A good first date film gives you something to talk about without making you explain yourself. It should open a conversation, not close one down.
Looking back, the 2000s were a golden era for this kind of filmmaking - studios still willing to fund serious work, directors still pushing at the edges of what was expected.
The best animated films don't talk down to anyone. They trust that emotion has no age requirement.
A young girl, Chihiro, becomes trapped in a strange new world of spirits. When her parents undergo a mysterious transformation, she must call upon the courage she never knew she had to free her family.
Sophie, a young milliner, is turned into an elderly woman by a witch who enters her shop and curses her. She encounters a wizard named Howl and gets caught up in his resistance to fighting for the king.
After hundreds of years doing what he was built for, WALL•E- a robot designed to clean up the earth-discovers a new purpose in life when he meets a sleek search robot named EVE. EVE comes to realize that WALL•E has inadvertently stumbled upon the key to the planet's future, and races back to space to report to the humans. Meanwhile, WALL•E chases EVE across the galaxy and sets into motion one of the most imaginative adventures ever brought to the big screen.
Carl Fredricksen spent his entire life dreaming of exploring the globe and experiencing life to its fullest. But at age 78, life seems to have passed him by, until a twist of fate (and a persistent 8-year old Wilderness Explorer named Russell) gives him a new lease on life.
On Christmas Eve, three homeless people living on the streets of Tokyo discover a newborn baby among the trash and set out to find its parents.
What makes these films remarkable is their emotional honesty. They're animated, but they don't soften anything.
Wandering her rambling old house in her boring new town, 11-year-old Coraline discovers a hidden door to a strangely idealized version of her life. In order to stay in the fantasy, she must make a frighteningly real sacrifice.
In 1970s Iran, Marjane 'Marji' Satrapi watches events through her young eyes and her idealistic family of a long dream being fulfilled of the hated Shah's defeat in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. However as Marji grows up, she witnesses first hand how the new Iran, now ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, has become a repressive tyranny on its own.
A tale of friendship between two unlikely pen pals: Mary, a lonely, eight-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max, a forty-four-year old, severely obese man living in New York.
Lovable Sulley and his wisecracking sidekick Mike Wazowski are the top scare team at Monsters, Inc., the scream-processing factory in Monstropolis. When a little girl named Boo wanders into their world, it's the monsters who are scared silly, and it's up to Sulley and Mike to keep her out of sight and get her back home.
Remy, a rat, possesses a palate far more refined than that of his fellow comrades. He dreams of becoming a chef, one who creates rather than scavenges. When fate deposits him in the sewers beneath one of Paris's most famous restaurants, he finds himself ideally placed to fulfill his dream. Forming an unusual alliance with a hapless young kitchen worker, Remy begins a daring culinary double life. As Remy pursues his vision, he must navigate the suspicions of the calculating Head Chef Skinner, the disapproval of Remy's own colony, and the foreboding presence of renowned food critic Anton Ego, who strikes fear in the hearts of chefs all throughout France.
The best suspense doesn't come from action - it comes from caring about what happens. These films make you care, then twist the knife.
These films prove that animation is not a lesser form of cinema. It's a different one - capable of its own kind of greatness.