Animated movies capture the hearts of everyone young and old. Especially the 4 animated movies collected here today. From the story of one of Disney's most popular princesses to a japanese animation of a girl maneuvering through a mystical world of spirits and strange creatures, these movies are the epitome of the animated film scene.

TOY STORY

"Toy Story" creates a universe out of a couple of kid's bedrooms, a gas station, and a stretch of suburban highway. Its heroes are toys, which come to life when nobody is watching. Its conflict is between an old-fashioned cowboy who has always been a little boy's favorite toy, and the new space ranger who may replace him. The villain is the mean kid next door who takes toys apart and puts them back together again in macabre combinations. And the result is a visionary roller-coaster ride of a movie.

For the kids in the audience, a movie like this will work because it tells a fun story, contains a lot of humor, and is exciting to watch. Older viewers may be even more absorbed, because "Toy Story," the first feature made entirely by computer, achieves a three-dimensional reality and freedom of movement that is liberating and new. The more you know about how the movie was made, the more you respect it.

Imagine the spectacular animation of the ballroom sequence in "Beauty and the Beast" at feature length and you'll get the idea. The movie doesn't simply animate characters in front of painted backdrops; it fully animates the characters and the space they occupy, and allows its point of view to move freely around them. Computer animation has grown so skillful that sometimes you don't even notice it (the launching in "Apollo 13" took place largely within a computer). Here, you do notice it, because you're careening through space with a new sense of freedom.

INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE

“Mom, can we go see ‘Into the Spider-Verse,’ again?” my nine-year-old son asked me as I was tucking him in to bed the other night. And I was happy to hear his request. I’d been thinking about how much I wanted to revisit the film for days after the screening we’d attended, myself—not only because it’s such a pure blast of creative joy, but also because there’s so much going on that a viewer couldn’t possibly catch it all the first time around.

It’s only fitting that my kid would be thinking about “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” as he was drifting off to sleep. As rooted in a vividly specific, recognizable New York as it is, and as closely as it hews to comic-book imagery and structure within its animated format as it does.

It would seem like an impossible feat, but somehow, directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman have breathed thrilling new life into the comic book movie. The way they play with tone, form and texture is constantly inventive and giddily alive. Given that we get a handful of Marvel films every year—and we’ve certainly had no shortage of movies featuring Spider-Man among them, either as a main character or as part of an assembled ensemble—the idea of yet another might sound like overkill or worse: a shameless cash grab.

SPIRITED AWAY

Viewing Hiyao Miyazaki's "Spirited Away" for the third time, I was struck by a quality between generosity and love. On earlier viewings I was caught up by the boundless imagination of the story. This time I began to focus on the elements in the picture that didn't need to be there. Animation is a painstaking process, and there is a tendency to simplify its visual elements. Miyazaki, in contrast, offers complexity. His backgrounds are rich in detail, his canvas embraces space liberally, and it is all drawn with meticulous attention. We may not pay much conscious attention to the corners of the frame, but we know they are there, and they reinforce the remarkable precision of his fantasy worlds.

"Spirited Away" is surely one of the finest of all animated films, and it has its foundation in the traditional bedrock of animation, which is frame-by-frame drawing.

Miyazaki began his career in that style, but he is a realist and has permitted the use of computers for some of the busywork. But he personally draws thousands of frames by hand. "We take handmade cell animation and digitize it in order to enrich the visual look," he told me in 2002, "but everything starts with the human hand drawing."

Consider a scene in "Spirited Away" where his young heroine stands on a bridge leading away from the magical bathhouse in which much of the movie is set.

FROZEN

"Frozen," the latest Disney musical extravaganza, preaches the importance of embracing your true nature but seems to be at odds with itself.

The animated, 3-D adventure wants to enliven and subvert the conventions of typical Disney princess movies while simultaneously remaining true to their aesthetic trappings for maximum merchandising potential. It encourages young women to support and stay loyal to each other—a crucial message when mean girls seem so prevalent—as long as some hunky potential suitors and adorable, wise-cracking creatures also are around to complete them.

It all seems so cynical, this attempt to shake things up without shaking them up too much. "Frozen" just happens to be reaching theaters as Thanksgiving and the holiday shopping season are arriving. The marketing possibilities are mind-boggling. And in the tradition of the superior "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Little Mermaid," surely "Frozen: The Musical" will be headed to the Broadway stage soon. The songs – which are lively and amusing if not quite instant hits—are already in place.