Taking a break from music this Friday.

1. Wolf Children, Mamoru Hosoda, 2012
Maybe I wouldn't love this so much if I wasn't a parent. But I am, and I do. I suppose my children love it too, so there goes that theory. This is my favorite movie, period. Of any type. The joy and pain of both romantic and parental love and loss, with an emphasis on how those we love are a mystery and a wonder to us. Beautiful art, beautiful music. I surprise myself by ranking anything above Studio Ghibli. But there you go.

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2. The Last Unicorn, Rankin/Bass, 1982
I just said nothing should top Ghibli. Perhaps this is a cheat. Rankin and Bass directed and produced The Last Unicorn, but they hired Topcraft to do the animation (they worked with the same animators for the ThunderCats TV series). Topcraft was also the team that animated Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, and when he founded Studio Ghibli he did so on the ruins of the bankrupted Topcraft. So in a way, The Last Unicorn is a proto-Ghibli film. Like many Ghibli films, it's based on a beloved book (Peter S. Beagle wrote the screenplay himself), it features gorgeous art that's unlike mainstream American animation, and it both merits and allows time for thought. My love for this film is so abundant that I even like the soundtrack performed by America. Where most CBers can quote The Princess Bride or Napoleon Dynamite word-for-word, I quote The Last Unicorn.

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3. Howl's Moving Castle, Hayao Miyazaki, 2004
It's so hard to pick a favorite Ghibli movie, and if I allowed myself more than one film per studio I could fill out a top 20 with Ghibli movies. (Another time I'll post a ranking of everything in Ghibli's catalog.) I'm going to go with Howl's, even though Princess Mononoke is stiff competition and the two 1988 films, My Neighbor Totoro and Grave of the Fireflies, both hold special places in my heart, being, along with Wolf Children, the most moving animated features ever made. Note: Grave of the Fireflies is not for the faint of heart. Afterward my fifteen year old daughter, tears streaming down her face, asked me "Why did you make us watch that?" Howl's, on the other hand, is probably her favorite movie.

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4. Song of the Sea, Tomm Moore, 2014
Once I finally paid attention to the movie my four year old son was watching repeatedly on Netflix, The Secret of Kells became one of the happiest discoveries of my life. Song of the Sea is even better, although I still can't spell Saoirse. There is no better coming of age and sibling love/hate movie out there.

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5. The Secret of Nimh, Don Bluth, 1982
Don Bluth left Disney (taking a big chunk of their animation team with him) because Disney was incapable of making a movie this good. Then, because of Don Bluth's competition, Disney eventually woke up and started making decent movies again. Among other things, the lesson taught here is that a movie with some real darkness can achieve much greater light.

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Honorable Mentions
• Kubo and the Two Strings, Travis Knight, 2016. This one's got it all. Love and hate in a family. Action, magic, sacrifice, and strikingly beautiful art.
• The Nightmare Before Christmas, Henry Selick, 1993. The best movie Disney ever made--notwithstanding Pixar. Or is it The Emperor's New Groove? But that's not fantasy so doesn't count here. Treasure Planet and Atlantis deserve mentions as well.
• How to Train Your Dragon, Dean BeBlois, 2010. Is it sacrilege to say Dreamworks > Pixar? Because sometimes I lean that way.
• Coraline, Henry Selick, 2009. It's not too dark if I can watch it with my three year old daughter, is it?
• The Iron Giant, Brad Bird, 1999. Does this count, or is it SF? Despite some trite writing and more swearing than necessary, a pretty good flick.