Zootropolis (or Zootopia if you prefer...)

#236 at the time of writing.

Yeah, outside of America this got a different name, possibly because of trademark conflicts with a Danish zoo, although Disney are not forthcoming with their reasons. Anyway, whatever you wanna call it, I loved it.

I have a soft spot for Walt Disney Animation Studios features, with Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph being my latest faves (and now Moana, of course - delightful!), and this one is wonderful. It's a joke-packed buddy cop film starring a rabbit and a fox, set in a stunningly detailed mammalian city (full of easter eggs), with none other than Shakira rocking the soundtrack. And yeah, Judy Hops is sexy. C'mon, it's not the first rabbit that has roused the blood - Jessica Rabbit got the eyes popping too...

The storyline is thoroughly right-on in a way that feels all the more urgent for having been released in the shitty year that was 2016. (And, interestingly, in a way that Moana avoided, being unabashedly a fantasy rather than a morality tale.)

The story fundamentally changed in the development process*. Originally it was Nick Wilde's story (the fox), and secondary character Judy Hops was a seasoned and cynical cop. It must have been tortuous to work through that and get to this much better sounding version.

*The comments on that article are hilarious.

Grave of the Fireflies

#67 at the time of writing.

Two Japanese children try to survive alone after their parents are killed and their city firebombed towards the end of World War II. An unflinching tale of the terrible personal tragedies of war.

Our Western sensibilities have trained us to think of animated features, and films starring children, as being for children. Yet this is a most adult, and artful, and depressing picture. It was produced concurrently with the delightful My Neighbour Totoro, and the two were released as a double feature - but they could not be more different. One is about the loss of innocence, the other embodies the purest innocence. One is about the consequences of conflict, the other avoids conflict altogether.

If you get a chance to see this, don't watch the awful dubbed version. The voices are so silly it takes most of the impact away. Why couldn't they do a decent job with the dubbing, like they did with My Neighbour Totoro! (Probable answer: this is one of the few exceptions to the Disney-Tokuma international distribution deal.)

SPOILER ALERT! Read no further if you haven't seen the film. Sadly, the film is based on a true story. Akiyuki Nosaka lost his little sister during the war to malnutrition and blamed himself for her death. His 1967 novel, on which this movie is based, was written to come to terms with the loss.

Toy Story

#112 at the time of writing.

The genre of digitally animated movies owes a huge debt to Toy Story - the first feature film to be entirely computer animated. If this film had been rubbish, the genre might have sputtered and struggled to get going. But with an unblushing emphasis on character and story, animation giant John Lasseter's Pixar (using Steve Jobs' computers) deservedly exploded onto the scene and never looked back.

The early Nineties: Terminator 2 had shown that digital trickery could be used to great effect; Lawnmower Man proved that digital effects were no substitute for a crappy story. After a couple of limp decades, Disney were experiencing a resurgence of success with musical animated features such as Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. Enter a quirky non-musical feelgood film about toys that come to life, and boom - cartoons are cool again, for adults as well as children.

Re-watching this for maybe the tenth time recently, I continue to be struck by just how wonderful it is. The jokes! The characters! The phenomenal voice work from Tom Hanks! It hasn't aged at all. And it's hard to believe that such a high quality movie could possibly have been matched - perhaps even outdone - by its two sequels. (The best trilogy of all time?)

The story of Toy Story's production, and the hiccups along the way, makes fascinating reading.

The Lion King

#79 at time of writing.

This film announces itself as something special in the first five minutes. A sweeping panorama of the African savannah with swarms of animals gathering to welcome a newborn lion prince, set to Elton John and Tim Rice's beautifully crafted song "The Circle of Life" - and then, boom, the title screen. Awesome.

The visuals are stunning throughout, but what really makes the movie is the dramatic story (inspired by Hamlet) and the thoroughly musical sense of humour.

It's very telling that the recent re-release of the film in 3D has seen it rocket more than 20 places higher in IMDb's ranking - a sign that this (mostly) hand-animated marvel has endured into the age of ubiquitous CGI.

Arguably the peak of the 90s Disney Renaissance, and one of the best (non-Pixar) Disney animated features ever.

Avengers Assemble

#124 at time of writing.

Back in 2005, an enterprising Marvel Studios executive (Avi Arad) decided to produce a slate of films about individual super-characters, to establish their identities and familiarize audiences with them, before merging the characters together in an epic Avengers movie.

They got off to an excellent start with Iron Man, which was followed in quick succession by The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America. And now, finally, the motley crew are brought together.

I must admit that I expected this film to be poor. For one thing, the concept is a huge example of what Blake Snyder calls double mumbo jumbo. A god-alien in the same movie as an artificially enhanced soldier from the 1940s and a giant green id monster? Sounds dubious.

But whilst it is indeed silly, this film is never cringeworthy. Rather, it is thoroughly pacey and entertaining, gloriously irreverent, and often laugh-out-loud funny. This quote from director Joss Whedon sums up the spirit of the film: "The whole movie is about finding yourself from community. And finding that you not only belong together but you need each other, very much. Obviously this will be expressed through punching."

Legal rights issues prevented a number of "Avengers" characters from being included in this film, such as Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch, villains Magneto, Doctor Doom and Norman Osbourne/Green Goblin. Though all characters are owned by Marvel/Disney, the X-Men and Fantastic Four characters were licensed to Fox Studios, and those of Spider-Man to Sony, before work began on an Avengers film. Marvel has said that in the future they hope to regain the rights to all licensed properties, that the aforementioned characters might have a role in subsequent Avengers films.

Toy Story 3

#9 at time of writing.

Wow. I haven't laughed out loud so often, and cried so hard, since... well, since Up. But if you exclude Pixar, since ever.

That's right. I'm a grown man and I bawled my eyes out.

Pixar are the masters - nay, the gods - of story. With Toy Story 3, they once again excel themselves. There is not one moment that allows your attention to flag, and the plot masterfully achieves that most challenging of goals (as taught by Terry Rossio): it's decisive, set-up, inevitable and yet genuinely unexpected.

This wonderful threequel complements and augments the first two films beautifully, whilst simultaneously laying a fair claim to being one of the best animated movies ever. Indeed, IMDb voters have propelled it into the top 10 movies of all time, of any genre. (With Inception currently at #3, July 2010 is proving to be a month of astonishingly high-quality film releases, at least as far as IMDb voters are concerned.)

The emotional core of Toy Story 3 is provided by the question: What happens to Andy's toys when he grows too old to play with them? A typical Pixar mix of loss, jealousy, hope and high-jinks follows, with an ending that will reconnect you to your inner child - and perhaps have your real children wondering why you are sniffling and teary-eyed over a bunch of toys.

Thank goodness Pixar and Disney made up. When they split over creative differences in 2004-2005, Disney started up an animation division titled 'Circle 7 Animation,' which would have been in charge of churning out sequels for Pixar films without consulting Pixar. The original plot for Toy Story 3 was going to be about Buzz Lightyear having a defect and being shipped to Taiwan to be fixed, and the other toys shipping themselves to Taiwan to rescue him. Judging by Disney's decidedly mediocre record with sequels, we should be grateful that Pixar are back in charge.