This year has been an absolute feast of animated movies, with many of the best ones coming from outside the limited world of American animation (though even among the weary world of sequels and movies tied to existing IP, there are some glittering gems). The animated movies of 2024 have spanned genre, from fantasy and sci-fi to grounded tales of family loss, all visually rich in their own special way.
Here are the best animated movies of the year so far.
Chicken for Linda
Directors: Chiara Malta, Sébastien Laudenbach
Cast: Mélinée Leclerc, Clotilde Hesme, Laetitia Dosch
Chicken for Linda is vividly distinct in its visuals, with characters rendered in single blocks of color with distinct dark outlines against painted backgrounds. They all move with a specific physicality that really renders their world in an eye-catching way. But as fantastical as it looks, the story is incredibly grounded — albeit a little whimsical in terms of hijinks. A young girl asks her mother for a specific meal that her father used to make for her. And her mother, feeling guilty about wrongfully punishing her daughter, is determined to track down a chicken for this meal. But the town is on strike, so none of the stores are open, and this romp takes them through the countryside, with a whole lot of shenanigans at play. However, at its core, the movie is about grief, slowly draped in the background until it builds up to a softly cathartic moment. —Petrana Radulovic
The Concierge
Director: Yoshimi Itazu
Cast: Natsumi Kawaida
The most charming part of The Concierge is seeing the animals do very Human Things, like shopping for handbags and proposing marriage to their partners, while still maintaining their animal physicality. In this world, extinct and endangered animals all flock to a department store, where their needs are catered to by concierges. Our plucky protagonist Akino is determined to be a very good concierge, though she’s also super anxious about messing up and failing her charges. There’s a subtle thread about loneliness and connection woven throughout the film’s episodic structure that swirls into the forefront of the final act, in tandem with Akino’s own confidence blooming. —PR
Flow
Director: Gints Zilbalodis
Flow, the feature debut of animator Gints Zilbalodis, might look like a big-screen take on Little Kitty, Big City, but there’s a reason it’s Latvia’s entry for the Best International Feature Oscar on top of being an animated contender: Aside from it being frickin’ adorable, it’s also a vivid tale of loss, survival, and renewal.
After a cataclysmic event floods a world that humans have either evacuated or already been wiped out of, our black cat hero finds himself alone and scrambling to stay afloat (literally). The cat eventually takes refuge with a nice canine in a boat captained by a capybara. As they drift through the vastness a post-apocalyptic waterworld, they make a bird friend.
Flow isn’t far off from a wacky DreamWorks animated movie — the animal pals all have distinct personalities and abilities that far exceed most lazing house pets. But Zilbalodis’ film is also completely void of dialogue, making room for expressive cartooning and eerie silence. There is danger everywhere in the fallen world, and occasionally on the boat — it’s tough out there for a li’l guy. Zilbalodis captures it all in fluid camerawork that brings us close to the texture of this world. There are moments when the journey could devolve into an Unreal Engine demo — ripe with beautiful sunsets and overgrown vistas — but Flow is ultimately haunted by the lack of humanity. Even in its most delightful kitten-fueled moments, at every turn, Zilbalodis makes us wonder: How did we get here? —Matt Patches
Inside Out 2
Director: Kelsey Mann
Cast: Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Phyllis Smith
Pixar Animation’s belated sequel to Pete Docter’s brilliant 2015 movie Inside Out is an odd choice to become Pixar’s biggest box-office hit ever, not to mention the record holder for biggest animated movie of all time. But those records speak to this movie’s impact and relevance. For a generation of kids navigating a rising new wave of anxiety and depression disorders, it’s a movie that gives Anxiety (Maya Hawke) a face, a voice, and even a purpose. It’s a cleverly constructed story full of mental-landscape gags and by-now familiar characters (particularly Amy Poehler as Joy and Phyllis Smith as Sadness), but it brings authentically new ideas to Docter’s setting and conceit. It’s funny, empathetic, and sly about evoking teenage feelings of self-consciousness, envy, low self-esteem, and the clash between expectations and reality. Despite what the box office says, it’s far from Pixar’s best movie — but it’s a rare case of a really well-assembled, well-intentioned project getting the attention it deserves. —Tasha Robinson
Mars Express
Director: Jérémie Périn
Cast: Léa Drucker, Mathieu Amalric, Daniel Njo Lobé
Mars Express is the type of movie critics and audiences often claim can’t be made anymore: a mature original animated sci-fi thriller with meticulously well-crafted characters, beautiful set-pieces, and heady themes that meaningfully probe at questions pertinent to both our present and humanity’s collective future.
Inspired by noir classics like Chinatown, The Long Goodbye, and Kiss Me Deadly, Jérémie Périn’s tech-noir caper follows its protagonists — Aline, a human private detective, and her partner Carlos, an android replica of her deceased colleague — as they stumble upon a planet-spanning conspiracy with even farther-reaching implications. If you’re yearning for an inspired work of storytelling that has something to say in its own unique voice, Mars Express is requisite viewing for any serious animation or sci-fi enthusiast. —Toussaint Egan
ME
Director: Don Hertzfeldt
Don Hertzfeldt is one of the greatest living animators working today, if not one of the greatest living filmmakers of his generation. I say that without the slightest hint of doubt or reservation because, to put it pointedly, his body of work attests to that fact. His films manage to cram more ideas and meaning into the span of 20 minutes than most mainstream movies struggle to muster in two hours.
Case in point, ME, Hertzfeldt’s latest musical short film that probes at such thorny subjects as mortality, eternity, and the futility of relying solely on technology in search of the answers to life’s most confounding and essential questions. It’s the type of movie that sticks with you long after it’s finished, the type that makes you look at yourself, the people around you, and the world differently for having watched it. If that doesn’t qualify it as one of this year’s best animated features, I don’t know what does. —TE
Look Back
Director: Kiyotaka Oshiyama
Cast: Yumi Kawai, Mizuki Yoshida
Look Back is one of the most affecting films I’ve seen all year. Kiyotaka Oshiyama’s adaptation of Chainsaw Man author Tatsuki Fujimoto’s one-shot manga is faithful both to the text and the spirit of that text: a heartbreaking story about the labor of art that is itself a labor of art. The film centers on Ayumu Fujino, an elementary school student with a talent for drawing manga. Initially driven by her rivalry with her reclusive classmate, Kyomoto, Fujino’s life is irrevocably changed not only through the pursuit of honing her craft, but through her blossoming friendship with Kyomoto. Look Back is more than just a stunningly well-crafted piece of animation; it’s a stirring testament to the power of art to elevate and edify those who pour their own hearts and minds into the labor of its creation, as well as its power to connect people with one another across vast intervals of time, space, and lived experience. It is, in no uncertain terms, a masterpiece born from the heart. —TE
Robot Dreams
Director: Pablo Berger
Told entirely without dialogue, Robot Dreams follows Dog, a lonely dog in an anthropomorphic world, who orders a robot friend. The two strike up a fast friendship over a memorable summer — but are forced to part ways when Robot loses his battery power on a beach. The animation is delightful and the characters and world are endearing. But most of all, it’s a surprisingly poignant movie about friendship, and the memories we carry from the people who are no longer in our lives. It also uses Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September” in the most devastating way possible. —PR
Sirocco and the Kingdom of the Winds
Director: Benoît Chieux
Cast: Loïse Charpentier, Maryne Bertieaux, Aurélie Konaté, Pierre Lognay
At its core, Sirocco and the Kingdom of the Winds is a fairy tale about two sisters who find themselves in a fantastical world that they only know from a fantasy book series. The movie shares familiar tropes with stories like Spirited Away and Over the Garden Wall, but director Benoît Chieux imbues the film with enough originality that it turns into a wondrous adventure — and a deeper dive into sibling relationships and the transformative power of love in the face of grief. The visuals are particularly stunning and unique, looking like a cross between surrealist landscapes and retro science fiction, and rendered in blocks of color that make it look particularly dreamlike and trippy. —PR
Transformers One
Director: Josh Cooley
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry, Jon Hamm, Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key
Transformers One director Josh Cooley has a real knack for getting audiences emotionally invested in the lives of toys. Cooley’s follow-up to Toy Story 4 may not have the poignancy and maturity of a Pixar movie, but the director still manages to tell an entertaining origin story about Optimus Prime and Megatron going from best buds to mortal enemies in this Transformers prequel.
The movie explores the friendship between Optimus (Chris Hemsworth) and Megatron (Brian Tyree Henry), their respective journeys of self-discovery, and the conflicting reactions to learning what life is really like on the planet Cybertron under its benevolent ruler, Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm). Joining them on their transformative road trip are Elita-1 (Scarlett Johansson) and B-127 (Keegan-Michael Key), who delivers much of the animated film’s humor.
Transformers One is an enjoyable start of a new series of animated movies (that we’ll never get) about the robots in disguise. It can be a little hammy at times, and Megatron’s heel turn may be a bit sudden, but One is an unexpectedly solid story about lifelong friends falling out. It’s a shame that audiences overlooked it. You shouldn’t. —Michael McWhertor
The Wild Robot
Director: Chris Sanders
Cast: Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Catherine O’Hara
The Wild Robot proves that DreamWorks is in its glow-up era.
Not only is the movie gorgeous, with a lush painterly look, it’s also a deeply moving story about the complications of parenthood and the importance of kindness. The film follows a robot named Roz (Lupita Nyong’o), who finds herself stranded on a remote island. She tries to assimilate with the local wildlife, who are all suspicious of her (and each other), and ends up taking in a young gosling and a snarky fox.
Even though it features a cast of talking animals, it never feels like it’s pandering just to kids. At the same time, director Chris Sanders tackles some serious themes, but they feel accessible enough for children. It’s incredibly emotional without ever feeling overly didactic about its larger themes. —PR
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