Coco / **** (2017)

Any number of recent mainstream cartoons that find their way to theaters are in some way about the importance of family values, but Pixar’s “Coco” is the first in a while that is truly sincere about the concept. Never is there a sense while watching it that artists or filmmakers are weaving an illusion that is at the service of a shallow impulse, nor does it inspire the urge in us cynics to pick apart the formula in secondary exercises (a behavior, I willingly admit, that I used in Disney’s recent “Moana”). Like a drill plunging to the depths of a rich reservoir, here is a wonderful little film that finds a powerful source of inspiration while others barely scratch the surface of their wisdom, allowing many of us to forget we are hardened adults diminished by experience. For a precious few minutes I was not merely a movie enthusiast – I was a kid entranced by a spell, in a place of splendor and sensation, joining characters on a quest that felt created by magic rather than the pens of ambitious scribes. And if the feeling remains true that the studio’s output is as rewarding for adults as it is for children, their latest strikes an even more elusive chord: one that transports the oldest of codgers back to a time when our innocent young eyes were starved for exciting adventures.

Finding Dory / *** (2016)

Share in a conversation with a handful of loyal Pixar enthusiasts and you’ll discover very few commonalities between them. Over the course of twenty-odd years, the studio that mastered computer animation has given them a lifetime’s worth of diverse trophies to covet: yarns involving talking toys, busy bugs, cooking rats, machines that sense loneliness and even a few humans seeking adventure in the midst of personal grief, among others. Like the Disney name that oversees their output, they have become dependable facilitators of the most gentle of memories. But almost no consideration is complete without dealing with “Finding Nemo,” easily the most consistently celebrated film of their diverse lineup. On paper a mere story about the search for a clownfish stolen from the depths of the ocean is hardly that dynamic, but in execution it was a movie rich in skill and meaning; those who made it seemed as if they were weaving magic rather than just making yet another mainstream cartoon. Years marched by before its success translated to the most obligatory of marketing decisions – the promise of a sequel – but the thirst of the audience has scarcely diminished after the pass of thirteen years. Something about a reef full of delightful straight-shooters and gentle personalities instills a need in admirers for more, and the new “Finding Dory” is poised (at least at the box office) to quench that thirst.

Inside Out / **** (2015)

Inside the mind of every teenage girl is a plethora of conflicting emotions struggling to find a meaningful balance. This is the narrative according to “Inside Out,” the newest Pixar film, which takes that dependable sense of adventure of animators, quite literally, into the head of one such young girl who is learning to deal with the tribulations of growing up. She has more than her fair share of reasons to doubt her own stability, too; a rather joyous sort who was perfectly happy in her Minnesotan hometown, she finds herself thrust into the realities of cross-country relocation to San Francisco, learning how to function in a new school (without friends), and living in a house where the narrow walls seem to create their own sense of anxiety. To suggest she feels like a stranger in her own life only scrapes the surface of the realization; her eventual detachment informs her perspective so thoroughly that her joyous demeanor quickly falls under the weight of conflicting feelings, all of them extreme. Many kids inevitably must walk the long mile of change when it comes to a family moving away from a sense of security, and yet how can poor confused Riley possibly rediscover her lost optimism, especially when everything she has ever known has been replaced by things so frighteningly foreign?

WALL-E / **** (2008)

The truth is all in the eyes. In moments of grinding routine and isolation, they stare beyond objects with a seeming sense of longing, like those of an emotional being displaced from the intimacy of interaction. Clips from a movie musical play over a small screen inside a metal shack, and he gazes at them not just with perplexity or wonderment, but also with a slanted brow that suggests untapped desire. How he came to possess these sensations is guesswork in a story unburdened with the formality of comprehensive setup, but this much is clear: the robotic creature at the center of Pixar’s “Wall-E” is something very special, and for 98 minutes moviegoers are not so much witnessing his antics as they are projecting his values into their own existence, and finding resonance in the notion that life, perhaps, really can be simplified into some kind of universal declaration. To see these sentiments delivered so profoundly, furthermore, speaks volumes to the power animation possesses in cleansing minds weathered by the cynicism of adulthood.

Ratatouille / ***1/2 (2007)

It was no small feat to feign enthusiasm at the prospect of Walt Disney Pictures acquiring ownership of Pixar Animation, especially on the eve of the release of “Ratatouille.” After a string of successes on part of the CGI-geared cartoonists – all of whom had nearly full creative ownership of all their stories and images prior to Disney’s distributing of them – the idea that the future material of this immensely successful studio would be under direct guidance of the gargantuan Mouse House corporation felt, well, like an uncertain reality. For the company whose founder gave birth to the medium of feature animation, this prospect is dismaying, and underscores a surprisingly underwhelming trend of in-house animated endeavors in the recent years, which seems fueled less by creative desires and more by mass marketing potential (save for “Treasure Planet,” which was full of wondrous ideas but failed commercially because of its narrow appeal). The question then becomes, how can the consistency on part of the Pixar name possibly keep up, especially in the hands of a system now long absolved to settling for the median in this genre?

Up - ***1/2 (2009)

What a delightful, ambitious, sweet and good-natured undertaking this is! Pixar’s “Up,” the studio’s tenth feature-length endeavor and first to be filmed in 3D, opens on a note of human subtlety that goes beyond what we expect of a cartoon and grows into what may very well be the most touching human drama of the year. We are used to seeing many things from the minds of this high-functioning production company, ranging from charming shorts to brilliant fully-realized feature films, but as always you can never really know what is hidden in that big hat of tricks. Ten films later, and after great achievements like “Wall-E,” “Finding Nemo” and “The Incredibles,” we now realize that we are not simply dealing with animators but visionaries, who treat their craft with all the care and precision of a director straight out of Hollywood’s golden age.

The Incredibles / **** (2004)

Pixar's "The Incredibles" is by far the best of the CGI-animated films in the Disney canon, a wondrous and exciting spectacle that is just as enticing narratively as it is visually, and a film that reaffirms the strength of the animator's imagination. It's also a considerably extreme departure from the Pixar standard, side-stepping the widely-accepted "buddy movie" approach of films like "Finding Nemo" and "Toy Story" so that it can charter new and more satirical territory - namely, a story involving a family of misfit superheroes. The leader of the pack, Mr. Incredible, is kind of like a Superman with more compatible social skills, and his partner in crime, the virtuous and fetching Elastigirl, is a headstrong woman who is perfectly capable of holding her own against a job dominated by the male ego. Together, they live by the tasks of any standard superhero formula - save the world, try to live a "normal" life, then save the world all over again - but as the movie opens, their vocation of choice is suddenly undermined by the onslaught of countless frivolous lawsuits (in one instance, Mr. Incredible saves a suicidal man but winds up injuring him in the process, thus resulting in a legal battle). With the profession now threatened, heroes worldwide turn in their masks and enroll in the Superhero Relocation Program. Their days of saving lives and correcting misdeeds, it seems, are over.

Finding Nemo / ***1/2 (2003)

The warm and inviting visuals that catapult us into the world of "Finding Nemo" instantly evoke one of the oldest of childhood pleasures: that of watching curious little water-based creatures swim strategically through decorated aquariums like adventurers seeking buried treasure. The amusing pastime, at least on an surveying level, is as innocent a thing to a kid as playing with friends or having ice cream on a summer day, but for those of us who grew up to accept the time-consuming challenges of fish-keeping, the cycle of life for our little undersea pets is anything but a straightforward journey, plagued by nearly all the universal laws of nature that have been established for virtually every living being on this planet. Just imagine, though, how all those poor little fish must feel amongst our own frustration, not knowing where to turn or what to do in the established parameters of their ever-changing homes. In this new Disney film, a colorful canvas alive even at the farthest edges helps pitch these important realizations to the younger viewer, who accept that little fish can be "cute" but don't quite understand the level of dangerous intricacy that surrounds them behind glass and in the sea. Surviving, it seems, is their real adventure.

Monsters, Inc. / *** (2001)

On the other side of closet doors, in a universe right next door to the ones explored in "Toy Story" and "A Bug's Life" (in which toys and insects live social and productive lives), lies the land of Monstropolis, a colorful but eccentric cityscape that houses beings not unlike what many of us imagined were living in closets or under beds when we were young. What has never been said of monsters, however, prior to Pixar's "Monsters, Inc." is that human children scare them just as much as they scare us, and though kids may pull blankets over their heads for fear of a furry large beast emerging from a doorway, those same large creatures live with the idea that all children are toxic and can hurt them right back.

The "Toy Story" Comparison

In 1996, a little film studio called PIXAR unleashed a creation onto the world that would shape the very mold of feature animation. The film, titled “Toy Story,” was the first ever produced that was built completely on computer generated imagery, inspired by the very minds who helped give Disney’s animation studio a push for implementing computer animation in their feature animated films. Naturally, the response was positively overwhelming, opening up to glowing reviews and brilliant financial success. Heck, there was even major adult-audience turnout for the film—which is odd, since animation is generally regarded as a child’s genre. It was almost assured that the studio would want to capture that success with a sequel. Three years later, that possibility was realized.