Animated Films, Ranked
The studio animation canon ranked end to end, from the 1941 Disney features to the DreamWorks era. A complete ranking rather than a greatest list, because the bottom of it matters as much as the top.
Sometimes the right format is a ranked argument. This tag collects curated film lists: the greatest of a genre, a theme, or a decade, each ranking an argument you are invited to have with me.
AnimationThe studio animation canon ranked end to end, from the 1941 Disney features to the DreamWorks era. A complete ranking rather than a greatest list, because the bottom of it matters as much as the top.
Fiction WritingEvery biopic and true story reviewed on this site, ranked. Space procedure, the Manhattan Project, a surgeon's uncredited assistant, four hours of Gettysburg, and the worst-reviewed biopic of the century.
ChildhoodEvery coming of age film reviewed on this site, ranked. Truffaut, Hughes, Crowe, Coppola and Gerwig, plus the horror films that use adolescence as the actual subject.
CrimeEvery courtroom drama reviewed on this site, ranked. Wilder, Preminger, Lumet's descendants, a Scopes trial fictionalised, and a comedy that gets the evidentiary procedure right.
Fiction WritingEvery documentary reviewed on this site, ranked by the rating its review carries. Natural history, true crime, sport, surveillance, and the two films that got convictions overturned and a genocide described on camera.
Art HouseEvery foreign language film reviewed on this site, ranked. Soviet montage, Italian neorealism, Bergman, Kurosawa, the French New Wave, Hong Kong action and the Iranian films that work under restriction.
Fiction WritingEvery historical epic reviewed on this site, ranked. Dreyer, Bondarchuk, Kubrick, Zinnemann and Branagh, plus the two Musketeers films shot simultaneously and released as a swindle.
Fiction WritingEvery movie musical reviewed on this site, ranked. Astaire and Rogers, Bernstein and Sondheim, two Fosse films about self-destruction, and a De Palma rock opera nobody saw.
Black and WhiteEvery samurai film reviewed on this site, ranked. Kurosawa, Kobayashi, Gosha and Okamoto, and a genre whose masterpieces are nearly all arguments against the thing they depict.
ComedyEvery satire reviewed on this site, ranked. Brooks, Verhoeven, Altman, Ashby and the Zuckers, and a run of films that turned out to be documentaries.
Fiction WritingEvery supernatural horror film reviewed on this site, ranked. Tourneur's shadows, Argento's colour, two Japanese curses that rewired the genre, and a found-footage film that cost almost nothing.
Fiction WritingEvery vampire film reviewed on this site, ranked. Dreyer's dream logic, Herzog remaking Murnau, Bava's gothic, Hammer's decline into sex, and the one film that asks whether there is any such thing as a vampire at all.
Professional ghostwriting for executives, founders, coaches, and authors who want to get the book done right. 113+ books authored. 54+ ghostwritten for clients.
Ready to discuss your book?
BOOK YOUR PRIVATE CONSULTATIONNo pitch. No pressure.
© 2026 Richard Lowe. The Writing King. All rights reserved.
