Mike’s Favorite Animated Shorts of the Decade (50-41)
This might be the one list I was most excited for. It’s the last one I came up with, too. I had all the others and then, I don’t know, about two weeks before I unveiled that I was gonna be doing all this, I thought, “Animated shorts would be a really terrific list to pull off.” Because, like songs, animated films are something that we all can consume pretty quickly and easily and have real opinions on. And each year, it’s one of my favorite categories to delve into when we get to awards season. And all too often do we forget about all the great ones we watch and never go back to them. When in reality, a perfectly crafted animated short of is one of the greatest viewing experiences you can ever have.
This was also a list I had to do the most homework for. Because aside from what gets shortlisted for awards, there are also dozens of other shorts that come out each year that most people don’t even know about. Occasionally they’ll be highlighted on a video site or get press, but most of the time they come and go without anyone knowing about them. So I really tried to dig and find stuff that I wouldn’t have otherwise known about in the hopes of making a list that was truly worth discussing. I almost wanted to be as inclusive as possible and go to 100, but in the end, I felt 50 was the way to go. Because I’m really happy with the 50 that I chose.
I’m gonna try to make this a point going forward, that I’m going to seek out more animated shorts on a yearly basis, and make them a part of my repertoire for watching and showing people things. Here’s what I’d suggest we all start doing — before you sit down for a movie night with friends or family or your children or whomever… just put on one animated short before your film. Like Disney and Pixar do. They give you a short film, and then the feature starts. I think it’s a great way of doing things and exposing yourself to great, compressed stories that you wouldn’t otherwise get to see.
So, in the spirit of that, here are my favorite animated short films from this past decade: (more…)
Mike’s Favorite Animated Films of the Decade (10-1)
Our first official list. My favorite animated films of the decade. What I love about animated films in particular is that, in a lot of ways, they’re the first films we’re exposed to as children. Anyone growing up pretty much from the 80s onward grew up with these films in our lives, because of the home video age. Before we went to theaters to see stuff and before we got into ‘movies’ at large, there was all those movies we grew up on. And now, even though I’m not of the age for most of the animated fare to appeal to me like they used to, there’s still some amazing stuff that comes out each year that’s worth talking about, because they, while entertaining for all, are an art form of their own.
So we’ll shout out the 50 that I liked best over the past decade. Animation is a genre with some great stuff, but overall a very limited number of films that come out each year, owing to the length it takes to actually make one of them. So 50 feels right, rather than trying to stretch it.
So here are my top animated films from the decade 2010-2019: (more…)
Mike’s Favorite Animated Films of the Decade (20-11)
Our first official list. My favorite animated films of the decade. What I love about animated films in particular is that, in a lot of ways, they’re the first films we’re exposed to as children. Anyone growing up pretty much from the 80s onward grew up with these films in our lives, because of the home video age. Before we went to theaters to see stuff and before we got into ‘movies’ at large, there was all those movies we grew up on. And now, even though I’m not of the age for most of the animated fare to appeal to me like they used to, there’s still some amazing stuff that comes out each year that’s worth talking about, because they, while entertaining for all, are an art form of their own.
So we’ll shout out the 50 that I liked best over the past decade. Animation is a genre with some great stuff, but overall a very limited number of films that come out each year, owing to the length it takes to actually make one of them. So 50 feels right, rather than trying to stretch it.
So here are my top animated films from the decade 2010-2019: (more…)
Mike’s Favorite Animated Films of the Decade (30-21)
Our first official list. My favorite animated films of the decade. What I love about animated films in particular is that, in a lot of ways, they’re the first films we’re exposed to as children. Anyone growing up pretty much from the 80s onward grew up with these films in our lives, because of the home video age. Before we went to theaters to see stuff and before we got into ‘movies’ at large, there was all those movies we grew up on. And now, even though I’m not of the age for most of the animated fare to appeal to me like they used to, there’s still some amazing stuff that comes out each year that’s worth talking about, because they, while entertaining for all, are an art form of their own.
So we’ll shout out the 50 that I liked best over the past decade. Animation is a genre with some great stuff, but overall a very limited number of films that come out each year, owing to the length it takes to actually make one of them. So 50 feels right, rather than trying to stretch it.
So here are my top animated films from the decade 2010-2019: (more…)
Mike’s Favorite Animated Films of the Decade (40-31)
Our first official list. My favorite animated films of the decade. What I love about animated films in particular is that, in a lot of ways, they’re the first films we’re exposed to as children. Anyone growing up pretty much from the 80s onward grew up with these films in our lives, because of the home video age. Before we went to theaters to see stuff and before we got into ‘movies’ at large, there was all those movies we grew up on. And now, even though I’m not of the age for most of the animated fare to appeal to me like they used to, there’s still some amazing stuff that comes out each year that’s worth talking about, because they, while entertaining for all, are an art form of their own.
So we’ll shout out the 50 that I liked best over the past decade. Animation is a genre with some great stuff, but overall a very limited number of films that come out each year, owing to the length it takes to actually make one of them. So 50 feels right, rather than trying to stretch it.
So here are my top animated films from the decade 2010-2019: (more…)
Mike’s Favorite Animated Films of the Decade (50-41)
Our first official list. My favorite animated films of the decade. What I love about animated films in particular is that, in a lot of ways, they’re the first films we’re exposed to as children. Anyone growing up pretty much from the 80s onward grew up with these films in our lives, because of the home video age. Before we went to theaters to see stuff and before we got into ‘movies’ at large, there was all those movies we grew up on. And now, even though I’m not of the age for most of the animated fare to appeal to me like they used to, there’s still some amazing stuff that comes out each year that’s worth talking about, because they, while entertaining for all, are an art form of their own.
So we’ll shout out the 50 that I liked best over the past decade. Animation is a genre with some great stuff, but overall a very limited number of films that come out each year, owing to the length it takes to actually make one of them. So 50 feels right, rather than trying to stretch it.
So here are my top animated films from the decade 2010-2019: (more…)
The Top Tens of the Decade Lists
We just finished an entire decade in film and I covered it all on this site. Of course this was going to happen.
What I did was go through the entire past decade and gathered my favorite films in a bunch of different categories: Songs, Performances, Directorial Efforts, Posters, Scores, Trailers, Documentaries, Animated Films, Animated Shorts, Hidden Gems, and then the big one — my Top 500 Films of the Decade.
There’s not going to be a lot of new information necessarily. If somehow you remember all of the lists I’ve put out each year, I’m sure 95% of the choices will be exactly the same. But I’m interested in seeing how I rate things when taken as an entire decade and not just a single year. Maybe my Top Ten for the decade will be half films from just 2015. I don’t know. I also wanna see how my opinions have changed over the decade. I endeavored to create each list totally fresh, going through everything I saw this past decade and considering it all as if I was making each list for the first time. My original lists were only consulted to make sure I didn’t exclude anything on them.
And, of course, like always, the real goal of this and most things I do on this site is to celebrate all the great movies that have come out and hopefully get people to find some things they never knew about or thought to watch before. If my lists give you even one movie you see and love and start showing to your friends, then they were a resounding success. (more…)
Mike’s Top Ten of 2018
As of the original postings of these lists, this is the most recent year. We’re under a year since my initial list has been posted, so not a whole lot of time has gone by for me to have changed my opinion from what it was then. Though I will say, enough time has gone by for me to call myself out on my bullshit and cut the pretense.
Though admittedly, I find that most of the time when things change on the lists, it’s not because I was forcing something on that shouldn’t have been there, it’s usually because I’m under the gun when I choose the list. I often have just finished watching mostly everything from the year (sometimes I don’t even get to do that) and some of the choices I have to decide on based on a single watch. I’m usually cramming second watches for things (if I even can) within a two day period, and usually I’m somewhere else, around friends or family and I have to do it all on the fly. So things end up on that are just easy choices that I don’t have to stress over. And most of the time they turn out to be the right choices over time. But sometimes I do admittedly need that extra space of a year or more to really know what my true feelings are. So as such, while you won’t see too many changes from the list you saw in December, some things will shuffle around a bit and what I kind of figured to be true at the time has held out to be true now. So really, the moral of this is — time wins out. The truth always gets revealed over time.
As for 2018 as a whole… I didn’t like it at the time. I thought it was an incredibly weak year without too much memorable stuff in it. Now, of course, having a year to let this movies sit, it feels like a really respectable top ten list that’ll hold up just fine. The lower tier stuff, it’s just gonna take time to figure out where that shakes out in terms of a strong or weak year. Ultimately, I’m pretty pleased with how these ones are holding up for me so far. (more…)
Mike’s Top Ten of 2017
This is one of the strongest years of the decade. I wouldn’t have immediately pegged it as one of those, but it is. It’s deep. There’s a lot of great stuff here, and this top ten could easily have been swapped out for a bunch of the 11-20.
At the time of the initial posting of this list, we’re not that far removed from these films coming out, but it does feel like some of the choices on it are undisputed great movies. Some are films that people generally like, even if they won’t appear on everyone’s lists, and there’s maybe one or two that I know are gonna go down as the films of the decade over time even though they weren’t as universally well-received.
I will also say that this the only year of this decade that has, at this point, managed a film that has found its way to my list of all-time favorite films. It’s a good year. (more…)
Mike’s Top Ten of 2016
I didn’t know what to write for 2016 for the longest time. But as I started writing up all the films, I realized what it is — this is a sneaky strong year. The top ten didn’t immediately strike me the way something like 2015 does as being the obviously strong year from an entire decade. But when I look at it… there are movies here that I love beyond words that, to me, are gonna stay among my absolute favorites. And the more I look at the lower tier stuff the more I realize there are some really amazing gems to be found here that deserve to be seen.
The year will always be remembered for the top two films, which will be forever linked in people’s minds, but really when you look at it… if you’re trying to find an amazing movie that might be slightly off the beaten path, 2016 is the place to look. There’s stuff up and down this list that’s just tremendous that it feels like almost no one knows about or bothered to see when it came out. This is my ‘drum beating’ year, with stuff that I’m trying to help get noticed and become a movie people either later realize is great or just get seen by more people.
Also what I love about this top ten list in specific is that it has a nice mix of obvious stuff that everyone loves, stuff that is slightly off the beaten path that makes you think ‘oh, that’s good, but top ten? Wow’, plus stuff that almost no one knows about and then stuff where you go, “You know what? That is a really great movie and I never considered it that way.” It’s a really eclectic list, and it’s another year that has an 11-20 (and even a tier two!) full of stuff that could also be in the top ten. I’m a huge fan of this year and it took me going back to reconsider it all to realize that. This is one of the strongest years of this decade. (more…)
Mike’s Top Ten of 2015
2015 is one of the strongest years of this decade, if not the strongest year. I’ve got at least two separate legitimate top ten lists with the films of this year. If I took my 11-20 and presented it to you as if it were the list of another year, it would look totally fine and no one would even question it. That’s how strong this year is.
Though the one thing that has remained constant for me after all this time, despite how many amazing films there are and how easy it is for stuff to be swapped out for something else, is my #1. I don’t think anyone else would have it close to their #1 film of the year, and I was steadfast about it from the jump. I knew it was my #1 movie and nothing was able to change that. No matter what great other stuff there is and no matter how highly the rest of the films from this year are regarded over time, my #1 is gonna be my #1. And I take great comfort in that.
I should also mention how much other fantastic stuff there is this year in the lower tiers as well. This is a good place to find some great hidden gems to check out. Some years there’s only a handful. Here, you can throw a dart and pretty much whatever you hit is worth seeing. That’s a strong year. (more…)
Mike’s Top Ten of 2014
2014 is kind of a patchwork year. There’s a small handful of films a lot of people will agree on, but past that it gets uneven. Though I think the great stuff does tend to rise to the top and the year does get weaker as it goes along. Which, I guess is kind of what one would hope for with any year.
Looking at my list for this year, every film in my top ten is by a director who has already had a top ten movie before (save one, which is by a director who would have later top ten movies, since this was his first major feature). Which, to me, marks it as one of the weaker years of the decade, with me going to the well of ‘old reliables’, knowing that the people who tend to make good films helped bail it out. Otherwise, it does tend to get thinner earlier than most other years do. (more…)
Mike’s Top Ten of 2013
I don’t particularly remember 2013 in terms of my top ten list. I remember the year feeling like it was weak. Which I must say about almost every single year initially, which has to be because I’m forced to assess as year as a whole just as its coming to a close rather than having had the proper time to let stuff settle as it ought to.
This year in particular I know has a major change to it, which is that it’s the second time ever alongside the first list I ever posted on this site that a surefire top ten film didn’t get seen before the year was out. The first year, technically the list got posted after the year was over and I wasn’t as efficient in seeing things as I became over the course of the decade. Which is what makes it even more stunning to me. Even by 2013, I knew that if anything felt like it had a chance at the top ten, I made sure to see it. And yet, I posted 2013’s list and literally the next day I saw the movie. It’s the most significant top ten moment for me out of all the lists. It won’t seem so major on paper, since I quickly went in and made it my #11 for the year at the time, but that’s the biggest alteration in the history of the lists.
Aside from that, most of the list is basically the same as I had it. My “#11” and #12 moved up and other stuff moved down, which is par for the course. It feels like a generally pretty solid list of ten, and there’s some cool stuff down below. Overall this feels like one of the more average years for the decade. (more…)
Mike’s Top Ten of 2012
2012 is the first (and perhaps only) year from this decade where the top ten list I posted at the time exactly matches my top ten now. I knew immediately what my ten favorite movies were that year, and that hasn’t changed. And, in all likelihood, that won’t change. These ten are pretty much my ten. My goal in writing up the list each year is to try to best guess what films are not only my favorite films at the moment, but also which ones are going to continue being my favorite films over time. Some years turn out better than others. And as it stands, this might be the only one of the decade where I ended up being completely right all the way through.
Which is impressive to me, because there are two choices on this list that are not mainstream choices for top ten films. I don’t think you’ll see those on most people’s lists. And if you do, chances are they won’t be around a lot of the other stuff I’ve also chosen. But I love them, and would 100% call them two of the top movies of the year.
I’m a big fan of this list. (more…)
Mike’s Top Ten of 2011
Love me some 2011. I moved to LA midway through this year, so a lot of the movies in the top ten were ones I saw right as I got to LA, which gives them an extra sense of specialness to me.
As a year… I forget how strong it is at the top. It feels like just another year to me when I think about it in the abstract, but here, I could legitimately almost make two separate top ten lists with the movies in the top 20.
This was my first official top ten list created after this site was in existence. So in a way this was the one where my knowing it was gonna go on here affected the decision-making. For better or for worse, I guess. Mostly I’m just happy that a lot of my choices are still ones I would put on the list. But it’s also a strong enough year to where anything that got swapped out is basically a toss-up situation anyway. So it’s hard for me to be disappointed with anything that made it on. (more…)
Mike’s Top Ten of 2010
The original 2010 Top Ten List was the very first article I posted on this site. So it’ll always be a special year for me. It was the year I really started taking movies (and watching new movies) seriously, and was the first time I really was prepared to pick my favorites for a given year because I watched the majority of stuff that came out.
Looking at the list for 2010 as it stands now… most of it’s the same. Which I like. I like knowing that my favorite films then are largely still my favorite films now. And the changes that were made were either minor or were things that were always gonna happen when time passed. Also, looking at this year, I’m fairly confident 90% of this list will remain as top ten films in perpetuity. It’s a real strong year at the top, and most of those top films are indisputable. (more…)
Mike’s Top Ten of 2009
Out with a bang. The 2000s ends with some real great stuff. What I love most about this year is that, back then if you asked me what my top ten was, I’d have given you a very reasonable set of movies, with a very reasonable choice at #1 and things generally in the places you’d expect them to be based on some populist idea of what the best films were. Though deep down in my heart, I knew what would happen over the next few years. I knew which movies were gonna be my actual favorites and wind up becoming the real top choices. And lo and behold, a decade later, that’s what happened.
I feel like my list is very specific to me and my tastes, and while most people could agree that the majority of it is made up of good movies, I’m not sure most people would have this specific set of ten films. Though maybe I’m wrong. Honestly, all I care about is the fact that #1 is one of the most underrated films of the past 25 years, and I cannot stress how emphatically I have chosen it as my #1 film of this year. (more…)
Mike’s Top Ten of 2008
The years only get better as this decade starts winding up. This year was so good it managed to get the Oscar voting procedure changed so it could include more than five films in the Best Picture category. (Most people assume The Dark Knight is the main reason for that change, but you also forget films like The Wrestler and Doubt and even Wall-E that probably would have made it if they had the spots for them.) It’s an incredible year. Plus there are some straight awesome movies here too. Some of them we all agree on… others are my own personal missions (that I think people might eventually be coming around on).
The tough thing for me about 2008 is, despite having a top ten list that’s top to bottom amazing… I really had trouble picking #1. It was easy to find the ten that I considered my favorite, but past that, actually ranking certain ones over others was incredibly difficult, which is not what I was expecting. And I’ll be honest… #1 did not go the way I’d have expected if you gave past me this list of ten and said, “Which did you put at #1?” (more…)
Mike’s Top Ten of 2007
2007 is in the running for strongest film of the 2000s. Even in the old days of the site when I put up rudimentary versions of these lists, this was the year that always had the most stuff contending at the top. This is a year that I could legitimately create two separate Top Ten lists that each hold up. Even going down into tier two, there’s stuff that would go much higher in other years. Every decade has that year or two where it seems that all the greatest stuff comes out, and this is definitely one of those for this decade.
Though I will say, despite the amazing stuff that’s come out this year, this list in particular is a healthy dose of ‘me’. I’d say about half of it is stuff that would appear on most people’s lists near the top. And the other half is decidedly stuff that only I would ever put on my top ten list among the other ones there. One movie for sure is one that I’m pretty sure I’m one of the only people in the world who truly loves it as much as I do. The other stuff is just stuff I really adore. It’s all really personal to my tastes, and that’s what I love about this year — that I could have a list that’s so specific to me and yet have the leeway to have like thirty other movies that are all incredible around it.
But also, let me reiterate — this year is so strong. Like half of my tier three would be tier two and even have an outside shot at 11-20 in other years. If you wanted to pick randomly from this decade for some hidden gems to see, this is the year you want to look at. It goes about 60 deep on great movies. (more…)
Mike’s Top Ten of 2006
Love me some 2006. This is a year that sort of falls out near the top of films that I love, but it does feature a return to form of having a lot of lower tier stuff I like a lot. Which is a stark contrast to 2005, which is solid at the top, but has almost nothing near the bottom to speak of. But that’s the beauty of the ebbs and flows of a decade.
This year in particular features three of my all-time absolute favorite films. Past that, it’s all really solid, but the thing that holds it up is those top three. (more…)
Mike’s Top Ten of 2005
Every time I think about 2005, it feels like the “dark” year of this decade. Don’t know why (though I have guesses), but that’s what it’s always felt like.
It’s a solid year. There are a bunch of movies in this top ten that I love. Though admittedly the lower tiers are not as strong as some of the other years.
This is one of those years that feels most like a good indicator of people’s tastes. If I wanted to gauge the kind of stuff someone likes, this feels like a year to look at. Because there’s only a small handful of consensus movies this year, and a lot of the generally “liked” stuff feels like it could vary wildly from person to person. Which leaves open spots for people to put the films that matter to them. I know that I’ve got at least one movie on this list that would appear on very few top tens for this year and very much indicates who I am as a movie person. (more…)
Mike’s Top Ten of 2004
2004. Quietly amazing year. I mean, yes, I’m partial to most of the years of the 2000s just because they were my teenage years and that’s when I was most impressionable. So I made the strongest connections to movies during these years. That said, there are some really awesome movies this year.
Part of the top ten list is a very consensus set of movies. But I guarantee there’s at least one almost no one’s heard of or would think to put on their list, one that is very specific to me that most people probably won’t agree with, and a third that I don’t think enough people get that most people wouldn’t have anywhere near their list. But that’s what makes my lists unique. You get my favorites, and not what everyone else would put.
Wouldn’t it be crazy, though, if my #1 movie was Welcome to Mooseport? Don’t laugh, I considered it. (more…)
Mike’s Top Ten of 2003
Love me some 2003. This is the 2000s sweet spot for me, where I was really all in on movies and really understood everything I was watching, who was making them, and really felt fully aware for the first time.
This is an interesting list in that it’s got not one, not two, but three Christmas movies on it. It’s got one franchise that ends, one that begins, and part of a two-parter in it. It’s a very outlier kind of list. It’s hard enough to get a single Christmas movie, but three? In the same year? That’s nuts.
There’s also some really cool stuff in the lower tiers as well. A lot of hidden gems that I feel like not enough people go back to or never saw in the first place. It’s a good year. (more…)
Mike’s Top Ten of 2002
This is one of my favorite years of this decade. This is quite possibly my strongest top ten list of the 2000s. I’m not gonna go so far as the proclaim it the strongest year of the decade (that’s probably 2007), but I think this is arguably the strongest of the top ten lists. Every movie on it is great.
What’s great to me about it is that almost all of it (save one) is something I saw right as it came out and loved from the jump. I always appreciate those lists, because it means I’ve lived with the films more and have a certain closeness to them that I don’t necessarily have with something I only came to later on.
What’s also great about this list — here are the directors in the top ten: Spike Lee, Spike Jonze, Doug Liman, Steven Spielberg (twice), Martin Scorsese, Peter Jackson, Roman Polanski, Paul Thomas Anderson and Sam Mendes. Not bad company, right? That’s why I think this might be the strongest list of the decade. (more…)
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