Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Kidult superhero movies are nothing new, but this 2018 animated splinter off the Sony-Spidey combine does something really smart with the money-spinning multiverse concept. In Rodney Rothman, Bob Persichetti and Peter Ramsey’s version, Spider-Man is reborn across the dimensions – as Gwen, as a private eye, as a pig – and the result is a fruitfully mind-bending recalibration of the entire mythos.

The Amazing Mr Blunden

In 1972, director Lionel Jeffries followed up The Railway Children with another absorbing period melodrama about first world war school kids, though considerably darker and spookier. A family move to the country, where the children meet another set of kids, ghosts from a century earlier, and our heroes go back in time to save them from murderous adults.

The Iron Giant

An imaginative, sophisticated animation from an unlikely source: Ted Hughes’s children’s novel about a giant “metal man” who saves humanity. Brad Bird – later to go big with The Incredibles – created a landmark in sensitive, moving animation in 1999, a long way from DayGlo Disney and anticipating the likes of WALL-E and Up.

Corpse Bride

The most grown-up animation to come out of the Tim Burton stable, and undeniably the weirdest. A story of reanimated cadavers and marital vows from beyond the grave, this 2005 film has Burton’s then-partner Helena Bonham Carter as the zombified wedding-dress botherer of the title. Make of that what you will.

Babe

Despite being made back in 1995, this is still irresistibly cute: a modern nursery fable about a baby pig who conquers the world of competitive sheep-herding. Radical in its way (can you imagine a talking-animal film without moving mouths?) but at heart it’s just a great, emotional story.