Top Ten Animated Movies of the Decade

10. Isle of Dogs

I’ll admit that when I first saw this, I was let down.  It doesn’t reach the heights of Anderson’s other stop-motion Mr. Fox and the human parts of the story in particular were uninteresting.  But I’ve caught it on tv a few times before then, and every time I do I like it quite a bit more.  Somehow Anderson can make a dogs furtive glance funny.  It works.

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9. The Peanuts Movie

This didn’t and still doesn’t get a lot of fanfare, but I really liked what the Peanuts movie did.  It really seemed to capture the heart and soul of Schultz’s comic in both story and animation.  Its really a solid little cartoon.

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8. How to Train Your Dragon

I think this one surprised a lot of people.  This came out at the height of 3D and got a lot of hype for the flying scenes, but I guess this is a reflection of how vivid the animation is.  The story works well and can be quite touching at time.

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7. Coco

I’m just a sap I guess.  That scene with the song at the end clinched this for me.

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6. Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse

I suspected that this was mostly people getting over-hyped, but when I decided to watched it I ended up liking it quite a bit.  The mix of animation styles is cool, and the death of … someone major at the beginning and its fallout really won me over.

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5. Moana

I don’t know why I like this one as much as I do.  Ts not really my kind of movie, but there you have it.  I even like the songs.  Like, a lot.

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4. The Lego Movie

I’ve always been a big lego maniac, but even so I was skeptical of a movie about lego.  But low and behold, what I got was great.  The animation was creative, the themes spoke to the purpose of lego itself, it was funny… it was awesome.

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3. Toy Story 3

This might be the best of the series.  I think maybe it is.

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2. Your Name

As far as the animation is concerned, the is the most gorgeous looking film on this list.  And the story, though weird, is really quite wonderful.  Your Name really took me by surprise.  It was very close to topping this list.

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1. Inside Out

This is Pixar reaching back to its glory days of a decade earlier.  You know, when it made Cars.  I love the themes of Inside Out and how they mesh with these characters.  There’s a lot of imagination happening here.  I seem to like Inside Out more every time I see it.  It also has the added memory of me taking my niece to see this as her first movie when she was 4 years old.