The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025

Honourable Mentions: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Mulholland Drive, The Royal Tenenbaums

Hayao Miyazaki is a towering figure in animation, a filmmaker who brought East to West with stories derived from Japanese folklore, genre fantasy and his own life experiences growing up in the shadow of the Second World War. His films speak to both the wide-eyed earnestness of childhood and of the pain that can lie just beneath the surface of happy memory. Appropriately, Miyazaki's stories always feel emotionally pivotal, with the grandiosity and beauty of Studio Ghibli's animation never smothering the dramatic weight of the story being spun, whether it's about an anti-fascist, self-hating pig-man pilot in Porco Rosso, or a child on the cusp of young adulthood in Kiki's Delivery Service.

It's a testament to Miyazaki's endurance and talent that so many of his films could be labelled his best, but if any were to exemplify the peak of his and Studio Ghibli's gifts, it would probably be 2001's Spirited Away.

Another coming-of-age tale that speaks to both the powerlessness and determination that can accompany childhood, but one that's as brimming with love and beauty as much as it is peril and threat, Spirited Away is pure comfort - a warm glow of a film whose shine never ceases. That same description could also be used for a great many other Miyazaki movies, but this one just about takes the cake.