Tags :: Pixar
An Elemental misstep: Does Pixar still need — or benefit from — anthropomorphic fantasy?
What if the four elements had feelings? Pixar filmmaker Peter Sohn’s gentle, compassionate storytelling may have something to offer family audiences … if he can break away from what has become a rut in Pixar thinking.
Lightyear is an anti–space opera for an anti-heroic age
It pains me to say this: If Lightyear is Andy’s Star Wars, what an impoverished childhood Andy had.
Mother knows best: Turning Red, Encanto, and Disney/Pixar’s new overbearing moms
The familiar animation trope of the domineering dad and the (sometimes) supportive mom gets an update in recent films from the Mouse House.
Luca (2021)
In Pixar’s Luca, a gentle, overtly Miyazaki-esque coming-of-age period piece struggles under the heavy weight of iron-clad Disney/Pixar formula requirements and story beats. The charming elements work well enough to carry the film, but only just.
Soul (2020)
Pete Docter’s Soul is Pixar’s third straight original feature, following Coco and Onward, that is explicitly about death, finality, and, in some way, what lies beyond.
![Toy Story 4 [video]](/uploads/articles/toystory4-vid.jpeg)
Toy Story 4 [video] (2019)
For the first time, Pixar has made a Toy Story movie that adds nothing essential to the arc of the previous films. It’s still worth seeing.
Toy Story 4 (2019)
Toy Story 4 does not continue the story of the first three films, but casts about for new things to do in this world with the sprawling cast of characters in Bonnie’s orbit, most of whom once revolved around the now-absent figure of Andy.
Cars 3 (2017)
At this point it seems like too much to hope for that any Pixar sequel, let alone a Cars sequel, should function smoothly from start to finish, but at least it ends well.
Inside Out and upside down: Does Pixar’s most recent masterpiece distort human nature?
None of this is to say that Inside Out doesn’t present a lopsided view of the place of emotions in human nature. It does. Most if not all stories, even great ones, are lopsided in some respect or other.
Finding Dory (2016)
Hank the octopus is a particular standout. Hank’s squash-and-stretch movements push computer animation to yet another high-water mark, and his mad skills are highly entertaining — so entertaining, in fact, that I kind of wish the movie had been about him.
Three ages of Pixar
For 15 astonishing years, from 1995 to 2009, Pixar created a body of work — 10 films — so revolutionary and beyond mainstream Hollywood animation that it’s hard to quantify … In recent years, alas, Pixar has stumbled more often than not.
![The Good Dinosaur [video]](/uploads/articles/good-dino.jpg)
The Good Dinosaur [video] (2015)
According to Paul Valéry, art is “never finished, only abandoned.” Maybe so, but this is the first Pixar movie that really glaringly illustrates the point.
What’s so special about Pixar’s flawed protagonists and their moral journeys
Only Pixar regularly impresses on viewers that just because you’re the hero of your story doesn’t mean you’re right about everything: that you may make serious mistakes, there may be consequences, and you must take responsibility.
Inside Out (2015)
Inside Out is a rare family film for so many reasons: a story with no villain, for one thing, centering on an imperfect but basically happy intact family going through a tough time. It is a wise and wounding depiction of growing up, a story of growth and loss, with real stakes and real consequences.
Monsters University [video]
Is it “okay to be okay” if you’re Pixar? Monsters University: : my “Reel Faith” 60-second review.
Monsters University (2013)
Monsters University, from first-time director Dan Scanlon, is a charming, well-crafted trifle — at least until the subversive last act, when it sets its sights a bit higher.
In Praise of Pixar Short Films
One of the more striking marks of Pixar’s innovative stature and impact on the world of Hollywood animation has been their pioneering revival of the long-neglected animated short film prior to the feature (at least prior to animated features) as an industry staple.
Finding Nemo (2003)
(New review for 3-D rerelease) Andrew Stanton’s Finding Nemo is the best father-son story in all of Hollywood animation, and maybe animation generally. It’s also a stunningly gorgeous film that exploits the potential of computer animation like no film before it and few films after it.
Finding Nemo [video]
It still makes me cry every time.
Brave [video]
Brave in 60 seconds: my “Reel Faith” review — plus clips from the film!
Brave (2012)
Among Hollywood animated films, it may be the most positive affirmation of family since The Incredibles and the best fairy tale since Beauty and the Beast.
Don’t read reviews of Pixar’s Brave!
Reviews from the Hollywood trade journals (Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, etc.) and perhaps other sources are starting to appear … and they all freely reveal a key second-act plot twist that I went into Brave not knowing. And I’m sure that more reviews, as they come out, will do the same.
Cars 2 (2011)
Visuals aside, Cars 2 is the first Pixar film ever (or at least since A Bug’s Life) that could one could easily imagine as a DreamWorks film—circa Shark Tale perhaps, with its punningly fishified analog of the human world. Or, with its frenetic action and gimmickry, Cars 2 bears some resemblance to a Blue Sky Studios cartoon (circa Robots, say, or Rio, with its world culture flavor). In a word, not only is Cars 2 mediocre, it doesn’t even feel like mediocre Pixar.
Cars vs. A Bug’s Life: Which is Pixar’s least impressive film?
With Cars 2 approaching this weekend, I thought I’d take a look back at Cars, easily Pixar’s least impressive and celebrated film since their second picture, A Bug’s Life.
Infographic: Pixar vs. DreamWorks
Props to reader Victor for highlighting this infographic from a few years back analyzing the differences between the creative processes at Pixar and DreamWorks.
Toy Story 3 (2010)
At times Toy Story 3 feels a bit less fleet-footed than its predecessors, though there’s nothing that doesn’t work. Lee Unkrich, who co-directed Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo, directs with a sure hand. The story is stuffed with wit and invention, such as a couple of premise-bending applications of the Potato Heads’ modular body parts and some hilarious riffing on Ken and Barbie.
“Welcome Yet Nonessential”
Those three words from Peter Debruge’s Variety review of next weekend’s Toy Story 3, called out by Peter Chattaway in blogging the review, perfectly encapsulate what I’ve thought had to be the case about this film since I first heard of it. More broadly, as Peter suggests, it seems a harbinger of things to come from this “third phase” in Pixar history that this film is ushering in.
Pixar Toys and “Happy Monsters”
More insightful analysis on patterns at Pixar from Peter T. Chattaway…
Three Phases of Pixar History
Peter Chattaway has just posted some thoughts he’s previously shared elsewhere regarding the shape of Pixar’s body of work to date, and I’ve long thought it’s a brilliant theory.
Up (2009)
As wonky as the proceedings get, director Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc.) and screenwriter and co-director Bob Peterson (Finding Nemo) never entirely lose touch with the ragged human emotions underlying the story. There’s an obvious metaphor in the film itself for the strange blend of realism and zaniness, partly tethered to solid ground, partly twisting in the capricious winds of whimsy.
WALL•E (2008)
Even Pixar has never attempted anything on a canvas of this scale. From Monsters, Inc.’s corporate culture to Finding Nemo’s submarine suburbia, previous Pixar films have never strayed too far from the rhythms of real life. … WALL‑E creates a world that, despite clear connections to contemporary culture, looks and feels nothing like life as we know it, with unprecedented dramatic and philosophical scope.
Ratatouille (2007)
Ratatouille is a revelation — a delightfully surprising discovery in a genre that seldom surprises even savvy youngsters, a warm and winsome confection that will be treasured by viewers young and old long after the mediocrities of summer 2007 have been justly forgotten.
Cars (2006)
Cars is Pixar’s most improbable success to date, a film that could easily have misfired, but somehow does not.
The Incredibles (2004)
The Incredibles is exhilarating entertainment with unexpected depths. It’s a bold, bright, funny and furious superhero cartoon that dares to take sly jabs at the culture of entitlement, from the shallow doctrine of self-esteem that affirms everybody, encouraging mediocrity and penalizing excellence, to the litigation culture that demands recompense for everyone if anything ever happens, to the detriment of the genuinely needy.
Toy Story 2 (1999)
It’s the best kind of sequel, the kind that neither repeats the original nor merely adds to it, but lovingly builds upon it and goes beyond it into narrative and emotional territory no first film could reach.
Toy Story (1995)
Toy Story, the first-ever fully computer-animated feature and the film that put Pixar Studios on the map, is more than a technical tour de force. It’s moviemaking alchemy — a breathtakingly perfect blend of wide-eyed childhood wonder and wry adult humor, yesteryear nostalgia and eye-popping novelty, rollicking storytelling and touchingly honest emotion.
Monsters, Inc. (2001)
The world of Monsters, Inc. is a more artificial and contrived affair than the Toy Story world, and something of the figure of the Monster in myth and fairy tale and imagination has been lost. Yet there’s also a slyly satiric point: Childhood fears aren’t what they used to be.
A Bug’s Life (1998)
Pre-DecentFilms capsule review
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