"Pixar"

2015 · Pete Docter, Ronnie del Carmen · 95 min · Animation / Comedy

Inside Out is Pixar firing on all cylinders, taking a high-concept premise about the emotions inside a child's head and turning it into something that hits harder than most live-action dramas. The world-building is endlessly inventive, the voice cast is perfectly matched to their roles, and the central message about the necessity of sadness lands with a force that catches most viewers off guard. A few criticisms stick, mainly that Riley herself feels underwritten and that the adventure plot follows a familiar path, but those feel like small complaints against a film that won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature and left entire theater audiences in tears. It's one of those rare animated films that earns its emotional payoff honestly.

1995 · John Lasseter · 81 min · Animation / Comedy

Toy Story took a massive creative gamble and won so completely that it reshaped an entire industry overnight. The first fully computer-animated feature film still works thirty years later because Pixar built it on a foundation of sharp writing, perfect voice casting, and a story about friendship and jealousy that connects on a gut level. The animation has aged and the plot is simpler than what the studio would go on to produce, but 81 minutes of this much charm, humor, and heart is hard to argue with. It launched a franchise, launched a studio, and proved that animated films could be just as smart and emotionally honest as anything made for adults.

2008 · Andrew Stanton · 98 min · Animation / Sci-Fi

WALL-E is one of Pixar's finest achievements, a film that communicates more through beeps and gestures than most movies manage with pages of dialogue. Its first act is a near-perfect piece of visual storytelling, and the love story at its center is among the most emotionally affecting romances in animation. The spaceship sequences don't quite match the brilliance of those early Earth scenes, and a few elements land with less nuance than the rest. But the highs here are so high that the dips barely register in the final accounting. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and almost two decades later, nothing in animation has told a better love story with fewer words.

2017 · Lee Unkrich, Adrian Molina · 105 min · Animation / Fantasy / Comedy-Drama

Coco is Pixar operating at something close to full power, using the studio's technical brilliance and emotional precision to tell a story about family, memory, and what it means to truly disappear. The cultural authenticity gives it a specificity that most animated films lack, and the final act delivers the kind of gut-punch that Pixar has built its reputation on. A somewhat predictable villain reveal and a few too many familiar story beats keep it just short of the studio's absolute peak. But when Miguel sings to his great-grandmother in that final scene, none of that matters. You'll be too busy trying to hold it together.

2003 · Andrew Stanton · 100 min · Animation / Adventure / Comedy-Drama

Finding Nemo remains one of Pixar's finest achievements, a film that works as a colorful underwater adventure for kids and a surprisingly affecting meditation on parenthood and letting go for everyone else. Dory alone is worth the price of admission. The episodic structure keeps it from building the kind of sustained momentum that Pixar's very best films manage, and a few of the supporting characters fade into the background. But the emotional core, a terrified father learning that love means giving his kid room to fail, hits just as hard on the twentieth viewing as it did on the first.

2007 · Brad Bird · 111 min · Animation / Comedy

Ratatouille is Pixar operating at peak confidence, telling a story about a rat who wants to cook and somehow making it one of the most thoughtful animated films about creativity ever produced. The animation is stunning, Paris has never looked this good in any medium, and Anton Ego's climactic scene remains one of the most powerful moments in Pixar's entire catalog. Linguini is a bit of a blank slate and the romance never fully lands, but everything surrounding those weak spots is so assured and so smart that they barely register. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and earned over $620 million worldwide, and close to two decades later, it still holds up beautifully.

2009 · Pete Docter, Bob Peterson · 96 min · Animation / Adventure

A film defined by the best ten minutes Pixar has ever produced, followed by an adventure that never quite reaches the same height. That opening sequence earns its place among the most emotionally powerful moments in animation, and the score alone justifies watching it twice. The adventure half is fun, colorful, and occasionally thrilling, even if it settles into more familiar territory. What saves the whole thing is Carl's emotional arc, which gives the action real stakes and real heart. It's a very good movie that happens to contain a great one inside it.