Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for animated movies like Lost in Starlight:
Elemental
Elemental acts as a surprising return to the roots of Pixar. It’s a movie with a host of relevant themes and messages rolled into a sincere and effective love story. It’s been a a minute since Pixar landed an original story with such a clear balance of narrative and comedy.
The Wild Robot
The overall package of The Wild Robot is ultimately quite honorable and noteworthy. The animated genre offers just a few great movies a year, and The Wild Robot falls into that category. It’s probably the frontrunner for Best Animated Picture at the Academy Awards, and I’d add that we’ve had much worse winners should this take home the prize. It’s sweet and effortlessly likeable, even if you can see the mechanisms of it working behind the scenes.
Nimona
Nimona tries to strike at the same imaginative core that worked so well for a few of Netflix’s animated releases from a year ago, namely The Sea Beast and Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, but instead comes out overbaked – trying to have its way in so many directions that it just ultimately feels lost within so many ideas.
Elio
Conceived by Adrian Molina and then handed off to Domee Shi and Madeline Sharafian, Elio bears the fingerprints of multiple creative voices. You can feel the push and pull in its structure. Elio (voiced with wide-eyed sincerity by Yonas Kibreab) is accidentally identified as the leader of Earth and whisked to the Communiverse, a galactic council where rival species debate, posture, and search for common ground. Back home, a clone holds his place while his guardian, Aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña), an Air Force major who shelved astronaut dreams to raise her nephew, tries to keep life steady. The movie toggles among coming-of-age comedy, interstellar diplomacy satire, and family melodrama, which gives Elio scope, but also leaves it feeling overstuffed and under-shaped.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse continues what the first film did so well – feel like something you’ve never seen before. An intense thrill ride that explores carving your own path and not staying constrained to the expectations set before you.
WALL-E
Over fifteen years later, I’m not sure Disney Pixar Studios has made a movie nearly as insightful, colorful, and ambitious as WALL-E. As an allegory for corporate greed and environmental neglect, the film operates on such a concise and straightforward manner – Pixar’s strongest thematic statement in their catalogue.
Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
Little Amélie or the Character of Rain might set a record for the youngest protagonist to figure out how the world works. Your tolerance for its perspective will decide how much you connect with it. The new French animated feature from Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han Jin Kuang adapts Amélie Nothomb’s novel The Character of Rain, condensing big ideas about identity, belonging, love, and death into a brisk 75 minutes seen through the eyes of a two year old.
Read our full review of Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
Flow
Flow attempts to push the boundaries of visual storytelling in the animated genre, and in many ways, it succeeds. Created entirely using Blender rendering software, typically reserved for 3D video game sprites, the film builds a nearly 90-minute animated feature filled with an abundance of visual ideas and thematic density. It’s a technical marvel that redefines the potential of its medium through its innovative use of technology.
The Boy and the Heron
Hayao Miyazaki creates worlds where grief dances with wonder, where loss paves the way for discovery, and imagination reigns supreme. His latest movie The Boy and the Heron continues those trends to great lengths; it’s a symphony of animation, storytelling, and profound emotions that transports you to a realm of breathtaking beauty and exploration.
Isle of Dogs
Viewed as a standalone animated feature, Isle of Dogs is a unique, thoughtful piece that few filmmakers besides Wes Anderson could have envisioned, let alone executed. But graded on the curve of Anderson’s own career, it feels minor. It lacks the emotional punch of The Royal Tenenbaums, the elegance of The Grand Budapest Hotel, and even the narrative focus of later entries like Asteroid City or The Phoenician Scheme.
READ MORE: Lost in Starlight (2025)
