Ghost in the shell
Grave of the FireFlies
Metropolis(2001)
Akira
For memories sake…….
An American Tale
The Land Before Time
To Sakuragen: Yes, my roommate is predisposed to hate anything anime but liked Tokyo Godfathers quite a bit. He’s even been talking about buying it. I did feel a difference in the manga and anime of Tekkon Kinkreet. 19 times out of 20 I prefer the manga to the anime but in this case the manga seemed to me more about the violence and with less reason/emotion behind it. The art was also cleaned up without being straightened too much, it kept that playful energy and I ended up liking the style better that way.
Anything by HAYAO MIYAZAKI, BRAD BIRD, HENRY SELICK or NICK PARK, in terms of mainstream animation.
Recent classics have included WALL-E, which should have won some major awards for filmmaking, but didn’t because it’s a cartoon. Last year’s WALTZ WITH BASHIR was also a class act.
PERSEPOLIS was good, as well as its animated counterpart FEAR OF THE DARK (but of lesser quality).
I used to be a fairly big Japanese animation fan back in the day, so the usual AKIRA and GHOST IN THE SHELL get a mention. I have a soft spot for the PATLABOR films, except for the third. SATOSHI KON is a good mind-screw.
Short animated films lately that have been good: THE DANISH POET and PETER AND THE WOLF.
Some classic NFB animated shorts, like those by RYAN LARKIN, are also good.
Social consciousness: WATERSHIP DOWN.
Classics: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. FANTASIA.
The sort-of-animation award goes to WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? Apart from this film, Zemeckis needs to lay off the format. Yuck.
Wall-E, Finding Nemo, Up > Ratatouille
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937)
Pinocchio (1940)
Aladdin (1992)
A Bug’s Life (1998)
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)
Finding Nemo (2003)
The Incredibles (2004)
Wall-E (2008)
Coraline (2009)
Up (2009)
I thought Ratatouille looked great but the voice work is really rather weak (aside from the excellent work provided by Peter O’Toole) and, c’mon, it’s about a RAT in a KITCHEN! Yuk!
Coraline
Up
The Stewie Griffin movie
The nightmare before christmas
Monsters inc.
Wall-E
howls moving castle
Wait-also Waltz with Bashir
Spirited Away
Princess Mononoke
Triplets of Belleville
Persepolis
Ratatouille
Alice in Wonderland
Totoro
Iron Giant
Wall-E
Up
Something outside of the generally acclaimed (Pixar, Miyazaki, Disney; not that there’s anything wrong with those): Mind Game was pretty sophisticated, animation-wise (if 2-D is your thing) and in other ways. Same director as Tekkon Kinkreet.
I find it interesting that a forum with a name like The Auteurs overlooks so easily the wealth of auteurist, personal animation out there for all the studio-produced decidedly non-auteurist stuff—much of which is great, of course (I love Pixar as much as the next guy), but a lot of the lists here are like those live-action based lists that seem to suggest that great film stops at Spielberg and Scorsese and contemporary critically acclaimed foreign stuff like Pan’s Labyrinth.
There’s a whole lot more there than Wall*E and The Triplets of Belleville and Miyazaki is what I’m saying. Even though they’re all great.
Also, it seems silly to restrict lists of best animated films to feature-length, because what that actually begins to entail is a list of the best commercial animated films. Most experimental, daring, personal stuff (again, I don’t suggest this means “best” or that commercial animation is inherently lacking) is short for obvious reasons—it takes a team of people and a lot of money to sculpt 90 minutes of frames at 24 fps, even with computer graphics.
Anything by master Miyasaki-san, followed by Katsuhiro Otomo, Satoshi Kon, and Rintaro.
Top 10:
Akira
Beauty and the Beast
Castle in the Sky
Grave of the Fireflies
Kiki’s Delivery Service
Pinocchio
Princess Mononoke
Sleeping Beauty
Spirited Away
Toy Story 2
I’d place right outside the top 10:
A Bug’s Life
Aladdin
Bambi
Howl’s Moving Castle
Only Yesterday
Pom Poko
Porco Rosso
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Wall-E
Coraline???
Wall-e… best movie of all time? Probably not. But it’s amazing. Throw some Miyazaki in there as well. And more Pixar. Everyone seems to be sticking to that trend anyhow. Oh and I really enjoyed the Batman anime thing that came out a few years ago.
Wall-e… best movie of all time? Probably not. But it’s amazing. Throw some Miyazaki in there as well. And more Pixar. Everyone seems to be sticking to that trend anyhow. Oh and I really enjoyed the Batman anime thing that came out a few years ago.
You can’t have this list without Miyazaki
I like Nausicaa
The Jungle Book
The Incredibles
The Land Before Time and most of the Don Bluth films
Akira
Ratatouille
Bambi
1. Akira
2. Princess Mononoke
3. Cowboy Bobop
4. Nausicca of the Valley of the Wind
5. Ghost in the Shell
6. Final Fantasy Legend of the Crystals
7. Porco Rosso
8. Spriggan
9. Ninja Scroll
10 Street Fighter
triplets of bellsville, great movie
Triplets of Belleville
bolt
spirited away
water babies
little mermaid
madagascar
The Land Before Time
Dumbo
Snow White
Heavy Traffic
Coonskin
Wizards
Beauty and the Beast
Vampires of Havana
Fantasia
Sleeping Beauty
Pinochio
Steamboat Willie
Spirited Away
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Fantasia
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
Ratatouille
The Lion King
Toy Story 2
Treasure Planet
Finding Nemo
Yellow Submarine
Toy Story
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Princess Mononoke
The Iron Giant
Bambi
Sentimental favorites:
Hoppity Goes to Town (a.k.a. Bugville and Mr. Bug Goes to Town)
The Aristocats
Heavy Metal
My Neighbor Totoro
The Cat Returns
Howl’s Moving Castle
Beavis & Butthead Do America
Open Season
Madagascar 2
1.Up
2. Persepolis
3. Wall-E
4. Fantasia
5. Spirited Away
6. Howl’s Moving Castle
7. The Lion King
8. Finding Nemo
9. The Nightmare Before Christmas
10. Corpse Bride
Miyazaki’s works, obviously.
Pixar’s works, obviously.
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Coraline
James and the Giant Peach
Akira
Disney’s works, obviously.
Two Pages and The Secret of Nimh hasn’t even been mentioned once!? what is wrong with you people?
My room mate always freaks out when The Secret of Nimh is or isn’t mentioned. He’s obsessed with it. He claims it’s maybe the single greatest animated movie (excluding anything from Japan).
If we’re talking all animation, including short work, then a ton of Dave Fleischer cartoons from the 30s and early 40s. “Swing You Sinners” (1930) might be the greatest work of surrealist art ever produced in America. Also recommended: “Bimbo’s Initiation,” “Crazy Town,” “Snow White,” “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead” – each represents a perfect specimen of American madness in its most perverse and poetic manifestation. The Popeye and Superman cartoons are great too, but a touch too controlled for my taste.
See also Tex Avery, especially his fabulous Egghead cartoons.
Chuck Jones’ work is often great, especially his Road Runner cartoons, which play with greater and greater levels of abstraction.
Most Disney shorts after the departure of Ub Iwerks (post-29) bore me, but those early Mickey cartoons are fantastic.
The early Disney features are extraordinary products of high craft, and Pinnochio in particular might be the most visually beautiful American movie ever made.
For some reason, the French animated sci-fi film Fantastic Planet (1973) doesn’t have the massive cult following it deserves.
Ralph Bakshi’s work is very erratic, but Heavy Traffic (1973) has some great things in it.
I’m not as taken by the Pixar movies as most people, but the first third of Wall-E (2008) is some of the best filmmaking of the last decade.
Bruno Barretto’s Allegro Non Troppo (1976) is hilarious, beautiful and horrifying, often all at the same time.
Heavy Metal (1981) is one of the most juvenile movies ever made, but if you ever feel like being directly plugged into the id of a 14 year old boy from 90 minutes, it’ll get the job done in a rather exuberant manner.
Tim Burton’s short film “Vincent” (1982) is probably the best thing he’s ever done.
Will Vinton’s claymation feature “The Adventures of Mark Twain” (1986) represents the apotheosis of that very singular form.
Mikhail Titov’s “Srazhnie” might be the coolest movie ever made from a Stephen King story.
The Brave Little Toaster (1988) appears to be utterly forgotten, but it’s attractively made, and as I recall has unusually good musical numbers.
Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit shorts all manage to achieve a glorious kind of low-key perfection (wish I liked Cure of the Wererabbit half as much as the shorts).
Billy Plympton’s work is uneven, but some of it, such as “25 Ways to Quit Smoking” is gleefully malicious in a way that makes me feel better about the human race.
Don Hertzfeldt’s work is marvelously disturbing, and increasingly some of the most poignant American filmmaking around.
- 5 Centimeters Per Second
- Macross: Do You Remember Love
- Snow White
- Nausicaa
- Beautiful Dreamer
- Skies of Arcadia
- Waltz of Bashir
- Heavy Metal
- Up
- Kimagure Orange Road – I Want to Return to that Day
- Kiki’s Delivery Service
- Pinnochio
- Akira
- Castle of Laputa
- The Girl Who Leaped through Time
- Perfect Blue
- Mobile Suit Gundam: Trilogy
- Macross Plus
I second Bimbos Initiation.
Wish there was more bimbo : (
Dat Punk – Interstella 5555
Siddhi
Wall-E is the best animated movie of all time.