Although it is just plain fun to rank a director's movies, it may also help me think about the director's oeuvre of work as a whole. Comparisons can help me to discover elements of film that I am drawn to, what the director finds value in revealing through their movies and possibly how the director has grown artistically.

Miyazaki films are really special. Somehow he is able to imbue a lot of humility into his stories, despite plenty of lofty imaginative, fantasy and supernatural elements. He puts care into creating heroes that feel grounded and they achieve a lot through simple gestures of love or of understanding others.

It is also great that most of Miyazaki's heroes are females, often children, and they always feel fully-realized because they reveal themselves through very nuanced, realistic actions or reactions. Miyazaki has obviously, patiently observed the complexities of every person and is able to convey the uniqueness of his characters with just the way they walk or their facial reactions to certain situations. He seems to care about what makes people unique and that these people can share something of themselves to the world and help reinstate balance and community within the world.

Often what creates the imbalance is humanity's relationship with nature and how some people take a little bit too much advantage over it to fulfill their selfish desires while others can find a respect for nature and form a symbiotic relationship with it. He also explores how being highly skilled in something or having power (often supernatural power) no one else can have is a huge responsibility, as some characters choose to abuse their abilities to achieve their own goals and others use them to help the community.

My favorite aspect of a Miyazaki film is how they explore the imbalance between community members or of a community with nature. He shows how these imbalances, no matter how small they are, reverberate throughout the whole community or the whole world. There's a pervasive melancholy created through this imbalance that he reveals, especially considering how the antagonists are usually not bad at all; maybe they are reacting poorly to a situation or they have a personal pain they carry with them that influences them to behave poorly. They would really love for harmony to be restored. In most of his movies the antagonists are not really defeated, but are shown they do not need to behave in destructive ways to achieve peace.

Finally, there is a ton of wonder in Miyazaki's movies. Characters are often marveling at the great beauty and power found in nature, of characters' supernatural powers, and of people's abilities to be truly great at a particular skill. This wonder is also instilled in us with a patient focus on wondrous animation that shows us fantastic worlds and creatures full of imagination. Once we wonder at the capabilities of the people and of the world around us, we develop respect for humanity and nature and we may even begin to wonder what we have inside ourselves that can inspire such awe.

Other directors I have ranked:
JJ Abrams | PT Anderson | Wes Anderson | Judd Apatow | Darren Aronofsky | Ari Aster | Sean Baker | Bong Joon-ho | Jane Campion | Charlie Chaplin | Damien Chazelle | Coen Brothers | Sofia Coppola | Cameron Crowe | Andrew Dominik | Robert Eggers | David Fincher | Alex Garland | Greta Gerwig | Todd Haynes | Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu | Jim Jarmusch | Rian Johnson | Spike Jonze | Satoshi Kon | Stanley Kubrick | Sergio Leone | Richard Linklater | George Lucas | David Lynch | Martin McDonagh | Steve McQueen | Sam Mendes | Nancy Meyers | Jeff Nichols | Christopher Nolan | Alexander Payne | Sarah Polley | Lynn Ramsay | Céline Sciamma | Ben Stiller | Quentin Tarantino | Andrei Tarkovsky | Taika Waititi | Edgar Wright | Chloé Zhao