From the earliest days of cinema history, cartoons were never just for kids, and it’s important not to confuse the medium with a genre.
Animation has produced movies that are charming, romantic, harrowing, musical, magical, dystopian, funny…and pretty much every other adjective you might use to describe a story that you’d find in a live-action. That said, the best animated movies tell stories that are particularly well-suited to a cartoon canvas. Here are 40 of those that you can stream right now, spanning many genres and age ranges.
Turning Red (2022)
Whenever 13-year-old Mei Lee gets too excited, she turns into a giant red panda, which happens for the first time the morning after her overprotective mother embarrasses her in front of the older boy she has a crush on. A bright and lively coming-of-age story about the virtues of embracing change and letting your giant red panda flag fly, it’s very much a movie that works with kids—but the lessons here also apply to parents, who might need reminding that it’s OK to let kids grow up and be a little (or a lot) different.
Where to stream: Disney+
Wendell & Wild (2022)
This was the first film since 2009 from director Henry Selick, of A Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline (both movies to which we’ll return, don’t worry). Having not lost a step, and joined here by co-writer Jordan Peele, the director fashioned another stop-motion masterpiece, this time about a couple of demon brothers (Peele and Keegan-Michael Key) and the troubled young woman (voiced by Lyric Ross) who they try to manipulate into helping them start their own demon carnival. Turns out she’s not such an easy mark.
Where to stream: Netflix
Soul (2020)
Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx) is a pretty good jazz musician—but the high school music teacher’s life hasn’t been quite all he dreamed. At least until he falls down a manhole, dies, and discovers what it really means to have soul. This Pixar movie about finding your purpose won a Best Animated Feature Oscar, as well as one for Best Original Score for the work of Jon Batiste, Trent Reznor, and Atticus Ross.
Where to stream: Disney+
The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021)
Danny McBride voices technophobic Rick Mitchell, who teams up with his movie-obsessed daughter Katie (Abbi Jacobson) to save the world in this smartass-yet-heartwarming animated movie. Aspiring filmmaker Katie is constantly at odds with her dad, whose nature and tool obsessions (and general anxiety) leave him out of the loop when it comes to her dreams. Instead of letting Katie take a flight to college, Ricks opts for a road trip to help the whole family bond, which isn’t working out too well, even before a tech company’s AI goes rogue and threatens the entire world in hilariously animated ways. The family has to learn to respect their differences and understand each other in order to beat the machines.
Where to stream: Netflix
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Peter Parker is a supporting character in the best Spider-Man movie of them all, with Miles Morales reluctantly learning to become a hero with a little help from Spider-people from across the multiverse. The gorgeous, intentionally messy, ultra-stylish animation is like nothing you’ve ever seen.
Where to stream: FXNow, Fubo
Nimona (2023)
Based on the graphic novel by ND Stevenson, Nimona is a heartfelt, joyful, and very funny fantasy set in a futuristic world full of medieval trappings. Ballister Boldheart, alongside his boyfriend, Ambrosius Goldenloin, is about to be knighted by the queen, and he’ll be the first commoner ever to receive the honor. All good, until he’s framed for the queen’s murder and forced to flee, becoming the criminal that the snobs already took him for. Luckily (or not) he’s joined by Nimona, a teenager who’s been an outcast because of her shapeshifting powers. The two work to clear Ballister’s name, even as Nimona has things to teach Ballister about being true to your authentic self.
Where to stream: Netflix
Spirited Away (2001)
Hayao Miyazaki’s triumph is, not surprisingly, also one of the greatest films of all time (live-action or animated). It’s a work of tremendous beauty, with great care taken in each and every single frame. It’s the story of stubborn Chihiro, who goes on an adventure in a world of spirits to rescue her parents from a witch and to reclaim her name.
Where to stream: Max
The Iron Giant (1999)
In Cold War-era Maine, a giant alien robot becomes the focus of fear and paranoia from an American military who can only see his potential as a weapon—but also becomes the best friend to a lonely little boy who believes in his mechanical heart. Aside from being a deeply emotional experience, the characters here (including the giant robot) are as complex as any in live-action film. (The director, Brad Bird, went on to make The Incredibles, which certainly also could be on this list, but I didn’t want to just include every Pixar movie.)
Where to stream: Digital rental
The Sea Beast (2022)
Chris Williams, an animator who has either directed or had a hand in some of the best animated movies of the last decade (Bolt, Big Hero 6, Moana, etc.), brings us this story about a girl who stows away on the ship of a legendary monster hunter (Karl Urban) and sets off on an adventure that gives her new insight into what truly makes someone (or something) monstrous. It makes use of modern animation technology without ever feeling gimmicky.
Where to stream: Netflix
My Father’s Dragon (2022)
Loosely adapted from Ruth Stiles Gannett’s 1948 children’s novel and geared toward younger audiences than most other all-ages animated movies on this list, My Father’s Dragon still has enough wit and surprises to make it easy to recommend to just about anyone—along with more emotional intelligence than many movies made for adults. A boy named Elmer (Jacob Tremblay) and his shopkeeper mother, Dela (Golshifteh Farahani) leave their tight-knit town in favor of a bigger city—though the promise of better circumstances doesn’t quickly materialize. Elmer’s patience is rewarded, though, when a talking cat invites him on a beautiful, candy-colored adventure to meet a dragon and save an island.
Where to stream: Netflix
Bubble (2022)
From Attack on Titan and Death Note director Tetsurô Araki and an all-star creative team, Bubble finds Tokyo cut off from the rest of the world when reality-bending bubbles rain down on the city (shades of Stephen King’s Under the Dome, perhaps). It’s a gorgeous, parkour-infused love story, but it’s worth checking out for anyone who loves animation (or great sci-fi films in general).
Where to stream: Netflix
Akira (1988)
Set in a dystopian 2019, this beautiful cyberpunk classic finds biker Kaneda forced to face down his friend Tetsuo after he gains telekinetic abilities in an accident. The wildly kinetic movie and its highly detailed world set a new standard for anime—we’re still living in the animated world that writer/director Katsuhiro Otomo and company gave birth to with this one.
Where to stream: Hulu, Crunchyroll
Toy Story (1995)
I’m not sure that the first Toy Story is the best of the series, but it’s brilliant in its own right, not to mention technically groundbreaking, so, if you’re rewatching (or watching for the first time), it’s still the best place to start.
Where to stream: Disney+
Lightyear (2022)
Unpopular opinion alert: This movie deserves another chance. Though its confusing premise (it’s presented as the movie about Buzz Lightyear that inspired the toy from the Toy Story series) sent it to the bottom of the box office, Lightyear is, at heart, a characteristically charming, poignant Pixar film with a strong science fiction hook. Investigating a new world, Buzz (Chris Pine) and his best friend and commander Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba) become stranded along with their team. Buzz commits to testing the hyperspace fuel that they’ll need to get home, but the resulting time dilation means that every brief trip into space sees years pass by for his friends on the surface. It’s the kind of poignant set-up that Pixar is so good at, even if it’s understandable that it left theatrical audiences scratching their heads.
Where to stream: Disney+
Ghost in the Shell (1995)
A legitimate cyberpunk mind-bender in the William Gibson mold, manga adaptation Ghost in the Shell easily stands alongside spiritual cinematic siblings like Blade Runner or The Matrix (which it explicitly inspired). From director Mamoru Oshii and writer Kazunori Itō, the film finds cyborg security officer Motoko Kusanagi on the hunt for a seemingly invincible hacker, the case leading her to question not only her own identity as, essentially, a robot with a human mind—but also the very nature of reality itself. Along with Akira, this movie became a gateway to anime for an entire generation of American fans, and it inspired an animated franchise, even though it stands entirely on its own.
Where to stream: Tubi, Freevee
Dumbo (1941)
One of early Disney’s shortest films, Dumbo is a brisk, occasionally heartbreaking story about the titular elephant with the enormous ears. The movie’s racist crows are a problem, but otherwise it’s a tender, occasionally heartbreaking story about a kid who just wants to belong. “Baby Mine” is among the most effectively tearjerking numbers in the entire Disney musical pantheon.
Where to stream: Disney+
The Tale of Princess Kaguya (2013)
Isao Takahata, the co-founder of Studio Ghibli alongside Hayao Miyazaki, capped his brilliant career with this Academy Award-nominee based on the 1,000-year-old folktale known as “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter.” The deceptively simple pencil and watercolor style is endlessly gorgeous. The story itself involves a woodsman who finds a baby in the bamboo and ultimately decides that it’s his fate to give her the life of a princess. The girl wants nothing more than the love of her family, but the movie turns on the dichotomy between that simple virtue and the need to satisfy the desires of family and community.
Where to stream: Max
Mulan (1998)
Yes, this is another example of Disney doing a westernized version of a non-western culture, with all of the problems and inaccuracies that entails. Nevertheless, it’s still a beautiful, inspiring story of a young Chinese woman impersonating a man to take her father’s place in the military, and saving her country from invading Huns in the process.
Where to stream: Disney+
Shrek (2001)
While Eddie Murphy feels like a highly questionable choice for Chinese-folktale-inspired Mulan, he’s very much at home here as Donkey, teaming up with Mike Myers as the titular ogre to save the imprisoned Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz). The movie blends genuine laughs with some genuine feels, ultimately turning the Disney princess formula on its head by making clear that true beauty is found in the swamp. It was the very first film to win an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
Where to stream: Netflix
Coraline (2009)
From the director of A Nightmare Before Christmas and based on the book by Neil Gaiman, the stop-motion-animated Coraline is every inch the dark fantasy that you’d expect from that team-up. In the film, Coraline explores her new home in the general absence of her preoccupied parents, discovers a door into a slightly sinister, but definitely appealing alternate universe. Coraline is forced to choose which reality she’d prefer to live in, and fight for the opportunity.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Blame! (2017)
In the future, the City grows like a virus, endlessly in all directions, humans long since having lost control of the automated systems designed to run things. Those same systems now see views humans as “illegals” to be purged, so flesh-and-blood survivors are caught between the city’s murderous defense systems and the need to find food. One group of humans, though, is on the hunt for the existence of someone with a genetic marker that they believe will allow for access to the city’s control systems—a hunt lead by Killy, a synthetic human who might have the key. Neat world-building here, and solid CGI animation.
Where to stream: Netflix
Chicken Run (2000)
The sharp Aardman Brothers comedy has some incredibly fun stop-motion animation and an awful lot of chickens. It remains the top-grossing stop-motion animated movie of all time. And 20+ years later, we got a similarly good sequel.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)
The late, great Kevin Conroy is joined by Mark Hamill and Dana Delany in this short animated crime thriller, initially intended as a direct to video release and yet somehow standing with the very best movies of the entire Batman franchise. Even while reconnecting with a former love, Bruce is forced to re-examine his life’s choices as a mysterious vigilante is killing criminals in Gotham.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Princess Mononoke (1997)
Another triumph from Hayao Miyazaki, Princess Mononoke is set in a fantasy version of medieval Japan. Ashitaka is infected in an animal attack, and seeks a natural cure—only to discover that humanity’s activities have angered the gods and thrown the natural balance.
Where to stream: Max
The Little Mermaid (1989)
Following a series of flops, Disney was all-but finished as a producer of animated films. The Little Mermaid singlehandedly brought the company roaring back. It’s an instant classic to rival the triumphs of earlier decades.
Where to stream: Disney+
Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)
Another brilliant piece of stop-motion animation, this time inspired by origami and Japanese ink wash painting. Set in feudal Japan, the story involves Kubo and his enchanted shamisen (the title’s string instrument), on a beautiful, dreamlike quest to stop his grandfather, the Moon King, in a story that doesn’t talk down to a young audience.
Where to stream: Digital rental
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
This seasonal gem from Henry Selick and Tim Burton is so familiar at this point, it’s easy to underestimate its impact on pop culture. A wholly original dark fantasy and an enduring holiday classic (but is that holiday Halloween or Christmas?).
Where to stream: Disney+
Your Name (2016)
Never has a body-swap story been this gorgeously rendered, with a use of light like I’ve never seen in animation. Country girl Mitsuha begins mysterious trading bodies with Taki, a boy from Tokyo, and the two slowly come to understand each other and their separate lives. Gut-punching revelations in the second act take the story into deeper waters, the film revealing itself to have far more on its mind that a metaphysical meet-cute.
Where to stream: The Criterion Channel, Crunchyroll
Weathering With You (2019)
Makoto Shinkai followed up Your Name with this equally impactful successor, a gorgeous vision of rain-soaked Tokyo, and a young woman who can control the weather (this movie doing for water imagery what Your Name did with light). Troubled runaway Hodaka meets and befriends Hina, whose emotions impact the weather. There are life- and world-threatening consequences to all of this, but, ultimately, it’s about the triumphs and tragedies of first love.
Where to stream: Max
Sleeping Beauty (1959)
You know the story, but if you’ve never seen the film itself, you’re missing out on one of the signature artistic achievements of Disney’s golden era. Both the backgrounds (inspired by gothic art and medieval tapestries) and the gorgeous character designs and animation represent some of the finest hand-drawn work ever put to film. When it was released in 1959, after an eight-year development process, it represented a huge leap forward for both Disney and screen animation in general. (Audiences weren’t quite ready for it, and it was a financial disappointment. History has certainly redeemed it.)
Where to stream: Disney+
The Red Turtle (2016)
Dutch animator Michael Dudok de Wit teamed with Studio Ghibli for this dialogue-free film that tells the story of a man who becomes trapped on a desert island with only a giant turtle for companionship. What starts as a survival tale takes on deeper resonance as their bond grows. A powerful emotional journey.
Where to stream: Starz
Up (2009)
Its tear-jerking opening minutes ground all the silliness to come in Up, a wild, sometimes wacky adventure story about an old man who has given up on life until he finally decides to set off on a real adventure (with a young stowaway tagging along), floating his house to South America with the help of thousands of balloons. It’s an absurd romp that somehow never loses its grounding in the idea that grief and loss can only be challenged by forming real human connections.
Where to stream: Disney+
Flee (2021)
Presented as an animated pseudo-documentary, Flee sees director Jonas Poher Rasmussen telling the story of Amin Nawabi, heading off to marry his boyfriend but stopping to recount his childhood journey to escape Afghanistan at the end of the Soviet occupation. A gripping, and deeply moving, journey of self discovery.
Where to stream: Hulu
Perfect Blue (1998)
As good a reminder of the breadth of animation as anything (and proof that anime can do the psychological thriller genre as well as any medium) Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue isn’t going to be for everyone. Its blurring of fantasy and reality draws comparisons to the films of Darren Aronofsky—though it’s really the other way around, as Perfect Blue came before both Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan, which echo it deliberately. Its story follows a young Japanese singer who is pushed to quit her career to take a job on television—a move with horrific consequences in the best tradition of high-price-of-fame stories.
Where to stream: Shudder
Fantastic Planet (1973)
This French science fiction film defies any attempts to succinctly describe its plot, except to say that it takes place in a distant future on a world where giant blue humanoid creatures keep humans as pets, when they’re not treated as wild animals. It’s almost pure allegory for whatever you’d like to slot in: perhaps animal rights, perhaps racism, but it’s ultimately a beautiful, deeply trippy journey to a vividly imaginative world.
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel
Frozen (2013)
While many Disney princess stories wind up with fairly straightforward good versus evil dichotomies, Frozen does something new in crafting a lead who’s also the film’s antagonist, following her on a journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance that’s as deeply meaningful as ever in a Disney film. (It’s also a top-tier sisters movie.)
Where to stream: Disney+
Paprika (2006)
Therapists can enter the dreams of their patients in the Satoshi Kon’s masterpiece, which clearly inspired Inception. The film plays with layers of emotion and reality without ever leaving its audience feeling lost or disoriented. Well, maybe a little bit.
Where to stream: Tubi
Coco (2017)
Miguel enters the land of the dead to find his grandfather, and bring the gift of music back to his family in this Oscar winner. The stunningly detailed depiction of the afterlife not only celebrates Mexican culture, it feels deeply universal.
Where to stream: Disney+
Waltz with Bashir (2008)
There’s documentary style here, but the film, involving the recollections of Ari Colman and his time as as young soldier in Israel’s 1982 war with Lebanon, recognizes the ambiguous nature of memory. It’s also a movie that makes clear the crimes and costs of war like few others.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
A gorgeous, deeply spooky fairy tale that sold audiences on the then-unheard-of idea that people would sit still for a feature-length animated film. It remains both entertaining and a work of art in its own right.
Where to stream: Disney+
