10 Directors With The Most Movies In The IMDb Top 250

6. Hayao Miyazaki (6)

The Movies: Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, Howl's Moving Castle, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Castle in the Sky If tasked with selecting a single, monumental figure within the field of animation, most would probably opt for Walt Disney. And whilst Disney was certainly a pioneer and assured an immortal legacy with his work across the span of many successful decades, Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki might be better suited for the title; his pictures are, after all, beautiful, ethereal, timeless, breathtaking, exciting, complex, and completely original. There are very few alive who can match his achievements. In truth, Walt Disney and Miyazaki share very little in common save for their mutual love of animation; their movies could not be more different. Whilst Disney's films often felt like products of a larger studio system, Miyazaki's films are far more personal - they "feel" like the man himself might have drawn and curated each in and every frame (and in some cases such a thing is true). If Spirited Away is Miyazaki's definitive masterpiece, the film that sums him up as an animator and as a visionary (and even as a man), the five other movie gems on the IMDb Top 250 are not to be classed as lesser products - Spirited Away merely marked a peak. Miyazaki's canon is arguable unrivalled, and it's nice to see that the IMDb acknowledges this great filmmaker and holds his work in such high esteem.