The 12 Best Kids Movies of 2018
Kids don’t always have the most discerning tastes in, well, anything. Those are skills that come with age. So it’s with great appreciation that we celebrate movies aimed at kids that do more than just go through the motions—movies with originality, crisp storytelling and humor. These dozen movies are the works of filmmakers from the U.S., Japan, England and Brazil, and include both animation and live action. Of course, they have plenty for adults to enjoy, but we appreciate them most of all for providing children with great stories to engage with and helping them to see what great moviemaking is all about.
Here are the 12 Best Kids Movies of 2015:
12. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
Director: Eli Roth
Each of the following statements are true: 1) Eli Roth made a film based on a 1973 children’s novel. 2) The film stars Jack Black. 3) It’s a blast. Who knew? Roth sinks his teeth into material that exudes a joie de vivre for the horror that’s central to his work: It’s a movie very much in love with skeletons, spirits and haunts, with the titillating fear they instill in audiences, and the distinct pleasure found in getting spooked out. It’s not scary, per se, though meeker members of its core demographic may find a few of its pieces genuinely frightful. (Leering hobo demons with forked tongues and curved, overlong fingernails can have that effect on people.) Think of the movie as akin to a funhouse, because who doesn’t like fun, especially when “fun” is defined as “Kyle MacLachlan plays a zombie wizard” and “Black bickers and banters with Cate Blanchett like an old married couple in a 1940s screwball comedy”? The film’s at its best when focused on this dynamic, but eventually, a Big Bad™ must rise and a battle must be fought. Here the plot stays lively, too, especially with MacLachlan hamming it up as Jonathan’s former friend-turned-nihilist with bad designs for mankind. (We learn that he saw some shit in World War II, which takes us back to a mutation of the movie’s grief element—PTSD changes a person.) But as delightful as relentless CGI monster mayhem is—and there’s plenty to go round as The House with a Clock in Its Walls rolls through its final act—it’s the lovely character work that makes the story memorable. Roth and his cast pack a surplus of exuberance into a children’s fantasy mold that’s by now grown musty. Maybe putting that mold in the hands of a horror auteur is the best way to abate it. —Andy Crump / Full Review
11. Mary and the Witch’s Flower
Director: Hiromasa Yonebayashi
There’s something heartbreaking about the idea of a child who’s eager to help around the house but creates more of a mess than they end up cleaning. That’s Mary, the title character of Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s new film Mary and the Witch’s Flower. She wants to be useful to her great-aunt Charlotte (Lynda Baron), and to Charlotte’s housekeeper, Miss Banks (Morwenna Banks), but she can’t relieve Charlotte of an empty teacup without dropping it on the floor. The kid’s a walking disaster. It’s practically tragic. She’s a good kid, she just has nothing to do, until she meets a couple of outdoor cats who lead her to a clutch of glowing blue flowers which capture her curiosity on sight. Not knowing exactly what they are (hint: they’re witch’s flowers), Mary takes them back to Charlotte’s and quickly discovers that the flowers bestow temporary magical abilities on whoever touches them. Mary and the Witch’s Flower’s plot—and, boy, there’s a lot of plot—kicks off from there: Mary is whisked away by a flying sentient broom to an academy for witches, led by Madame Mumblechook (Kate Winslet) and Doctor Dee (Jim Broadbent), who put on a kindly front that disguises unsavory intentions. There’s a familiarity to Mary and the Witch’s Flower as narrative: Harry Potter-lite by way of Studio Ghibli-lite with a dash of Yonebayashi’s past thematic interests. The whole thing is spirited, gentle and unfailingly lovely. We all look for magic in the world around us, and when we do the world routinely lets us down. Movies like this remind us that there’s magic, and life, in art—and perhaps especially in animation. —Andy Crump / Full Review
10. Mirai
Director: Mamoru Hosoda
In the cosmology of human experience, every child born is at once the heart and center of their own universe. Through no fault save their own innocence, one might imagine themselves the sun, resplendent in glow of their parent’s love and admired by every person imaginable. To the mind of such a child, the birth of a sibling must seem akin to the advent of a rival star, stealing across the sky to siphon away their parents’ affection. Herein lies a lesson in love. Cosmic analogies aside, the essence of this story is the premise of Mamoru Hosoda’s Mirai, the seventh film from the veteran director and the latest of his explorations probing at the subject for which he is best known for—family. The film follows Kun, a four-year-old boy who struggles to cope with the birth of a baby sister, Mirai, into his small family. His cries for attention spurned and selfish outbursts rebuked, Kun retreats into an imaginary world surrounding the garden situated at the heart of his family home where he is visited by visions of his loved ones from both the past and future. It’s through them that Kun slowly begins to grasp how Mirai’s life and his own are links in a larger chain of consequence, entwined together by a force as resolute as it is ephemeral. Mirai is restrained in its concept, especially when compared to the fantastical escapism of Hosoda’s previous work. While the film dabbles in the aforementioned moments of temporal and spatial transportation, these moments themselves are prefigured throughout the film as the overactive imaginings of a child’s mind and played for comedy rather than pathos. In reality, the story takes place entirely within Kun’s modernist family home whose very construction, courtesy of real-life architect Makoto Tanijiri, reiterates Mirai’s broader themes of familial causality and connection. —Toussaint Egan / Full Review
9. Smallfoot
Sergio Pablos is best-known as the sole creator of the Despicable Me franchise, which has grossed more than $3.5 billion dollars for Universal Pictures. So it’s no surprise that Warner Brothers wanted some of that magic, commissioning a film based on Pablos’ book Yeti Tracks about a village of giants living atop a secluded Himalayan mountain, following the dogmatic religion which denies the existence of anything below. When one young Yeti, Migo (Channing Tatum), sees a plane crashing with a human—a Smallfoot—bailing out with his parachute. When he tells the villagers, their leader the Stonekeeper (Common) tries to convince him not to believe his own eyes. The devout Migo has to wrestle between his faith and evidence to the contrary. What follows is an adventure into a world that has been hostile to the Yeti, an unlikely friendship and a discovery of a difficult truth. A desperate and unethical nature documentarian Percy (James Cordon) is trying to get his own proof of Bigfoot, and the two worlds inevitably collide. There’s plenty of humor to go with the film’s heart, giving kids and adults to plenty to enjoy. —Josh Jackson
8. Tito and the Birds
7. Teen Titans Go! to the Movies
6. Ralph Breaks the Internet
5. Peter Rabbit
4. Mary Poppins Returns
3. Incredibles 2
2. Paddington 2
1. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse-
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