The 100 best animated movies: the best quirky 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 ‘quirky’.
How many have you seen? Take our poll to find out.
Spirited Away (2001)
Moving is a drag for ten-year-old Chihiro, until she discovers she’s meant to work in a bathhouse for the spirit world.
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Dumbo (1941)
It ain’t easy being gray in one of Disney’s most simple, cute and memorable tales.
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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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Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
An eccentric inventor and his loyal canine companion hunt a mutant bunny.
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Ratatouille (2007)
Pixar was at the height of its powers when it made this Paris-set tale of a rat with immense cooking talent.
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Up (2009)
Pixar’s saddest, sweetest, strangest film.
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The Triplets of Belleville (2003)
An oldster saves her kidnapped grandson with the help of three peculiar singers.
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WALL-E (2008)
Pixar pushes the boundaries (again) with a near-wordless tale of robot romance in a dystopian future.
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Mary and Max (2009)
A wise, funny Claymation tale of lives lived on the edge of society.
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Tokyo Godfathers (2003)
Three Japanese vagabonds attempt to find the parents of an abandoned baby during Christmastime.
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Pom Poko (1994)
This thunderous Ghibli romp – part satire, part family adventure, part war ‘documentary’ – is one of the weirdest movies ever made.
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Rango (2011)
A talking chameleon, used to blending in, must take a bold stand as a Western town’s new sheriff.
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Coraline (2009)
‘Nightmare Before Christmas’ director Selick’s follow-up is altogether more unsettling.
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The Tale of the Fox (1930)
The world’s first feature-length stop-motion animation... and one of the greatest.
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ParaNorman (2012)
Fun for the whole family – with ghosts and booger-green zombies.
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Goodbye Mr Christie (2011)
Part art piece, part gross-out comedy, part apocalyptic epic, all indescribable.
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James and the Giant Peach (1996)
Roald Dahl’s beloved but trippy children’s book – about escape, adventure and the company of giant insects – meets its creative match.
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Kirikou and the Sorceress (1998)
A West African village folktale pits a plucky tot against a fearsome magician.
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