Good Animation Movies & Shows

Genres:

Action Animation Comedy Documentary Drama Family Horror Mystery Romance Sci-Fi

Foreign

Tokyo Godfathers

4.8/5

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2003

This is a great movie to watch on say a Sunday.. The story of three homeless people who find a newborn baby while foraging through trash on Christmas eve and decide to care for the baby and track down its parents. Middle-aged Gin, aging transvestite Hana and teenage runaway Miyuki form a makeshift family haunted by its members’ past and troubled by their present. As expected, Satoshi Kon (who also directed Paprika) delivers a beautifully animated story with unique characters and unique dynamics. The result is a very humane and moving animation, not to be missed by both Kon fans and those willing to be introduced to his style.

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Foreign

Spirited Away

4.7/5

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Animation / Family

2001

This is director Hayao Miyazaki and producers Studio Ghibli at their best. On the surface level, it’s a film about a young girl who stumbles into an abandoned theme park with her parents. She accidentally finds herself in a creepy spiritual world wherein she must find a way to save her parents and escape. More broadly, however, this is a film about the struggle for Japanese cultural identity in the wake of the economic crisis of the early 90’s. A deep and deeply hypnotizing movie about a little girl’s journey.

Foreign

Wolf Children

4.7/5

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Animation

2012

If you’re living alone and just came back home from a bad day, it could make you feel like everything’s alright again. This is the kind of movie that feels like a warm hug, that you’d keep in your hard drive to watch over and over again, just because it makes you feel so damn good! The story offers a realistic yet ultimately forgiving view of maternity, and growing up in general. From director Mamoru Hosoda, who’s known for his other works like “The Girl Who Leaps Through Time”, “Wolf Children” is another kind of beautiful that can only be fully understood after you watched it.

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World of Tomorrow

4.2/5

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Animation / Comedy

2015

How often does a short film get picked as movie of the year? The answer: not often but it happened with World of Tomorrow. The 2016 Oscar nominated masterpiece is an insight-packed journey of a little girl who gets a peek into her distant future. It is directed by Don Hertzfeldt, the genius who also gave us the other mind-bending stick-figure animation It’s Such a Beautiful Day. The little girl in question? Hertzfeldt’s young niece who also contributed lines to the film! World of Tomorrow is a must-watch – a piece of art so beautiful it will revive your love for cinema for a long time.

weird

Waking Life

4.3/5

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Animation / Drama

2001

Waking Life is composed exclusively of a series of conversations involving the main character, with him sometimes participating and sometimes just as a spectator. The discussions revolve around issues such as metaphysics, free will, social philosophy or the meaning of life. The title refers to a quote from Jorge Santayana: “sanity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled.”, and the whole movie wanders around the state of a lucid dream, emphasized by the rotoscoping technique in which it was filmed. Waking Life is not just a movie worth watching, it is a movie worth watching a thousand times, because you will always notice something that you have previously missed out.

Song of the Sea

4.5/5

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Animation

2014

This movie is absolutely wonderful. It’s an Irish animated movie, and the drawings/graphics are so beautiful and different from what you usually see in this genre, that this alone would be a good reason to watch this. On top of that the music is beautiful as well. But what really touched me about this movie is the story – it’s about a boy who, dealing with the loss of his mother, embarks on an adventure into the underworld of feelings in order to save his sister. I found it to be refreshingly original, sometimes quite intense (I cried a lot during this movie), and heartwarming. The details are great. And I love the way the story was interwoven with Irish mythology, making it magical.

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Foreign

Princess Mononoke

4.7/5

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Animation / Sci-Fi

1999

A fantastic animated period piece set during the Muromachi era in Japanese history. It follows a young man who is looking for a cure for his curse from a demon before he dies. At the same time, the film explores environmental issues, showing the effects of a brutal war between the nature gods and humans. The story is action packed and fast paced, drawing freely from Japanese mythology and modern hot topic political issues. Similarly, the renowned animation is a combination of classic hand drawn animation and pioneering 3-D rendering.

Foreign

Paprika

4.4/5

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Animation

2006

A splendid animated movie by the legendary animator and director Satoshi Kon. A team of scientists and psychologists have created a device allowing them to enter someone else’s dreams. Even if the usage of this device is not allowed outside of her facility, Doctor Atsuko Chiba is using it to cure patients from depression. Things start to get complicated when a stolen device is being used by someone to implement confusing dreams in various victims, causing them to mentally break down.

It's Such a Beautiful Day

4.2/5

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Animation / Comedy / Drama

2012

Two-time Oscar nominee Don Hertzfeldt crafts this provocative film in the most skillful way. With only stick figure drawings and some stock footage, he compellingly walks you through the crumbling mind of a man. It is funny. It is sad. It is unsettling. Unlike most movies – or perhaps any movie – there is no point in the film where you feel safe. Unpredictable. Engrossing. Disturbing. By the end of it, you will not be sure what you’ve just seen, but you will feel as if it has changed you. **Personal suggestion: do not watch alone late at night**

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Mary and Max

4.5/5

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Animation / Comedy

2009

A heartwarming and (ironically) heartbreaking indie film based around the lives of Mary, an 8-year old girl from Australia, and her pen pal Max, a 44-year old man from America. The film follows these two as they deal with life’s complications, from the perspective of a child and an autistic man. One of the most riveting and diverse films I’ve seen, with many joyous moments and cold plot twists. Would recommend 8 condensed milks out of 10.

Oscar Nom

The Secret of Kells

4.5/5

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Animation / Sci-Fi

2009

A Franco-Gaelic animated film nominated for an Academy Award, the Secret of Kells certainly isn’t your average Disney fare. Set in 8th century Ireland, it is beautifully animated, taking cues from ancient illuminated manuscripts and Gaelic folk art. Featuring a plot heavily inspired by Irish mythology, it tells the story of the Viking invasion of Ireland and the creation of the Book of Kells, an Irish national treasure. The world of the film pulses with the lush greenery of the island, populated by fairies, giants, magic and mystery.

Foreign

The Triplets of Belleville

4.3/5

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Animation / Comedy / Drama

2003

This French film, written and directed by the filmmaker Sylvain Chomet, is in the strictest sense an animated foreign comedy film but it is unlike anything I have ever seen. It has a unique surrealist animation style that manages to stay oddly grounded. In other words, it wasn’t some psychoactive drug trip but more like taking a look at the world through Salavador Dali’s eyes. However what struck me the most while watching this film was how everything was animated to extenuate ugliness and imperfection. None of the surroundings and characters look like you see in most animated films, either hyper-realistic or like unblemished porcelain dolls; everything is drawn with blatant, over-exaggerated, and warped features. These features define each character as well as instantly evoking what thoughts and feelings the director wants you to associate with them. The characters’ exaggerated features also allow the film to progress without almost any actual dialogue. Contextual clues and facial expressions were more than enough to conduct entire conversations as well as progress the story line without ever saying a word. This makes the movie accessible to people of all tongues without the subtitle stigma that many people have with watching foreign films. In conclusion, while this film is not for the causal movie watcher, it is still a beautifully imperfect work of hand-drawn art that is an experience that goes far beyond mere entertainment.