10. “Your Name” (2016)
A sensation when it was released in Japan, “Your Name” quickly became the second largest-grossing native film in the country, after the master Hayao Miyazaki‘s “Spirited Away.” That’s not too shabby. And the movie, about two teenagers (a boy in Tokyo and a girl in the rural countryside) who start to swap bodies, is a total delight, one in which magical realism is effortlessly woven into a small-scale drama. And “Your Name” is a formally ambitious one, as well, embracing the sensibilities of modern Japan by weaving in high-energy music montages that take on the shape and structure of a music video, alongside long passages of more traditionally thoughtful Japanese animation. The result is a movie so charming and warm those that somehow believe Japanese anime is just not for them, will be thorougly convinced and disabused of this notion. – DT
9. “Coco” (2017)
To tell a story about death and what lies beyond, Pixar found the perfect setting to inject it with as much color as possible in “Coco.” One of the studio’s most soulful offerings, the film follows a young boy searching for meaning amidst Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico City. He inadvertently ends up on the other side – swapping the vivid orange hues of his city’s celebrations for the endlessly luminous flashes of life among the dead. Somewhat bringing to mind Tim Burton’s take on the world of the dead in “Corpse Bride,” there is warmth and boundless imagination in the alternate reality of “Coco.” The young boy strikes up a friendship with an unlikely skeleton (Gael Garcia Bernal, always a delight) and the film bursts into song, celebrating friendship and family in all its complicated and messy but ultimately entirely crucial cacophony. It’s a marvelous and intelligent film, tastefully framing the idea of individual ambition and collective responsibility when you are a key part of a family – all while playing the guitar beautifully. – EK
8. “Toy Story 4” (2019)
The announcement of a fourth installment to the “Toy Story” franchise was one met with skepticism and exhaustion, but the end product completely obliterated all traces of doubt. The final chapter is so accomplished, so caring and well-judged that it’s difficult to imagine the other three without it now. The story, asking how you deal with being left behind but also how to reassess your entire purpose in life, goes extremely deep. From a visual point of view, it’s only when comparing frames from this one side by side with the first, or even second film, that it’s clear to see just how far the “Toy Story” designs has come. The literal porcelain skin of Bo Peep here has a sturdy shine to it, delicate and smooth in a way that it seems utterly insane that a computer made this up with a simple color palette. The fabrics of these toys’ outfits are fraying, and specks of dust float in the air, beautifully but also ominously, to show just how much time passes when people stop playing with you. It’s a beautiful, existential, sad and utterly superb film about expectations and loyalties and the grace of letting go. – EK
7. “World of Tomorrow” (2015)
It’s all of 17 minutes long, but Don Hertzfeldt’s animated existentialist, melancholy sci-fi short “World Of Tomorrow” is a mini-masterpiece that may blow your mind and leave you tearfully pondering your existence. “World Of Tomorrow” is simple and primitive—using stick-figure digital animation—but it has the poignancy and profundity that comes from childlike wisdom. Hertzfeld’s short centers on Emily, a little girl taken on a mind-bending tour of her distant future. It’s a bittersweet meditation on life, full of love, life, loss and the sad inevitability of death. It’s also full of heady, metaphysical/philosophical ideas of rebirth, impermanence and the foolhardy human quest to live forever, all of it, juxtaposed next to Emily, voiced by Hertzfeld’s then,-4-year-old niece, who undercuts each deep thought, with some cute, nonsensical toddler-like retort like, “I had lunch today.” It’s like Radiohead’s OK Computer and Kid A— lonely, forlorn futurism—as filtered through the sophistication of an uncomplicated mind. And it’s gorgeous, stunning and hauntingly dolorous work that makes you feel totally alive. – RP
6. “Rango” (2011)
One of two animated features completely produced this decade by effects powerhouse Industrial Light & Magic (the other is the bizarre jukebox musical “Strange Magic” from 2015), “Rango” is a huge stylistic and narrative swing, directed by visionary “Pirates of the Caribbean” filmmaker Gore Verbinski and written by the great John Logan. This is a movie that looks insane; all of the characters were designed by the great “Crash” McCreery, who cooked up the original dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park,” and ILM has rendered the animal cast in painstaking detail, going for a kind of earthy realism over the normal CGI slickness. (They weren’t afraid of grunge.) And the storyline, a kind of old west retelling of “Chinatown” involving a dustbowl town and the need for water, never takes the audience for granted. It’s sophisticated stuff, all the way around, and one of the most unique mainstream animated films of the decade. – DT
5. “The Lego Movie” (2014)
While released just a few years ago, it’s somewhat difficult to imagine a time when “The Lego Movie” was fresh and innovative (in the years since Warner Bros. effectively ran it into the ground with a quick onslaught of mediocre sequels and spin-offs). But Chris Miller and Phil Lord‘s animated opus really did seem groundbreaking and unique when it was released: the style (produced by Australian studio Animal Logic) brought a stop-motion aesthetic to normally slick computer animation, the storyline was clever and able to incorporate the actual building of Legos into the plot (along with characters from multiple properties that the Lego brand touches), and it was a movie based on a toy line that wasn’t abysmal. It’s a shame what happened to the franchise (it was recently announced that the property will soon move to Universal) but that doesn’t take anything away from the first film’s specialness and its clever, warm and hopefuly ideas, sprung from the very basics of LEGO, about discovering individuality in a sea of conformity, but never forgetting the collective good. – DT
4. “Moana” (2016)
In the past decade, Disney have gone through a staggering amount of changes. The battle isn’t over yet, but their canon has slowly widened, making room for heroes that look and sound more heterogeneous, thus reflecting the audience they’re playing to. “Moana” perfectly exemplifies this – the eponymous heroine is a headstrong daughter of a chief in a Polynesian village, and the film follows her quest to fulfil her own individual ambitions, as opposed to those her heritage dictates. Amazingly, there’s no romantic interest or narrative for her, it’s not necessary and the film thankfully doesn’t even try (perhaps a first for a quote-unquote “Disney Princess”). This going against the grain is what gives the film its fire, set on the luscious island of Motunui. Such a backdrop allows for vibrant hues across the board – translucent turquoises for the sea, at odds with the very fine-grained sand beneath everybody’s toes. The progress made in computer animation is greatly visible here in the physical details on Moana herself: gone are the plastic-smooth updos and poreless white surfaces pretending to be skin. On top of the amazing textures, the songs are infectiously catchy (courtesy of Lin Manuel-Miranda), the film has a ton of profound heart and the independent, self-sufficient Moana herself easily ranks up there as one of Disney’s best animated heroines ever. And this isn’t even touching upon The Rock‘s various charms and the warmth and humor he brings to this deeply inspired adventure. – EK
3. “Anomalisa” (2015)
A hilariously dark, downcast existential drama about unhappiness and a half-glass full outlook on life, writer/director Charlie Kaufman’s “Anomalisa” would be bleak and depressing af—and it is in many ways—if he wasn’t so willing to skewer his narcissistic, self-involved protagonist and his own very-male misanthropy (voiced by David Thewlis; a not so subtle stand-in for Kaufman’s self-censuring pessimism). Co-directed by stop-motion animator Clark Duke (“Mary Shelley’s Frankenhole”), “Anomalisa” is Kaufman’s version of hell. The story is set (trapped, really) in the purgatory of Cincinnati—depicted here as a soul-crushing tedium, replete with anonymous figures that all look and sound alike, all voiced by Tom Noonan—inside an anonymous hotel, during a customer service convention where the lead, a guru in the customer service industry is scheduled to give a keynote speech (is there anything more dull?). It’s a loopy and surreal film, the animated sensibilities giving the film—which could have been ostensibly made as a regular live-action drama—an unsettling, slightly-off-center quality that eventually devolves into something nightmarish. Of course, there’s also the idealized, romanticized Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who briefly lights up the inherent darkness in the film’s curmudgeonly hero. A tragicomedy about the ways we self-sabotage happiness and live inside our own ruinous heads (especially a particular kind of selfish, self-pitying male), “Anomalisa” is dark, but funny— a film about deep loneliness, the need to connect and the absurdist despair often found within the confines of the single-serving industry and those that wait on you hand and foot. – RP
2. “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” (2018)
The story of “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” lets every person believe that they can be, and already maybe are, Spider-Man. It’s the first installment in the franchise that introduces the idea of the multiverse, and so unfolds a fast-paced, extremely meta, endlessly riotous adventure film. There is a danger when adapting galaxy-brained comic book stories that the product on the big screen could be confusing, overwhelming, excessive and frankly unnecessary. But somehow, the first animated film in the Spider-Man franchise (long overdue, comic fans might say) bypasses all chaos in favor of a dizzying success. A staggering voice cast brings the energy – Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Brian Tyree Henry, John Mulaney, Nicolas Cage. The deep rewards of this film come from the combination of successes firing from all cylinders. The crucial multiverse is manifested in endless colors, a hallucinatory trip through every possible strand of the human and material world that somehow feels within reach. The film is funny, adventurous, ambitious, but never loses sight of its steadfast moral that everyone can be a hero – the universe just needs to come and find you. It’s everything we could have wanted, so much more than we deserved. Andrew Garfield could never. – EK
1. “The Wind Rises” (2013)
Perhaps one of Hayao Miyazaki’s more grounded offerings, “The Wind Rises” feels like a mature, cumulative contemplation on the filmmaker’s career and personal passions. It’s officially billed as a fictionalized biopic of aircraft engineer Jiro Horikoshi, best known as the designer of the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter pilot, but the film feels deeply personal. The traditional Ghibli style, favoring perfect sky blues and fresh greens to paint the fields, is out in full force here. The sheer expansiveness of the sky, of the dreams to fly and to build something beautiful lend an existential heft to this one. The looming threat of WWII anchors the film, and perfectly reflects Miyazaki’s paradoxical relationship with his country’s legacy. Is it right to make something beautiful if it, in turn, will end up damaging the world? Where do you draw the line between art and responsibility? As the meditative film develops, the answers remain unclear – but the impact remains deeply felt, wherever you are in the world. Miyazaki’s characters in this have featherlight imagination and boundless love for each other, but the looming threat of the war, of patriotic responsibility and mechanical possibility cast a cloud over the fanciful atmosphere – which makes the film all the more affecting. It’s unclear if Miyazaki has fully retired, as rumors of new projects undermine this notion, and it was meant to be the filmmaker’s swansong, and if it is indeed the end, at least the animation master truly soared to beautiful heights. – EK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imtdgdGOB6Q
Honorable Mention
Obviously, we left “Frozen” and “Frozen 2” off the list, but they’re both solid. Yes, a little overrated given their pervasiveness in the culture, but there’s profound animation artistry within and it is incontestable the way “Frozen” got audiences interested in animation in a way not seen since the fabled Disney Renaissance (Also, Quentin Tarantino is correct and “Tangled” is pretty good too!). Additionally, there were two “Toy Story” entries that were truly wonderful and nicely bookended the decade (2010’s “Toy Story 3” and 2019’s “Toy Story 4“) but the former didn’t earn a spot on our list, but to be fair, it’s pretty wonderful too. International offerings we wish we had space for include “The Secret of Kells” (2010) from Ireland, “Song of the Sea” (2014), “Boy and the World” (2013), “In This Corner of the World” (2016), “The Breadwinner” (2017), “Mary and the Witch’s Flower” (2017), “From Up on Poppy Hill” (2011), “When Marnie Was There” (2014), “Mirai” (2018) and “The Night Is Short, Walk on Girl” (2017).
Additionally, “Rise of the Guardians” (2012) is an underrated gem from DreamWorks Animation by ‘Into the Spider-Verse’ director Peter Ramsey that doubles as a new holiday classic. Also, of note, Tim Burton’s “Frankenweenie” (2012). Before sapphic love, “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” director Celine Sciamma blew us away emotionally with her offbeat but oddly heartbreaking stop-motion animation “My Life As A Courgette” (2016). And history was made with Van Gogh biopic “Loving Vincent” (2017) that proudly boasted every single stop motion frame to be an individual oil painting.
