant

Simply wonderful. This animated reworking of the beloved 1968 book The Iron Man, by England's late Poet Laureate Ted Hughes's, is a rare adaptation that actually improves upon the original material: It's everything a good children's adventure tale should be, and a powerful fable for adults. Set amid the jittery, duck-and-cover paranoia of the Cold War years, the story opens as an unidentified flying something whizzes past Sputnik and splashes down off the coast of tiny Rockwell, ME. Out of the sea comes a 50-foot Goliath with high-beam headlights for eyes and an insatiable appetite for metal. Roaming the pine forests around Rockwell, the robot happens...