The 100 best animated movies: film critics and journalists

Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman was a film critic for Entertainment Weekly for 24 years.

1. Bambi
2. Toy Story
3. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
4. Yellow Submarine
5. The Incredibles
6. Pinocchio
7. Fantastic Mr. Fox
8. The Iron Giant
9. Fantasia
10. Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
     

“With apologies to Hayao Miyazaki and the Brothers Quay.”

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the film editor and founder of Slant Magazine.

1. Grave of the Fireflies
2. Dumbo
3. Millennium Actress
4. Pinocchio
5. Up
6. Spirited Away
7. The Iron Giant
8. Ratatouille
9. My Neighbor Totoro
10. Perfect Blue
     

J. Hoberman (in alphabetical order)

J. Hoberman is the home-video columnist for The New York Times. He wrote for The Village Voice for 33 years, serving as its senior film critic from 1988 to 2012.

• The Bugs Bunny/Road-Runner Movie
• Corpus Callosum
• Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
• Gremlins
• Heaven and Earth Magic
• King Kong
• Little Otik
• Pinocchio
• Waltz with Bashir
• A Scanner Darkly and Coraline
   

“It’s a list with five caveats. (1) My favorite animated films are mainly less than 60 minutes. (2) Hence, I included movies in which digital and/or stop-motion effects are crucial. (3) I also limited myself to only one movie per filmmaker. (4) The list is alphabetical, but I had a tie for tenth place with A Scanner Darkly. (5) I’m sure I forgot something.”

 

Tom Huddleston

Tom Huddleston is a film writer for Time Out London.

1. The Bugs Bunny/Road-Runner Movie
2. It’s Such a Beautiful Day
3. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
4. Up
5. My Neighbor Totoro
6. Grave of the Fireflies
7. South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
8. The Jungle Book
9. Porco Rosso
10. Wall-E
     

“Every one of the films on this list is pretty much flawless. To be honest, picking The Bugs Bunny/Road-Runner Movie is kind of a cheat: It’s the 11 greatest Looney Tunes shorts haphazardly nailed together, along with a compilation of Road Runner gags. Still, the result is perhaps the funniest movie ever made, certainly the most insanely inventive and unexpectedly literate. Don Hertzfeldt’s It’s Such a Beautiful Day is the result of eight years work by arguably the most original filmmaker currently working in any medium. It broke my heart.”

 

David Jenkins

1. My Neighbor Totoro
2. Alice
3. It’s Such a Beautiful Day
4. Spirited Away
5. The King and the Mockingbird
6. The Illusionist
7. The Emperor’s Nightingale
8. Whisper of the Heart
9. Waking Life
10. Paprika
     

Eric Kohn (in alphabetical order)

• The Congress
• Dumbo
• Fantasia
• The Iron Giant
• It’s Such a Beautiful Day
• The Nightmare Before Christmas
• Ratatouille
• South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
• Spirited Away
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit
   

“These are unranked. As an amateur cartoonist—or maybe now I’m just a rabid doodler—I have always been attracted to the deceptive simplicity of the drawn line, which reaches the height of its unlikely sophistication with Don Hertzfeldt’s brilliantly subversive short ‘Rejected.’ Meanwhile, Ari Folman’s The Congress is an unprecedented vision of classic and contemporary technologies forced together with constantly beguiling results. Everything else on here has some elements of those ingredients in play, but they’re also just fully unique visions—weird, funny, insightful and uncompromised, they illuminate the range of powers offered by movies of all stripes.”