The 100 best animated movies: the best cult movies
World-famous animators pick the best animated movies ever, including Disney and Pixar movies, cult movies, kids movies, stop-motion, anime and more
We’ve applied 26 handy labels to the 100 great animations in our list. Here you’ll find all the films deserving of the label ‘cult’.
How many have you seen? Take our poll to find out.
My Neighbour Totoro (1988)
Miyazaki proves he has the heart of a child, the eye of a painter and the soul of a poet.
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The Iron Giant (1999)
The Ted Hughes novel came to Hollywood in a studio movie that broke technical and storytelling boundaries – if not box-office records.
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The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
The film that made Christmas creepy.
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Fantastic Mr Fox (2009)
An idiosyncratic auteur gets animated with this stop-motion take on Roald Dahl’s children’s novel.
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Yellow Submarine (1968)
The cartoon Beatles rampage through a psychedelic Pop Art dreamscape.
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Alice (1988)
This Lewis Carroll adaptation, from a brilliant Czech surrealist, is too wild and wonderful for kids.
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Akira (1988)
A biker teen unleashes a psychic with apocalyptic powers – oh, and it’s 2019.
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Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
This unflinching war story proves that, in animation, anything is possible.
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Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
A live-action gumshoe must prove that a cartoon rabbit has been wrongly accused of murder.
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Fantastic Planet (1973)
Surreal social commentary in a Gallic animated sci-fi milestone.
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Persepolis (2007)
An Iranian expat remembers her tumultuous childhood during the Islamic revolution.
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South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)
Freed from the constraints of network TV, prepubescent paper-cut terrors go on the rampage.
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Watership Down (1978)
Nothing is child’s play in this vivid, gutsy adaptation of Richard Adams’s novel about a colony of rabbits seeking a new warren.
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Princess Mononoke (1997)
Ancient forests mark the battleground for mankind’s future in this mythical drama set in medieval Japan.
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Waking Life (2001)
Conversations swirl in a treatise on the need to stay curious.
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When the Wind Blows (1986)
An elderly British couple thinks it can survive a nuclear attack with Blitz-era gumption.
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The Secret of Nimh (1982)
Threatened farm animals seek the help of super-smart experimental rodents from a lab.
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Waltz with Bashir (2008)
The madness and futility of war... in animation.
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Allegro Non Troppo (1976)
Animation meets classical music in an Italian-style Fantasia.
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Fritz the Cat (1972)
Hard to be a collegian feline in the city? Not really, especially when there’s so much sex and pot to be had.
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Animal Farm (1954)
A landmark work of British animation, terrifying to kids, and some adults.
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Heaven and Earth Magic (1962)
Wonderfully madcap early-1960s experimental piece.
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Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
This mythical adventure provides the ultimate showcase for Ray Harryhausen’s stop-frame animation.
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King Kong (1933)
Stop-motion animatronics meet live action in this still-thrilling adventure story.
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Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion (1997)
The seminal anime series comes to a close with an apocalyptic bang.
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Porco Rosso (1992)
A tribute to classic Hollywood, aviation and the unlimited possibilities of cinema.
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Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004)
A spooky sequel descends even deeper into virtual reality’s underworld.
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Heavy Traffic (1973)
A grubby New York City, a murderous cast of characters and plenty of off-color jokes – Walt would not approve.
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Faust (1994)
A gleefully bizarre twist on the Faust story that blends live-action with puppetry, stop-motion animation and more.
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The King and the Mockingbird (1980)
A mockingbird conspires to bring down a despotic king in this seminal futuristic fairy tale.
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The Lord of the Rings (1978)
Peter Jackson was only 17 when a brave filmmaker tackled Tolkien.
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Ghost in the Shell (1995)
Anime’s international breakthrough, probing the dystopia of an all-engulfing network.
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Coonskin (1975)
A controversial satire on race relations from ’70s animation outlaw Bakshi.
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The Bugs Bunny/Road-Runner Movie (1979)
This compilation of classic Looney Tunes cartoons deserves to be far better known.
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Gulliver’s Travels (1939)
Jonathan Swift is adapted in the first feature from Disney’s closest rivals.
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Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
This richly imagined postapocalyptic fantasy is Miyazaki’s first masterpiece.
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