The best animated movies of 2019 offer a wonderful display of the truth that animation is not a genre, it is a medium. The word “animated” often conjures family entertainment in the mind of the reader, whether it’s the classics of Disney, the modern pioneers at Pixar, or possibly even the geniuses at Laika. The truth is that the best animated movies of 2019 prove that it is a medium that contains multitudes of styles and tones apart from the family fare that so dominates the multiplex. In fact, most of those movies are missing from the collection below, with the exception of two of the most artistically sound franchises in animation history in “Toy Story” and “How to Train Your Dragon” and the latest from the world power that is Disney in “Frozen 2.” But alongside those movies that are basically licenses to print money, you’ll find reviews of smaller, foreign films like “I Lost My Body,” “Bunuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles,” “Funan,” and “Promare.”
The best animated movies of 2019 includes all films from this medium, not genre, that our staff gave 3-4 stars this year.