The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Animation refers to films in which the films are drawn individually by hand, each frame moved slightly to give the impression of movement. Animated films from the mid-1990s onwards have been increasingly drawn by computer to the point that today the art of hand-drawn animation is a dying art form.
The first animated film was Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and the success of this has spread until animation now covers a sizeable percentage of contemporary box-office earnings.
Animation in the American mainstream is almost always sold as being for family audiences (although there is a reasonable amount of animation for grown-ups, particularly outside the US, this has by and large not been financially successful). Content frequently deals with fantastic topics such as fairytale adaptations, the lives of anthropomorphic talking animals or adventures featuring young protagonists.
See also: For animation from Japan see Anime. Films in which animation is blended with live-action are discussed under Toons. For animation using three-dimensional models see Stop-Motion Animation, for animation that uses models molded in clay see Claymation. For films that remake prior animated works in live-action see Animation in Live-Action.
Neglected today, this adaptation of Richard Adams’ classic novel about a quest among rabbits was one of the finest animated films of its era. This is frequently heartbreaking and touches on darker emotions that Disney and most other family films regularly sanitise.
Visually stunning Hayao Miyazaki film about the search for a lost city of the clouds Soaring adventure in an alternate world of airship fantasies, rendered in a series of breathtaking vistas
The best animated film Disney ever made, created as a work of art with animation set to classical music. The segments vary between abstraction, comic eccentricity and evocations of nightmare. The results are magical.
One of the loveliest of Hayao Miyazaki’s anime, the story of a young witch who creates a parcel delivery service using her broomstick. As always, Miyazaki gives the film a simple beauty and an adult emotional complexity
One of the classic films from Disney’s Golden Age, a beautiful piece of anthropomorphism in the tale of an ungainly elephant that flies with its oversized ears. Considered controversial in more recent years.
Almost completely ignored at the time of its release, an animated masterpiece where Martin Rosen, the director of Watership Down, adapts another Richard Adams about two escaped laboratory animals. This has an incredible and at times dark emotional range far away from Disney
Possibly the most perfect of all Hayao Miyazaki’s anime, a work about childhood featuring an array of charmingly eccentric creatures. It is a film of absolutely magical charms beneath which lies a swim of adult emotions that children’s films rarely touch upon
A Disney animation classic about two talking dogs from different walks of life who fall in together. It is impossible not to be charmed by the plaintive delights and sweetly romantic tenderness of the film
The first full-length animated film ever made and the beginning of the Disney tradition. A superlative effort, full of an adorable anthropomorphism where Disney instinctively grasps all the elements of the formula
One of the masterpieces of Hayao Miyazaki, a gentle, beautiful work of anime set in an afterlife bathhouse where Miyazaki’s range of extraordinary creatures and quiet tenderness finds something that Western fantasy rarely ever comes near
The film that created the cult of anime in the West. Essentially a Cyberpunk version of The Fury, this has been construed as a series of climaxes that get progressively larger in scale until they almost reach a point of sensory overload
One of the unquestionable classics from Disney’s Golden Age of animation between 1939 and 1942. This is an absolute delight for its unalloyed innocence and tragically affecting emotions
One of the great Disney animated classics from the still unsurpassed era between 1937-42. The studio were at the peak of their game artistically and the film embodies a near-perfect sense of childlike innocence
Stunning work of fantasy from Hayao Miyazaki. Made on an epic-sized story canvas and with a breathtaking beauty, this is one of the few original screen works to capture something of the nature and scale of written epic fantasy
A near-dialogueless story of a lonely robot clearing up junk in the aftermath of civilisation. This is surely Pixar’s most endearing film to date where they are operating at the peak of their creativity
Czech Jules Verne adaptation that conducts an extraordinary blend of animation and live-action. Maybe the purest evocation of Steampunk that has ever been placed on screen. A work of underappreciated genius
Hayao Miyazaki’s second film, a visually stunning work set in the aftermath of a holocaust. Miyazai’s frequent themes of pacifism and respect for the environment and run through building to a emotionally wrenching climax
One of the finest works from Pixar, the story about an old man and a boy on an adventure in a film that develops some incredibly nuanced and heart-warming emotional depths
Stunning Mamoru Oshii-prodcued anime short about a vampire girl who operates as an American agent eliminating vampires in post-War Japan
A cult anime about a demon war on Earth and a half-demon child who has been born in the body of a teenager. This quite takes you aback with its extremes of violence and sexual fetishism
Epic and beautifully animated anime set largely underwater about the struggle to save a dying Earth from an evil super-computer that wants eradicate humanity
Before this was spun out into a series of ho-hum sequels, the original was an animated film that burst with a freshness and a series of winning voice characterisations
This is a charming and delightful animated film about a group of talking household appliances appliances that set out on a quest to find their young master. Little seen at the time but two sequels followed.
The first film from Don Bluth, a Disney animator who formed his own company vowing a return to the studio’s classic tradition. The results are beautiful and quite magical
Stunning anime remake of Metropolis based on an Osasmu Tezuka. The visuals and particularly the design are overwhelming – like a Cyberpunk film set in a stylised Art Deco world
The first X-rated animated film. Ralph Bakshi’s first film, taken from Robert Crumb’s cartoons, this is hilariously raunchy as the titular talking cat takes a strung-out but often sharply politicised journey through 1960s counter-culture
The start of the 90s renaissance of Disney animation, a beautifully made adaptation of the fairytale that hearkens back to the Disney Golden Age. The only animated film nominated for an Academy Award Best Picture
From Mamoru Oshii of Ghost in the Shell fame, an anime that seems a mix of Biggles and Never Let Me Go, all taking place in an alternate world. The film is exquisite in its detail
One of the finest of all Disney animated films, an adaptation of the fairytale made with the full artistic resources that studio could bring to bear
An Oscar nominees for Best Animated Film – a unique and exquisitely drawn dive into Celtic mythology that comes with wit, humour and the emotional tenderness of a Hayao Miyazaki. This deserves to be seen far more widely than it ended up being
Richard Linklater conducts an animated adaptation of the Philip K. Dick novel with extremely faithful results. Keanu Reeves is a police officer assigned to investigate what he realises is himself
Extraordinary animated film from Shane Acker concerning the lives of a series of stitchpunk dolls as they try to make sense of the world in the aftermath of civilisation
An extraordinary anime adapted from Project Itoh, a conceptually challenging work concerning a villain who can manipulate language to drive populations to genocide
Classic anime from Mamoru Oshii, a Cyberpunk work with a heroine who is a cyborg special forces officer, a work that delves deeply into the philosophical questions of what is human and what is machine
Sixteen years after making Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo returns to direct a full-length anime, making a Steampunk work that is dazzling in its epic quality and vistas of mass destruction
Mamoru Oshii’s follow-up to Ghost in the Shell where he makes a work that pushes both an artistic envelope at the same time as taking his philosophical fascination with the Cyberpunk world to a stunning level
Reboot of the Ghost in the Shell series in a quartet of prequel stories. This funnels the essence of Cyberpunk superbly, creating a dazzling world with cyborgised security services fighting terrorists hacking people’s brains
Beautifully made Mamoru Hosoda film about a rogue A.I. taking over a social media network. A film that is also a heartwarming work about family togetherness
One of the best films to come out of Disney’s animation renaissance during the 1990s, this uses all the studio as its disposal to create a work that is epic in its scope
A delightful animated film from Latvia made entirely without dialogue, following a group of animals fleeing as their territory is flooded. The winner for my top film of 2024.
An utterly charming film, all told without dialogue, about a dog living in 1980s New York who purchases a robot as its new best friend
The most demented premise of the year – an animated film about the lives of the talking produce in a supermarket. This is crude, rude and guaranteed to offend (as might be expected from a Seth Rogen penned vehicle); it is also one of the funniest and cleverest films of the year
The second animated film from DreamWorks, an impressively produced retelling of The Book of Exodus and the story of Moses.
The last really good animated film made during Walt Disney’s lifetime and for the next couple of decades. Filled with cuddly anthropomorphism and charmed delights
Entirely charming French animated film from the directors of A Town Called Panic. This is a children’s film that comes with a beautiful simplicity, a duo of winning characters and some side-splitting visual gags
Extraordinary anime where the members of an after school club secretly harbour great powers. From there, this expands out with reality-bending scope
The first full computer animated film from Disney. It feels like someone decided to give the Jurassic Park dinosaurs their own film, mixed up with the plot of The Land Before Time
Michel Ocelot is one of the great underrated animators of the world. Here he makes an exquisite tribute to the Belle Epoque featuring appearances from names of the era and decked out in Steampunk inventions
Chuck Jones, the director of numerous Warner Brothers cartoons, adapts a popular children’s book that comes with a dizzying array of surreal visuals and puns
This was the fourth animated film from Pixar and is a winning and delightful Maurice Sendakian tale about the monsters in the closet and their friendship with a young girl
An animated effort about a mad scientist and three orphans. One entered this with zero expectation only for it to unexpectedly emerge as a side-splitting and completely charming pleasure
This broke ground in being the first animated film made using the motion-capture process. Robert Zemeckis directs with a quite magical touch
Delightful and charming Studio Ghibli film about shape-changing raccoons that blend with humanity when their forest is threatened
Hayao Miyazaki in a more whimsical comedic mood with this story of the adventures of a talking pig aviator. Even when in a lighter vein, Miyazaki cannot help but fill the film with images of charm and considerable beauty
A surprisingly good animated film about the relationship between a caveman and a dinosaur, all without a line of dialogue. From the director of the Hotel Transylvania films
From Kirikou director Michel Ocelot, an anthology of animated fairytales that prove quite delightful
This Hayao Miyazaki film about a girl who becomes assistant to a mysterious magician is not quite in the same league as Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away but has the sublime beauty, eccentric characters and tender charms that all his work does
The first film from French animator Rene Laloux, a trippily surreal vision and one of the few portraits of a genuinely alien world on film
Delightful motion capture animated film about children discovering a neighbourhood house that is alive. Written with refreshingly well-rounded characters and directed with a great sense of comic grotesque
Gore Verbinski makes an eccentrically different animated homage to the Western, all cast with talking animals. The animation comes from Industrial Light and Magic and is quite unlike any other animated film.
Despite being made by the same company, this has absolutely nothing to do with the Final Fantasy videogame. It is a visually stunning work of anime that takes place on an epic scale set after Earth has been invaded by spirit beings
An unabashed delight among the Pixar films about a fish parent on a quest to find his missing son. This comes with an extraordinarily vibrant palette of colours and a line-up of winningly eccentric characters
Makoto Shinkai conducts a flawless capturing of Hiyao Miyazaki’s style – the clean simplicity of the animation, reverence for nature, the tender intimacy of the characters – in this beautifully animated work about the discovery of an underground realm
A classic animated film. A delightful film about a young pig that seeks to change his fate and gets aid from a spider that can spell. A theatrical outing for Hanna-Barbera, creator of tv’s The Flintstones et al
An animated film from Genndy Tartakovsky, director of the Hotel Transylvania films, that is a really quite filthy and hilarious story of a dog about to have its testicles removed who goes on one last adventure
One of the most delightful films produced during the 1960s-80s lean years of Disney animation. This was not a success but delivers a film of winning charms about a mouse equivalent of Sherlock Holmes
Forget about movie melodrama like A Beautiful Mind , this may be one of the best, most credible films about mental illness … Essentially a surreal animated family history of a Latvian animator, this distils some incredibly bleak anecdotal material with a wittily and biting incisive brilliance
Winning animated film from Pixar based around the appealingly original idea of vehicles having personalities. The idea is spun out with considerable wit and sophistication. Two sequels followed.
Comedian Rodney Dangerfield writes, produces and voices the role of a dog in this surprisingly charming and likeable animated film, the best and lest recognised film Dangerfield ever made
Beautifully made anime from Makoto Shinkai about a young girl and a three-legged chair on a quest to close a series of portals across Japan and prevent unimaginable chaos emerging
Adaptation of the Alan Moore graphic novel, one of the most famous comic-book titles of all time. The notoriously cranky Moore need have no reason to shun this film version, which recreates his work right down to preserving his dialogue and replicating the set-up of individual panels
Hayao Miyazaki’s son Goro more than capably takes up his father’s mantle in a anime beautiful adaptation of one of Ursula K. Le Guin’s later Earthsea books
Beautifully affecting animated film from Ari Folman in which the imaginary companion in Anne Frank’s diary comes to life in the present day
George Miller of Mad Max fame makes a motion-capture animated film about a young penguin who sets out to fulfill his dream of tap-dancing. This ends up being a film of unexpectedly winning charms
Anime set in a disquiet utopia where the populace is monitored by cyber implants. Almost completely eschewing the usual action scenes of sf anime, this tells a strong, intelligent and character-driven story
The debut film from French animator Michel Ocelot, a beautifully simple series of African folk tales about a young boy whose plain-speaking truths outwit a witch
Studio Ghibli tackle Mary Norton’s classic books about a miniature family that live inside the walls of a house. Norton’s essential Englishness translates surprisingly well to anime and the results are quite magical
Animated film that takes place in a Steampunk alternate history. This brims over with an extraordinary degree of visual invention from the amazingly detailed vistas of the world to a script tossing in quirky twists and wacky inventions
A unique and very original animated film from Richard Linklater where a character wanders through a dream, encountering various people and their different philosophical outlooks
A dazzling reboot of the earlier manga/anime made with stunning photorealistic animation design and breathtaking action scenes that made this a benchmark for modern anime. Sequels followed.
Richard Linklater makes a charming animated film about a kid selected for a secret Moon Landing. Most of all a film with a lovely nostalgia for growing up in the era of the Moon mission
The first animated film from DreamWorks, a rather charming effort that takes place in an ant nest with Woody Allen perfectly voice cast as a nebbish ant who decides to defy the crowd
An animated adaptation of Alan Moore’s classic, genre defining comic-book, this is the most faithful treatment to date
Powerful and biting animated film from a Raymond Briggs book focused on an elderly couple and their wholly inadequate attempts to cope with the outbreak of nuclear war
Groundbreaking film that hilariously imagines an alternate world where cartoon characters live alongside humans. The energy and creativity of the film is superlative
Pixar’s sequel to their first film and arguably an even better work where they get the plaintive emotion, character arcs and witty humour down perfect
An Italian-made homage to/parody of Fantasia offering an anthology of animated tales. This is witty and more adult in tone, yet perfectly charming and delightful in its own way
Anime from Yoshiaki Kawajiri about a war with a demon dimension that falls halfway between H.P. Lovecraft and a hard-boiled detective thriller and brims over wit fascinatingly pathological sexual imagery
The first animated film from Brad Bird is a sweet and lovely piece about the friendship between a young boy and a giant robot. Underrated at the time, this has subsequently become regarded as a classic
A winning animated film about a robot trying to find its way among the animals on an island. Tender and heart-warming, the sort of film that Pixar used to do so well
Disney’s animated adaptation is usually hated by Lewis Carroll purists for its free and easy treatment of the story but for everyone else comes with a splendidly demented visual absurdism
Big hit for Pixar and director Brad Bird, a witty spoof of the superhero film that shows a superhero family trying to deal with everyday life. Enormously good-natured fun all around
Mamoru Hosoda proves himself as one of the major directors in anime with this tender, lovely and enormously affecting work about a mother raising two werewolf children.
The third film from Irish animator Tomm Moore, a beautiful Princess Mononoke-like tale of a girl’s friendship with persecuted werewolves in the forest
One of the best Disney animated films in ages. Has the winning concept of the secret lives of the characters inside videogames. Imagine Tron by way of Toy Story. The animators have clever fun with the idea, while the film creates a character arc that become the strength of the film
The third of The Beatles films, in this case an animated work that features likenesses of The Fab Four as they trip through some amazing nonsensical psychedelic visuals
This nominally tells three slice-of-life tales but in each the principal character is creating a book or film about one of the other characters. This becomes a meta-fiction of considerable cleverness as we see how the problems of one character end up reflected in the other character’s story
A really good Disney animated film set in a world that imagines what might happen if animals lived in cities, this is an ingenious reworking of the talking animals premise that overflows with visual ingenuity and warm humour
Splendidly original and completely off the wall work of stylised animation from Sylvain Chomet
One of the most extraordinary of all anime films – apparently a favourite of The Wachowskis (you can see they’ve borrowed moves from it), concerning ninja facing supernaturally empowered assassins demonic forces, directed with an extraordinary visual stylism