Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Debut director Hiromasa Yonebayashi (When Marnie Was There, 2014) and Studio Ghibli teamed up for this film version of Mary Norton’s 1952 children’s classic The Borrowers, full of gorgeous imagery of the natural world. Arrietty is the daughter of a family of Borrowers—miniature people secretly living in an occupied house—who risk their home when she befriends a human boy.

Spirited Away was Hayao Miyazaki’s first Oscar win, and the first hand-drawn, non-English-language animated film to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. The film invites audiences into a mind-bending supernatural realm when a wrong turn on a family road trip lands 10-year-old Chihiro in a mysterious dimension populated by all manner of creatures, including soot gremlins (first introduced in My Neighbor Totoro), the giant witch Yubaba, and, most memorably, the enigmatic No Face. To find her parents and return to the real world, Chihiro must work at an enchanted bathhouse serving spirits of all shapes and sizes. A tour de force of surrealist invention, Spirited Away is a timeless wonder filled with whimsy and joy.

Isao Takahata’s adaptation of Hisaichi Ishii’s beloved slice-of-life manga departs from Studio Ghibli’s traditional anime style and instead uses a roughly sketched comic-strip look. Awash in pastel watercolors, My Neighbors the Yamadas delights in the everyday misadventures of its titular family—dad, mom, older brother, little sister, granny, and Pochi the dog. Punctuated by daydreams and fantasies, Takahata’s film is a heart-warming and honest look at modern family life. Along with its typical animation style, Ghibli forgoes its usual long, orchestral music in favor of short piano themes to match its episodic style, making the film a standout in the studio’s filmography.