As November comes to a close, the stragglers will slowly appear. I may go weeks without getting one and then get one on two consecutive days. I won’t know it’s over until the end of December when the standard critics awards season is over. So, here’s one of the year’s big Animated Feature contenders.

Rango

Genre: Animation
Stars: Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin, Ned Beatty, Alfred Molina, Bill Nighy, Stephen Root, Harry Dean Stanton, Timothy Olyphant, Ray Winstone
Director: Gore Verbinski
Premise: “Rango is an ordinary chameleon who accidentally winds up in the town of Dirt, a lawless outpost in the Wild West in desperate need of a new sheriff.”
Oscar Chances: Few animated features this year earned categorically strong praise and this film has. I fully expect it to be one of the five.
Rotten Tomatoes:
88% (200 critics; as of 11/28/11)
Metacritic:
75 out of 100 (35 critics; as of 11/28/11)