Back on Tuesday, I began my ranking of the twenty PIXAR films from worst to best. With ten films out of the way, we now come to my top ten favorite PIXAR films, which kicks off with...
Is Monsters Inc. the most layered or complex PIXAR film? Certainly not. But regular PIXAR director Peter Doctor's penchant for creating delightfully fun movies that could sneak up on you with how emotionally powerful they could be was easily established with Monsters Inc. A universe of monsters just going to their 9-to-5 job of scaring kids proved to be an engrossing prospect, especially when paired with the hysterical rapport between its two lead characters, Sully and Mike. Those two characters are brought to life through vocal performances by John Goodman and Billy Crystal, respectively, in casting that proved (alongside the casting of Steve Buscemi as Randall) to be one of the best examples of celebrity voice casting in PIXAR history. The universe and comedy is so delightful, you'll be forgiven for being shocked by just how moving the final moment between Sully and Boo is.
God, I can't even count the amount of times I saw Finding Nemo in a theater as a kid, this movie totally had me under its spell. Why exactly was that? Well, for one thing, there's no shortage of fun characters in it, from the support group of sharks refusing to eat fish ("INTERVENTION!") to the fish tank gang kidnapped Nemo befriends to the one and only Dory. Impressively, Finding Nemo is able to juggle all those characters without coming off as overly crowded, instead, this abundance of fishy friends just feels like a reflection of just how truly expansive the world Marlin has been avoiding for so long is. It's one of a number of lovely storytelling touches throughout Finding Nemo, with another one of these touches being how comic relief sidekick Dory is good for more than just memorable lines of dialogue. She's also crucial to both key plot points of the story and in the development of Marlin as a character. It's that kind of writing that makes Finding Nemo the kind of film both kids and adults can watch endlessly. After all, the exceptional comedic line deliveries of Albert Brooks resonate with people of all ages!
If anyone was wondering if PIXAR, in the middle of their 2010s fixation on sequels, could still release a top-notch piece of original family entertainment, Coco was a wonderful reassurance that that was very much still the case. What's especially delightful about Coco is, like fellow recent original PIXAR gem Inside Out, how much it bucks the studios recent trend of emphasizing realism above all else in their animation. Whereas the Cars films, for instance, pride themselves on making computer-animated sand look indistinguishable from real sand, Coco revels in creating sets, costumes and characters in the Land of the Remembered that could never be found in reality. It uses animation to create wonderous sights straight out of your imagination, all while telling a beautiful story about family, loss and how something as simple as a song can unite generations. Oh, and even for a studio now famous for churning out emotionally gut-wrenching sequences, that final scene of Miguel singing Remember Me to his great-grandmother still took me by surprise by how much it moved me on a personal level.
Toy Story 2 provided many firsts for PIXAR's filmography. It was their first sequel, for one thing, it served as the debut for numerous technological innovations for their computer-animation technology while the rightfully iconic When She Loved Me sequence was the first major emotional scene in a PIXAR feature film. But even aside from its historical significance for PIXAR, Toy Story 2 is still a wonderful movie on its own terms. Toy Story 2 takes the exceptional characters from the original Toy Story and tosses them into a new exciting adventure bringing them to a whole array of awesome new characters (Tour Guide Barbie! Bullseye! Wheezy! Jessie!), exciting set pieces like an airport runaway chase scene that could really only occur with these toy characters and the sort of thoughtful existential questions this series has become known for. All these years later, Toy Story 2 is still as remarkable of a creation as ever.
PIXAR has only created four original movies in the 2010s and the best of the bunch, handily, has to be Inside Out. What's perhaps most amazing about this feature is how well it works as serving up two stand-alone films for the price of one. The individual plotlines concerning personifications of the emotions inside a person's head and the story of a young girl named Riley actually function as their own entities marvelously while still managing to bounce off each other in fascinating ways. This narrative juggling feat is just one of a number of ways Inside Out impresses, with another impressive part of the production being the vividly-realized production design used to bring the interior of the human mind to life. Let's also give a big hand for sublime vocal performances from Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith and Richard Kind, the latter playing an imaginary friend who was absent from the film's marketing but totally unforgettable in the actual movie.
From 2007 to 2009, PIXAR delivered three original films in a row each with a concept that seemed like it could never work as the backbone to a major computer-animated family movie. The first of these was Ratatouille, a film about a rat who wants to be a chef in Paris. It's the ultimate underdog story and it's one told with an irresistible passion for its story. Ratatouille has a clear love for the world of cooking that's almost as massive as its love for dreamers of all stripes. Even the seemingly cold-hearted baddie Anton Ego ends up succumbing to the endearing spirit that permeates Ratatouille. It's such a beautifully told story that's filtered through oodles of great humor (the character Linguini has plenty of fun instances of physical comedy) and delightfully unexpected plot detours, including a crucial moment of development for Anton Ego. It's been said time and time again since its 2007 release, but it bears repeating: Ratatouille is truly something special.
I'll never understand people who say only the first ten minutes of Up are good. Yes, that opening montage depicting the married life of Carl Fredricksen and Ellie is an astonishing feat of dialogue-free storytelling, no question, but Up still has so much to offer once that sequence is finished. For one thing, moments like Russell and Carl's campfire chat that gradually reveals Russell's fractured home life or Carl discovering the back pages of Ellie's "Adventure Is Out There!' scrapbook are almost as emotionally devastating as that Married Life montage, especially since they both (particularly the latter) know that less dialogue can sometimes be better. The more fanciful comedic aspects of Up are also a hoot, particularly anything involving Dug and his collar that makes all of his hysterically mundane thoughts heard. Yes, the first ten minutes of Up are extraordinary, but so is the fact that the rest of Up merges a wacky adventure/comedy with a poignant exploration of what it means to lead a fulfilling life.
The one that started the entire PIXAR feature film library is still one of the studios most impressive achievements. Who knew the concept of toys coming to life could reap so much compelling storytelling but such a feat was on full display in this initial Toy Story film, which is just bursting with loveable perfectly cast characters (Wallace Shawn as an eternally paranoid T-Rex is especially excellent). Those characters may be made out of plastic but their experiences resonate as relatable to us flesh-and-blood humans, Woody and Buzz's most vulnerable moments in this story still stir one's emotions no matter how many times you watch it. Nowhere is the feat of making these toys engaging as characters more apparent than in the scene of Woody and Buzz flying through the sky on a rocket, a glorious moment so oozing with an infectious triumphant spirit that it still gives me chills to this very day.
WALL-E
From its very first shot, WALL-E lets you know it's gonna be something special. Juxtaposing a musical number from Hello, Dolly! with the imagery depicting the vastness of space, WALL-E's opening shots see the film hit the ground running with bold creativity that proceeds to keep on running until the credits have finished rolling. Like the best PIXAR films, WALL-E tells a tale only possible through animation where robots capable of only saying a handful of words fall in love with one another. With minimal dialogue on display, the intricately-crafted animation (plus outstanding sound work from Ben Burtt) of WALL-E is used to keep the audience's investment in the story and characters to great effect. Every gesture conveyed by WALL-E and his robot pals are able to say so much and the power of such subtle storytelling makes the romance between WALL-E and Eve something truly extraordinary to watch. Like its opening shots set to Put On Your Sunday Clothes, WALL-E is thoroughly unexpected, imaginative and totally impressive.
I went back and forth for eons on what could possibly top this list. Really, anything in this top five could have made a fine pick for Best PIXAR Movie, but right now, in this moment, I have to go with Toy Story 3. PIXAR films are well-known for not just their memorable emotional sequences but also how they pair that pathos with plenty of similarly effective comedy, but nowhere has that mixture worked as well as it did with Toy Story 3. The final twenty minutes are an avalanche of intimate poignancy preceded by a colossal amount of hysterical comedy, much of it coming from newbie character Ken (voiced by Michael Keaton in one of his best ever performances). Most impressively though is just how well-made Toy Story 3 is as a feature, family-oriented or otherwise. Its script is tightly paced while both its camerawork and editing shows real versatility (when the story briefly shifts into a heist film, these two elements of Toy Story 3 delightfully adjust themselves to evoke the heist film genre beautifully) in addition to overall craftsmanship. Everything just comes together beautifully in Toy Story 3, especially in its best scene depicting all of its lead characters, without uttering a single word, gradually coming to terms with the prospect of dying together. Tackling that kind of sequence with such incredible success is just one of the many ways Toy Story 3 manages to emerge as the best feature released by PIXAR yet.
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