Animated movies, and why I'm a child at heart

I bought Tangled yesterday and watched it for the second time.  It’s a beautiful movie, and much, MUCH better than I was expecting it to be.  While I was watching it, it occurred to me that there has been a lot of exciting things happening in animation recently, including several films that have been making not only my personal favorite lists, but the top ten lists of reviewers all over the place.  

I love animated film.  If I had to pick a genre of movie to watch forever to the exclusion of all others, it would be animated – and I would be cheating, because calling “animation” a genre ignores the fact that these films can be dramas, they can be comedies, they can be kid’s films, they can be mature and engrossing.  One of the great things Pixar has done, I believe, is show this to the world: among their collection, they boast a superhero film that is also a spy movie, heist films, science fiction, romance, workplace drama, identity crises, and everything I love about the Food Network with ten times the emotional impact.

The list below was compiled using a very complicated system of criteria, which included my evaluation of the films’ artistry, strength of story, and re-watchability (which is always a factor when I make lists like this.  Whether or not I want to see a movie again is a huge part of my personal appraisal when it comes to movies.).  I also tried to cover a wide ground, which is why the whole list isn’t divided evenly between Disney, Pixar, and Miyazaki, even though I kind of wanted to do that.  

So here’s my list of my ten favorite animated films of all time.  When I was researching a little to make sure I wasn’t leaving anything out, I discovered that I’m actually painfully ignorant of many films – so if you feel that I’ve made a glaring omission here, there’s a good chance I just haven’t seen it.  Unless it’s The Triplets of Belleville, Akira, or Paprika.  Those movies I straight up did not enjoy.

10. (Most of) The Animatrix (2003)

I almost did not include this one, because there are a couple of the segments I did not enjoy, and because I wasn’t really sure how to judge it against cohesive narratives and consistent animation.  I finally did, though, because one thing The Animatrix does almost better than anything else is take risks.  It could have been awful – there was a very real chance that the segments wouldn’t flow, that it would be too confusing, that it would be a pile of incomprehensible avant-garde bullshit.  But it’s not.  Most of its chapters are truly, truly beautiful (ex. "The Second Renaissance," both parts; "Program;" "World Record"), and all of them taken together provide a much more interesting and informative picture of the world of The Matrix than either of its heinous sequels.

9. Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (2001)

Cowboy Bebop has become one of the universal animes - if you're a fan of the medium there's a good chance you've seen this series and you probably have ~feelings~ about it.  That's ok, I do too.  And the film does what a lot of series-generated films do not: it stands pretty effectively on its own merits.  That is, you do not have to have seen the show to appreciate the movie, although I don't think you could watch it and not WANT to see the Further Adventures of Spike & Co. What I love about it is how philosophical it gets without losing the apathetic nature of its main character.  Spike never stops being the nihilistic space cowboy that we expect him to be, but he also gets the chance to be quietly reflective (while being chased, shot at, and drugged, natch).  This movie brings the best things from the series, all the quirky characters and space western atmosphere, and ups the mental ante.  It asks a lot from the viewer, and I don't think that's a bad thing.

8. The Last Unicorn (1982)

Oh, be still, my heart.  Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn is unquestionably my favorite book, and when I learned there was a film adaptation, I couldn't decide whether to be afraid or excited (at the tender age of, like, 12.  I was a cynical child).  It's a good thing I took a chance because The Last Unicorn is a feat of a translation.  Beagle wrote the script, and it has an unparalleled voice cast, including giants such as Christopher Lee, Mia Farrow, Jeff Bridges, Alan Arkin, and Angela Lansbury.  The animation is definitely a product of the 80's, calling to mind Ralph Bakshi's work, but achieves a delicate nightmare feel that stays with you long after the credits have played out.  This film glows.

7.  The Lion King (1994)

Hamlet told with African safari creatures.  No kidding.  But what The Lion King may lack in originality it makes up for in sheer force of personality, helped along by brilliant music and memorable characters.  It plays out across a range of distinct landscapes, and I love that even the backgrounds have character: the sweeping savannah that echoes Mustafa's nobility, the golden brown desert with its carrion birds, the oasis full of vine-hammocks and lovely waterfalls that hosts Simba's "frat boy" phase.  Like I mention later on, I've never been a lion, but watching The Lion King makes me feel like there's something to this idea of interconnectedness.  It's a masterpiece, one of the jewels in Disney's animated crown.

(Side note: I got to see The Lion King once on an IMAX, and the force of my heartstrings almost killed me.  It was like distilling all the joy from my childhood into a 90-minute moment, and then blowing that moment up on that GIGANTIC ASS screen.  I cried through the whole thing.)

6. How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

Unggh, this MOVIE.  If you know me, you know that dragons are my very favorite fantastical creature (I have one tattooed on my right shoulder, and dozens of chotchkes on my bookshelves and walls), so seeing the trailer for this movie was like early Christmas.  And then it exceeded my expectations by being one of the best films to be made last year.  It's the first movie DreamWorks has made that really felt like it was competing with Pixar - the animation was a step up, the story was rich and complex, and it had animals that didn't talk to people.  Toothless is amazing: one part my bird, two parts cat, and 100% attitude, and in no way anthropomorphized.  Hiccup is our hero here, which we never forget, but Toothless is his perfect focus.  Their developing relationship is sweet without being toothachey and silly without losing value.  Helped along by beautiful sky vistas and appropriate levels of Viking-provided comic relief, this film not only makes this list of mine but also my top movies of all time.

5. Ratatouille (2007)

I have spent many, many hours in contemplation of my favorite Pixar movies.  For a long time, I said my very favorite was Wall-E, as it is a science fiction romance and those are two of my favorite things; I also thought the first half hour or so (before that amazing little robot is launched into orbit) is incredibly brilliant.  The things the sound mixers did without dialogue, and the emotion the animators conveyed in that bleak, brown wasteland was incredible.  But I chose Ratatouille because at the end of the day, it has far more emotional resonance for me – the whole story is driven by the emotional power of food, and I get that a little better than I get robot-space-love.  Ratatouille brings Paris and its culinary passion to life through the most unlikely of subjects (a rat, of all things, who eats fine cuisine instead of trash.  This is my kind of rat.), and that final scene never fails to clench my heart just a little bit.

4. The Thief and the Cobbler (1993)

The first time I watched The Thief and the Cobbler was on VHS at my grandmother’s house, and I remember being wildly entertained by the goofier elements – the Grand Vizier who always rhymed when he spoke, his weird loopy vulture that was kind of like a low-rent version of Iago from Aladdin, the fabulous Thief who lurks around the edges of the whole film making wildly historically inaccurate observations and trying to steal everything not nailed down.  Now, however many years later, those things still make me laugh, but I can also appreciate the fluid and Escher-like animation (especially during a brilliant chase scene through a palace, when the tiled floor patterns become doorways and tunnels), the sweetly simple but effective story, and the really excellent voice work (several versions of this exist, on my copy Matthew Broderick voices Tack the Cobbler, Jennifer Beals plays Princess Yum Yum, and the titular Thief is Jonathan Winters).

3. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

I don’t remember what movie I saw it in front of, but I saw the trailer for Nightmare in the theater and I will never forget the image of Jack pulling the Christmas lights down into his eye sockets.  When I was little, it was strange, kind of scary, but infinitely memorable, and now as an adult I find the same image hauntingly beautiful.  Jack’s first discovery of Christmas Town is an encapsulation of everything this movie excels at: brilliant soundtrack, evocative backdrops, and an odd combination of the grisly macabre and shining fairy tale.  The characters are singular and the animation is groundbreaking.  We would not have Coraline without Nightmare, and I don’t believe studios would have thought about 3D without the stop-motion media.  Or at least, it would have taken them a lot longer without movies like Nightmare where a 3D palate actually matters.  It certainly changed the way we think about how we celebrate holidays.

2. The Little Mermaid (1989)

I could not limit myself to only one Disney movie no matter how hard I tried, and even cutting it off at two was hard.  A lot of the things I love about The Little Mermaid are similar to why I love The Lion King – they are both stories set against incredibly lush, beautiful backdrops, full of color and exotic detail.  The Little Mermaid has the edge over Lion King for a few reasons: first, I have never been a lion, but I was a 16-year-old girl once and I, too, thought that my love was the be-all and end-all of my life.  Not that I am comparing Ariel’s journey to me in high school (well, I kind of am, but her love for Eric is obviously more Epic and True than any of my teenage crushes) but for a story set under the ocean and enacted by people that are half fish, Mermaid is incredibly relatable.  Second, Ariel is a badass princess – she knows what she wants and she sets out to get it, and she SACRIFICES.  She WORKS for her happy ending, and ultimately is the one who ends up saving the Prince, rather than the other way around (this is why Sleeping Beauty is not here – there are many reasons to love that one as well, but Aurora is pretty boring).  And then there’s the music, which I could wax rhapsodic about for pages; I posit that there’s not a person on the planet that doesn’t know the lyrics to either "Under the Sea" or Part of Your World, and a good many that know both.  It’s a beautiful score and a beautiful movie, and one of Disney’s finest.

1. Princess Mononoke (1997)

Miyazaki has been called the "Disney of Japan," and that's not an exaggeration.  His films bring a similar level of beauty and richness to the table, but I would argue that the one area in which Miyazaki surpasses the Western giant is that he crafts impeccable animated movies "for grownups."  Princess Mononoke is not a film for children, with its grotesque demons and themes of war and banishment.  But it doesn't lose anything by being animated: it is just as serious, and purposeful, and meaningful as any live-action movie that deals with similar themes (*cough*AVATAR*cough*).  It is detailed and subtle and universal; it carries Miyazaki's common message of environmentalism but never loses sight of its human characters, who also have their place in this world.  It delves into Japanese mythology without alienating a Western audience.  The English dubbing is perfection.  This movie is literally flawless.