Spirited Away

Spirited Away is literally “ten-year-old girl accidentally enters the spirit world and gets a job at the most stressful bathhouse in existence” and somehow Hayao Miyazaki turned that into one of the most emotionally intelligent coming-of-age films ever made. Chihiro isn't some precocious chosen-one princess. She's scared, whiny, overwhelmed, and initially just wants her parents back. Then she slowly learns how to work, negotiate, care for people, recognize danger, and keep her identity intact while everyone around her is trying to rename, use, or consume her. The girl develops character because she has bills to pay. And the world??? Yubaba's bathhouse is EVERYTHING. No-Face is a creepy little icon, Kamaji is running a boiler-room empire with six billion arms, Lin is basically the exhausted coworker who accidentally adopts the new girl, and Haku is out here being a beautiful dragon with approximately seventeen layers of unresolved lore. The movie is also fucking hilarious in places, which people sometimes forget because they get distracted by the prestige aura. Chihiro's parents turning into pigs? Horrifying. No-Face eating everything? Insane. Yubaba's giant baby? That thing needed to be studied by several governments. But the real magic is how little the film needs to explain. It's about greed, work, environmental damage, loneliness, identity, kindness, and growing up, yet it never stops being a strange fairy tale first. It doesn't tell you what the world means; it lets you wander through it until you figure out what it means to you. That's why this bitch has aged so beautifully.