Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
Takahata's 1988 Studio Ghibli WWII drama. Two siblings starve in firebombed Japan.
Tag: Childhood (Page 5)
2000sSpirited Away (2001)
A ten-year-old girl trapped in a bathhouse for spirits. First non-English Best Animated Feature Oscar winner.
2000sMan on Fire (2004)
Tony Scott's 2004 Mexico City revenge thriller. One of the great late-career Denzel performances.
1990sThe Sixth Sense (1999)
M. Night Shyamalan's 1999 ghost story with the most-quoted twist of its decade. Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, a script that earns its reveal twice.
1990sThe Trials of Life (1990)
Attenborough's 1990 series tracking animals through twelve life stages. Births, courtships, fights, deaths.
2000sFlatland: The Movie (2007)
Johnson and Travis's 2007 animated adaptation of Edwin Abbott's 1884 novella. Source long thought unfilmable.
1980sThe Land Before Time (1988)
The Land Before Time is the children's film about dinosaur grief that traumatized an entire generation. Steven Spielberg and George Lucas executive produced.
ChildhoodFreaky Friday (1976, 2003, 2018, 2025)
Freaky Friday is the body-swap premise Disney has now adapted four times across nearly fifty years. Mary Rodgers wrote the 1972 novel.
2000sCoraline (2009)
The film adapts Neil Gaiman's 2002 novella. The film cost approximately sixty million dollars and made one hundred and twenty-five million worldwide.
2010sThe Boxtrolls (2014)
The Boxtrolls is Laika's third feature and a strange, beautiful, sometimes overstuffed adventure that does not get the credit it deserves. Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable co-directed.
1990sJames and the Giant Peach (1996)
The film adapts Roald Dahl's 1961 children's novel about an orphan who escapes his abusive aunts by climbing inside a magically enormous peach and floating across the Atlantic with a crew of human-sized talking insects. The film made approximately twenty-nine…
1980sThe NeverEnding Story (1984)
The NeverEnding Story is the rare children's film that takes children seriously as readers. The script is based on Michael Ende's 1979 German novel.