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Disney keeps speeding into the baffling but kid-beloved world of Cars
With Run The Series , The A.V. Club examines film franchises, studying how they change and evolve with each new installment.
From 2007 to 2010, the animation company Pixar, fresh off its purchase by Disney, went on an astonishing run that equals or surpasses just about any streak of American feature animation made by anyone, including its parent company. While picking the “best” Pixar movie is probably a fool’s game, convincing cases could be made for any of these four released in successive years between 2007 and 2010: Ratatouille , Wall-E , Up , and Toy Story 3 . It’s all the more surprising, then, that this spectacular quartet is flanked on the Pixar timeline by two pillars of relative embarrassment: Cars (2006) and Cars 2 (2011). This summer, Pixar made it a trilogy with Cars 3 .
When Cars came out, it was only the seventh Pixar feature, so there wasn’t a great deal of shame when it was more or less universally considered the studio’s weakest film. Appropriately, its status as a consensus worst-of choice was supplanted five years later by Cars 2— a movie that, if anything, has fewer defenders than its predecessor. I wish I could offer a thoughtful dissenting opinion, but while I’ll stick up for Brave and The Good Dinosaur as underappreciated original efforts, I have to agree with the cranky adult masses about Cars 2 : It is the worst Pixar movie. Handily.
Yet the Cars series is only the second Pixar franchise to reach three entries, with the release of Cars 3 , and the only one to produce a series of spin-offs, the non-Pixar (but John Lasseter-produced and theatrically released) Planes and Planes: Fire & Rescue . It did all of this in far less time than the Toy Story series, which in 2019 will see the release of its fourth installment, nearly 24 years after the groundbreaking original. The Cars saga managed to produce five installments in just 11 years—almost as if it required less thought and effort than Pixar’s flagship series.
Some parents may issue the rare Pixar-related groan, but the Cars trilogy-plus has been a big business for the studio, and millions of kids love it. This makes sense: It is extremely—in the hallowed words of ’90s Warner Bros. executives—toyetic. Kids have been ascribing personalities to their toy cars for decades, and like Toy Story , the central conceit of Cars confirms what children have long suspected and/or dreamed of: that inanimate objects they love are, in fact, alive. Cars goes further than Toy Story , though, by making the toys life-sized, and (as far as we can tell from the series) beholden to no larger humans who might want to control or limit their adventures. In the Toy Story movies, just leaving a room is a momentous undertaking for the characters. In the Cars movies, the vehicles are utterly, perhaps terrifyingly, free.
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This makes the world of the series fun to speculate about, as ScreenCrush’s Matt Singer has done gleefully this past spring. But the delightful weirdness of the Cars universe may also be its limitation. There may be a certain formula to the way that Toy Story , A Bug’s Life , Monsters, Inc . , and Finding Nemo all explore unseen facets of a world that resembles our own. In fact, it’s definitely a formula; that’s part of the reason those Pixar projects from the late ’00s seem even more inventive. But Pixar isn’t always about bucking formula. It’s very often about executing formula with great wit, style, and emotion, obscuring the story mechanics beneath all of those qualities. The strange accidental science fiction of the Cars series should be an even more elaborate distraction from a formulaic story, but it goes too far in the other direction. So little of what is compelling about these movies has to do with the characters, plotting, jokes, or emotions. They don’t run quite as smoothly as even second-tier Pixar.
Yet the first Cars is not remotely a bad movie. It’s certainly more beautiful and idiosyncratic than any number of other contemporary animation studios’ better efforts. As many have pointed out, the story is basically the Michael J. Fox movie Doc Hollywood minus the surprise nudity (or, depending on your interpretation of the social mores in the Cars world, plus near-constant nudity). Here, the hotshot waylaid in a small town en route to more glamorous environs isn’t a surgeon with a sweet car but an actual car by the name of Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson). He’s desperate to get to a tie-breaking NASCAR-style championship race, but forced to repair his damage to a single main road that runs through Radiator Springs. This formerly bustling town on Route 66, somewhere around Arizona or New Mexico (statehood seems to remain in this human-free alternate universe), is populated by the usual small-town eccentrics, including the hick-ish tow truck Mater (Larry The Cable Guy), the positive-thinking Sally (Bonnie Hunt), and the grumpy vintage recluse Doc Hudson (Paul Newman).
The movie espouses the virtues of slowing down to appreciate life’s quieter, simpler pleasures. This is something the movie both practices, by setting a still-held record for longest Pixar feature, and flouts, by needlessly complicating McQueen’s long road to the movie’s actual plot. Pixar movies often show off brilliantly staged chase sequences, and it’s refreshing that its race car movie is often downright prosaic by comparison. But the elaborate circumstances of McQueen’s stranding in Radiator Springs (and several subsequent escape attempts) have all of the business and movement of classic Pixar set pieces without much of the fun.
When the movie gets genuinely slow, though, it takes on a contemplative tone, particularly in the history montage where the characters explain how Radiator Springs went from popular road-trip spot to bypassed curio too far from the highway. This is where John Lasseter, directing his first Pixar movie since Toy Story 2 , shines—celebrating bygone Americana while maintaining the hope that it might not be lost forever. This celebration just so happens to feature the comic stylings of Larry The Cable Guy.
It’s probably not fair to beat up on Mr. The Cable Guy; little of his stand-up act’s affected idiocy makes it into his character beyond the hillbilly veneer and a single catchphrase utterance (repeated at least once in each subsequent sequel). Frankly, if Mater was assayed by an anonymous voice actor saying the same lines, hatred for him probably would have been reduced by at least 50 percent. But Larry The Cable Guy’s presence in Cars , his subsequent elevation to a leading role in Cars 2 , and even his continued presence in Cars 3 (however scaled back) clearly rubs plenty of Pixar fans the wrong way. Lasseter and his non-Pixar ringers made a stylistically dissimilar but weirdly compatible decision when they cast Dane Cook as the lead voice in the Planes series. Dusty Crophopper, the crop-dusting plane eager to race in those movies, doesn’t take on the more noxious elements of Cook’s stand-up persona; he was probably cast, as Patton Oswalt or Dave Foley or Amy Poehler were, for vocal qualities, not to shape the comic sensibility of the film. But his vocal presence alone will be enough to irritate plenty of snobs in the audience (yours truly included).
Hipness has never been this series’ concern, though. The first Cars was one of three racing-themed movies that came out in the summer of 2006, the other two being Talladega Nights and The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift . Of those three, it’s by far the most unironically appreciative of NASCAR culture, as opposed to the satire of Talladega or the quasi-underground cool of Tokyo Drift . Sincere interest in vehicles going fast to the delight of a roaring crowd is also all over Cars 2 (which takes a more international approach but also follows a feature-length global car race) and the first Planes (which is basically the same as the Lightning McQueen half of the Cars 2 plot, married to an inversion of the first movie: Instead of a hotshot racer who gets stuck in a small town, Dusty is a small-town dreamer who yearns to become a hotshot racer). Even Cars 3 , which attempts to address the aging process, wraps that up in concern for whether cars can go really, really fast.
Cars 2 deserves some credit for doing something entirely different from its predecessor—in addition to being a racing movie, it’s a globe-hopping, action-heavy adventure starring Mater rather than a lesson about life’s quieter pleasures starring McQueen. Its opening is even one of the best sequences in the series. An episode of spy intrigue populated entirely by sentient vehicles is a deeply silly idea, but the first scene of Cars 2 perfectly realizes that silliness, following the exploits of spymobile Finn McMissile (Michael Caine) as he sneaks onto a ship in the middle of the ocean, spies on nefarious enemy cars, and makes a spectacular getaway.
Eventually, the movie sucks Mater into its spy plot as part of an extended mistaken-identity farce, and while it’s still fun to watch spy cars voiced by the likes of Caine and Bruce Campbell perform impossible vehicular stunts, adding a slapstick dimension (which seems like it should be right in Pixar’s wheelhouse) turns Cars 2 into one of those overblown action-comedies where the action drowns out the comedy and simple-minded lessons overpower the action. It also feels, more so even than Cars , like a movie solely for children.
The Planes spin-offs continue that progression, adding in the strange-but-true disadvantage that plane-windshield eyes are less expressive than car-windshield eyes. The first Planes reverses that Cars pokiness into pure kid-movie expedience: Dusty doesn’t stumble unexpectedly into the path of his crusty Doc Hudson-style mentor figure; he seeks him out within the first 10 minutes. Similarly, Dusty’s entry and participation in an ambitious multiday worldwide plane race isn’t especially complicated; he gets lucky, and then bad guys conspire against him. The animation isn’t nearly up to Pixar standards, but it’s better than a bargain-basement rip-off, which presumably explains Disney’s decision to release the Planes movies theatrically instead of directly to DVD as originally planned. Although it makes a few intriguing missteps, like a bizarre detour in the Pacific Ocean theater of the Cars -world version of World War II via a brief and casualty-heavy flashback, Planes isn’t offensively terrible. It’s just talkier, exposition-heavier, and all-around duller than its four-wheeled cousins. It feels nearly as long at 90 minutes as Cars does at two hours.
That’s also true of the hasty and even-shorter follow-up Planes: Fire & Rescue , which seems to exist to answer a cynical series of rhetorical questions: Hey, kids like firetrucks, too, right? And their parents get some satisfaction from nodding in solemn approval when others laud the heroism of firefighters? And, as such, audiences of all ages will surely be roused by the sound of guitar riffs, alternately faux-bitchin’ and faux-inspirational, accompanying the sight of a bunch of tough airplanes and trucks training to take out fires?
In Planes: Fire & Rescue, suddenly crop duster turned champion racer Dusty needs to become a firefighter to save his local airport, which isn’t up to code. The existence of stringent safety regulations in the Cars -verse is puzzling, because the vehicles seem vastly more likely to survive a terrible crash than either humans or vehicles in our world. Even the hilariously dark and realistic-looking crash that served as the teaser trailer for Cars 3 takes Lightning McQueen about 15 seconds of screentime to recover from in the actual movie, at least physically, with no reference made to any significant rehabilitation work on his body.
Planes: Fire & Rescue is almost as tedious as its predecessor. But if it’s arguably more craven for approval than the Cars films that came before it (dedicating itself to real firefighters before the Disney logo even comes up), it’s also less directly derivative of them. Making Dusty a wannabe firefighter instead of a wannabe Lightning McQueen does make him more likable (though not especially more interesting), and the movie sometimes comes up with amusingly weird gags, like one of the rescue choppers having previously starred on a TV show called CHoPS , a tape of which is inexplicably housed in a case for the movie Howard The Truck . Still, it’s a pretty thin broth for all but the younger-but-not-too-young kids (my under-2 daughter, who lasted a solid 20 minutes into Cars , bailed on Fire & Rescue after about five).
Cars 3 returns the series to Pixar, and clearly wants to redeem itself to some degree. Mater’s role, as mentioned, is minimized, though the pauses for his shtick feel longer than ever, and the movie returns Doc Hudson to the fore, despite his being dead. (Doc’s offscreen departure into whatever insane hell passes for a Cars afterlife was written into Cars 2 to coincide with Paul Newman’s death.) It also gives McQueen a coach-turned-protégé in the form of a younger, female-identified car (how is that determination made, by the way?) named Cruz (Cristela Alonzo). The plot is a mishmash of everything from Rocky III to Rocky Balboa to Creed .
As ever, a speed-obsessed Cars movie is surprisingly slow out of the gate and decidedly overlong in general, and the jokes more than ever seem to depend on characters delivering lame car puns and sometimes even pointing them out. But McQueen’s anxiety about aging does ground the movie to some degree, even if it seems reluctant to show him aging in any way but placing him alongside newer, sleeker, meaner car opponents. Cars 3 also contains perhaps the series’ only race that generates actual suspense, in part because the clear modeling on the Rocky series makes it seem possible that the good guys could actually lose for once. Like any Pixar movie, it has some great visual touches, like a crazed demolition derby sequence or the more wistful shallow-focus textures of a flashback scene. It’s less bonkers than Cars 2 , but more involving.
The main problem with Cars 3 , really, is that it’s a Cars movie. Even at its first-movie best, this is a difficult origin to transcend. They’re all happy to equate race car driving with athleticism, co-opt a Larry The Cable Guy catchphrase, or compete for the title of dumbest down-home music cue. (Do you go with the straightforward awfulness of Rascal Flatts covering “Life Is A Highway,” or the more elaborate atrocity of Brad Paisley and Robbie Williams performing the awkwardly named ode to cross-culture pollination “Collision Of Worlds”?) The series is the closest Disney has come in recent years to constructing an expensive monument to bad taste.
This actually makes it difficult to rail against the Cars movies without sounding like the adult who wants to appreciate Pixar on a much deeper level than mere children—or, say, an East Coast film critic who finds it hard to gin up interest in NASCAR unless Will Ferrell is making fun of it. To Pixar’s credit, there is something delightful about the pure, kid-hypnotizing simplicity of goofy-talking automobiles chased with, say, a chilling glimpse of a Cars -ified Statue Of Liberty (thanks, Planes ). There are fleeting moments when Lasseter’s deranged enthusiasm for this world becomes infectious. Even when Pixar tries to pander, it comes up with something singular.
Final ranking: 1. Cars (2006) 2. Cars 3 (2017) 3. Cars 2 (2011) 4. Planes: Fire & Rescue (2014) 5. Planes (2013)
Best Pixar Movies: Ranked From Worst to Best
With pixar's turning red currently turning heads, it's time to update the rankings..
Pixar's 25th film, the joyous and jittery Turning Red , is now ready for all to see, exclusively on Disney+ here in America. And with the acclaimed animation studio's latest entry comes the need to look back at the company's (near) 30 years of storytelling and pluck out the best of the best. What are the best Pixar movies? Read on...
From living toys to missing fish to rats with culinary expertise, Pixar's 25-film run (so far) is unparalleled, delivering iconic animated characters, thrilling adventures, and moments that instantly melt your heart. Though its last three films have been relegated to streaming only (with few theatrical exceptions in New York and L.A.), the studio will return to multiplexes this summer with Lightyear, a spinoff of the Toy Story franchise. But Turning Red, like Luca and Soul before it, prove that you don't need a big screen to showcase big emotions.
We're taking it all in here. All the Cars, Monsters, Bugs, Toys, Incredibles, and more so that we can properly rank Pixar's full catalogue. Agree? Disagree? Don't care because there are more important things in life? We got you. Check out our ranking of the Pixar movies, from least-good to cinematic bliss...
As the second Pixar franchise to get a third movie, Cars is a great example of the more traditional disconnect between kids and grownups when it comes to blockbuster animation. Cars is a merchandise cash cow, but it's also the studio's brand that's left the most older viewers cold. Cars 3 goes the Rocky Balboa comeback route for a more internalized story about Lightning McQueen's doubt and fear when pitted against a younger, faster generation of racers. Generally, Cars 3 is lauded for being the deepest, most introspective entry of the three, with the consensus being that it's the Cars flick most aimed at adult Pixar fans. Still, Cars 3 came about at a time when viewers wanted either new Pixar products and/or sequels to better Pixar movies.
Cars 2 benefits from cherry-picking the best elements of the first Cars movie and switching genres completely by taking Lightning McQueen and Mater out of Radiator Springs and dropping them into the middle of a fast-paced, dynamic spy flick. What's lost here, for the most part, is the warmth and heart that we adore, and expect, from most Pixar offerings.
Cars 2 is also a darker film where several car characters do meet an untimely, and sometimes gruesome, end. But the fast pacing works in the film's favor, as the slightly morbid moments flicker in and out as quickly as race car laps. Cars 2 isn't the usual intimate magical experience you expect from Pixar fare, but it's still a high-octane adventure the burns fast and furious.
23. Finding Dory
After a half decade of mostly sequels, and two originals that fell short of expectations, Finding Dory brings back friends-not-food Marlin, Nemo, and Dory for another undersea adventure - this time about tracking down short term memory-challenged Dory as she searches for her long lost parents. With Ed O'Neill, Idris Elba, Dominic West, and Sigourney Weaver adding their voices to the odyssey, Finding Dory manages to be visually impressive and disarmingly charming though it still can't shake off the unnecessary sequel vibe given that it doesn't improve on the classic first film and it came during a Pixar era of commercially-driven "sameness."
22. Monsters University
Monsters University is Pixar’s take on a college movie, with Mike (Billy Crystal) and Sulley (John Goodman) reintroduced as freshmen at MU, both with dreams of making it as a “scarer.” It doesn't have the emotional weight of the first one (Boo, you are missed), but Monsters University is still a fun and funny movie in its own right. Pixar’s biggest obstacle at this point was their own track record as so many of their films had been so emotional that a certain standard had been set. Pixar, however, uses animation to tell all sorts of stories and not all of them have to make you weep to be worthwhile. We all like a good comedy too, right?
21. The Good Dinosaur
The Good Dinosaur, considered by some to be Pixar's biggest "soft miss" from the previous decade, takes on a big "what if?" Asking people to imagine what would happen if the dinosaurs never went extinct, this movie follows a young dino named Arlo who gets swept away from his family and has to journey through the great unknown to get home. The film is one of the most visually stunning projects Pixar has ever created, but it retreads some familiar Pixar tropes and, on top of that, its troubled production shows.
There are some great emotional moments as Arlo and his "pet" human Spot grow closer, and The Good Dinosaur proves that Pixar excels at showing instead of telling. Even when the film does hit story points that feel familiar, it does them well and in a way that children can comprehend -- even if it does get a bit scary for its target young audience sometimes.
The first Pixar film to follow a female protagonist (the arrow-shooting princess Merida), the first one to be set in the past (medieval Scotland), and their 13th film to open at No. 1, Brave wisely forsakes the well-worn relationships of other animated fairy tales -- the wicked stepmother/stepdaughter dynamic or father/daughter bond or the princess and prince romance -- in favor of the more complicated, yet loving bond between a headstrong mother and her equally stubborn daughter. And yet despite that smart choice, Brave still never quite transcends. It's a technical marvel (Merida’s wild curls, the misty Highlands, immersive 3D), but it’s ultimately seen as a lesser effort from a studio known for breaking new ground.
It should come as no surprise that 2006's Cars is near the bottom of this list, as it and its sequels are the least loved of all the Pixar films and yet, as we noted above, when it comes to Pixar, the worst is still usually pretty dang good. John Lasseter's odd love letter to "the Mother Road" Route 66 tells the tale of Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson), a rookie racecar who learns that winning isn't everything. The film, while still clever and endearing, gets a bit bogged down in open road romanticism and those stretches of story ultimately hurt the final product.
Onward, which had its theatrical run short-sheeted by the onset of the pandemic (which, in turn led to Soul's streaming release), combined a high concept realm -- that of a land of fairy tales and fantasy updated for modern times -- with a off-kilter magical adventure featuring only half a dad being brought back to life for 24 hours, and delivered an unexpectedly poignant look at loneliness and loss. Tom Holland and Chris Pratt headline as two elf brothers on an '80s Amblin-style quest in this clever, vibrant family fable.
17. Turning Red
Turning Red, which is still fresh off the presses and will most likely rank higher in the years to come, is an awesomely anxious coming-of-age story about a 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian girl, Mei, living in Toronto whose plan to keep her boy band fanaticism secret from her perfectionist mother goes awry when a magical family tradition starts turning her into a giant, floofy red panda whenever she experiences -- you know -- any strong feelings about anything. A clever knockout, Turning Red captures the wild energy of adolescence, uses pop stars as a timeless window into puberty, and tells a tale of friendship and family in the most delightful way.
2021's Luca felt like a return to classic Pixar in terms of defying labels and providing a unique vibe. Retro-set on the 1950s Italian Riviera, and with a soundtrack full of toe-tapping Italian tunes, this sun-drenched story features two young sea creatures, longing for a life of land exploration, who disguise themselves as humans in a small town and wind up competing for a Vespa in the local Portorosso Cup. After befriending local outcast Giulia (Emma Berman), the trio form a bond that bridges worlds and opens up endless possibilities. Luca has smaller stakes than some other Pixar films but its heart is just as mighty.
Soul goes about as big as you can get for a Pixar film, exploring the afterlife in the same way WALL-E explores the future, Monster, Inc. delves into the scream industry, and Coco travels into -- okay -- also the afterlife. Soul's version of the hereafter, however, is more utilitarian, with a vaporwave art vibe and music provided by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, while the real world is marvelous and unpredictable (with jazz provided by Jon Batiste). Telling the story of a pianist who meets an untimely demise (Jamie Foxx), and who's desperate to join the land of the living again so he can do the one thing he thinks will make his life meaningful, Soul ambushes us with harsh relatability. Tina Fey lends her voice to the other half of this mismatched duo, as a stubborn unborn soul refusing to enter the world. Soul makes no bones about how big its themes are, tackling the meaning of life and the time-honored debate between Team Journey and Team Destination.
14. Incredibles 2
And the longest time between movies in a Pixar franchise goes tooooo...The Incredibles, which finally dropped a sequel 14 years after the awesome original. Outside of the Toy Story saga, this was the sequel fans had been clamoring for the most and eventually, yes, writer/director Brad Bird returned to gift us with another glimpse into the lives of the superpowered Parr family. This fantastic follow-up takes place right after the end of the first film (a privilege animation provides) and spins the saga off into a "Mr. Mom"-style caper involving Mr. Incredible staying at home with baby Jack-Jack and Elastigirl becoming the standout superhero of the homestead. It might not top the 2004 movie but it admirably switches things up and gives us an exciting new story instead of repeating the beats of the past.
13. A Bug’s Life
Pixar's second film, A Bug's Life, was a take on the old Ant and the Grasshopper parable mixed with Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. A great sophomore effort for the young company, A Bug's Life didn't quite match the magic of Toy Story but it still was crucial in helping define and refine the Pixar formula: a mix of kid-friendly comedy, adult-friendly knowingness and nostalgia, and state-of-the-art computer animation. In A Bug's Life, Dave Foley plays Flik, an outcast ant who, after his colony is threatened by villainous grasshoppers, recruits a bunch of other loner insects -- well, actually they're just circus performers who are out of work. But they are, of course, up to the task.
12. Toy Story 4
Toy Story 4 gently suffers from the sentiment that it's a bit of a "hat on a hat," as Toy Story 3 feels like both a pinnacle for the series and a natural, satisfying ending to the story. It's also the Toy Story entry fans hold the least regard for, but as you can see the "worst" Toy Story film still easily and snugly fits in Pixar's top half. And it ultimately may not even be the final Toy Story chapter.
In the franchise's fourth entry, Woody, Buzz, and the rest of the toy team (including a newly repurposed spork named Forky) head out on a road trip with Bonnie's family where they're unexpectedly reunited with Bo Peep, who's enjoying her freedom as a "lost toy." Toy Story 4 stays true to all the magical hallmarks of the series while, once again, providing a fitting end.
11. Ratatouille
Directed by Brad Bird (The Incredibles), who was already beloved by animation aficionados for The Iron Giant prior to joining Pixar, the truly wonderful Ratatouille takes us into the heart of Parisian cuisine through the lens of a creature we don't usually associate with having a refined palate - the rat. Yes, Remy the Rat dreams of becoming a chef and tries to achieve his goal by forming an alliance with a fancy restaurant's garbage boy, Alfredo Linguini, controlling the lad's kitchen skills by hiding under his hat. Ratatouille is a unique slice of animation that strikes deep notes of recognition across many kinds of moviegoers, be they discriminating foodies, fans of animation, or just everyday folks expecting to be entertained. It's a seven-course meal that delivers hilarious antics and unbridled joy.
10. Toy Story 2
The law of averages suggests that Toy Story 2 shouldn't be as good as it is, just from a sequel standpoint, but it brilliantly expands upon the original Toy Story adventure in just about every way. The story of Woody's abduction by a toy collector (Wayne Knight) and the attempt by his pals to save him is truly exceptional stuff. Here Woody is faced with a serious choice between living forever -- hermetically sealed as a collector's item -- or going back to his friends and the boy who loves him and facing the prospect of getting torn apart at any moment, as a boy's toys tend to be. Live life or watch from the sidelines? What would Woody do? Quite simply, it's a tour de force of talking toy cinema.
Up proves its power within the first 10 minutes. With just a few lines of dialogue, an opening montage introduces us to the main character, Carl, and shows us the story of his life and love with Ellie – from their meeting as children, to their marriage, to their inability to have children of their own, to Ellie's passing. Those last two elements tell you all you need to know about a film where Pixar once again proves it doesn't shy away from truly emotional, powerful material.
The adventure that follows for Carl and the young boy, Russell, who inadvertently tags along is certainly fanciful - Carl gets an entire house to fly using balloons! - yet infused with an incredible amount of pathos and meaning, as we watch Carl oh so literally carry his burden on his back, as he physically drags that floating house through the jungle, determined to bring it to the place he and Ellie dreamed about. Funny, exciting and touching, Up is a beautiful film - and the second animated movie to ever receive a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars.
8. Finding Nemo
Finding Nemo, from 2003, features some of the most widely recognized characters from a Pixar picture aside from the original Toy Story troupe. The film's story of an overprotective father who is separated from his son instantly preys upon any parent's deepest fears, and yet the film is never manipulative or calculating in its storytelling methods. From the breathtaking design of the deep-sea world to the spot-on performances by Ellen DeGeneres, Albert Brooks, and more, Finding Nemo is a hilarious, thrilling and even spiritual adventure that represents the apex of Pixar's storytelling abilities. It was a blockbuster for the studio, an astounding achievement in animation, and a game-changer for kids' movies.
7. Monsters, Inc.
In 2001, Pixar unleashed a rollicking workplace comedy about kindly, chatty "joe schmoe" monsters and the utility company they work for in the land of Monstropolis. Starring John Goodman as Sulley and Billy Crystal as Mike, a couple of working-class creatures, Monsters, Inc. takes what seems like an insane premise and makes it relatable by having these so-called monsters act like working stiffs. Monsters! They're just like us!
With Benny Goodman-style jazz and comedic banter befitting an SNL sketch, Monsters, Inc transforms from a simple clock-punching parable into a quest to save a little girl and a mission to unravel a conspiracy. It stealthily starts as a somewhat thin-yet-amusing sitcom and finishes as one of Pixar's finest heart-tugging outings.
2017's Coco is easily regarded as one of Pixar's most emotional endeavors. A monumentally gorgeous tear-jerker, Coco follows a 12-year-old Mexican boy named Miguel who is accidentally transported to the Land of the Dead where he seeks the help of his deceased musician great-great-grandfather. It's a soaring supernatural quest that explores familial themes, identity, and learning what it means to grow up in a world that isn’t perfect. Pixar was culturally conscious when developing this marvelously Mexican story, turning to an array of outside Latino consultants to vet ideas and suggest new ones (upending a long-running studio tradition of strict creative lockdown). Coco is an uplifting revelation and one of the company's crowning efforts.
5. Inside Out
True to its concept, Inside Out is Pixar's emotional roller coaster, offering up what is probably the best depiction ever of how the human body's memory and emotions work. Shining a spotlight inside the mind of an 11-year-old girl coping with the first big change in her life -- her family moving to a new, unfamiliar city -- Inside Out characterizes the five emotions that run a person's inner "Headquarters" to take viewers on a visually inventive adventure.
Following both young Riley on the outside and her feelings on the inside -- Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, Disgust -- Inside Out is a thoughtful, caring film without going overboard, and a hilarious, quirky romp without losing its edge. It's at once very surreal and very human, simplifying our brains while also presenting our lives as complicated. RIP Bing Bong.
4. Toy Story
When the first Pixar feature was released in 1995, a new age dawned for animated films. Not just because of its computer-generated animation but because of the superb storytelling. Toy Story was technically at the top of its game while also illustrating some very familiar thematic throughlines that included the rivalry between Tom Hanks' wooden cowboy and Tim Allen's space-age action figure, the buddy comedy, the fear that we all have of becoming obsolete, and of course the very idea of toys having a life of their own. The result was a huge success that took age-old tropes and made them fresh and new again -- and created the cinematic mega-beast known as Pixar along the way.
You will believe a robot can fall in love! With WALL-E, Pixar began to flirt with a slightly experimental edge to its filmmaking, delivering a first act that's almost entirely dialogue-free and creating whimsey and mirth in the garbage-covered ruins of Earth. It's honestly the most adorable dystopia ever.
At the heart of most Pixar films is the theme of isolation. WALL-E, one of the animation studio's top-tier achievements, is a breathtaking meditation on loneliness and the re-enforcement that every sentient creature contains an unbeatable desire to connect with someone else. Pixar has a way of creating fantastic creatures and characters who tug violently on all our heartstrings. And all WALL-E wanted to do was hold someone else's hand like he'd seen in the musical Hello, Dolly. Post-trashpocalypse world be damned! WALL-E is lush, phenomenal sci-fi like no other. This is skewering satire mixed with a lovable, relatable search for companionship.
2. Toy Story 3
Leave it to Pixar to make the best (temporary) threequel ever. The story of Andy moving on to college -- leaving Woody and Buzz and the gang dealing with a great, understated villain in Lots-O'-Huggin' Bear at the new daycare center home -- is the most fun of the Toy Story films. It works as a drama, a comedy and an action film -- a terrific trifecta! It's a beautiful, vibrant story about memories, the passing of time, and how you treat the people in your life.
As with everything Pixar does, the attention to detail here is incredible. The split-imagery within the daycare/Alcatraz is great. How the slide in the playground becomes a watchtower at night. How the bead mazes double as razor wire. How marker smudges become prison tats. The level of detail, in things like Woody's rounded-down hairline, is astounding. So many moments -- character moments, mind you -- cross over into "great" or "perfect" status, and the last 15 minutes are some of the strongest work the studio has ever done.
1. The Incredibles
Prior to the MCU, back when only Spider-Man, Batman, and X-Men ruled the superhero box office roost, director Brad Bird gave us, in a way, a better Fantastic Four movie than the live-action one we'd get a year later. The Incredibles, now almost 20 years later, is still regarded as one of the best superhero movies of all time.
The story of retired heroes Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) and Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), as well as their super children Violet, Dash, and Jack-Jack, The Incredibles takes Bird's love of old-school comic-book conventions that was evident in The Iron Giant and mashes it with commentary about American nuclear family. Bird brought a new and different voice to the Pixar world. The Incredibles is less cute and more biting, introducing a few more sinister and violent elements to the studio's usual product, though it's never not a family story centered around issues that most families face. Brilliantly designed, perfectly paced, and next-level exciting, The Incredibles grabs hold and never lets go.
Note: This article originally ran on May 2, 2017. It was updated on March 28, 2022.
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TAGGED AS: animated , Animation , Disney , Disney Plus , Disney streaming service , movies , Pixar
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All Pixar Movies Ranked By Tomatometer
When Disney distributed Pixar’s Toy Story as an autumn alternative to traditional 2D animated features in 1995, could the studio have predicted that it would instead set the gold standard and template for theatrical cartoons for decades to come? After all, the slide from peak Disney Renaissance had only just begun (their releases that year were Pocahontas and A Goofy Movie ) and Pixar was up to that point a studio that only made commercials and shorts; a feature-length 3D animated movie was a miracle in of itself, and they were not equipped to churn out quality yearly releases like Walt Disney Animation.
Pixar’s follow-up took three years to hit theaters, and though A Bug’s Life is looked back on in the canon as a minor Pixar effort, everyone in 1998 rushed out to see it, and it again ended up grossing more than Disney’s then recent works like Hercules and Mulan . 1999’s Toy Story 2 was a cultural event, and established Pixar as the one to take animation to the highest heights in the new century. What followed was a then-unprecedented run of Certified Fresh hits and box office smashes, from Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo to The Incredibles , WALL-E , and Up .
2011’s Cars 2 broke the streak with Pixar’s first Rotten film, and the studio has since spent the past decade oscillating between returning to the sequel well ( Monsters University , Finding Dory ) and pulling up original property ( Coco , Inside Out ), closing out with Toy Story 4 . For 2020, Onward was pulled from theaters after two due to the pandemic, while Soul went straight to Disney+ in hopes of salvaging a year of chaos. Luca and Turning Red continue to expand the breadth and color of their stories. Now, we’re ranking all Pixar movies by Tomatometer! — Alex Vo
MORE DISNEY: All Disney+ Shows and Original Movies Ranked | The 100 Best Movies on Disney+ | All Disney Animated Movies Ranked | All Star Wars Movies Ranked | All MCU Movies Ranked
Toy Story 2 (1999) 100%
Toy Story (1995) 100%
Finding Nemo (2003) 99%
Inside Out (2015) 98%
Toy Story 3 (2010) 98%
Up (2009) 98%
Toy Story 4 (2019) 97%
Coco (2017) 97%
The Incredibles (2004) 97%
Ratatouille (2007) 96%
Monsters, Inc. (2001) 96%
Soul (2020) 95%
WALL-E (2008) 95%
Finding Dory (2016) 94%
Turning Red (2022) 95%
Incredibles 2 (2018) 93%
A Bug's Life (1998) 92%
Luca (2021) 91%
Onward (2020) 88%
Monsters University (2013) 80%
Brave (2012) 79%
The Good Dinosaur (2015) 75%
Lightyear (2022) 74%
Cars (2006) 74%
Cars 3 (2017) 69%
Cars 2 (2011) 39%
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The Greatest Car Movies Ever Made
This list of the best car movies features awesome and fast cars, ranked by the fans. This car films list can be sorted by director, actors, or year of release via their column headers. So, what are the best movies about cars? Nothing is more exciting than a movie with a fast auto. In this list of the greatest car movies ever made, including racing films, fast car movies, old, classic films with high speed chases, and action car movies. What are the best car action movies? While this might not feature all car films, it does have the greatest.
Cars in movies have always played an important storytelling role in American and foreign cinema and when talking about the top car movies one has to mention The Fast and the Furious , Gone in 60 Seconds , and all-time greats like Bullitt and Smokey and the Bandit . Featuring good classic movies, car-themed animated films, and cool Hollywood movies about driving similar to Need for Speed , this list has it all.
After watching these, you may make your own top 10 car movies list. For other interesting movie lists check out the horse racing movies , and car racing movies .
Ford v. Ferrari
- Released : 2019
- Directed by : James Mangold
- # 45 of 217 The Best Sports Movies Ever Made
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- # 20 of 31 Movies That Make You Want To Swipe Right On Historical Figures
- Released : 1968
- Directed by : Peter Yates
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- # 36 of 100 The Best PG Action Movies
- # 11 of 140 The Best Mystery Movies Rated PG
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American Graffiti
- Released : 1973
- Directed by : George Lucas
- # 104 of 204 Musical Movies With The Best Songs
- # 86 of 306 The Greatest Movie Themes
- # 70 of 187 Movies That Should Be Made Into Broadway Musicals
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The Fast and the Furious
- Released : 2001
- Directed by : Rob Cohen
- # 15 of 140 The Best Movies Of 2001
- # 12 of 15 Fictional Friend Groups In Movies You Most Want To Join
- # 3 of 58 The Best Car Racing Movies That Really Put The Pedal To The Metal
Smokey and the Bandit
- Released : 1977
- Directed by : Hal Needham
- # 114 of 302 The Best Duos of All Time
- # 122 of 375 'Old' Movies Every Young Person Needs To Watch In Their Lifetime
- # 162 of 456 The Most Quotable Movies Of All Time
Gone in 60 Seconds
- Released : 2000
- Directed by : Dominic Sena
- # 22 of 82 The Best Movies Of 2000
- # 3 of 12 12 Bad Nicolas Cage Movies That Are Actually Good
- # 10 of 14 14 Underrated Action Movies About Characters Pulled Out Of Retirement
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- Report this list
Best CAR-MOVIES ever!
Here's best best car-movies and best car-chases, and some where the cars are better and more important than the movie! The movies with the best driving experiences, either as a car movie, og as a part of the movie! These films are films where cars, car related stuff, traffic and driving make out an important part of the movie. Not all are just car movies!
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1. The Pinchcliffe Grand Prix (1975)
G | 88 min | Animation, Comedy, Family
Reodor Felgen decides that he will enter a car race to defeat his former friend who has stolen his plans for a car.
Director: Ivo Caprino | Stars: Wenche Foss , Per Theodor Haugen , Harald Heide-Steen Jr. , Leif Juster
Votes: 13,756
2. Drive (I) (2011)
R | 100 min | Action, Drama
A mysterious Hollywood action film stuntman gets in trouble with gangsters when he tries to help his neighbor's husband rob a pawn shop while serving as his getaway driver,
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn | Stars: Ryan Gosling , Carey Mulligan , Bryan Cranston , Albert Brooks
Votes: 654,531 | Gross: $35.06M
3. Fast & Furious 6 (2013)
PG-13 | 130 min | Action, Adventure, Crime
Hobbs has Dominic and Brian reassemble their crew to take down a team of mercenaries: Dominic unexpectedly gets sidetracked with facing his presumed deceased girlfriend, Letty.
Director: Justin Lin | Stars: Vin Diesel , Paul Walker , Dwayne Johnson , Michelle Rodriguez
Votes: 399,617 | Gross: $238.68M
Because of the Jensen Interceptor!
4. Ronin (1998)
R | 122 min | Action, Crime, Thriller
A freelancing former U.S. Intelligence Agent tries to track down a mysterious package that is wanted by the Irish and the Russians.
Director: John Frankenheimer | Stars: Robert De Niro , Jean Reno , Natascha McElhone , Stellan Skarsgård
Votes: 186,965 | Gross: $41.62M
5. Transporter 2 (2005)
PG-13 | 87 min | Action, Crime, Thriller
Transporter Frank Martin, surfaces in Miami, Florida and is implicated in the kidnapping of the young son of a powerful USA official.
Director: Louis Leterrier | Stars: Jason Statham , Amber Valletta , Kate Nauta , Alessandro Gassmann
Votes: 206,619 | Gross: $43.10M
6. Family Plot (1976)
PG | 120 min | Comedy, Crime, Drama
A phony psychic/con artist and her taxi driver/actor boyfriend encounter a pair of serial kidnappers while trailing a missing heir in California.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Karen Black , Bruce Dern , Barbara Harris , William Devane
Votes: 23,756
7. Speedtrap (1977)
PG | 113 min | Action, Crime, Drama
After a wave of unsolved car thefts, an insurance company calls in private investigator Pete Novick to solve the case. While the chief of police isn't thrilled about having an outsider come... See full summary »
Director: Earl Bellamy | Stars: Joe Don Baker , Tyne Daly , Richard Jaeckel , Robert Loggia
8. Surveillance (I) (2008)
R | 97 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
Two FBI agents attempt to clarify the murders occurring in a desolate region. They approach the witnesses of the latest incident with the help of the local police. All of them hide something and all have wildly different stories to tell.
Director: Jennifer Lynch | Stars: Julia Ormond , Bill Pullman , Pell James , Caroline Aaron
Votes: 18,010 | Gross: $0.03M
9. What's Up, Doc? (1972)
G | 94 min | Comedy, Romance
The accidental mix-up of four identical plaid overnight bags leads to a series of increasingly wild and wacky situations.
Director: Peter Bogdanovich | Stars: Barbra Streisand , Ryan O'Neal , Madeline Kahn , Kenneth Mars
Votes: 24,838 | Gross: $10.47M
The best parody of a car chase ever! A must see!
10. Duel (1971 TV Movie)
PG | 90 min | Action, Thriller
A business commuter is pursued and terrorized by the malevolent driver of a massive tractor-trailer.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Dennis Weaver , Jacqueline Scott , Eddie Firestone , Lou Frizzell
Votes: 73,364
11. Crash (1996)
NC-17 | 100 min | Drama
After getting into a serious car accident, a TV director discovers an underground sub-culture of scarred, omnisexual car-crash victims who use car accidents and the raw sexual energy they produce to try to rejuvenate his sex life with his wife.
Director: David Cronenberg | Stars: James Spader , Holly Hunter , Elias Koteas , Deborah Kara Unger
Votes: 62,449 | Gross: $2.04M
12. Gone in 60 Seconds (2000)
PG-13 | 118 min | Action, Crime, Thriller
A retired master car thief must come back to the industry and steal fifty cars with his crew in one night to save his brother's life.
Director: Dominic Sena | Stars: Nicolas Cage , Angelina Jolie , Giovanni Ribisi , T.J. Cross
Votes: 283,268 | Gross: $101.65M
13. Grand Theft Auto (1977)
PG | 84 min | Action, Comedy, Crime
A rich girl steals her dad's Rolls Royce and heads off to Las Vegas to get married. However, her angry parents, a jealous suitor, and a bunch of reward seekers are determined to stop her.
Director: Ron Howard | Stars: Ron Howard , Nancy Morgan , Elizabeth Rogers , Barry Cahill
Votes: 2,828
14. Trafic (1971)
G | 96 min | Comedy
Mr. Hulot drives a recreational vehicle from Paris to Amsterdam in his usual comical, disastrous style.
Director: Jacques Tati | Stars: Jacques Tati , Marcel Fraval , Honoré Bostel , François Maisongrosse
Votes: 7,013
15. Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988)
PG | 110 min | Biography, Comedy, Drama
The story of Preston Tucker, the maverick car designer and his ill-fated challenge to the auto industry with his revolutionary car concept.
Director: Francis Ford Coppola | Stars: Jeff Bridges , Joan Allen , Martin Landau , Frederic Forrest
Votes: 20,742 | Gross: $19.65M
16. Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006)
PG | 92 min | Documentary
A documentary that investigates the birth and death of the electric car, as well as the role of renewable energy and sustainable living in the future.
Director: Chris Paine | Stars: Martin Sheen , Tom Hanks , Mel Gibson , Reverend Gadget
Votes: 12,613 | Gross: $1.68M
17. To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)
R | 116 min | Action, Crime, Drama
A fearless Secret Service agent will stop at nothing to bring down the counterfeiter who killed his partner.
Director: William Friedkin | Stars: William Petersen , Willem Dafoe , Jane Leeves , Cherise Bates
Votes: 35,138 | Gross: $17.31M
18. The Hitcher (1986)
R | 97 min | Action, Thriller
A young man who escapes the clutches of a murderous hitchhiker is subsequently stalked by the hitcher and framed for his crimes.
Director: Robert Harmon | Stars: Rutger Hauer , C. Thomas Howell , Jennifer Jason Leigh , Jeffrey DeMunn
Votes: 49,662 | Gross: $5.84M
19. The Cannonball Run (1981)
PG | 95 min | Action, Comedy, Sport
A wide variety of eccentric competitors participate in a wild and illegal cross-country road race. However, the eccentric entrants will do anything to win the road race, including low-down, dirty tricks.
Director: Hal Needham | Stars: Burt Reynolds , Roger Moore , Farrah Fawcett , Dom DeLuise
Votes: 37,594 | Gross: $72.18M
20. Rush (I) (2013)
R | 123 min | Action, Biography, Drama
The merciless 1970s rivalry between Formula One rivals James Hunt and Niki Lauda .
Director: Ron Howard | Stars: Daniel Brühl , Chris Hemsworth , Olivia Wilde , Alexandra Maria Lara
Votes: 486,298 | Gross: $26.95M
21. Vehicle 19 (2013)
R | 85 min | Action, Crime, Thriller
In Johannesburg, an American parole breaker unknowingly picks up a rental car that will tie him to a web of corrupt local police.
Director: Mukunda Michael Dewil | Stars: Paul Walker , Naima McLean , Gys de Villiers , Leyla Haidarian
Votes: 15,597
22. Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)
PG | 98 min | Action, Crime, Drama
When a South American drug lord pays Pace to steal 48 cars for him, all but one is in the bag - thereby, the police precipitate in a desperate car chase against Pace and his Eleanor across Southern California.
Director: H.B. Halicki | Stars: H.B. Halicki , Marion Busia , Jerry Daugirda , James McIntyre
Votes: 9,350 | Gross: $0.47M
23. Get Carter (1971)
R | 112 min | Action, Crime, Thriller
When his brother dies under mysterious circumstances in a car accident, London gangster Jack Carter travels to Newcastle to investigate.
Director: Mike Hodges | Stars: Michael Caine , Ian Hendry , Britt Ekland , John Osborne
Votes: 34,790 | Gross: $0.39M
24. Weekend (1967)
Not Rated | 105 min | Adventure, Comedy, Drama
A surreal tale of a married couple going on a road trip to visit the wife's parents with the intention of killing them for the inheritance.
Director: Jean-Luc Godard | Stars: Mireille Darc , Jean Yanne , Jean-Pierre Kalfon , Yves Afonso
Votes: 14,972
Motoring madness! Porn for those loving classic cars from 1967, in a 10 minute accident queueing scene. Amazing gathering of smashed cars, as well!
25. The Italian Job (1969)
G | 99 min | Action, Comedy, Crime
A comic caper movie about a plan to steal a gold shipment from the streets of Turin by creating a traffic jam.
Director: Peter Collinson | Stars: Michael Caine , Noël Coward , Benny Hill , Raf Vallone
Votes: 47,752
26. O'Horten (2007)
PG-13 | 90 min | Comedy, Drama
A drama focused on a life-changing moment in 67-year-old train engineer Odd Horten's existence: the evening of his retirement.
Director: Bent Hamer | Stars: Baard Owe , Espen Skjønberg , Ghita Nørby , Henny Moan
Votes: 3,918 | Gross: $0.30M
27. Death Race 2000 (1975)
R | 80 min | Action, Comedy, Sci-Fi
In a dystopian future, a cross country automobile race requires contestants to run down innocent pedestrians to gain points that are tallied based on each kill's brutality.
Director: Paul Bartel | Stars: David Carradine , Sylvester Stallone , Simone Griffeth , Mary Woronov
Votes: 28,885 | Gross: $8.00M
28. Death Proof (2007)
R | 127 min | Action, Thriller
Two separate sets of voluptuous women are stalked at different times by a scarred stuntman who uses his "death proof" cars to execute his murderous plans.
Director: Quentin Tarantino | Stars: Kurt Russell , Zoë Bell , Rosario Dawson , Vanessa Ferlito
Votes: 297,042
29. Highway 61 (1991)
R | 102 min | Comedy, Music
A small-town barber goes on a road trip from Thunder Bay to New Orleans with an unpredictable woman and a coffin.
Director: Bruce McDonald | Stars: Don McKellar , Valerie Buhagiar , Earl Pastko , Peter Breck
Votes: 1,443 | Gross: $0.29M
30. The Fifth Element (1997)
PG-13 | 126 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
In the colorful future, a cab driver unwittingly becomes the central figure in the search for a legendary cosmic weapon to keep Evil and Mr. Zorg at bay.
Director: Luc Besson | Stars: Bruce Willis , Milla Jovovich , Gary Oldman , Ian Holm
Votes: 481,101 | Gross: $63.54M
31. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)
Not Rated | 83 min | Action, Comedy
Three go-go dancers holding a young girl hostage come across a crippled old man living with his two sons in the desert. After learning he's hiding a sum of cash around, the women start scheming on him.
Director: Russ Meyer | Stars: Tura Satana , Haji , Lori Williams , Ray Barlow
Votes: 15,458
32. Christine (1983)
R | 110 min | Horror, Thriller
A nerdish boy buys a strange car with an evil mind of its own and his nature starts to change to reflect it.
Director: John Carpenter | Stars: Keith Gordon , John Stockwell , Alexandra Paul , Robert Prosky
Votes: 86,327 | Gross: $21.20M
33. Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
R | 111 min | Action, Biography, Crime
Bored waitress Bonnie Parker falls in love with an ex-con named Clyde Barrow and together they start a violent crime spree through the country, stealing cars and robbing banks.
Director: Arthur Penn | Stars: Warren Beatty , Faye Dunaway , Michael J. Pollard , Gene Hackman
Votes: 115,367
34. Transporter 3 (2008)
PG-13 | 104 min | Action, Adventure, Thriller
Frank Martin is forced to deliver Valentina, the kidnapped daughter of a Ukrainian government official, from Marseilles to Odessa on the Black Sea. En route, he has to contend with thugs who want to intercept Valentina's safe delivery.
Director: Olivier Megaton | Stars: Jason Statham , Robert Knepper , Natalya Rudakova , François Berléand
Votes: 170,210 | Gross: $31.72M
35. Taken (I) (2008)
PG-13 | 90 min | Action, Crime, Thriller
A retired CIA agent travels across Europe and relies on his old skills to save his estranged daughter, who has been kidnapped while on a trip to Paris.
Director: Pierre Morel | Stars: Liam Neeson , Maggie Grace , Famke Janssen , Leland Orser
Votes: 610,144 | Gross: $145.00M
36. Vanishing Point (1997 TV Movie)
PG-13 | 91 min | Action, Adventure, Drama
An ex race car driver hurries 1200 miles home in a 1970 Challenger when his wife has labor problems. Cops in several states try to stop him - initially for speeding.
Director: Charles Robert Carner | Stars: Viggo Mortensen , Christine Elise , Steve Railsback , Rodney A. Grant
Votes: 2,902
37. Vanishing Point (1971)
R | 99 min | Action, Crime, Thriller
During the 1970s, car delivery driver Kowalski delivers hot rods in record time but always runs into trouble with the highway cops.
Director: Richard C. Sarafian | Stars: Barry Newman , Cleavon Little , Charlotte Rampling , Dean Jagger
Votes: 29,265
38. Convoy (1978)
PG | 110 min | Action, Drama
Truckers form a mile-long "convoy" in support of a trucker's vendetta with an abusive sheriff - Based on the country song of the same title by C.W. McCall.
Director: Sam Peckinpah | Stars: Kris Kristofferson , Ali MacGraw , Ernest Borgnine , Burt Young
Votes: 17,426 | Gross: $45.00M
39. Death Race (2008)
R | 105 min | Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Ex-con Jensen Ames is forced by the warden of a notorious prison to compete in our post-industrial world's most popular sport: a car race in which inmates must brutalize and kill one another on the road to victory.
Director: Paul W.S. Anderson | Stars: Jason Statham , Joan Allen , Tyrese Gibson , Ian McShane
Votes: 212,091 | Gross: $36.32M
40. Transit (I) (2012)
R | 88 min | Action, Crime, Thriller
A gang of bank robbers hide their loot in the car of a family going camping. They chase down the family to kill them and get the loot back, but run into a fight.
Director: Antonio Negret | Stars: Jim Caviezel , James Frain , Elisabeth Röhm , Diora Baird
Votes: 11,395
41. Bullitt (1968)
M/PG | 114 min | Action, Crime, Thriller
An all-guts, no-glory San Francisco cop becomes determined to find the underworld kingpin that killed the witness in his protection.
Director: Peter Yates | Stars: Steve McQueen , Jacqueline Bisset , Robert Vaughn , Don Gordon
Votes: 71,228 | Gross: $42.30M
42. Rubber (2010)
R | 82 min | Comedy, Fantasy, Horror
A homicidal car tire, discovering it has destructive psionic power, sets its sights on a desert town once a mysterious woman becomes its obsession.
Director: Quentin Dupieux | Stars: Stephen Spinella , Roxane Mesquida , Wings Hauser , Jack Plotnick
Votes: 38,295 | Gross: $0.10M
43. The French Connection (1971)
R | 104 min | Action, Crime, Drama
A pair of NYPD detectives in the Narcotics Bureau stumble onto a heroin smuggling ring based in Marseilles, but stopping them and capturing their leaders proves an elusive goal.
Director: William Friedkin | Stars: Gene Hackman , Roy Scheider , Fernando Rey , Tony Lo Bianco
Votes: 125,844 | Gross: $15.63M
44. Highwaymen (2004)
R | 80 min | Action, Crime, Horror
Rennie Cray (Caviezel) embarks on a bloodthirsty rampage to avenge the death of his wife who was struck down by a serial killer - a man who hunts and kills women using his '72 El Dorado.
Director: Robert Harmon | Stars: Jim Caviezel , Rhona Mitra , Frankie Faison , Colm Feore
Votes: 9,089 | Gross: $0.37M
45. Flash of Genius (2008)
PG-13 | 119 min | Biography, Drama
Robert Kearns takes on the Detroit automakers who he claims stole his idea for the intermittent windshield wiper.
Director: Marc Abraham | Stars: Greg Kinnear , Lauren Graham , Alan Alda , Tim Eddis
Votes: 17,380 | Gross: $4.23M
46. Fast & Furious (2009)
PG-13 | 107 min | Action, Crime, Thriller
Brian O'Conner, back working for the FBI in Los Angeles, teams up with Dominic Toretto to bring down a heroin importer by infiltrating his operation.
Director: Justin Lin | Stars: Vin Diesel , Paul Walker , Michelle Rodriguez , Jordana Brewster
Votes: 292,662 | Gross: $155.06M
47. The Fast and the Furious (2001)
PG-13 | 106 min | Action, Crime, Thriller
Los Angeles police officer Brian O'Conner must decide where his loyalty really lies when he becomes enamored with the street racing world he has been sent undercover to destroy.
Director: Rob Cohen | Stars: Vin Diesel , Paul Walker , Michelle Rodriguez , Jordana Brewster
Votes: 392,463 | Gross: $144.53M
48. The Car (1997)
133 min | Comedy
Mahadevan wins a new car as a prize which brings him a lot of bad luck.
Director: Rajasenan | Stars: Jayaram , Janardanan , Sreelakshmi , Kalabhavan Mani
49. Babas bilar (2006)
90 min | Action, Comedy
Jojo is out of money and must work for his stepfather's shady car dealership to pick up a car that belongs to a Russian gangster.
Director: Rafael Edholm | Stars: Andreas Wilson , Sara Sommerfeld , Hassan Brijany , Georgi Staykov
50. The Love Bug (1968)
G | 108 min | Comedy, Family, Sport
Down-on-his-luck race car driver Jim Douglas teams up with a little VW Bug that has a mind of it's own, not realizing Herbie's worth until a sneaky rival plots to steal him.
Director: Robert Stevenson | Stars: Dean Jones , Michele Lee , David Tomlinson , Buddy Hackett
Votes: 16,554 | Gross: $5.09M
51. Cars (2006)
G | 117 min | Animation, Adventure, Comedy
On the way to the biggest race of his life, a hotshot rookie race car gets stranded in a rundown town, and learns that winning isn't everything in life.
Directors: John Lasseter , Joe Ranft | Stars: Owen Wilson , Bonnie Hunt , Paul Newman , Larry the Cable Guy
Votes: 431,834 | Gross: $244.08M
52. Zyzzyx Rd (2006)
Not Rated | 90 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
Staid accountant Grant finds himself questioning his sanity after he begins a passionate affair with the enigmatic Marissa in Las Vegas and winds up killing her jealous boyfriend, Joey, when he attacks them. But is Joey really dead?
Director: John Penney | Stars: Leo Grillo , Katherine Heigl , Tom Sizemore , Rickey Medlocke
Votes: 1,114 | Gross: $0.00M
53. Cannonball Run II (1984)
PG | 108 min | Action, Comedy
The original characters from The Cannonball Run (1981) race across the country once more in various cars and trucks.
Directors: Hal Needham , Ralph Bakshi | Stars: Burt Reynolds , Dom DeLuise , Dean Martin , Sammy Davis Jr.
Votes: 16,644 | Gross: $28.08M
54. Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
PG | 99 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
An old Jewish woman and her African-American chauffeur in the American South have a relationship that grows and improves over the years.
Director: Bruce Beresford | Stars: Morgan Freeman , Jessica Tandy , Dan Aykroyd , Patti LuPone
Votes: 112,279 | Gross: $106.59M
55. Taxi (I) (1998)
Not Rated | 86 min | Action, Comedy, Crime
To work off his tarnished driving record, a hip taxi driver must chauffeur a loser police inspector on the trail of German bank robbers.
Director: Gérard Pirès | Stars: Samy Naceri , Frédéric Diefenthal , Marion Cotillard , Manuela Gourary
Votes: 85,391 | Gross: $0.27M
56. Fargo (1996)
R | 98 min | Crime, Thriller
Minnesota car salesman Jerry Lundegaard's inept crime falls apart due to his and his henchmen's bungling and the persistent police work of the quite pregnant Marge Gunderson.
Directors: Joel Coen , Ethan Coen | Stars: William H. Macy , Frances McDormand , Steve Buscemi , Peter Stormare
Votes: 686,358 | Gross: $24.61M
57. Headhunters (2011)
R | 100 min | Action, Crime, Thriller
An accomplished headhunter risks everything to obtain a valuable painting owned by a former mercenary.
Director: Morten Tyldum | Stars: Aksel Hennie , Synnøve Macody Lund , Nikolaj Coster-Waldau , Julie R. Ølgaard
Votes: 103,769 | Gross: $1.20M
58. Collision (2009)
TV-PG | 201 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
The story of a major road accident and a group of people who have never met, but who all share one single defining moment that will change their lives.
Stars: Douglas Henshall , Dean Lennox Kelly , Lucy Griffiths , Phil Davis
Votes: 2,163
59. Frozen River (2008)
R | 97 min | Crime, Drama
A mom looks for another source of income, when her husband leaves with the money meant for the new mobile home. A nearby Indian territory stretches across the border to Canada with a drivable frozen river between. Smuggling?
Director: Courtney Hunt | Stars: Melissa Leo , Misty Upham , Charlie McDermott , Michael O'Keefe
Votes: 25,982 | Gross: $2.51M
60. Psycho (1960)
R | 109 min | Horror, Mystery, Thriller
A Phoenix secretary embezzles $40,000 from her employer's client, goes on the run and checks into a remote motel run by a young man under the domination of his mother.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Anthony Perkins , Janet Leigh , Vera Miles , John Gavin
Votes: 679,591 | Gross: $32.00M
61. Halfway to Haugesund (1997)
68 min | Comedy, Drama, Music
Beat up punk rock legend Otto, of "Otto's Speedway Action Organ", finally gets another gig in Haugesund on Norway's west coast. He gets his father's car, a 1969 model Opel Diplomat, out of ... See full summary »
Director: Harald Østgaard Lund | Stars: Geir Birk Nilsen , Yasmin Syed , Peter Garden , Eivind Haugestøl
62. Mad Max (1979)
R | 88 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
In a self-destructing world, a vengeful Australian policeman sets out to stop a violent motorcycle gang.
Director: George Miller | Stars: Mel Gibson , Joanne Samuel , Hugh Keays-Byrne , Steve Bisley
Votes: 211,322 | Gross: $8.75M
63. Jeepers Creepers (2001)
R | 90 min | Horror, Mystery
A brother and sister driving home through isolated countryside for spring break encounter a flesh-eating creature which is in the midst of its ritualistic eating spree.
Director: Victor Salva | Stars: Gina Philips , Justin Long , Jonathan Breck , Patricia Belcher
Votes: 133,187 | Gross: $37.90M
64. Dead End (I) (2003)
R | 85 min | Adventure, Horror, Mystery
Christmas Eve. On his way to his in-laws with his family, Frank Harrington decides to try a shortcut, for the first time in 20 years. It turns out to be the biggest mistake of his life.
Directors: Jean-Baptiste Andrea , Fabrice Canepa | Stars: Ray Wise , Lin Shaye , Mick Cain , Alexandra Holden
Votes: 30,014
65. The Wraith (1986)
PG-13 | 93 min | Action, Horror, Romance
In a small town in Arizona, a mysterious man/spirit descends from the sky and manifests in a sports car and targets a local violent road-racing gang of motor heads, headed by a ruthless bully who'll do anything to get what he wants.
Director: Mike Marvin | Stars: Charlie Sheen , Nick Cassavetes , Sherilyn Fenn , Randy Quaid
Votes: 17,501 | Gross: $3.50M
66. The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (1990)
R | 104 min | Action, Adventure, Comedy
A vulgar private detective is hired to find a missing groupie and is drawn into a mystery involving a series of murders tied to the music industry.
Director: Renny Harlin | Stars: Andrew Dice Clay , Lauren Holly , Wayne Newton , Priscilla Presley
Votes: 18,590 | Gross: $21.41M
67. The Machinist (2004)
R | 101 min | Drama, Thriller
An industrial worker who hasn't slept in a year begins to doubt his own sanity.
Director: Brad Anderson | Stars: Christian Bale , Jennifer Jason Leigh , Aitana Sánchez-Gijón , John Sharian
Votes: 397,081 | Gross: $1.08M
68. Hit and Run (I) (2012)
R | 100 min | Action, Adventure, Comedy
Former getaway driver Charles Bronson jeopardizes his Witness Protection Plan identity in order to help his girlfriend get to Los Angeles. The feds and Charles' former gang chase them on the road.
Directors: David Palmer , Dax Shepard | Stars: Dax Shepard , Kristen Bell , Bradley Cooper , Kristin Chenoweth
Votes: 36,602 | Gross: $13.75M
69. Grand Prix (1966)
Approved | 176 min | Drama, Sport
American Grand Prix driver Pete Aron is fired by his Jordan-BRM racing team after a crash at Monaco that injures his British teammate, Scott Stoddard.
Director: John Frankenheimer | Stars: James Garner , Eva Marie Saint , Yves Montand , Toshirô Mifune
Votes: 9,762 | Gross: $20.85M
70. Le Mans (1971)
Approved | 106 min | Action, Adventure, Drama
Two car racing champions, an American and a German, face off on the world's hardest endurance course: Le Mans in France.
Director: Lee H. Katzin | Stars: Steve McQueen , Siegfried Rauch , Elga Andersen , Ronald Leigh-Hunt
Votes: 10,998 | Gross: $0.71M
71. Thunder Road (1958)
Approved | 92 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
A veteran comes home from the Korean War to the mountains and takes over the family moonshining business. He has to battle big-city gangsters who are trying to take over the business and the police who are trying to put him in prison.
Director: Arthur Ripley | Stars: Robert Mitchum , Gene Barry , Jacques Aubuchon , Keely Smith
Votes: 4,160
72. Smokey and the Bandit (1977)
PG | 96 min | Action, Adventure, Comedy
The Bandit is hired on to run a tractor-trailer full of beer over state lines, in hot pursuit by a pesky sheriff.
Director: Hal Needham | Stars: Burt Reynolds , Sally Field , Jerry Reed , Mike Henry
Votes: 52,429 | Gross: $126.74M
73. Goldfinger (1964)
PG | 110 min | Action, Adventure, Thriller
While investigating a gold magnate's smuggling, James Bond uncovers a plot to contaminate the Fort Knox gold reserve.
Director: Guy Hamilton | Stars: Sean Connery , Gert Fröbe , Honor Blackman , Shirley Eaton
Votes: 193,918 | Gross: $51.08M
74. Fast Five (2011)
PG-13 | 130 min | Action, Crime, Thriller
Dominic Toretto and his crew of street racers plan a massive heist to buy their freedom while in the sights of a powerful Brazilian drug lord and a dangerous federal agent.
Director: Justin Lin | Stars: Vin Diesel , Paul Walker , Dwayne Johnson , Jordana Brewster
Votes: 386,927 | Gross: $209.84M
75. American Graffiti (1973)
PG | 110 min | Comedy, Drama
A group of teenagers in California's central valley spend one final night after their 1962 high school graduation cruising the strip with their buddies before they pursue their varying goals.
Director: George Lucas | Stars: Richard Dreyfuss , Ron Howard , Paul Le Mat , Charles Martin Smith
Votes: 92,403 | Gross: $115.00M
76. The Blues Brothers (1980)
13+ | 133 min | Action, Adventure, Comedy
Jake Blues rejoins with his brother Elwood after being released from prison, but the duo has just days to reunite their old R&B band and save the Catholic home where the two were raised, outrunning the police as they tear through Chicago.
Director: John Landis | Stars: John Belushi , Dan Aykroyd , Cab Calloway , John Candy
Votes: 204,042 | Gross: $57.23M
77. The Transporter (2002)
PG-13 | 92 min | Action, Crime, Thriller
Frank Martin, who "transports" packages for unknown clients, is asked to move a package that soon begins moving, and complications arise.
Directors: Louis Leterrier , Corey Yuen | Stars: Jason Statham , Shu Qi , Matt Schulze , François Berléand
Votes: 308,376 | Gross: $25.30M
78. The Road Warrior (1981)
R | 96 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
In the post-apocalyptic Australian wasteland, a cynical drifter agrees to help a small, gasoline-rich community escape a horde of bandits.
Director: George Miller | Stars: Mel Gibson , Bruce Spence , Michael Preston , Max Phipps
Votes: 184,264 | Gross: $12.47M
79. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
PG-13 | 107 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
After being exiled from the most advanced town in post apocalyptic Australia, a drifter travels with a group of abandoned children to rebel against the town's queen.
Directors: George Miller , George Ogilvie | Stars: Mel Gibson , Tina Turner , Bruce Spence , Adam Cockburn
Votes: 139,856 | Gross: $36.20M
80. Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)
R | 102 min | Drama
While drag-racing through the American Southwest in a Chevvy 150, a driver and his mechanic cross paths with an alluring hitchhiker and the inexperienced, tall tale-spinning driver of a GTO.
Director: Monte Hellman | Stars: James Taylor , Warren Oates , Laurie Bird , Dennis Wilson
Votes: 12,807
81. The Great Race (1965)
Passed | 160 min | Action, Adventure, Comedy
In the early 20th century, two rivals, the heroic Leslie and the despicable Professor Fate, engage in an epic automobile race from New York to Paris.
Director: Blake Edwards | Stars: Tony Curtis , Natalie Wood , Jack Lemmon , Peter Falk
Votes: 18,500 | Gross: $25.33M
82. Corvette Summer (1978)
PG | 105 min | Adventure, Comedy
A high school grad and a hooker-in-training try to track down his stolen Corvette.
Director: Matthew Robbins | Stars: Mark Hamill , Annie Potts , Eugene Roche , William Bryant
Votes: 3,452 | Gross: $15.50M
83. The Gumball Rally (1976)
PG | 105 min | Comedy
An eclectic group of people takes part in a secret, and illegal, cross country road race.
Director: Charles Bail | Stars: Michael Sarrazin , Tim McIntire , Raul Julia , Norman Burton
Votes: 4,255
84. Blue Thunder (1983)
R | 109 min | Action, Crime, Drama
The cop test pilot for an experimental police helicopter learns the sinister implications of the new vehicle.
Director: John Badham | Stars: Roy Scheider , Warren Oates , Candy Clark , Daniel Stern
Votes: 22,033 | Gross: $42.31M
85. Blue Streak (1999)
PG-13 | 93 min | Action, Comedy, Crime
A former convict poses as a cop to retrieve a diamond he stole years ago.
Director: Les Mayfield | Stars: Martin Lawrence , Luke Wilson , Peter Greene , Dave Chappelle
Votes: 85,140 | Gross: $68.52M
86. Against All Odds (1984)
R | 128 min | Action, Adventure, Crime
A gangster hires an ex-football player to find his girlfriend. When he finds her, they fall in love, and the twists start to appear.
Director: Taylor Hackford | Stars: Rachel Ward , Jeff Bridges , James Woods , Alex Karras
Votes: 12,782 | Gross: $25.10M
87. Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974)
PG | 93 min | Action, Crime, Thriller
Down-on-their-luck racers Larry and Deke steal from a supermarket manager to buy a car that will help them advance their racing chances. Their escape does not go as planned when Larry's one-night stand, Mary, tags along for the ride.
Director: John Hough | Stars: Peter Fonda , Susan George , Adam Roarke , Kenneth Tobey
Votes: 7,285 | Gross: $0.62M
88. Iron Man (2008)
After being held captive in an Afghan cave, billionaire engineer Tony Stark creates a unique weaponized suit of armor to fight evil.
Director: Jon Favreau | Stars: Robert Downey Jr. , Gwyneth Paltrow , Terrence Howard , Jeff Bridges
Votes: 1,071,503 | Gross: $318.41M
89. Die Another Day (2002)
PG-13 | 133 min | Action, Adventure, Thriller
James Bond is sent to investigate the connection between a North Korean terrorist and a diamond mogul, who is funding the development of an international space weapon.
Director: Lee Tamahori | Stars: Pierce Brosnan , Halle Berry , Rosamund Pike , Toby Stephens
Votes: 222,356 | Gross: $160.94M
90. Back to the Future (1985)
PG | 116 min | Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi
Marty McFly, a 17-year-old high school student, is accidentally sent 30 years into the past in a time-traveling DeLorean invented by his close friend, the maverick scientist Doc Brown.
Director: Robert Zemeckis | Stars: Michael J. Fox , Christopher Lloyd , Lea Thompson , Crispin Glover
Votes: 1,221,803 | Gross: $210.61M
91. The Cars That Ate Paris (1974)
PG | 91 min | Comedy, Horror, Sci-Fi
The small town of Paris, Australia deliberately causes car accidents, then sells/salvages all valuables from the wrecks as a means of economy.
Director: Peter Weir | Stars: Terry Camilleri , John Meillon , Kevin Miles , Rick Scully
Votes: 4,178
92. The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
PG | 125 min | Action, Adventure, Thriller
James Bond investigates the hijacking of British and Russian submarines carrying nuclear warheads, with the help of a K.G.B. agent whose lover he killed.
Director: Lewis Gilbert | Stars: Roger Moore , Barbara Bach , Curd Jürgens , Richard Kiel
Votes: 111,249 | Gross: $46.80M
93. Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
PG-13 | 111 min | Drama
A rebellious young man with a troubled past comes to a new town, finding friends and enemies.
Director: Nicholas Ray | Stars: James Dean , Natalie Wood , Sal Mineo , Jim Backus
Votes: 92,834
94. Drive Angry (2011)
R | 104 min | Action, Comedy, Fantasy
A vengeful father escapes from hell and chases after the men who killed his daughter and kidnapped his granddaughter.
Director: Patrick Lussier | Stars: Nicolas Cage , Amber Heard , William Fichtner , Billy Burke
Votes: 100,774 | Gross: $10.71M
95. National Lampoon's Vacation (1983)
R | 98 min | Adventure, Comedy
The Griswold family's cross-country drive to the Walley World theme park proves to be much more arduous than they ever anticipated.
Director: Harold Ramis | Stars: Chevy Chase , Beverly D'Angelo , Imogene Coca , Randy Quaid
Votes: 113,132 | Gross: $61.40M
96. Taxi Driver (1976)
R | 114 min | Crime, Drama
A mentally unstable veteran works as a nighttime taxi driver in New York City, where the perceived decadence and sleaze fuels his urge for violent action.
Director: Martin Scorsese | Stars: Robert De Niro , Jodie Foster , Cybill Shepherd , Albert Brooks
Votes: 848,555 | Gross: $28.26M
97. Used Cars (1980)
R | 113 min | Comedy
When the owner of a struggling used car lot is killed, it's up to the lot's hot-shot salesman to save the property from falling into the hands of the owner's ruthless brother and used-car rival.
Director: Robert Zemeckis | Stars: Kurt Russell , Jack Warden , Gerrit Graham , Frank McRae
Votes: 15,762
98. Easy Rider (1969)
R | 95 min | Adventure, Drama
Two bikers head from L.A. to New Orleans through the open country and desert lands, and along the way they meet a man who bridges a counter-culture gap of which they had been unaware.
Director: Dennis Hopper | Stars: Peter Fonda , Dennis Hopper , Jack Nicholson , Antonio Mendoza
Votes: 112,248 | Gross: $41.73M
99. Black Dog (1998)
PG-13 | 89 min | Action, Crime, Drama
A weapons loaded truck is shadowed by FBI and ATF. It explodes and kills the driver. Jack, just out of prison, is pressured into driving another truck from Atlanta to NJ. Things get rough when hijacking attempts are made.
Director: Kevin Hooks | Stars: Patrick Swayze , Randy Travis , Meat Loaf , Gabriel Casseus
Votes: 9,525 | Gross: $12.83M
100. The Big Lebowski (1998)
R | 117 min | Comedy, Crime
Ultimate L.A. slacker Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski, mistaken for a millionaire of the same name, seeks restitution for a rug ruined by debt collectors, enlisting his bowling buddies for help while trying to find the millionaire's missing wife.
Directors: Joel Coen , Ethan Coen | Stars: Jeff Bridges , John Goodman , Julianne Moore , Steve Buscemi
Votes: 818,481 | Gross: $17.50M
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Ranking the best Pixar movies (and Cars 2 I guess…)
(ED Note: This feature originally ran in June of 2018. It has been updated the include the latest Pixar releases as of December 2022.)
I’ve been a fan of Pixar for most of my life. Whenever Pixar gets around to making a new movie, whether it’s an original movie or a sequel, there are a few things you can be certain of. It’s going to make a fortune at the box office, it’s going to be beautifully animated (for the time), and there are probably going to be a scene or two that will make you cry or feel a feeling. Pixar has its tropes, like having two characters go on an adventure together to do the thing and learn about each other, but those tropes usually offer up imaginative worlds, interesting side characters, and compelling story beats.
I wanted to take a look back at all of the other features that the studio produced over the past twenty-plus years and rank them from best to worst. This is all subjective mind you, but even then, most of Pixar’s movies are great. Hell, you can easily take any of the movies in my Top 10 and make a case for it being their best movie and chances are I’d agree with you. Pixar has such a good reputation for a reason after all.
For the record, I’m not going to cover Pixar shorts because we’d be here all day, but I felt like giving a shout-out to the best ones so you can track them down and give them a watch. Go and watch Geri’s Game, La Luna, and Sanjay’s Super Team, which released alongside A Bug’s Life, Brave, and The Good Dinosaur respectively. As for the feature films, let’s start by getting the worst one out of the way.
26) Cars 2 (2011)
In Cars 2 , the Larry the Cable Guy truck gets mistaken as a super-spy and has to save the Owen Wilson car from being killed because of oil. It existed. Let’s move on.
25) The Good Dinosaur (2015)
Hey everybody! Did you forget that The Good Dinosaur existed? Well don’t worry, so did everyone else! It’s a visually impressive movie, like every Pixar movie honestly, but nothing really happened for its entire runtime. It played into every Pixar trope and had nothing of value to add. Despite this being a Pixar movie, barely anyone went to see it and I can’t even begin to tell you what happened in the movie. No seriously, I forgot basic story bits even though this was one of the last Pixar movies I saw for this ranking. It’s not bad, but this was by far Pixar’s dullest movie.
24) Monster’s University (2013)
Now this movie just plain sucks. I stand by saying that The Good Dinosaur is worse from a narrative point of view, but Monster’s University is bad by just being insufferable. It’s a prequel that no one asked for and takes some very likeable characters from the original and makes them into assholes. Sully is a jerk for most of the movie and all of the new characters are varying levels of annoying. Oh, and did I mention this is an Animal House ripoff? I remember seeing this in theatres and getting frustrated at how unimaginative this movie was. Then I saw it again and confirmed that yeah, this was just creatively bankrupt. Also, it contradicted basic elements from the first movie. Like… did the creators even watch the original movie and see how this prequel couldn’t possibly work? It’s not even that hard, but this prequel is shot down in the first five minutes of Monster’s Inc !
23) Cars (2006)
Look, I get that Pixar needed to make a franchise that could make bank and spawn a multimedia monster of toy cars, shorts, and two sequels that I had to sit through, and there’s nothing wrong with making a franchise designed to milk kids of their money. Hell, that’s what most kids shows do anyway. But could they have at least made Cars good? The Owen Wilson car (yes I know he has a name, but let’s be honest here, you’re just gonna call him the Owen Wilson car), is a jerk, and the story is the same boring story about learning humility and becoming a better person. The only thing keeping this movie from the bottom? It sure is a ton of fun to riff on with people!
22) Finding Dory (2016)
Finding Dory isn’t a bad movie by any definition, but it is pointless. It doesn’t need to exist, it adds nothing to the original, and it’s safe. Finding Dory is a safe movie. What makes this at least a little better than Monster’s University is that one, Dory is still a pretty enjoyable character, even if she can be grating at times, and two, it doesn’t directly contradict the original movie. It performs the basic functions of a sequel competently, and it cashed in on another massively popular Pixar movie. As you do.
21) The Incredibles 2 (2018)
Out of all of the recent Pixar sequels being made, The Incredibles 2 felt the most necessary. The point of the first film was watching Mr. Incredible learn that he’s not a one-man show and that he needed the help and support of his family in order to truly become a hero, so with a cliffhanger that teased the Incredibles fighting a new threat, of course I wanted a sequel. Yet when it finally came out, The Incredibles 2 left most audiences on the north side of meh. The tone is all over the place, juxtaposing the intrigue of the main plot with inconsistent slapstick that went on for far too long. That would have been fine, but the biggest problem was that it was a structural retread of the first movie. The family only really came together at the very beginning and the very end to stop the bad guys, wasting that interesting family superhero dynamic, only this time without a purpose. It’s fine, but it could have been so much better.
20) Lightyear
I said in my original review that Lightyear was probably going to be somewhat of a box-office success due to it being a part of an established IP. It wasn’t a success by any definition of the word, but that’s mostly because the film needed to be good too. Outside of a pretty solid and interesting first 15 minutes, the rest of the movie devolves into lame comic relief and bog-standard sci-fi tropes that did nothing to engage audiences. It’s not an awful movie, but it’s one that’s lacking any creativity or imagination during its runtime.
19) Onward (2020)
Onward is a weird movie that seems to be at odds against itself at several points. It has an interesting fantasy world, one that’s almost identical to our world, but instead of really doing anything truly unique with that concept, it turns into yet another Pixar buddy road trip film. This is really one of the few times that Pixar really created an intriguing and fresh world, only to do so little with it. It seems to be in a weird mid-space for the studio, not quite commercial enough to merchandise, but it doesn’t have any passion that you would see from some of their more original fare. Without that love, you just have left a fairly disappointing movie that leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
18) Brave (2012)
Brave is a really weird movie. I feel like it was the prototype to Frozen, swapping off two sisters that are trying to understand each other for a mother and a daughter. And while the first half of the film is really good with Merida trying to be a proactive character and butting heads with her mother, everything kind of goes off the rail by copying, of all things, Brother Bear . There are a lot of bears in this movie. Bears. And while the movie wasn’t unbearable after the halfway point’s twist, I was just sitting in my chair thinking that something clearly wasn’t right. It feels like two concepts were smashed together into one movie and it barely works. The ending is effective and Merida is a great character, but man oh man did I feel like I dropped some acid 45 minutes in.
17) Cars 3 (2017)
If I’m being perfectly honest here, Cars 3 is a pretty okay movie. It’s nothing mind-blowing, but it’s the best of the Cars franchise if only because it decides to put the focus away from the pre-established characters, who were usually the worst part of the previous movies. Instead, the Owen Wilson car has already gone through legitimate character development and actually deserves to be called a halfway decent character. The new characters are fairly interesting, and while it pretty much is the exact same plot as the original Cars , there are definitely stronger character beats. Plus the Owen Wilson car is actually a mentor of sorts, which is kind of cool seeing him go from a punk to a wiser car. It’s not groundbreaking, but it’s the best Cars movie. I don’t really know if that’s a backhanded compliment or not, but a compliment’s a compliment.
16) Ratatouille (2007)
I’m the kind of man that loves food. I love all kinds of food, and I love seeing some good animated food. Ratatouille is a charming, if forgettable, Disney movie that gets by on its charm and endearing main characters alone. That may be fine, but what really propels this movie up a few rankings is the ending. The last 10 minutes of Ratatouille , as well as that final monologue, are just plain fantastic. There’s so much heart and soul put into the ending that it’s arguably one of the best endings in Pixar. I mean, it’s attached to a so-so movie, but a solid ending can really make up for a lot of problems.
Luca is a movie that looks drop-dead gorgeous. The water is absolutely fantastic and the Italian setting really does a lot to help distinguish the film from other Pixar films. The downside is that there really isn’t much else to talk about with it. I love the friendship present between Luc and Alberto, but the film doesn’t really go in on saying it’s anything more than just a friendship. That would have at least made the movie a bit more interesting to talk about other than the safe and fairly mundane plot that we do get. But I’d rather take a pleasant and mundane plot over a boring one.
14) A Bug’s Life (1998)
Now this is a major throwback for me. This was the first Pixar movie I ever saw and I watched it on VHS all of the time. I loved it. Looking back on it now, it holds up pretty well. This may be due to some nostalgia, but I thought that the whole cast was solid, Kevin Spacey was a damned good villain, and despite playing into a lot of bad tropes that Pixar eventually dropped like “the liar revealed” trope, when I was spending time with characters like Francis and Heimlich, I didn’t care. Yeah, the CG has aged considerably and it isn’t the prettiest movie to look at now, but I still had a fun time with A Bug’s Life , even though it’s clearly not perfect. Better than Antz though!
13) Toy Story 4
As soon as Toy Story 4 was announced, I think everyone was immediately apprehensive of it. Toy Story 3 ended the franchise on such a beautiful note that even the concept of a fourth movie seemed like a cynical cash grab by Pixar to milk the franchise for all it was worth. And it is. This is a cynical cash grab to milk the franchise for all it’s worth. But it’s also a pretty fine movie too. My biggest issue with the movie is that it recontextualizes the franchise as being Woody’s story and not the story of Andy’s toys, sidelining all of the toys for new ones with famous voice actors! It makes me want to roll my eyes, but then I see how gorgeous the movie looks, how funny certain scenes are, and the ending that Woody receives, and I have to admit that I still liked what I saw, though I don’t think I’m causing any chaos when I say that it’s easily the weakest of the series and feels like a TV special but with a bigger budget.
12) Finding Nemo (2003)
I’m going to come right out front and say this; I think that Finding Nemo is completely overrated and I feel like I’m the only one who thinks that. When people talk about this being one of the best Pixar movies, I just have to scratch my head. I mean yeah, it’s fun, pleasant, and inoffensive, but half of the movie is straight-up boring. Half of the time we’re with Nemo in the fish tank and chilling with all of the other sea creatures plotting their escape, which is awesome, but the other half is watching Marlin and Dory fart around and do nothing. Oh sure, we’re told that they’re getting closer, but all of the set pieces they encounter like the sharks, the jellyfish, and the whale just don’t do anything for me. It’s harmless at best and boring at worst. Still, I can’t deny that half of the movie is pretty good, the opening is solid and dark, and you feel like both Marlin and Nemo develop substantially by the end of their adventures. It’s good, but not that good.
11) Monsters, Inc. (2001)
Another childhood classic! When I think of how imaginative Pixar can be with the premises of each of their movies, I think of Monsters, Inc . All of the monsters have great designs and I love how the whole idea of there being a monster in your closet is just a day job for the monsters. They scare kids, scares generates power, the power runs the monster’s world, it’s kind of brilliant. Plus Mike and Sully are just such a great pair to watch. They’re silly enough for the kids and they feel like honest to god friends from the second they appear on screen. Not only that, but this is actually one the funniest Pixar movies around. The humor holds up really well and I was laughing way more than I did at Monsters University . The only thing that kept it any higher was that the villains were pretty run of the mill and the climax was just okay. Not the ending where Sully has to say goodbye, I’m talking about the fight scene with all of the flying doors. Great in concept, but the execution was just a bit off. Still, highly recommended.
10) Toy Story (1995)
The one that started it all. To say that Toy Story is one of the most important movies in animation history is a massive understatement. And really, what else can I add to this that hasn’t already been said before? Buzz and Woody are great characters, played perfectly by Tim Allen and Tom Hanks respectively, the other toys are full of personality, and the premise is out of the park. Plus it was brilliant for Pixar to use toys as the basis for their first animated feature since the concept would cover up some of the wonky animation and technology. Still, looking back on it now, Toy Story has not aged particularly well, especially the humans. Sid looks absolutely horrifying and Andy looks dead inside like 90% of the movie. Also, yeah the plot is kind of basic, but that’s just because the other movies in this series really upped the ante in the drama department. You can’t blame Toy Story for being a product of its time and it’s still a fantastic movie to sit through.
9) The Incredibles (2004)
The Incredibles has the honor of being the one Pixar movie that I thought got better as I got older. When I watched it for the first time, all I saw was a fun superhero movie where every family member had a unique power, but each member of the Parr family actually felt like a person. Violet was a relatable teenager, Dash was the kid that everyone wanted to be, and Bob and Helen were well-natured parents that just happened to be superheroes. But after rewatching it for the first time in a decade, there are so many sexual innuendoes between the two of them and Mr. Incredible’s mid-life crisis was pretty effecting. He used to be king of the world, but now he runs a desk job. The movie does a fantastic job of showing us the world through his eyes, but also it makes a point to show us the rest of the family and the lengths they’ll go to stay together. It’s a family film about family that actually succeeds, making me pretty excited for the sequel’s release.
8) Coco (2017)
Pixar’s tribute to Dia de Muertos also just so happens to be one of the best movies it has ever made. I was a bit hesitant to put Coco up this high given how comparatively recent it is to its peers, but there’s no denying how powerful the movie is. I’m a sucker for movies about music, and Coco delivers that in spades. I don’t even need to say how gut-wrenching it is to hear “Remember Me” for that final time after hearing it throughout the movie. But even looking past how effective the music is, there’s just so much energy in every frame. This may be a movie about the dead, but it all feels so alive and bright! The Land of the Dead is, in my opinion, the best world that Pixar has ever made, and seeing how much detail was put into this world is jaw-dropping. I literally paused the movie multiple times just to see certain set pieces in stills. Yes, it can be predictable with its twists, especially relating to Hector, but like Ratatouille , the payoff is easily worth it.
7) Turning Red
There’s something incredibly fresh about watching Turning Red. With a more modern setting, an energetic sense of humor, and an emotional/complex puberty metaphor, Turning Red was a vastly appreciated effort after so many of Pixar’s movies seemed to be on autopilot. It’s a shame that the film didn’t get as much recognition as it probably deserved, as it was shunted off to Disney+ while the inferior Lightyear received a theatrical release and bombed at the box office. Would it have been different if Turning Red was the one to get a theatrical release? If the quality here is any indication, probably.
6) Toy Story 3 (2010)
THIS MOVIE. If you ever wanted to bawl your eyes out, this is the movie to watch. Even if you never grew up with Toy Story , watching Toy Story 3 is probably one of the most difficult movies to get through because of how melancholy the whole movie is. It’s a movie about growing up and becoming an adult, which means having to leave behind parts of your childhood. I could go on about analyzing the themes and ideas and that tear-jerker of an ending, but like a lot of Pixar’s movies, while the ending is fantastic, the middle… not so much. Toy Story 3 introduces a lot of new characters and lets us spend time with the characters we know and love, but a lot of it felt off. Spanish Buzz is there for the kids to laugh at, but he really doesn’t serve much of a purpose throughout. The movie really just boils down to waiting for that last third to come, which may be my second-favorite ending in all of Pixar. I still love being with the toys, but it felt like I was being manipulated to cry my eyes out. Don’t get me wrong, I had no problem with being manipulated, but forcing emotions out instead of letting them come out naturally isn’t ideal.
5) Soul (2020)
Pete Doctor has been responsible for some of the best Pixar movies since the studios’ inception (one oh which has yet to appear on this list) and Soul is no exception. Sporting a much more metaphysical concept, one that is admittingly a bit hard to wrap one’s head around, the movie eventually unfolds to be an examination of what it means to live a life well-lived. Featuring plenty of soft and poignant moments, as well as some exceptional jazz music, I left Soul feeling grateful for the life I’ve lived so far. It doesn’t really feature any one stand-out moment I can point to to support my feeling besides that overview of New York City towards the end of the movie, but Soul emblemizes a mood over a story, and what a mood it is.
4) Toy Story 2 (2000)
Toy Story 2 is the best movie in the Toy Story series (thank you Toy Story 4 for stopping me from calling this a trilogy) because it fixes all of the problems of the first movie without being as manipulative as the third, as well as actually having a reason for existing unlike the fourth one. The animation is at the perfect point in time for the toys to actually look like toys and for the people to not be abominations and using that animation to tell a perfect story for Woody. Woody was always the most interesting character of the original story due to his larger than life personality and his reactions to Buzz’s seriousness. Separating him from the other toys should have been a death sentence, but they put him with two brand new characters that held the movie up spectacularly. Stinky Pete was a great mentor figure. And Jessie? Jessie’s backstory is undeniably one of the saddest things Pixar has ever created. It’s so sad that even just hearing the song that plays through the sequence is enough to make me hold back some tears. I could go on and on about Toy Story 2 for days, but it told a perfect adventure starring a bunch of cute little toys and the existential dilemmas they go through.
3) Wall-E (2008)
Wall-E may be a bit too preachy about environmentalism. Now that I got my one criticism out of the way, let’s gush about how Wall-E is a beautiful love story between two robots. This was the first time I actually sat down to watch Wall-E all of the way through and I was floored. The first half of the movie, where Wall-E is on Earth, is easily the best part of the movie. With barely any dialogue, I was able to feel for Wall-E and it only got better when EVE popped up and slowly warmed up to him. Once they left Earth, I still had a great time watching these two little lovebirds stick together and look out for one another. There’s just so much beauty in watching Wall-E and EVE fly around in space together. I know a ton of people adore Wall-E and would easily call it Pixar’s best film, but there were two others that shined just a little bit brighter in comparison.
2) Inside Out (2015)
A movie that teaches kids about the intricacies of psychology in a welcoming and fun way? Sign me up! Inside Out may not exactly be the saddest or funniest Pixar movie, but it instead focuses on giving us a rock-solid plot in a world that is beyond rich and complex. Following Joy and Sadness on a journey throughout the teenage girl they inhabit’s mind is a literal trip, with the two of them travelling to different parts of Riley’s subconscious. No matter what happened, I was always engaged with what the plot threw at me. With three separate plots about Joy and Sadness’s adventure, Fear, Disgust, and Anger trying to manage Riley, and Riley dealing with being a new girl in a big city, there’s at least something to like. The fact that all three of these plots work so well is nothing short of spectacular. Still, it didn’t have as much of a punch as my favorite Pixar movie…
1) Up (2009)
I think everyone kind of forgets the fact that Up was the first Pixar movie nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. Whether or not a movie got nominated at an awards show has no impact on whether or not I’ll like a movie, but Up is a deeply personal movie for its protagonist, Carl. The first ten minutes are dedicated to telling his story from childhood to adulthood, and it’s both uplifting and devastating. Jessie’s scene might be the saddest scene in Pixar’s history, but Up is just brutal on an entirely different level. By the time the actual plot begins, we already know everything we need to know about Carl and what he’s been through. The following adventure is fun and whimsical, but it’s tinged with this layer of grief and a desire for closure on his part. The side characters are fun, especially Dug and all of the other dogs, but Carl is the driving force of this movie. He’s a surly old man who’s lived a long life and wants to fulfill a promise that he’s made to someone dear to him. We’re rooting for him the entire time. That’s what makes Up the best Pixar movie. Pixar movies are movies for the entire family. Both kids and adults can have fun and sympathize for its characters, and Up is the epitome of that idea. It’s fun, it’s entertaining, it’s sad, it’s heart-warming, it’s Pixar. What more can be said?
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All 26 Pixar Movies, Ranked
This previously published story has been updated to include Lightyear .
Trying to rank all 26 Pixar films (most of which are available to stream on Disney+ ) in order of quality is like trying to rank your children by how much you love them. None of these movies is bad, but when you’ve made 26 films, one of them has to be No. 26 and one of them has to be No. 1. We tried to keep context in mind — Toy Story had an ability to blow your mind in 1995 the way nothing could today — and also ambition: In the world of children’s entertainment, nothing has set Pixar apart more than its burning desire not to coast or mail it in. Some of these movies work better than others, but all of them were trying to do something special. So here they all are, from worst to best.
26. Cars 3 (2017)
Early reviews of Cars 3 praised the latest installment in the Lightning McQueen saga for, essentially, not being Cars 2 , the only Pixar film to receive a “rotten” rating on Rotten Tomatoes . Not exactly a high bar … and we’re not even convinced the new film gets over it. Yes, the dopey Tow Mater is, blessedly, back on the periphery where he belongs while Lightning (Owen Wilson) squares off with two new foes: a sleek race car named Jackson Storm (Armie Hammer) and, more imposingly, the growing realization that he’s not the king of the track anymore. But where at least Cars 2 consciously tried to go in a radically different direction, Cars 3 feels like a tame holding pattern, providing the race sequences and heartwarming homilies that were rampant in the first film — except without the same level of inspiration. There isn’t one interesting new character, despite the effort from Hammer, Kerry Washington, Nathan Fillion, and Chris Cooper as Lightning’s cranky new trainer. And from Randy Newman’s by-the-numbers score to every single one of Mater’s tired quips, Cars 3 plays out like a rival studio’s lukewarm attempt to mimic Pixar’s magic. It’s not so much bad as it is deeply dispiriting.
25. Lightyear (2022)
This is not, inherently, a terrible idea: What if Pixar actually made the movie that first got kids in the ’90s psyched about Buzz Lightyear toys? What would that movie look like? What kind of character would Buzz be? Unfortunately, Lightyear is a letdown, not only because it doesn’t satisfyingly answer those questions, but because it’s not an especially great ’90s action movie in its own right — or, conversely, a sharp parody of one. This origin story follows the adventures of Buzz (now voiced by Chris Evans) as he works with a ragtag bunch of recruits to defeat alien invaders on a distant planet. Not surprisingly, Lightyear looks terrific, and it’s got some really funny moments — most of them provided by Sox, Buzz’s faithful robot cat. (Sox is voiced by Peter Sohn, who has worked at Pixar since the early 2000s, starting out as a story artist and doing voices on several of its films, not to mention directing The Good Dinosaur .) But this may be the first time that Pixar hasn’t fully justified one of its projects, at least creatively — financially is another matter. (People love, love, love Toy Story movies.) After a few years of taking chances, Lightyear feels like the safe, obvious, slightly lazy play from a studio that used to pride itself on not thinking that way. We’re not mad at Lightyear , we’re just disappointed.
24. Cars 2 (2011)
Larry the Cable Guy was Cars ’ secret weapon, lending his blue-collar earthiness to a character whose regular-folks demeanor had real pathos and sweetness. But that didn’t mean we wanted to see Tow Mater in a James Bond spoof. Give Cars 2 points for audacity: The follow-up shifts away from the original’s small-town, homespun charm to become a sleek, globetrotting action-thriller focusing on Lightning McQueen’s country-bumpkin sidekick. And then take away those points because Cars 2 proves that even the mighty Pixar can’t transcend the central problem with sequels: You can make everything bigger, but you can rarely replicate what was novel and charming about the original.
23. Brave (2012)
In the late 2000s, Pixar finally set out to fix its lack-of-female-protagonists problem — but unfortunately, it did it with an undercooked story that feels more like a response to criticism than a well-thought-out Pixar adventure. This is a textbook Idiot Plot movie, in which the whole dreadful second half could have been eliminated if (spoilers here) Merida — who is beloved in the kingdom and would have little reason to be doubted — just said, “Hey, my mom was just transformed into this bear, everybody chill.” (Heck, her mom could have even written her name in the ground with her claw to prove it, were anyone to ask.) This is also the first Pixar movie whose comedic tone is entirely out of whack; it’s dumb slapstick that reminds you of some subpar early Dreamworks movies. (We wouldn’t have thought Pixar was capable of making irritating, un-cute children, but here they are.) They would finally come up with a terrific female lead three years later, but Brave was the first time you thought, Wait, have they really lost something?
22. Monsters University (2013)
How many of us had been clamoring to see how Mike (Billy Crystal) and Sulley (John Goodman) became friends in college? Anyone? One of the sizable faults with Monsters University is that it’s a prequel that doesn’t have much need to exist — just do a short before one of the studio’s features and be done with it — but there’s enough heart and humor to make this cash-grab amusing enough. Still, Monsters University uncomfortably sums up Pixar’s post- Toy Story 3 era: It’s pleasantly entertaining just so long as you will yourself to forget the inspired storytelling and freewheeling imagination that used to be the studio’s trademarks.
21. The Good Dinosaur (2015)
Pixar’s lowest-grossing film, pre-COVID, The Good Dinosaur was beset with story problems, production delays, and reports of directors being replaced midstream . It was hardly the company’s first movie to have a difficult birth (No. 4 on this list is Pixar’s most famous example of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat), but it is the one film that felt most hamstrung in the public’s mind, never escaping the cloud of bad buzz and relative disinterest that greeted it over Thanksgiving 2015. All that said, this tale of an Earth on which dinosaurs weren’t wiped out by a meteor is visually stunning, imagining an unspoiled American Northwest in which the mighty reptiles rule. The Good Dinosaur is oddly conventional for Pixar from a narrative perspective — a young apatosaurus (voiced by Raymond Ochoa) gets lost and has to find his way home — but as a meditative, hero’s-journey travelogue, it’s a thoughtful addition to the company’s canon. This may be the one Pixar film most deserving of a reappraisal in ten years.
20. A Bug’s Life (1998)
We might be in the minority preferring that year’s Antz — which was famously part of a race between Dreamworks and Pixar to make computer-animated insect movies — but this is still a charming, ultimately harmless little tale that basically has the same plot as Antz but is aimed more squarely at children. As the years went by, Pixar became unusually skilled at making movies as appealing to adults as they were to kids, but the scale is still being balanced here: This is not one adults will rewatch, like The Incredibles or Toy Story. It still wins big points for having the queen of an ant colony voiced by Phyllis Diller .
19. Onward (2019)
An uneasy feeling sets in for Onward ’s first half, as we slowly realize the movie’s flimsy high concept (what if old fantastical creatures all became boring and suburban?) is being asked to carry some uninspired, familiar characterizations and yet another Let’s Go On A Quest! plot. (And that the movie’s idea of a sight gag is having a stop sign that reads “HALT.”) But just when you’re about to give up on it, Onward takes its first interesting turn, slyly flipping the concept of the destination being the journey all along, and the movie begins to feel like Pixar again, somehow finding a way to squeeze a little (if just a little) out of your tear ducts. The movie still feels a little half-baked, but it gets considerable mileage out of the simple visual of a pair of bodiless khakis, along with the most likable Chris Pratt since Parks and Recreation. They can do a lot better than this. But even at Replacement Level Pixar, they still find a way to crawl across the finish line.
18. Cars (2006)
By 2006, Pixar had been making features for more than a decade, and so a backlash was inevitable; perhaps overdue. Into that awaiting storm walked Cars , a sweet, modest family comedy. Essentially Doc Hollywood starring a cocky stock car, the film imagined a world ruled by living automobiles, wringing laughs from a hot-rod-out-of-water scenario in which ultracompetitive racer Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) gets stuck in a Podunk filled with ordinary folks like good-ol’-boy tow-truck Mater (Larry the Cable Guy). Cars is Pixar’s most nostalgic work, lamenting the sleepy communities and small-town values lost to the endless march of progress, which may explain why the movie feels so recycled, drawing from different genres without the studio’s usual freshness. Still, it’s consistently amusing — and for a whole generation of car-loving boys who grew up on it, Cars is as important as Star Wars or Batman.
17. Soul (2020)
After the frustrating, half-baked Onward , Pixar course-corrected a bit with Soul , a goofy, weird charmer about a jazz musician (voiced, well, by Jamie Foxx) who dies and is sent to the Great Beyond, where he tries to get back to his life and fix all that he regretted during his life. That sounds a little like a reverse Up , but the movie isn’t mournful: It’s mostly silly, with some fun gags mixed in with yet another dull let’s-go-on-an-adventure! plot (with partner Tina Fey, who doesn’t rise to the occasion). The movie has a strong ending, and its heart is in the right place, but it’s also all over the place and has a very dumb subplot involving a cat. It works, it’s fine, but that this is probably the best we can hope for from a non- Toy Story sequel from Pixar right now feels like a very bad sign.
16. Coco (2017)
Family is often a theme in Pixar films, but it’s rarely been explored so deeply as it is in Coco , which tells the story of Miguel (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez), a 12-year-old living in Saint Cecilia who wants nothing more than to be a singer and guitarist. Unfortunately for the boy, his family has forbidden music ever since his great-great-grandfather abandoned his wife and child to pursue his art years earlier. Told with magical realism and an array of terrific traditional folk songs , Coco sends Miguel on a journey into the Land of the Dead, which allows Pixar’s genius animators to produce one of their most dreamlike and colorful visual environments. The studio spent significant time researching Mexican culture and history, which adds authenticity and vibrancy to a quest-like tale about redemption, understanding, and forgiveness that will be familiar to Pixar fans. Still, it’s heartening that the Pixar braintrust, amidst pumping out Cars and Incredibles sequels, still tries to give itself fresh challenges.
15. Incredibles 2 (2018)
This sequel may take place immediately after the events of The Incredibles , but for audiences, the movie world has changed immensely since the first film blasted into theaters 14 years ago. For one thing, a superhero film is no longer a novelty — it’s now a Hollywood staple — but in a more general sense, Brad Bird’s original vision of a rollicking, action-packed animated family film has been duplicated by Pixar’s competitors. (The Despicable Me franchise in particular owes The Incredibles a huge debt.) So naturally, Incredibles 2 can’t match what was startlingly innovative about the 2004 film — even the movie’s glorious retro-cool production design and groovy score lack surprise — but it’s still a pretty nifty piece of high-quality entertainment. This time around, Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) has to play Mr. Mom while his wife Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) goes out in search of a masked villain named Screenslaver, leading to a winning mixture of domestic misadventures and comic-book heroics. Like a lot of recent Pixar films, Incredibles 2 mostly reminds you of the company’s once-formidable talents, but it’s a nostalgic, very fun ride.
14. Luca (2021)
One of Pixar’s great challenges is managing expectations. When you’re known for groundbreaking animation and whip-smart storytelling — when you’re praised constantly for being at the vanguard of your field — how do you downshift and do something that’s a little more modest in scale? That dilemma is what makes Luca such an interesting outlier in the studio’s catalog: It follows two teenage sea monsters who become friends in the human world, where they can blend in just so long as they don’t get wet, which isn’t advisable since people think those underwater beasts are horrifying creatures worth destroying. Where other Pixar entries want to knock your socks off, Luca drifts along on its gentle wavelength, examining male friendship and the pain of being an outsider with compassion and light chuckles. This isn’t the film you’d show first to someone who’d never seen any Pixar movies, but as the company reaches middle age, it’s an encouraging sign that its filmmakers are still willing to try new tones and moods.
13. Monsters, Inc. (2001)
The placement of Monsters, Inc. on any Pixar list depends on one question: How much of Billy Crystal’s shtick can you stand? If Aladdin is Robin Williams Unbound, this buddy comedy gave the Oscar host his chance to go full Catskills, voicing Mike Wazowski, the insecure, long-suffering, wisecracking partner to the lovable James P. “Sulley” Sullivan (John Goodman), who travels to the human world to give sleeping kids nightmares. The first of Pete Docter’s directorial efforts — he’d go on to make Up and Inside Out — Monsters, Inc. argues that you can never go wrong pairing exasperated adult characters with an impossibly cute kid (Boo, voiced by Mary Gibbs, who was only 5 when the movie came out). Mike’s kvetching gets tiresome, but the movie zooms along with whiplash speed. (The third-act chase set in the Monsters, Inc. conveyor belt of doors thrills.) And c’mon, Sulley’s final reaction shot is just beautiful.
12. Turning Red (2022)
In recent years, Pixar’s movies have been directed by a new wave of filmmakers, a younger generation who were kids when Toy Story first hit theaters, and the most promising of the bunch is Domee Shi, whose 2018 short Bao won an Oscar. Her feature debut is about boy bands and Toronto, friendship and motherhood, puberty and bullies. It’s also really funny. (Seriously, why are there five members in 4*Town?) Rosalie Chiang is delightful as the voice of Mei, Turning Red ’s 13-year-old heroine, who has reached the age when she’s getting boy crazy — and discovering to her shock that she turns into a big red panda when her emotions take over. It’s a metaphor for girls getting their period, but perhaps more pointedly, it’s a commentary on how women are punished in society for being “too emotional.” Turning Red also has a lot to say about the impossibility of understanding our parents, who themselves are carrying around the baggage of their complicated relationships with their own parents. If Shi’s movie doesn’t quite reach the heights of Pixar’s finest moments, it does suggest that the fretting over the end of the company’s golden age is misplaced. With filmmakers like her onboard, maybe Pixar is merely rebuilding and preparing for an exciting new era.
11. Finding Dory (2016)
Thirteen years after the marvelous Finding Nemo hit theaters, it’s debatable whether audiences were clamoring for a sequel. Yet, Finding Dory is a pretty stellar follow-up, with director Andrew Stanton returning to the original’s themes of family, loss, and reconciliation to deliver another action-packed, emotion-soaked comedy. The title’s double meaning — it’s Dory (again voiced by Ellen DeGeneres) who’s doing the searching, both for her long-lost parents and for her own sense of self-sufficiency — speaks to the depth of the movie, which serves as an example of how Pixar should be making sequels: by investing in intelligent, heartfelt stories that expand the first film’s scope without radically altering the characters’ personalities to serve hackneyed narrative conventions. Of the new additions, a gruff octopus voiced by Ed O’Neill is Dory ’s highlight, but the movie’s heart and soul remains Stanton, who rebounds terrifically from the embarrassment of John Carter for this second delightful dip into the ocean. Also: You may never hear Sigourney Weaver’s voice again without chuckling.
10. Up (2009)
All right, all right: We know this is lower than you think it should be. But take a step back and try to remember what comes to your mind when you first think of this movie. Yes, the wondrous image of the balloon raising the house into the air, and yes, maybe the cute dog that keeps being distracted by squirrels. But plot-wise, this whole film is completely overshadowed by the heartbreaking preamble , in which we learn the crushing story of Carl and Ellie’s life together. Yes, this will make you cry — just watching it again choked us up — but in retrospect, the rest of the movie is your fairly standard cute-kid, cute-dog, central-casting villain story. We’re not sure the whole movie should have been as powerful as those opening minutes — we might still be weeping — but take that away and this movie is a lot thinner than you remember. Sorry.
9. Ratatouille (2007)
As close as Pixar will get to an art movie, this story of a rat who is secretly the greatest chef in all of Paris is a delight, owing largely to a generous heart, a witty, Richard Dreyfuss–esque vocal performance from Patton Oswalt, and some legitimately democratizing notions about art and the act of creation. It’s not quite as viscerally thrilling as some other Pixar films — the main setpiece is about impressing a food critic — but it is funny and almost compulsively likable. After this film — which, we repeat, is a comedy about art and food and rats in Paris — became a huge hit and won an Oscar, it seemed as though Pixar could do no wrong.
8. Toy Story 4 (2019)
You can understand why so many were fretting about Toy Story 4 . Pixar sequels have led to diminishing returns in recent years, and Toy Story 3 ended so perfectly. Why even risk the most beloved animated franchise of the last two decades? Turns out: We shouldn’t have worried. Toy Story 4 may not reach the emotional heights of the third installment, and it might not have the simple perfection of the first one, but it’ll still knock you over. The story focuses more intently on Woody this time, but the overarching theme of what it means to love and be loved is as foregrounded as it has ever been; these remain the most generous and good-hearted of all the Pixar films. And this honestly might be the funniest film of the entire franchise, from Key and Peele’s Plush Rush to Keanu Reeves’s Duke Caboom, and, of course, Tony Hale’s Forky, a surrealistic, existential touch that happens to make you keel over with laughter every time you see him. Did they need to make a fourth one? Probably not. But you’ll be delighted they did … and more trustful of Pixar, if they ever decide to make a fifth.
7. Inside Out (2015)
Those going through Parks & Rec withdrawal, rejoice: Amy Poehler’s adorable Inside Out character Joy isn’t that far removed from her hyperpositive, smilingly pushy Leslie Knope, running the emotional headquarters inside the brain of a happy tween like it’s her own little sunny fiefdom. Inside Out can get bogged down a bit in plot busyness — Joy and Sadness (a terrifically gloomy turn from The Office ’s Phyllis Smith) have to find a way back to HQ after being sucked into the girl’s mind — but this is the cleverest, most emotionally pure Pixar film in years, offering plenty of teachable moments for both parents and kids about the need to embrace all of life’s emotions. And Bing Bong is going to break your heart.
6. Toy Story 3 (2010)
Ranking the three Toy Story films, all of which are wonderful, is nearly impossible, and there was much disagreement even among the two of us. (One of us had this as his best movie of 2010 , after all.) You really can’t go wrong with any of them, but we’ve got this one third if only because the Great Escape –type plot feels more familiar than we’re used to from these movies, and because the ending resembles some sort of cruel Disney-funded Pepsi Challenge to see if grown adults can keep from sobbing in the company of their children. Also: It’s not fair, but the fact that they’re making a Toy Story 4 does, in fact, hurt a bit of the finality of this one that made it so powerful.
5. The Incredibles (2004)
It was obvious, in retrospect, that director Brad Bird would move on to making live-action blockbusters: This is as exciting and riveting an action film as we’ve seen in American animation. If all blockbusters were like this one, we’d never object to a fifth Transformers movie. The key to The Incredibles ’ success is its economy of action: We are introduced to an entirely new universe, meet and empathize with a likable and close-knit family, discover the parents’ quiet dissatisfaction with what their lives have become, and then watch as everyone unites to overcome an evil force that wants to destroy the planet. It does all this in under two hours and never seems to be rushing or cramming anything in. Take note, Marvel: You can create a world, balance a huge cast of characters, and still wow your audience without making them look up everything on Wikipedia afterward.
4. Toy Story 2 (1999)
Toy Story 2 should have been a disaster. Designed to be a straight-to-DVD feature but then slotted for a theatrical release by Pixar’s Disney bosses, who were much happier with the in-progress film than the Pixar brain trust were, the sequel had to be reconceived on the fly and rushed to completion, grabbing story beats that had been rejected from the original film. Miraculously, Toy Story 2 shows no signs of the panic that went into making it. Expanding Woody and Buzz’s universe without losing focus on the characters, laughs, or sentiment, this follow-up deepens the themes of the original while keeping a wistful eye on childhood’s end. Joan Cusack is the MVP as the rootin’-tootin’ cowgirl Jessie, and her “When She Loved Me” flashback sequence remains one of the great cries in Pixar’s rich history of tearjerking moments.
3. Finding Nemo (2003)
Director Andrew Stanton wanted to make a movie set in the ocean, but he also wanted to address his own guilty memories of being an overprotective father to his young son. So he made this emotional, exciting, visually gorgeous story about a nervous clownfish (voiced by Albert Brooks) on a desperate search to find his lost son Nemo (Alexander Gould) with the help of a lovably loopy blue tang (Ellen DeGeneres). Finding Nemo ’s lessons about the importance of letting our children live their own lives are only strengthened by how scary this movie can be. Stanton and his animators load the film with plenty of terrors — the opening remains a nerve-shredder — and yet still insist that we have to learn that rather than smothering those we love, we need to release them into the scary world if they’re going to survive on their own.
2. Toy Story (1995)
More than 25 years after Toy Story ’s release, some of Randy Newman’s songs come across as creaky, and the once cutting-edge animation looks rudimentary. Otherwise, though, the best comedy of the 1990s remains perfect. Pixar’s first feature is still the template for every great movie the studio has made since: earned emotions; ripping action sequences; dead-on insights into human nature; and lots of giddy, witty, silly laughs. Toy Story is so funny because deep down, it’s actually a very melancholy film. Woody and Buzz’s battle for Andy’s love speaks to everyone’s fear of being replaced, as well as our shared recognition that the innocence of childhood cannot last. As for the voice cast, they’re impeccable: Tim Allen was never better, and even though Tom Hanks has won two Oscars, it is very likely (and completely appropriate) that Woody will be the role that immortalizes him.
1. WALL-E (2008)
We went back-and-forth on the top two here, but we ultimately had to go with this one, the most original and ambitious of all the Pixar movies. The first half-hour, which basically tells the story of the destruction of the planet and the devolution of the human race without a single line of dialogue, is total perfection: It’s almost Kubrickian in its attention to detail and perspective, though it never feels cold or ungenerous. Then we get to know WALL-E himself and realize that he sees humanity for so much more than it has become, and what it can become again. WALL-E is an unprecedented achievement , the absolute pinnacle of what Pixar can do. And not for nothing, WALL-E also happens to feature Pixar’s greatest love story. They’ve never been better. This is our pick.
Grierson & Leitch write about the movies regularly and host a podcast on film. Follow them on Twitter or visit their site .
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Ranking the best Pixar movies (and Cars 2 I guess…)
Animation sure has come a long way
I’ve been a fan of Pixar for most of my life. Whenever Pixar gets around to making a new movie, whether it’s an original movie or a sequel, there are a few things you can be certain of. It’s going to make a fortune at the box office, it’s going to be beautifully animated (for the time), and there are probably going to be a scene or two that will make you cry or feel a feeling. Pixar has its tropes, like having two characters go on an adventure together to do the thing and learn about each other, but those tropes usually offer up imaginative worlds, interesting side characters, and compelling story beats.
So with Incredibles 2 being Pixar’s 20th animated feature, which I have not seen yet but seems to be pretty good , I wanted to take a look back at all of the other features that the studio produced over the past twenty years and rank them from best to worst. This is all subjective mind you, but even then, most of Pixar’s movies are great. Hell, you can easily take any of the movies in my Top 10 and make a case for it being their best movie and chances are I’d agree with you. Pixar has such a good reputation for a reason after all.
For the record, I’m not going to cover Pixar shorts because we’d be here all day, but I felt like giving a shout out to the best ones so you can track them down and give them a watch. Go and watch Geri’s Game, La Luna, and Sanjay’s Super Team, which released alongside A Bug’s Life, Brave, and The Good Dinosaur respectively. As for the feature films, let’s start by getting the worst one out of the way.
19) Cars 2 (2011)
In Cars 2 , the Larry the Cable Guy truck gets mistaken as a super spy and has to save the Owen Wilson car from being killed because of oil. It existed. Let’s move on.
18) The Good Dinosaur (2015)
Hey everybody! Did you forget that The Good Dinosaur existed? Well don’t worry, so did everyone else! It’s a visually impressive movie, like every Pixar movie honestly, but nothing really happened for its entire runtime. It played into every Pixar trope and had nothing of value to add. Despite this being a Pixar movie, barely anyone went to see it and I can’t even begin to tell you what happened in the movie. No seriously, I forgot basic story bits even though this was one of the last Pixar movies I saw for this ranking. It’s not bad, but this was by far Pixar’s dullest movie.
17) Monster’s University (2013)
Now this movie just plain sucks. I stand by saying that The Good Dinosaur is worse from a narrative point of view, but Monster’s University is bad by just being insufferable. It’s a prequel that no one asked for and takes some very likeable characters from the original and makes them into assholes. Sully is a jerk for most of the movie and all of the new characters are varying levels of annoying. Oh, and did I mention this is an Animal House ripoff? I remember seeing this in theatres and getting frustrated at how unimaginative this movie was. Then I saw it again and confirmed that yeah, this was just creatively bankrupt. Also, it contradicted basic elements from the first movie. Like… did the creators even watch the original movie and see how this prequel couldn’t possibly work? It’s not even that hard, but this prequel is shot down in the first five minutes of Monster’s Inc !
16) Cars (2006)
Look, I get that Pixar needed to make a franchise that could make bank and spawn a multimedia monster of toy cars, shorts, and two sequels that I had to sit through, and there’s nothing wrong with making a franchise designed to milk kids of their money. Hell, that’s what most kids shows do anyway. But could they have at least made Cars good? The Owen Wilson car (yes I know he has a name, but let’s be honest here, you’re just gonna call him the Owen Wilson car), is a jerk, and the story is the same boring story about learning humility and becoming a better person. The only thing keeping this movie from the bottom? It sure is a ton of fun to riff on with people!
15) Finding Dory (2016)
Finding Dory isn’t a bad movie by any definition, but it is pointless. It doesn’t need to exist, it adds nothing to the original, and it’s safe. Finding Dory is a safe movie. What makes this at least a little better than Monster’s University is that one, Dory is still a pretty enjoyable character, even if she can be grating at times, and two, it doesn’t directly contradict the original movie. It performs the basic functions of a sequel competently, and it cashed in on another massively popular Pixar movie. As you do.
14) Brave (2012)
Brave is a really weird movie. I feel like it was the prototype to Frozen, swapping off two sisters that are trying to understand each other for a mother and a daughter. And while the first half of the film is really good with Merida trying to be a proactive character and butting heads with her mother, everything kind of goes off the rail by copying, of all things, Brother Bear . There are a lot of bears in this movie. Bears. And while the movie wasn’t unbearable after the halfway point’s twist, I was just sitting in my chair thinking that something clearly wasn’t right. It feels like two concepts were smashed together into one movie and it barely works. The ending is effective and Merida is a great character, but man oh man did I feel like I dropped some acid 45 minutes in.
13) Cars 3 (2017)
If I’m being perfectly honest here, Cars 3 is a pretty okay movie. It’s nothing mind-blowing, but it’s the best of the Cars franchise if only because it decides to put the focus away from the pre-established characters, who were usually the worst part of the previous movies. Instead, the Owen Wilson car has already gone through legitimate character development and actually deserves to be called a halfway decent character. The new characters are fairly interesting, and while it pretty much is the exact same plot as the original Cars , there are definitely stronger character beats. Plus the Owen Wilson car is actually a mentor of sorts, which is kind of cool seeing him go from a punk to a mentor of sorts. It’s not groundbreaking, but it’s the best Cars movie. I don’t really know if that’s a backhanded compliment or not, but a compliment’s a compliment.
12) Ratatouille (2007)
I’m the kind of man that loves food. I love all kinds of food, and I love seeing some good animated food. Ratatouille is a charming, if forgettable, Disney movie that gets by on its charm and endearing main characters alone. That may be fine, but what really propels this movie up a few rankings is the ending. The last 10 minutes of Ratatouille , as well as that final monologue, are just plain fantastic. There’s so much heart and soul put into the ending that it’s arguably one of the best endings in Pixar. I mean, it’s attached to a so-so movie, but a solid ending can really make up for a lot of problems.
11) A Bug’s Life (1998)
Now this is a major throwback for me. This was the first Pixar movie I ever saw and I watched it on VHS all of the time. I loved it. Looking back on it now, it holds up pretty well. This may be due to some nostalgia, but I thought that the whole cast was solid, Kevin Spacey was a damned good villain, and despite playing into a lot of bad tropes that Pixar eventually dropped like “the liar revealed” trope, when I was spending time with characters like Francis and Heimlich, I didn’t care. Yeah, the CG has aged considerably and it isn’t the prettiest movie to look at now, but I still had a fun time with A Bug’s Life , even though it’s clearly not perfect. Better than Antz though!
10) Finding Nemo (2003)
I’m going to come right out front and say this; I think that Finding Nemo is completely overrated and I feel like I’m the only one who thinks that. When people talk about this being one of the best Pixar movies, I just have to scratch my head. I mean yeah, it’s fun, pleasant, and inoffensive, but half of the movie is straight up boring. Half of the time we’re with Nemo in the fish tank and chilling with all of the other sea creatures their plotting to escape, which is awesome, but the other half is watching Marlin and Dory fart around and do nothing. Oh sure, we’re told that they’re getting closer, but all of the set pieces they encounter like the sharks, the jellyfish, and the whale just don’t do anything for me. It’s harmless at best and boring at worst. Still, I can’t deny that half of the movie is pretty good, the opening is solid and dark, and you feel like both Marlin and Nemo develop substantially by the end of their adventures. It’s good, but not that good.
9) Monsters, Inc. (2001)
Another childhood classic! When I think of how imaginative Pixar can be with the premises of each of their movies, I think of Monsters, Inc . All of the monsters have great designs and I love how the whole idea of there being a monster in your closet is just a day job for the monsters. They scare kids, scares generates power, the power runs the monster’s world, it’s kind of brilliant. Plus Mike and Sully are just such a great pair to watch. They’re silly enough for the kids and they feel like honest to god friends from the second they appear on screen. Not only that, but this is actually one the funniest Pixar movies around. The humor holds up really well and I was laughing way more than I did at Monsters University . The only thing that kept it any higher was that the villains were pretty run of the mill and the climax was just okay. Not the ending where Sully has to say goodbye, I’m talking about the fight scene with all of the flying doors. Great in concept, but the execution was just a bit off. Still, highly recommended.
8) Toy Story (1995)
The one that started it all. To say that Toy Story is one of the most important movies in animation history is a massive understatement. And really, what else can I add to this that hasn’t already been said before? Buzz and Woody are great characters, played perfectly by Tim Allen and Tom Hanks respectively, the other toys are full of personality, and the premise is out of the park. Plus it was brilliant for Pixar to use toys as the basis for their first animated feature since the concept would cover up some of the wonky animation and technology. Still, looking back on it now, Toy Story has not aged particularly well, especially the humans. Sid looks absolutely horrifying and Andy looks dead inside like 90% of the movie. Also, yeah the plot is kind of basic, but that’s just because the other movies in this series really upped the ante in the drama department. You can’t blame Toy Story for being a product of its time and it’s still a fantastic movie to sit through.
7) The Incredibles (2004)
The Incredibles has the honor of being the one Pixar movie that I thought got better as I got older. When I watched it for the first time, all I saw was a fun superhero movie where every family member had a unique power, but each member of the Parr family actually felt like a person. Violet was a relatable teenager, Dash was the kid that everyone wanted to be, and Bob and Helen were well-natured parents that just happened to be superheroes. But after rewatching it for the first time in a decade, there are so many sexual innuendoes between the two of them and Mr. Incredible’s mid-life crisis was pretty affecting. He used to be king of the world, but now he ran a desk job. The movie does a fantastic job of showing us the world through his eyes, but also it makes a point to show us the rest of the family and the lengths they’ll go to stay together. It’s a family film about family that actually succeeds, making me pretty excited for the sequel’s release.
6) Coco (2017)
Pixar’s latest movie also just so happens to be one of the best movies it has ever made. I was a bit hesitant to put Coco up this high, seeing with how recent it is, but there’s no denying how powerful the movie is. I’m a sucker for movies about music, and Coco delivers that in spades. I don’t even need to say how gut-wrenching it is to hear “Remember Me” for that final time after hearing it throughout the movie. But even looking past how effective the music is, there’s just so much energy in every frame. This may be a movie about the dead, but it all feels so alive and bright! The Land of the Dead is, in my opinion, the best world that Pixar has ever made, and seeing how much detail was put into this world is jaw-dropping. I literally paused the movie multiple times just to see certain set pieces in stills. Yes, it can be predictable with its twists, especially relating to Hector, but like Ratatouille , the payoff is easily worth it.
5) Toy Story 3 (2010)
THIS MOVIE. If you ever wanted to bawl your eyes out, this is the movie to watch. Even if you never grew up with Toy Story , watching Toy Story 3 is probably one of the most difficult movies to get through because of how melancholy the whole movie is. It’s a movie about growing up and becoming an adult, which means having to leave behind parts of your childhood. I could go on about analyzing the themes and ideas and that tear-jerker of an ending, but like a lot of Pixar’s movies, while the ending is fantastic, the middle… not so much. Toy Story 3 introduces a lot of new characters and lets us spend time with the characters we know and love, but a lot of it felt off. Spanish Buzz is there for the kids to laugh at, but he really doesn’t serve much of a purpose throughout. The movie really just boils down to waiting for that last third to come, which may be my second-favorite ending in all of Pixar. I still love being with the toys, but it felt like I was being manipulated to cry my eyes out. Don’t get me wrong, I had no problem with being manipulated, but forcing emotions out instead of letting them come out naturally isn’t ideal.
4) Toy Story 2 (2000)
Toy Story 2 is the best of the trilogy (why is Toy Story 4 going to be a thing?) because it fixes all of the problems of the first movie without being as manipulative as the third. The animation is at the perfect point in time for the toys to actually look like toys and for the people to not be abominations and using that animation to tell a perfect story for Woody. Woody was always the most interesting character of the original story due to his larger than life personality and his reactions to Buzz’s seriousness. Separating him from the other toys should have been a death sentence, but they put him with two brand new characters that held the movie up spectacularly. Stinky Pete was a great mentor figure. And Jessie? Jessie’s backstory is undeniably one of the saddest things Pixar has ever created. It’s so sad that even just hearing the song that plays through the sequence is enough to make me hold back some tears. I could go on and on about Toy Story 2 for days, but it told a perfect adventure starring a bunch of cute little toys and the existential dilemmas they go through.
3) Wall-E (2008)
Wall-E may be a bit too preachy about environmentalism. Now that I got my one criticism out of the way, let’s gush about how Wall-E is a beautiful love story between two robots. This was the first time I actually sat down to watch Wall-E all of the way through and I was floored. The first half of the movie, where Wall-E is on Earth, is easily the best part of the movie. With barely any dialogue, I was able to feel for Wall-E and it only got better when EVE popped up and slowly warmed up to him. Once they left Earth, I still had a great time watching these two little lovebirds stick together and look out for one another. There’s just so much beauty in watching Wall-E and EVE fly around in space together. I know a ton of people adore Wall-E and would easily call it Pixar’s best film, but there were two others that shined just a little bit brighter in comparison.
2) Inside Out (2015)
A movie that teaches kids about the intricacies of psychology in a welcoming and fun way? Sign me up! Inside Out may not exactly be the saddest or funniest Pixar movie, but it instead focuses on giving us a rock-solid plot in a world that is beyond rich and complex. Following Joy and Sadness on a journey throughout the teenage girl they inhabit’s mind is a literal trip, with the two of them travelling to different parts of Riley’s subconscious. No matter what happened, I was always engaged with what the plot threw at me. With three separate plots about Joy and Sadness’s adventure, Fear, Disgust, and Anger trying to manage Riley, and Riley dealing with being a new girl in a big city, there’s at least something to like. The fact that all three of these plots work so well is nothing short of spectacular. Still, it didn’t have as much of a punch as my favorite Pixar movie…
1) Up (2009)
I think everyone kind of forgets the fact that up was the first Pixar movie nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. Whether or not a movie got nominated at an awards show has no impact on whether or not I’ll like a movie, but Up is a deeply personal movie for its protagonist, Carl. The first ten minutes are dedicated to telling his story from childhood to adulthood, and it’s both uplifting and devastating. Jessie’s scene might be the saddest scene in Pixar’s history, but Up is just brutal. By the time the actual plot begins, we already know everything we need to know about Carl and what he’s been through. The following adventure is fun and whimsical, but it’s tinged with this layer of grief and a desire for closure on his part. The side characters are fun, especially Dug and all of the other dogs, but Carl is the driving force of this movie. He’s a surly old man who’s lived a long life and wants to fulfill a promise that he’s made to someone dear to him. We’re rooting for him the entire time. That’s what makes Up the best Pixar movie. Pixar movies are movies for the entire family. Both kids and adults can have fun and sympathize for its characters, and Up is the epitome of that idea. It’s fun, it’s entertaining, it’s sad, it’s heart-warming, it’s Pixar. What more can be said?
Filed under... #Animation #Destructoid Originals #Disney #Flixist
The 10 Best Characters In The Cars Franchise
Disney Pixar's Cars is a fantastic family film featuring a wide array of colorful characters. Here are 10 of the best featured in the franchise.
Disney Pixar's Cars franchise has become one of the most popular and successful in the history of the company, spanning three different movies and over $10 billion in merchandising sales, the franchise is simply a juggernaut.
RELATED: 10 Most Iconic Car Movies, Ranked
Whilst sometimes the franchise has come under flack for its stories, all three movies are great animated films and because of its popularity some of the characters have gone on to become incredibly iconic in movie history, especially within the Disney bubble.
Within this list, we will rank the 10 best Cars characters in the franchise, looking at some of the fastest and brightest cars to those that help bring the heart and comedy to the popular movies.
10 Cruz Ramirez
Cruz Ramirez may have only joined the Cars franchise in the final instalment of the series, but the car quickly became one of the most popular of all time as she took on the mantel from Lightning McQueen to become the next big race car.
Cruz initially starts the movie as Lightning's trainer, but it quickly becomes clear he is no longer able to compete at that level and the roles are reversed with Lightning taking up the coach role, allowing Cruz to live out her dream as a race car.
Whilst Cruz doesn't quite connect with an audience on the same level that McQueen does, mainly because the car doesn't quite get the same level of attention, it is still a brilliant character.
Mack is a character that often goes underrated by most people in the Cars movies, as he is normally overlooked for some of the flashier cars that are in the film, especially since Mack's main purpose is looking after Lightning McQueen.
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Mack is reliable and dependable and is always there for McQueen, a fantastic trait that everybody can respect, whilst Mack also provides some great one-liners throughout the films.
He isn't a main character in all three films, but the fact that Mack has remained as popular as most characters is a major sign of how iconic the big truck is.
8 Holley Shiftwell
Cars 2 is arguably the weakest of the three movies in the franchise, with the spy storyline not quite connecting on the same level as a simple racing storyline, but that doesn't mean that the film didn't introduce some fun new characters to the world.
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One character that was a success was that of Holley Shiftwell, which was portrayed by a Jaguar XJR-15 and was one of the spies throughout the movie, working alongside Mater in some hilarious scenes.
Holley was a likeable character, although she didn't quite reach the levels of Sally, she certainly served a purpose in this movie and helped make it that much more appealing.
It might seem strange that out of all of the brilliant characters in the Cars world, Sheriff is one of the top characters, but the Radiator Springs law enforcer really is a fantastic character in the original movie.
Whilst at first the character really does not like Lightning McQueen and comes down hard on the race car, Sheriff eventually warms up to him and plays a big role in helping change his characteristics.
It is a shame that Sheriff wasn't featured more in the sequels as it was a character that could have been fleshed out a little more and made into something.
6 Finn McMissile
Voiced by the legendary Michael Caine, Finn McMissile was one of the real redeeming qualities of the Cars 2 movie, as the main British Spy car, Finn took major inspirations from an Aston Martin DB4, and was a clear nod to the James Bond world.
Equipped with unique technology to help enhance the car, Finn instantly became one of the coolest cars to have appeared in the Cars world, mixing great, high-speed driving with other thrilling elements.
Whilst Finn only appeared in that movie and none of the others, it instantly became a popular character that is well remembered.
5 Guido And Luigi
Whilst this is technically two different cars, Guido and Luigi spend almost their entire time together throughout the movies as the two race car loving pit stop vehicles, which provide some fantastic moments throughout the franchise.
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At no point are Guido and Luigi the main focuses of the Cars franchise, yet whenever they are on screen they really do steal the scenes with their fast-paced Italian accents, talking as quick as they work.
They aren't anything special in terms of their car designs, but that doesn't take away anything from their characters, which are jam-packed with personality.
4 Doc Hudson
Doc Hudson, who is also known as The Fabulous Hudson Hornet is, without doubt, one of the best characters in Cars history, appearing in the first and third installments of the franchise as the popular retired race car.
Voiced by Paul Newman, Doc is one of the most important characters in the original Cars movie and is influential in helping McQueen become the elite racer that he has always been capable of becoming.
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Lightning saw the racing world through Doc's eyes after he became jaded with the racing world, although the two ended up teaching each other, with Doc becoming a beloved character because of that.
Sally Carrera is one of the best characters throughout the Cars franchise who is based on the Porsche 996 and becomes the girlfriend of the main character, Lightning McQueen, towards the end of the very first film.
RELATED: 5 Most Iconic Movie Vehicles (& 5 Which Made No Sense)
Whilst Sally is mainly featured heavily in the first Cars movie, she does appear in all three films, providing lightness to each movie when she appears as the perfect character to go alongside McQueen's bigger personality.
Sally is passionate about Radiator Springs and bringing it back to its former glory, which she manages to achieve alongside her partner.
Voiced by Larry the Cable Guy, Tow Mater, who is more simply known as Mater throughout the franchise is often the fan-favorite in the Cars movies due to his comedic nature.
Mater, who is inspired by a 1951 International Harvester tow truck might not be the flashiest or fastest vehicle in the films, but he really is the heart and soul of all the movies, whilst providing all of the comedic relief from some of the heavier, more emotional moments.
Despite the fact that Mater is portrayed to be dumb, it is often the tow truck who comes up with the answers to the movies major questions, even if he doesn't actually mean to do so.
1 Lightning McQueen
Kachow! Who else could be top of this list other than Lightning McQueen who is the crucial character in the Cars franchise, being the lead name in all three of the movies as one of the most popular characters in Pixar history.
McQueen's character goes on an interesting journey, from being rather self-centered and focused on only his racing career to learning there is more to life and that helping and caring for others is just as important.
As well as the life lessons that are taught through his character, McQueen also brings a large portion of the movies fast-paced action throughout his race scenes, which help keep the film moving on at a good pace.
NEXT: Top 10 Animated Cars Of All Time
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Cars 2, Blow Out, and the best things we watched this weekend
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This weekend marked the 78th Golden Globe Awards, an historic ceremony not only for it having been the first to take place in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic but for those whose work was recognized . Chloé Zhao became the first Asian woman to win the Golden Globe for best director for the Frances McDormand-led drama Nomadland , Chadwick Boseman was posthumously rewarded Best Drama Performance for his role in George C. Wolfe’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom , and Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari was rewarded with the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language film following the controversial (and frankly bizarre) odyssey in the lead up to its nomination .
Aside from the Awards however, there were a ton of movies and films available via streaming for the Polygon team to choose from. Here are a few of the movies we enjoyed over the weekend, and what you might enjoy watching throughout the week as well.
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22336964/collider.jpg "ranking the cars movies")
I want to formally rescind every critical comment I’ve ever made on the behalf of Cars 2 .
This weekend, I enjoyed a double feature of Cars and Cars 2 . It’s been years since I’ve watched either of them, and I was pretty confident in my assessment that while the original Cars was Just Fine, Thank You Very Much, Cars 2 was just a bunch of dumb jokes that did not make canonical sense in the greater Cars mythos. But upon this rewatch, I learned that I was wrong. So very, very wrong.
The original Cars put me to sleep, but I found myself enthralled by Cars 2 . The first Cars doesn’t quite work for me is because it is too rooted in reality. I found myself questioning every little world-building detail: If you are born a truck, is your destiny just to ferry cars around inside your body till the end of time? Why do cars lock themselves if their insides are their organs? Why are there restaurants and cafes if all they consume is oil?
But with Cars 2 , there is so much chaos and unbelievable plot elements that I can safely just tuck all the aforementioned overarching world-building questions in the back of my mind and just relish in its absurdity. The setup of Cars 2 already lends itself to humor: after accompanying racer Lightning McQueen on an international racing tour, goofy Mater finds himself caught up in a James Bond-esque spy mission, where suave agent Finn McMissle believes Mater to be an American spy in deep, deep undercover. Cue the hijinks, cue the hilarity, cue the really cool action sequences.
It’s all the delight of a spy movie, but with the added fact of Oh right, they’re all cars! This means that Finn McMissile launches wires from his tires in order to suspend himself over a secret meeting on a far off oil rig! That the cars have giant guns built somewhere into their bodies! That the car chase sequences are honestly the best car chase sequences I’ve seen in action movies, because the stakes are so much higher! Yes, there is a Pope, which once again raises questions about the greater Cars universe, but Agent Holley Shiftwell just sprouted wings and a jet engine, so I’m more focused on how cool that is.
I am going on record to say that Cars 2 is the superior Cars movie. It might not make you think deeply like Pixar films often do, but it will help you embrace your inner child’s boundless imagination. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride (ha). — Petrana Radulovic
Cars 2 is streaming on Disney Plus .
And everything else we’re watching...
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Writer-director Brian De Palma replaces the curious eye of a swingin’ ‘60s fashion photographer for the tuned ear of a B-movie sound designer in this loose remake of Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film, Blowup . The choice turns an average mystery it one of the essential thrillers of the 1980s.
With more in common with Klute and The Parallax View than the Hitchcockian riffs that De Palma became known for, Blow Out finds a young John Travolta in over his head when a night out with his microphone leads him to witness and record the assassination of a rumored presidential candidate. The police think the car wreck was an accident; proof on Travolta’s magnetic sound tape, which he plays and replays and reconstructs with meticulous strain, suggests a hidden gunman was behind the death. Teaming up with a prostitute who was in the car at the time, and while being hunted by the shadowy figure behind the murder, the sound engineer jumps through hoops to substantiate his sonic evidence. Through it all, De Palma uses long-360-degree camerawork, God’s eye views, split-diopter lenses, and eye-popping color to crank up the suspense. — Matt Patches
Blow Out is streaming on Showtime Anytime and available to rent on Amazon and Apple .
The Dark and the Wicked
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The Dark and the Wicked is the latest release from Shudder and follows a family as an otherworldly evil takes over their farm and tries to take over their near-comatose father. It’s a pretty standard horror movie premise, but where The Dark and the Wicked really sets itself apart is in its relentless desire to scare you. This is a movie operating on a scares-per-minute quota that it always meets.
Unlike most normal possession movies, which would rely on careful set ups and long drawn out tension, The Dark and the Wicked starts its frights early and never slows down. There are haunting shapes lurking in dark shadows, loud sheep, glass bottle windchimes, a haunted diary, spiders, gore, and the actual devil. And that’s only the first half hour.
None of the movie’s scares are entirely unique, but that’s never really a problem. It feels more like director Bryan Bertino ( The Strangers ) is pulling them from a horror-movie thesaurus, but each one is perfect for its moment and is exceptionally well executed.
It’s hard to imagine a better pairing of streaming service and movie than this one too. Bertino is both mining the depths of horror-movie history, while actively working against the genre’s conventional pacing and rhythms, which makes it perfect for Shudder’s horror-movie paradise. The Dark and the Wicked isn’t the scariest movie I’ve ever seen, but it’s a great way to spend 90 minutes and exactly the kind of movie I come to Shudder for. —Austen Goslin
The Dark and the Wicked is currently streaming on Shudder and available to rent on Amazon .
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My twice-a-month friend movie club decided to stick with movies that came out in 1982 for this next round of picks, hence Das Boot , which none of us had seen. (It originally released in Germany in ‘81, and arrived in the States in ‘82.) The Director’s Cut comes in at 3.5 hours, so I was bracing for a bit of a slog.
But, as it turns out, I found it massively compelling and not remotely indulgent. The characters are well fleshed out, and by the end I was fully enraptured by their intense journey. If you’re into Band of Brothers , this is tonally very similar, and the 3.5 hours can easily be broken into three separate viewings for a more episodic delivery mechanism. It’s easily one of the best war movies I’ve seen. — Russ Frushtick
Das Boot is available for rent on Amazon and Apple .
The Eisenhorn Trilogy
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Back when they first came out in 2006, I gobbled up Dan Abnett’s Horus Heresy books with relish. They were my gateway into Games Workshop’s Black Library of Warhammer 40,000 novelizations, but I fell off of the series around Descent of Angels: Loyalty and Honour and began skipping around. That’s how I came to entirely miss the tremendous Eisenhorn trilogy.
Set during the 42nd millennium — effectively the current timeline of the 40K universe — there are three books in the series, titled Xenos , Malleus , and Hereticus . They tell the story of inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn and his colorful band of companions. Together, they show a completely different side of the 40K universe. Rather than focusing on tales of epic battles and planetary bombardments (although there are a few), Abnett focuses on a far more intimate storyline filled with intrigue, suspicion, and political machinations. It’s far from Shakespeare, but they’re excellent fun.
Rather than read them in paperback, for the last month or so I’ve been banging away at them via Audible , where they’re read by the excellent Toby Longworth. I’m not really accustomed to listening to audio books, but Longworth’s presentation made for some excellent long-distance drives and plenty of hobby time with the Warhammer 40,000 Indomitus boxed set.
It might be a good time to get caught up yourself, especially considering that Amazon has made it known they plan to produce a live-action television series based on these novels . Big Light Productions — the folks responsible for Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle — are signed on to the production. —Charlie Hall
The Man From Nowhere
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Lee Jeong-beom’s 2010 action thriller The Man From Nowhere feels like a direct spiritual precursor to Derek Kolstad’s John Wick series, albeit more subdued and emotionally driven. Won Bin plays Cha Tae-sik, a mysterious widower-turned-pawnshop keeper who despite living in self-imposed seclusion forms an unlikely bond with So-mi (Sae-ron Kim), a young girl who lives in the same apartment complex. When So-mi mother’s steals a package of heroin from a ruthless gang of human traffickers and she and her daughter are abducted in an attempt to recover it, Cha Tae-sik embarks on a bloody campaign to exact revenge on them and rescue So-Mi, all while a team of South Korean DEA agents attempts to unravel the mystery of his elusive past and bring both him and the traffickers to justice.
The film is a methodical slow burn that explosively culminates in one of the most breathtaking knife fight showdowns I’ve ever seen in an action film. Won Bin’s raw and terse performance is magnetic, drawing the audience through the screen while propelling the action forward. The fact that he has yet to appear in a single film since only adds to the allure and mystique of his presence here. Sae-ron Kim is terrific here as well, delivering a speech here towards the tail end of the first act that’s beautiful and devastating in its emotional appeal. Considering recent reports that John Wick director Chad Stahelski and Derek Kolstad are currently attached to develop a forthcoming American adaptation , now is the perfect time to check out Lee’s original if you haven’t seen it already. From its stirring performances, don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-it action sequences, and engrossing score courtesy of Oldboy composer Hyun-jung Shim, The Man From Nowhere is a tremendously gratifying action flick for anyone hungering for a more emotionally driven thrill ride. — Toussaint Egan
The Man From Nowhere is streaming on Amazon .
In the Mood for Love
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When you see one Wong Kar-wai film, you immediately want to see all of them, but not at once: They’re movies best enjoyed as chance encounters, like beguiling strangers you spend two hours with at a bar or on a train before continuing on your way. I can’t tell you how long I’ve had In the Mood for Love unwatched on my shelf for, but last Saturday was the evening we finally crossed paths. The movie is about neighbors Chow Mo-wan and Su Li-shen who begin to suspect their spouses are having an affair with each other, and slowly start to develop a relationship of their own. It’s an achingly beautiful movie, full of deep reds and tight, lonely spaces, one of those stories where nothing and everything happens all at once. Which is kind of how it goes, when two people begin to understand what they want only when they realize what they lack. —Joshua Rivera
In the Mood for Love is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel .
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Screen Rant
Every pixar movie ranked from worst to best.
Pixar Animation has made 22 movies going back more than two decades, and almost all have been remarkable achievements. But which is the best?
Pixar 's 22 animated movies are difficult to rank because there are, arguably, only two or three that are not generally considered good films. Known for its trademark character-driven stories, the Pixar brand has built an association with unique and expertly crafted productions. The few disappointments in its collection are mostly disappointing by comparison - even Cars 2 .
Pixar movies consistently win awards and break box-office records, but more importantly, they are well made and typically well-received by audiences. Pixar has set the standard for 3D animated films for decades. Though Pixar's origins date back to the 1970s, Pixar released several short films in its early days before undertaking the endeavor of a full-length feature. Then, in 1995, Pixar released the first-ever fully 3D-animated feature-film. Toy Story marked the studio's breakthrough into becoming the animation giant that people know today.
Related: Why Soul's Reviews Are So Positive
Over the last 25 years, Pixar has brought so many incredible stories to life with its state-of-the-art animation techniques. These stories sometimes speak to one person more than another, but anyone who has seen a handful of Pixar movies could probably tell you of at least one that is dear to their heart.
22. Cars 2 (2011)
Cars 2 is the most universally disliked Pixar movie. It had a budget of $200 million, on par with Pixar’s two top-grossing films – Toy Story 4 and Incredibles 2 - but it is the only Pixar film (besides Onward ) to not make back its budget in domestic box-office sales. Cars 2 is disjointed, chaotic, and boring. Cars 2 was the first of only five Pixar films to receive zero Oscar nominations, but the movie was likely doomed from the start. Rather than developing out of an organic desire to tell a new story, Cars 2 was made to continue selling merchandise within the lucrative Cars brand and to market the new Cars Land at Disney’s California Adventure theme park, which opened in 2012 – the year after Cars 2 was released.
21. Cars 3 (2017)
Cars 3 told a more personal story than Cars 2 but still lacked the charm of the first Cars . Perhaps in an attempt to redeem the Cars franchise from the implosion of Cars 2 (and, of course, keep marketing Cars Land in California Adventure), Pixar made yet another sequel - one that tried to pretend its predecessor didn’t exist. But the mediocre story Cars 3 is overly focused on Lightning McQueen, forgetting what made the first film work: a quirky bunch of relatable characters who love their hometown and each other.
20. The Good Dinosaur (2015)
The Good Dinosaur , though third on this list, was not a terrible film by most standards. The animation is some of Pixar’s best work - however, the story is not. The pace is too slow for the entire film and the characters are one-dimensional. Pixar has proven that they can animate compelling characters that don’t speak (see: WALL-E ), so the fact that Spot – one of only two main characters in The Good Dinosaur - is somewhat lacking in personality really brings the film down. The Good Dinosaur is visually impressive, but there’s not much else that this film manages to get right.
Related: Every Cancelled Pixar Movie (& How The Sequels Changed)
19. Onward (2020)
Onward ’s truncated theatrical release due to the Covid-19 pandemic cost Disney tens of millions of dollars in losses on the film. Judging by Onward 's positive audience reception, though, it would have done very well financially if it had a full theatrical run; Onward holds the top Pixar spot for audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. But by doing something that they had never done before, Pixar ended up making Onward feel like a movie that had already been done by someone else. That said, Onward is not a terrible movie and the bittersweet ending wrapped up the very sincere message of the film: cherish every moment with the ones you love because life is unpredictable.
18. Monsters University (2013)
Monsters University was a perfectly adequate follow-up to Monsters Inc. , which Pixar smartly chose to place before the first movie rather than continue from where it left off. A sequel to Monsters Inc. , though possible, would have been more difficult to successfully execute, since the ending of Monsters Inc. fundamentally altered its premise. Monsters University doesn’t take many risks but makes the most of its two charismatic leads - joined by a lovable oddball group of new friends and a revitalized, invigorating soundtrack - and manages to be more entertaining than not.
17. Finding Dory (2016)
The consensus of Finding Dory was that it was not a bad sequel – it was good, even – but nowhere close to meeting the high bar set by the first film, Finding Nemo . Some criticized the film for taking cheap shots with highly emotional plot points – which, to some extent, it did. When high emotion works, it really works (see: Toy Story 3 ), but when it doesn’t, it feels melodramatic like parts of Finding Dory . But, as previously mentioned, this sequel that focused on Dory, her memory loss, and her family was not bad . By this point, Pixar had made incredible strides in animation and the pace of Finding Dory is lively yet comfortable. It’s worth watching at least once and still holds up after a few more viewings, which puts Finding Dory far and above many children’s animated films.
16. Brave (2012)
Merida is a cherished heroine for her subversion of many Disney princess tropes and, of course, her bravery. But one of the problems that Brave had was the expectation it had built. The trailers for Brave made the film seem like it would a mystical and epic adventure on the Scottish Highlands, so viewers were less than impressed when they were treated, instead, to a familiar story about understanding life in someone else’s shoes à la Brother Bear. Brave is one of the few – if not only - Disney or Pixar film that centers on a mother and a daughter relationship. Elinor and Merida are a relatable pair and Pixar had a great opportunity to show a parent-child relationship working through their issues by communicating, so it's a little disappointing that Elinor was a non-verbal bear for most of the film. That said, Brave has a great soundtrack, truly hilarious moments, and gorgeous landscapes.
Related: Every Pixar Movie Easter Egg That Teased A Future Film
15. Toy Story 2 (1999)
It may come as a surprise that Toy Story 2 has the highest Rotten Tomatoes critic score of any Pixar film, tied with Toy Story at 100%. A common problem among sequels is the difficulty of incorporating new characters into an established cast. Often, the new characters are added to sell merchandise (since no one needs another Buzz Lightyear) and not given much thought, which is what happened with Toy Story 2 . It's a great movie, but the love and care that went into the first film wasn't there. By the time Toy Story 4 came around, Stinky Pete was long gone, but Jessie and Bullseye meshed so well with the rest of the toys that it‘s easy to forget they weren’t actually in the first Toy Story .
14. A Bug's Life (1998)
Sandwiched between the first two Toy Story movies , A Bug’s Life is more than 20 years old and has no sequels or prequels - which is likely why it’s easily forgotten, but A Bug’s Life is one of the few Pixar films to have a straightforward villain that makes the story engaging and compelling. Flik, the hero of A Bug’s Life , is the reject of his ant colony, and when Flik teams up with a group of other misfits, the result is hysterical and charming. Featuring a whimsical soundtrack by Randy Newman and a cast of talented comedians and actors including Bonnie Hunt, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and David Hyde Pierce, Pixar’s hilarious and quotable sophomore film is frequently underappreciated.
13. WALL-E (2008)
WALL-E includes some of Pixar’s best visual storytelling and character building. Without a single word, a love story unfolds between two anthropomorphic robots set to the background of WALL-E 's romantic soundtrack . Audiences were immediately endeared to WALL-E because of his optimism, innocence, compassion, and affinity for Hello Dolly , but the transition to the loud and busy starship, the Axiom, felt jarring and disappointing. WALL-E 's strongest points are the ones unbothered with exposition and confrontation. Nonetheless, the film won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature and is rightly adored by many.
12. Up (2009)
If WALL-E is only some of Pixar’s best visual storytelling, then Up is the best. Aided in no small part by the emotional piano score composed by Michael Giacchino, Up compresses eight decades into eight of the most heartbreaking minutes in animated cinema. Childhood sweethearts Carl and Ellie struggle through the most relatable setbacks and still find happiness in their love for each other. But, like WALL-E , the last half of the film feels disconnected from the first. Carl and Russell’s dynamic is entertaining and heartwarming, but the excessively evil villain and talking dogs – though funny - feel out of place.
11. Toy Story 3 (2010)
Toy Story 3 had an incredible critical reception that it very much deserved, but - like several other animated films to be released in the 2010s - Toy Story 3 is a film that’s merely watchable for children even though it may not appeal to them. The ending of Toy Story 3 was clearly targeted toward young adults who were children at the time that the first movie was released. Young children were likely frightened by Toy Story 3 's incinerator scene (not to mention the unsettling monkey, demonic baby, and torture-victim telephone) and confused by all the grown-ups who were ugly crying when Andy gave his toys to Bonnie. However, Toy Story 3 was a groundbreaking sequel for being the third movie in a Pixar franchise and it showed audiences a brand-new kind of Toy Story .
Related: Toy Story Movies Ranked Worst To Best
10. Toy Story 4 (2019)
By the time Toy Story 4 released, the franchise had built the expectation that it could make good sequels, but that expectation led some fans to wonder, “Can Toy Story 4 follow Toy Story 3 with something better?” The answer: divided, of course, but audiences seem split close enough to the middle that an argument can be made for, “Yes.” The touching ending of Toy Story 4 allowed Woody to follow his own heart when he outgrew his old way of life. Part action-adventure and part heist movie (as opposed to Toy Story 3 ’s prison break), Toy Story 4 felt like a return to Toy Story days of old.
9. Cars (2006)
The legacy of Cars has been somewhat tarnished by its less-than-stellar sequels, which is unfortunate because the first Cars movie was terrific. Cars introduced several animation techniques that improved the realism remarkably, even when compared to The Incredibles , which Pixar had released the year before. Cars is also the first Pixar film to feature a soundtrack of songs by various popular artists – something that may not have worked for most other Pixar films, but it works so well for Cars . The tone set by Sheryl Crow’s “Real Gone” in the opening race lets viewers know that they are in for a ride. The loveable bunch of cars who help Lightning McQueen on his road to change captured the hearts of audiences and Radiator Springs sets the perfect scene for this change-of-heart tale.
8. Monsters, Inc. (2001)
Monsters, Inc. was Pixar’s fourth feature-length film and it was an astounding feat of animation. Sully required the individual animation of millions of hairs. Even if the technology has long since become outdated, it was cutting edge in 2001 - but Mike and Sully's complementary personalities are the real magic ingredient here. Monsters, Inc. included Pixar’s second-best twist-villain (Mr. Waternoose), a great signature song (“If I Didn’t Have You”), and fantastic world-building which set up an intriguing story about monsters who are afraid of children but need to scare children to power their cities.
Related: Why Pixar Movies Have So Many Shining Easter Eggs
7. Inside Out (2015)
Most movie-goers weren’t sure what to expect from Inside Out but were pleasantly surprised to find an exceptionally accurate metaphor for human emotion. Pete Docter, director of Inside Out , said in an interview with NPR that they wanted to convey the idea of “sadness as community bonding” and that sadness is necessary because it tells the people around us that we are in pain and have a need that isn’t being met. In that regard, Inside Out succeeded; the movie ticked every box for being quintessentially Pixar: imaginative, emotional, beautiful, and humorous (with a touch of silliness spread throughout). To tell a profound story in a captivating way that changes the way people see themselves and others is incredibly rare, but that's what Inside Out did.
6. Incredibles 2 (2018)
Incredibles 2 proved once again that Pixar can make successful sequels, both financially and critically. Incredibles 2 is currently the highest-grossing Pixar film, third highest-grossing Disney film (only behind Frozen and Frozen 2 ), and 18th highest-grossing film of all time. As for the critical success - many fans have said that they love this sequel even more than The Incredibles . Like many children's animated sequels, though, Incredibles 2 takes a darker tone and more mature themes than the first. But despite Evelyn Deavor, a.k.a. Screenslaver, being a more menacing twist-villain than Syndrome , she is a less compelling one, too. In The Incredibles , Syndrome's turn to evil is directly related to his past with Mr. Incredible, making for a more interesting dynamic when the heroes face off. If Incredibles 2 suffers from any serious problems, it's the lack of an interesting villain, because Incredibles 2 is well-made and full of delightful comedy and action.
5. Ratatouille (2007)
If Inside Out is the most quintessentially Pixar movie, then Ratatouille comes in at a close second. This movie is about a rat who believes in himself so much that he becomes the top chef in Paris. It's a premise that shouldn't work, but it does because of the way Pixar executes it. Remey's dreams are opposed to his family's beliefs - and sound logic - but instead of the film being about a power struggle between Remey and his father, it's about Remey working hard and becoming the top chef in Paris - with the help of Linguine, of course. The dynamic between Remey and Linguine makes for great visual comedy and the heart of Ratatouille is a simple, beautiful message: anyone can cook.
4. The Incredibles (2004)
The Incredibles marked the Pixar debut of composer Michael Giacchino and director Brad Bird, who had only directed one other film at the time - The Iron Giant . The Incredibles is part 60s spy thriller, part superhero movie, and part family drama. The Parrs are the first (super)humans to star in a Pixar movie and their family dynamic is what made the film so good. They’re supers who still have human problems, flaws, and weaknesses. A jazzy, electrifying musical score plus a few fantastic side characters (Frozone and Edna Mode), and Pixar’s best twist-villain make The Incredibles one of Pixar’s best films.
3. Coco (2017)
Toward the end of a decade that Pixar spent making a lot of sequels - no doubt at the behest of the merchandise-fueled machine that is Pixar’s owner, Disney - Coco resonated with viewers, many of whom had been longing for original stories that better represented Disney’s global audience. The vibrant color palette, music, plot, and themes have ties to Mexican culture and the Mexican holiday that sets the backdrop for the story, Día de Muertos – a phrase which Disney tried to trademark and eventually backed down after a lot of very deserved criticism.
And the film itself was not without criticism, either, receiving many accusations of copying a similar 2015 film, The Book of Life . But Coco was an instant family classic because it’s still so rare to see a children’s animated film focus on a multi-generational family and broach the topic of remembrance for the dead with such joy and celebration. Plus, there's never been a Pixar movie that pays off its plot threads with such sincerity.
2. Toy Story (1995)
Toy Story was the first feature-length, 3D animated film ever and it set the standard for future films of its kind. Pixar would not be the filmmaking giant that it is today if it weren't for Toy Story and the dedication that went into making it a groundbreaking achievement of technology. But Toy Story isn't great just because it was the first; it uses the "buddy film" narrative as its most basic structure, then fills out that framework with a unique premise, endearing characters, and a plot that is both comical and clever. Toy Story is a heartfelt homage to the imaginations of children everywhere, and it works so well because it's a simple film with a complex story that everyone can relate to on one level or another.
1. Finding Nemo (2003)
Finding Nemo is an outstanding film from every aspect and audiences knew that Pixar's fifth film was special from the time it hit theaters - it still has the second-highest domestic gross of any Pixar film when adjusted for inflation. Finding Nemo was absolutely cutting edge and, after seventeen years, the animation of Finding Nemo is still impressive. Thomas Newman’s score, full of soft piano and sweeping strings, perfectly complements the constant movement of the ocean. Each of the many, many side characters are unique and entertaining, the dialogue flows well, and the pacing is near flawless, alternating between Marlin and Nemo who each meet new friends that teach them something about themselves as well as each other. Parents and children - young and old - can find something that speaks to them in the funny and poignant film that is Finding Nemo .
Next: All Animated Disney Movies Ranked, From Worst To Best
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2011, Kids & family/Comedy, 1h 47m
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Cars 2 is as visually appealing as any other Pixar production, but all that dazzle can't disguise the rusty storytelling under the hood. Read critic reviews
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- Genre: Kids & family, Comedy, Adventure, Animation
- Original Language: English
- Director: John Lasseter
- Producer: Denise Ream
- Writer: Ben Queen
- Release Date (Theaters): Jun 24, 2011 wide
- Release Date (Streaming): Nov 1, 2011
- Runtime: 1h 47m
- Distributor: Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney
- Sound Mix: Dolby Digital, SDDS, DTS
- View the collection: Pixar
Cast & Crew
News & interviews for cars 2, critic reviews for cars 2, audience reviews for cars 2.
- Jun 19, 2016 While it may be Pixar's weakest film to date, Cars 2 is still a satisfying diversion for two hours - even if the story and characters force you to turn your brain off. Super Reviewer
- Dec 16, 2015 This movie lacked what other Pixar movies didn't lack. The first Cars was okay, but did we need a sequel? Super Reviewer
- Aug 18, 2014 Lacking compared to the first one, but kids will enjoy it anyway. Super Reviewer
- Nov 18, 2013 Jesus Christ, it reminds me of <i>Fay Grim</i> (2006)...... What a bizarre turn of bizarre events that came straight out from Bizarro world. I saw <i>Cars 2</i> <b>for the first time</b> exactly one week after watching Hal Hartley's sequel to <i>Henry Fool</i>, called <i>Fay Grim</i>. And it suffers from exactly the same f***ing syndrome: an illusion of international espionage parody. Wha.... Whhh What's the use? What's the logic behind such decision? In what book is it stated that making a film with thought-provoking reflections, either metaphysical, earthly or heartwarming, and continuing it with a "comedic" international espionage twist is supposed to contribute ANYTHING to the story? I would only justify such attempt with independent or renowned filmmakers, <b>as was the case of Hal Hartley</b>, but we are talking about Pixar here, a company focused at making trascendental 3D-animated films aimed at all types of audiences. This had no nostalgic quality, no logic in its continuity, no comprehensible character connections. No, it's just a parody. A bad one. I blame Pixar greatly because it hasn't been listening to the suggestions (let's not call them "demands") of fans: if there must be a sequel, it must be <i>The Incredibles 2</i>, not Cars 2, not Finding Dory, not Monsters University, no Toy Story 3 (an overrated sentimental mess). They are getting it all wrong. 90% of the times, sequels are signs of imminent scarcity in creativity. Pixar falls into that 90% of cases. How shameful. 54/100 Super Reviewer
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Oscars 2023: All 10 Best Picture Nominees Ranked from Worst to Best
From the spectacular to the bizarre (and everything, everywhere, in between), we attempt one last critical appraisal of the year's biggest contenders..
Mar 8, 2023 9:00 am
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The end of every awards season often comes with, more than anything, a sigh of relief. After months of campaigning, talking endlessly about the same films and performances and crafts, hearing the same stories over and over, it’s all too easy to feel eager to move on from them. What that ignores (or, at least forgets ) is the very reason why these are the films that have been singled out for fêting during this season: because they’re the best of 2022’s offerings.
So, step back from the nominations, wins, and other forms of seasonal adulation, and consider the quality of the films that have reached the upper echelons of cinema in recent months. No matter how you feel about the 10 films nominated in this year’s Best Picture race , this assortment of titles boasts some serious range: we’ve got festival favorites, two (!!) sequels, indie offerings, studio pictures, biopics, comedies, dramas, romances, remakes, and adaptations, and those are just the easiest terms to classify them by.
Before these movies are forever transformed by the context of whatever happens on Sunday night, we’ve decided to look at each of them head-on for one last time; not as winners or also-rans, but as a microcosm of the films that enthralled audiences, fans, cinephiles, critics, prognosticators, and more over the last few months.
From the spectacular to the bizarre (and everything, everywhere, in between), here are all of the Best Picture nominees of 2023, ranked from worst to best.
10. “Elvis”
To call the decision to make Tom Hanks’ con man Colonel Tom Parker the narrator of an Elvis Presley biopic polarizing is putting it mildly. It is the single biggest element of all this year’s Best Picture nominees that simply does not work, even overshadowing how the Baz Luhrmann film looks back at the King of Rock n’ Roll’s relationship to the Black community through distinctnyl rose-colored glasses.
The musical biopic, which happened to be the most successful original film of last year, making over $150 million at the box office, falls right in line with the rest of the Australian director’s epic oeuvre — for better and worse. If one is a Luhrmann fan, they are likely to point to the film’s impeccable craftwork and real sense of showmanship as high points. But, iff his filmmaking style does not work for you, little things like the anachronistic music cues may be a bother.
All that said, like he has done before with Leonardo DiCaprio in “Romeo + Juliet,” or Nicole Kidman in “Moulin Rouge,” Luhrmann unlocked something within rising star Austin Butler that transformed him into one of Hollywood’s most exciting new leading men — accent and all. —MJ
9. “All Quiet on the Western Front”
As war movies go, “All Quiet on the Western Front” certainly doesn’t reinvent the rulebook, especially since it draws from a 95-year-old novel that has been adapted twice before. But director Edward Berger delivers the first German perspective on the material with an angry, devastating look at gullible soldiers and the nationalist propaganda that tricked them into dying in the trenches.
It’s bracing, intense filmmaking that does the genre proud, and as the only non-English language movie nominated for Best Picture, proof that this season has truly gone global for every level of international cinema.
Is it one of the great movies, or a version of those movies that you’ve seen before? More often than not, “All Quiet on the Western Front” falls into the latter camp, but it’s nevertheless attuned to the powers of the genre on every level. —EK
8. “Avatar: The Way of Water”
James Cameron’s “Avatar” was a technological achievement first and a sci-fi epic second; the second follows suit, but stands on the shoulders of the protracted world-building that preceded it. Diving straight into Pandora and the Na’vi family it spent over two hours establishing before.
“The Way of Water” is an immersive survival story in tandem with delivering breathtaking visual information in every second of its hefty running time. It’s the better “Avatar” because it gives us so much more of what makes this kind of billion-dollar experiment worthwhile — namely, the color blue. The aquatic world of “The Way of Water” steals the show from its busy ensemble more than once, as Cameron once again shows that he’s better at blockbuster scale than finding the credible human drama within.
Still, what scale: It’s the most expensive form of environmental activism since climate change became a thing. The saga of Jake Sully and Neytiri (along with whatever happens next with their remaining offspring) feels like it’s just getting started, and no other filmmaker has created such a vast, profitable mythology on their own terms in film history.
“The Way of Water” works just well enough to make it worth anticipating however many more entries Cameron feels like offering up. —EK
7. “Triangle of Sadness”
Ruben Östlund’s second Palme d’Or winner is perhaps the most clearly amusing of this year’s Best Picture nominees, a screamingly funny upbraiding of the upper upper class that delights in taking them down a peg (or more). The Swedish filmmaker has always relished in skewering the elite, from the icy charms of “Force Majeure” to the machinations of the art world in “The Square.” So while “Triangle of Sadness” screams “Ruben Östlund film!,” it also does it in the most obvious of manners, at least for the typically slyly entertaining auteur.
That’s not always a bad thing, though, as Östlund opens the picture with an absolutely brutal takedown of the not-so-glamorous world of modeling (piercing stuff that, quite frankly, should have pulled in more notice for the wonderfully calibrated Harris Dickinson) before catapulting us into the world of ultra-rich pleasure-cruisers.
So far, so hilarious, but once the film’s central superyacht hits a major squall, things take a big turn, and one that’s not always in line with Östlund’s strengths. There are few filmmakers who could turn a long-form sequence of seasickness hitting the masses (and we’re explaining it away in the most mundane of terms, it’s insanely gross stuff, and kudos for that) into a knotted exploration of class warfare, but Östlund almost nails it.
Almost. While the film’s final act gives breakout star Dolly de Leon plenty to play with, as her Abigail becomes ruler of the worst assortment of rich losers imaginable, it’s all a bit too obvious and plain-faced to stick. As funny and wild as it all is, this could all be meaner by half, than we’d really be cooking. —KE
6. “Top Gun: Maverick”
Even if Joseph Kosinski’s long, long -gestating “Top Gun” sequel hadn’t proven to be such a box office juggernaut that it inspired Steven Spielberg to tell producer and star Tom Cruise that he “saved Hollywood’s ass” during the annual Oscar nominee luncheon, the film would have proven to be a bright light in the cinema landscape.
No, no, wait a second, we can back this up! In a world gone made for franchises, sequels, remakes, even requels, the idea of a “Top Gun sequel” may sound a bit silly, but the film delivered on what has always been the grand promise of the blockbuster (a promise too often forgotten by its box office brethren): a big, bombastic, fully immersive experience that doesn’t skimp on the good stuff. Mostly, this thing just looks great, a reminder that audiences still know the difference between a green screen and taking a bunch of cast and crew into actual fighter jets.
If you’re going to see “Top Gun: Maverick,” you should get what you pay for: massive stunts, huge set pieces, a Lady Gaga song, a bunch of rising stars with kicky call signs, Tom Cruise on a motorcycle, Tom Cruise on a sailboat, Tom Cruise in a jet, Tom Cruise crying, Tom Cruise laughing, Tom Cruise running, and the kind of audience bonding that can only be found when hundreds of strangers are aligned behind a need to see our heroes beat the bad guy (whoever the hell he might be) and jet this bad boy right out of the sky, over the sea, and into oddly tear-jerking territory. That’s cinema, baby! —KE
5. “Women Talking”
There’s magic in Sarah Polley’s latest, the kind of picture that becomes harder to describe the more you try to put words to it. Fortunately, Polley doesn’t suffer from the same affliction, weaving an artful and emotional film that only grows more richer the more her characters — yes, most of them women — talk to each other. Soon, you’ll feel like you’re in the hayloft with them, talking about nothing less than the very future of this community, a major ask that still feels staggeringly intimate.
It’s no surprise that Polley, an actor herself (and one born from casting director stock, no less), is aces at picking a dreamy ensemble to tell this nightmarish tale. Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Ben Whishaw, Frances McDormand, these are just the top-line stars, because every single other cast member only adds to the rich texture of this wonderful film. (Name them! Judith Ivey, Kate Hallett, Sheila McCarthy, Emily Mitchell, Liv McNeil, Michelle McLeod, Shayla Brown, and August Winter.)
The subject matter is, of course, heavy, but the care with which Polley and her cast and crew bring it to the screen make it something else entirely: the kind of story you can’t wait to see play out, but one you never want to see end. It is in conversation with you, with me, with all of us, and will remain worth talking about long after this season ends. —KE
4. “The Fabelmans”
It is fascinating that, in a year where the blockbuster — a concept “Jaws” filmmaker Steven Spielberg himself is responsible for helping craft in the modern sense — took on so much importance, with other nominees like “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Avatar: The Way of Water” being credited as the saviors of the theatrical experience, that the legendary director went against the grain and delivered a family drama that’s his most personal film yet.
This film, which garnered Spielberg his first Best Original Screenplay nomination alongside longtime collaborator Tony Kushner, is far from the first autobiographical film from the viewpoint of an auteur to come out in recent years, but its daring vulnerability makes it the standard bearer for the subgenre.
Though they are at very different points in life, stars Gabriel LaBelle, Michelle Williams, and Judd Hirsch all give career benchmark performances, and Paul Dano and Seth Rogen play the central conflict in ways that are impressively unexpected. Sure, there are things to nitpick, like the somewhat episodic structure of a film so enamored with the magic of cinema , but that’s life, messy and worthy of examining in all its forms. —MJ
3. “TÁR”
What makes Lydia Tár tick? That question sits at the center of writer-director Todd Field’s masterwork from its first frame until the last, as the director fuses the elements of a gothic thriller and social satire with documentary-like precision as he barrels down on some of the weightiest questions of our times: Sure, Tár’s conundrum is a trenchant look at the contradictions of cancel culture, the insular nature of privileged arts community, and the pressures placed on a powerful woman in the public eye. But it’s also a unique showcase of what Cate Blanchett can do like no other performer today, as she lives inside Field’s distinctive creation, and an entire world evolves around her.
It’s a cinematic symphony of actor-director cohesion in rare form, and the movies are all the better for it. You can pick apart the cerebral nature of the filmmaking all you want — and sure, some of its arguments about the knee-jerk sensitivity of younger generations have a bit of an “Old Man Screams at Cloud” vibe — but it’s the only Best Picture nominee this year that maintains a singular tone throughout, and leaves you thinking through the connotations of every scene. In that regard, yes, it’s a better movie about the power of movies than “The Fabelmans.” —EK
2. “The Banshees of Inisherin”
The characters who populate writer/director Martin McDonagh’s movies and plays tend to be gloomy, passive-aggressive people driven to violent extremes. “The Banshees of Inisherin” takes that template and transcends it. The story of drinking buddies Pádraic (Colin Farrell) and Colm (Brendan Gleeson) on an invented Irish isle in the midst of civil war takes a simple premise and imbues it with multitudes.
With two of the greatest Irish actors in its crosshairs, McDonagh merges a Malickian sense of wonder for the natural landscape with the chaos of human anxieties and existential malaise, tying it all together a string of feckin’ hilarious one-liners. Colm’s decision to start loping off his fingers to punish Pádraic for talking to him is the kind of wild violent twist that Tarantino used for shock effect decades ago, but McDonagh somehow makes it more palatable by rooting in genuine emotional stakes.
There are movies this Oscar season that juggle more moving parts and take more audacious swings, but none have the elegance and narrative specificity of McDonagh’s work. Among this year’s Best Picture nominees, it’s the only one that splits the difference between comedy and tragedy, the balancing act that McDonagh has perfected over the course of 30-odd years. There’s something about the fundamental smallness of its central conflict that also stands out in an era of overstatement. It’s a welcome reminder that movies don’t have to make grand gestures to be grand achievements. —EK
1. “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Upon first viewing, the Michelle Yeoh-starring vehicle is nothing like what one would expect of a Best Picture frontrunner. In recent years, it has been hard enough to get the Academy to consider even the highest brow comedies, so a movie with more than one sex toy-related sight gag seems Oscar voter-repellant.
But at the end of the day, the sophomore effort from writer-director Dan Kwan and Daniel Sheinert has enough heart to melt even the hardest of voters. Underneath its literal multiverse of layers is a much-needed story about a family reconnecting, accepting each other (flaws and all), and maintaining hope that they are on the road to a better understanding of one another.
Although it feels loose in its kinetic telling, viewers can tell the filmmakers went over every painstaking detail, creating a work of art that was built for repeat viewings, always providing something new to notice. And as the story gets rolling, it becomes so clear how much consideration the Daniels had for their remarkable cast, allowing Yeoh to show off her martial arts chops and let experimental theater pro Stephanie Hsu to proudly fly her freak flag.
Yes, those rocks were technically props, but two hours in, no one can convince us that the pair of actresses did not actually play them. The love that went into making the Best Picture frontrunner is palpable, and its awards journey has provided many gifts to cinema, including the return of Ke Huy Quan.
The only way something this frenetic works this well is if it has the ability to make one feel everything, everywhere, all at once, and judging by the response it has gotten this past year, the film has achieved exactly that. —MJ
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This Article is related to: Awards and tagged Best Picture , Oscars
The Best Pixar Movies Ranked, From 'Lightyear' to 'Turning Red'
Which is our favorite?
Pixar has been in the business of making incredible movies since the first Toy Story in 1995, giving us animated storytelling that taps into the human experience in unexpected, humbling and beautiful ways.
Its filmmakers have explored our struggles with tragedy, loss and grief (including even questions about the meaning of life ), as well as our experiences with love, family and friendship.
Ever since the first film from Pixar Animation Studios, the creators have delved into emotional themes in different ways, which makes ranking their entire movie catalog no easy task. Each of Pixar's 26 feature films, from every standalone movie to all the Pixar sequels, has something that keeps us coming back.
The best Pixar movies for adults and children touch different people in different ways, so it's inevitable this list will ruffle some feathers. But it's a testament to how much these animated movies mean to audiences. In determining rankings, we examined five key attributes of each film: plotline, characters, depth, cultural impact and rewatchability. This helped with the tough task of figuring out which of these truly great Pixar movies should top the list.
Here's our ranking of the best Pixar movies in order of least crowd-pleasing to the most beloved.
26. Cars 2 (2011)
One Cars movie really would have been enough, but this was when Pixar was (unfortunately) deep in its sequels phase. It's no secret that this film wasn't a hit with audiences or critics, as it's the only Pixar movie so far to get a "rotten" score on Rotten Tomatoes . Cars 2 is one of those sequels that lacks a strong standalone script and instead relies heavily on the success of its predecessor. It also tends to focus more on action scenes than heartfelt moments, leaving viewers without the wonder and depth that have defined Pixar's other films.
25. The Good Dinosaur (2015)
Best known for its stellar animation, The Good Dinosaur is an incredibly heartfelt film that will leave anyone who's ever felt like an outcast empathizing with lead character Arlo, the black sheep of the family. It's a solid movie, but because Pixar's other films have set the bar really high in terms of creativity and storytelling, we're placing this one at number 24, as some of the scenes are a bit slower and redundant. (What's this? Yet another animal attack?)
24. Cars 3 (2017)
Somehow Pixar wasn't deterred by the lukewarm reception Cars 2 received. Thankfully, the third installment in the Cars franchise features a more enjoyable story (and more solid jokes), as we watch Lighting McQueen struggle to stay relevant in the quickly changing world of racing. It still doesn't quite stack up against Pixar's other offerings (it's hard to with sequels anyway), but it's a pretty good film, all things considered.
23. Finding Dory (2016)
Watching this Finding Nemo sequel felt like experiencing deja vu. (A lost fish looking for its parents? That sounds awfully familiar…) The film borrowed a little too heavily from the winning storyline of its predecessor, and without the same emotional depth. Still, it's a fun journey into what made Dory, a blue tang fish with memory loss, who she is.
22. Lightyear (2022)
Lightyear is hands-down the most visually stunning Pixar film to date. Epic animations of the vastness and beauty of space make for an alluring sci-fi movie that takes Pixar in a direction it's never been before. Admittedly, I'm not a huge fan of spin-offs, and it's hard to feel like this wasn't just an opportunity for Disney/Pixar to milk the hype around the Toy Story franchise. But it was nonetheless enjoyable to see the studio venture into new territory and push the limits of animation. Also, embarking in a new thematic direction means we get fewer of the tender moments that characterize other Pixar films like Inside Out, Up or even Toy Story. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, if you prefer a more action-focused storyline.
21. Cars (2006)
Anthropomorphism is Pixar's magic power, which it executes well in Cars. There's a smattering of laughs amid lessons about the dangers of superficiality, as well as an underlying commentary on our obsession with celebrity culture. It's one of those movies that seems to appeal more to younger audiences, with its flashy scenes and thinner storyline, but it's still the best pick from the Cars franchise.
20. Luca (2021)
While a fun coming-of-age story about a sea monster who yearns to live on land, Luca doesn't offer up the same level of storyline creativity or emotional depth as many of Pixar's other films (that is, I didn't tear up while watching this one, which is always a shame). But it's still a lively film packed with adventure and suspense and beautiful animations of the Italian seaside town where it takes place.
19. Monsters University (2013)
This prequel features a fun, well-structured storyline that allows it to operate as a decent standalone. It does a good job of not feeling forced, and we get an intriguing look into the backstory of beloved monsters Sulley and Mike Wazowski, while also being introduced to memorable new characters like Terri & Terry Perry and Scott "Squishy" Squibbles.
18. A Bug's Life (1998)
A creative peek into what goes on in the world of insects, A Bug's Life finds strength in its wit and originality. It's a true adventure and an early testament to Pixar's remarkable storytelling.
17. Incredibles 2 (2018)
The long-awaited sequel is packed with the same action and lovable characters that made the first installment such a hit, though it's not quite on par with the original. The plot can at times feel predictable as the superhero family battles against a villain, though there are enough lighthearted and wholesome moments to make this follow-up stand out.
16. Toy Story 4 (2019)
This felt like the sequel that didn't need to happen, especially after Toy Story 3 ended on such a strong (and heartbreaking) note. There are still some fun sequences sprinkled throughout, but this fourth installment lacks the solid comedy and gripping plot that made the first three Toy Story films resonate. Nevertheless, we're introduced to loveable new characters like Forky, who provides a good dose of laughs.
15. Wall-E (2008)
A haunting rendering of what our world could look like if we continue to disregard the environment and become further consumed by technology, Wall-E is a pertinent and compelling story about Earth's last robot, who embarks on a journey into space with shiny probe Eve. Despite the minimal monologue, the film tells a captivating story about the consequences of our actions and our innate desire for connection.
14. Brave (2012)
There are plenty of stories centered on a headstrong child longing to carve their own path, but Brave levels up that oft-repeated narrative with a powerful female lead, hilarious characters and sprinklings of magic. It's a touching tribute to mother-daughter relationships and a gripping adventure all the way through.
13. Onward (2020)
A touching tribute to sibling bonds, this is one of those films that'll catch you off guard and have you reaching for a box of tissues. Onward serves as a timely commentary on how modern conveniences and technology seem to have stripped the world of enchantment and wonder, yet there are ways to reconnect with the past while cherishing the present and those around us.
12. Ratatouille (2007)
Here's a movie I would have loved to hear getting pitched. This story, about a rat who dreams of becoming a chef and enlists the help of a garbage boy to try to make that a reality, brings the beauty of Paris and its food scene to life. It plays well into the irony of a rat yearning to be in the kitchen -- a place he's least wanted -- and delivers a touching message: "Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere."
11. Coco (2017)
One of Pixar's most vibrant movies, Coco touches on themes that resonate with a range of audiences: family, culture and chasing a dream against all odds. The animation is breathtaking, with vivid depictions of the celebrations that accompany Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) in Mexico. It also features an epic plot twist that makes the story all the more intriguing.
10. Soul (2020)
Pixar has really defined its ability to tap into life's deepest questions and struggles, and Soul is a prime example. The film instills a sense of wonder through its dreamy concept of the afterlife, delicately hedging the heaviness of death and illustrating the beauty of life and our lasting impact. It's one of a handful of movies on this list that will make you reflect on your life's purpose, which is a much deeper takeaway than you'll get from most animated films.
9. The Incredibles (2004)
A movie about a lovable family of superheroes? It doesn't get more fun than that. The Incredibles offers up a perfect balance of laughs and adventure, as well as some of Pixar's most memorable characters (Edna Mode is nothing short of legend). There's just enough action not to overpower the strong plot that makes this film a cinematic masterpiece.
8. Monsters, Inc. (2001)
Turning a common childhood fear of monsters into a surprisingly touching film is nothing short of storytelling genius. Monsters, Inc., about a scare factory powered by the screams of human kids, follows the unlikely bond formed between two monsters and a little girl dubbed Boo, setting the stage for yet another intriguing and heartwarming story.
7. Turning Red (2022)
I can't remember laughing as much during a Pixar movie as I did watching Turning Red . The film follows the story of Meilin Lee, a 13-year-old girl who suddenly starts turning into a giant red panda when she's stressed or excited (a metaphor for strange bodily changes during puberty). Because this movie is set in 2002, it taps into nostalgia via details like Meilin's Tamagotchi and 4*Town, the hottest boy band. It's also incredibly wholesome, highlighting the importance of culture, family and strong female role models. The story was gripping, the jokes were funny and the takeaways were moving. What more could you ask for?
6. Toy Story 2 (1999)
This second installment in the Toy Story franchise maintains the wonder and comedy that made the original stand out. It also effectively builds on the plot, avoiding the pitfalls of many sequels that simply regurgitate the events and themes of their predecessors.
5. Finding Nemo (2003)
This film balances meaningful lessons on the complexities of child-to-parent relationships with fun, lively characters and memorable catchphrases ("Just keep swimming…"). The many plot twists will keep viewers invested in Nemo and dad Marlin's journey through a spellbindingly animated underwater world.
4. Inside Out (2015)
Pixar's imagination kicks into high gear in Inside Out, one of the deepest, most thought-provoking films out there. The movie poignantly characterizes a range of human emotions and illustrates the impact and importance of each one, both the good and the "bad." This is one of those rare films that's as amusing and stimulating for younger audiences as it is for older viewers, and will leave you pondering its meaning long after the credits roll.
3. Toy Story 3 (2010)
While sequels often pale in comparison to the original film, Toy Story 3 is a very strong exception. The film explores the bittersweet realities of change and growing up, while tapping into the unbreakable bonds we have with the people, places and moments that shaped us growing up. Keep a box of tissues close for this one.
2. Up (2009)
Nothing compares to that heart-wrenching montage near the movie's opening (if you know, you know). Throughout the film, Up taps into feelings of love, loss and closure, creating a touching story about the power of opening up, letting go and setting your emotions free. In addition to some tear-jerking scenes, Up also offers its fair share of laughs by pairing Russell, a jubilant, curious boy, with Carl Fredricksen, a cranky old man -- which also leads to some surprisingly tender moments.
1. Toy Story (1995)
With a cast of memorable characters, a touching storyline, strong punchlines and animation that's aged remarkably well, Toy Story is as timeless as it gets. The film, about toys that come to life when humans aren't looking, compellingly taps into childhood wonder and imagination. As Pixar's first full-length feature and the first fully computer-animated movie, Toy Story has also had an undeniable impact on the film industry, setting the stage for the countless computer-animated films that came after it. It stands out as a movie that never gets old no matter how many times you watch it, or how old you are.
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The arrival of Toy Story —and by extension Pixar Animation Studios—in 1995 forever changed how we see movies. Not since Snow White and the Seven Dwarves has the medium of animation been so significantly rocked, as new technology brought colorful CG to audiences for the first time ever. Within a decade, CG would replace hand-drawn 2D animation as the dominant medium at Walt Disney Animation Studios, and the animation world would remain forever transformed.
But Pixar’s legacy doesn’t begin and end with technology. Sure, Toy Story ushered in a new visual medium, but it also shook up the animated feature film world in much more fundamental ways. Pixar eschewed the tradition of fairy tales, sing-a-longs, and overly kid-oriented storytelling in favor of a more bold and mature approach. The folks at Pixar—headed up by the future “brain trust” of John Lasseter , Andrew Stanton , Pete Docter , and the late Joe Ranft —moved forward with the idea that animated films weren’t only for kids, and kids don’t need (or want) to be talked down to. Story, character, and emotion are king, and if you nail all three without pandering, you just might have something special on your hands.
That formula was repeated time and time again, as Pixar forged ahead with what seemed to be an impossible track record of greatness. The stumbles came eventually, inevitably, but the studio is always pushing ambitious ideas. 2015 was the first time in history where we saw two Pixar films released in the same year, and now the studio is splitting its time between theatrical and Disney+ releases.
As the studio shows no signs of slowing down, now seems like an opportune time to look back at how Pixar’s oeuvre stacks up so far. Without further ado, I present a complete ranking of all the Pixar movies from worst to best.
Editor's note: This article was last updated on March 11, 2022 to add Turning Red.
RELATED: Every Disney Animated Movie Ever Made, Ranked From Worst to Best
25.) Cars 2
While Pixar’s track record isn’t pristine anymore, Cars 2 is its big out-and-out failure. There’s no way around it: this is a bad movie. It’s juvenile, devoid of heart and wonder, and it feels perfunctory. Some of Pixar’s lesser films are even better than most animated movies from other studios, but not Cars 2 —it’s just as bad as a lackluster effort from DreamWorks Animation. It’s tough to know what exactly went wrong here. We know Pixar is capable of making good sequels, and when John Lasseter stepped in to take over the director’s chair from Brad Lewis there was the hope that he was “fixing” things. But in the end, it appears this movie was unsalvageable. The one saving grace is that the animation is pretty spectacular. But pretty ain’t enough. — Adam Chitwood
24.) The Good Dinosaur
While the 2015 entry The Good Dinosaur scored more positive reviews than Cars 2 , it stands as the studio’s lowest-grossing film in history by far—which is even more striking when taking into account that Pixar films released over a decade earlier, without the benefit of 3D ticket prices, made more money. But ultimately what matters is the film, not the box office, and unfortunately, The Good Dinosaur is a complete and utter snoozefest. The picture famously went through an incredibly tumultuous production that led to director Bob Peterson ’s removal and an entire creative reworking from the ground up. First-time filmmaker Pete Sohn took the reigns, and while the film’s emotional ambition is admirable, it suffers from a whiny, unlikeable protagonist in Arlo — the titular good dinosaur — and a meandering story. Which is a massive problem seeing as how Arlo commands the majority of the screentime with the dialogue-less Spot.
The movie bathes itself in Western genre tropes and aesthetics, which isn’t an issue unto itself — Pixar tackling a Western is exciting! — but again when your whole movie hinges on a protagonist as insufferably dumb as Arlo, the slower pace becomes a hindrance. From a technical perspective, The Good Dinosaur is jaw-droppingly gorgeous, although the decision to juxtapose photo-real settings with cartoonish dinosaur designs is still one of the studio's more befuddling choices. Ultimately, while the finale is admirably earnest and The Good Dinosaur ’s heart is in the right place, as a movie it's an absolute chore to get through, with characters and story that are far from the tightly structured Pixar we’ve come to know and love. — Adam Chitwood
23.) Cars 3
Cars 3 is a fine movie. It's not Pixar's worst, but it's certainly not up there with the studio's best. The first half of the film is fairly rote and, frankly, boring as it follows the "comeback story" narrative found in plenty of other sports movies, but it's in the film's second half where it starts to shine a bit. Cristela Alonso is a swell addition to the ensemble as Cruz Ramirez, whose character provides a refreshing foil to Lightning McQueen's confident machismo. The animation here too is some of Pixar's best. Director Brian Fee brings to life some of the most vivid environments we've ever seen in a Pixar film, and sequences in the latter half of the movie offer up some genuine dynamism for the Cars franchise's palette.
Thematically, however, Cars 3 is a bit of a conundrum. Its main drive is essentially a story about legacy and retirement, and choosing when you go out on your own terms. That's not exactly a universal theme for those under the age of 13 (the core demographic here) and it's a bit of a head-scratcher as to why it's leaned on so heavily. There's another theme about acceptance, representation, and beating the odds that comes towards the latter half of the film that's more successful and more relatable, but the core drive of Lightning's retirement is still an odd choice of material for this sequel. Ultimately, Cars 3 seems destined to be one of those middle-of-the-road forgettable Pixar pics. Again, it's certainly not a bad movie, but it'd be stretching to say it's a great one. — Adam Chitwood
22.) A Bug’s Life
Toy Story was a massive success, but while in production, the folks at Pixar didn’t know that it was going to work, let alone whether they’d ever make another CG film. Their follow-up effort, A Bug’s Life , feels like the studio still trying to figure out what kinds of movies it makes, and as a result, their sophomore feature is less inspired than their first film. It’s adequate enough — it’s not a bad movie — but it’s possibly Pixar’s most forgettable. “Oh yeah, A Bug’s Life . That movie’s fine,” is a common refrain, but no worries — Pixar recovered and solidified its status as a force to be reckoned with in its next two features. — Adam Chitwood
After first breaking out by not doing what every other animated film was doing, in 2012 it was time for Pixar to try its hand at its first-ever fairy tale. Brave was one of the more promising efforts from the studio, with a female protagonist, Scottish setting, and folklorish tone in tow. But the finished film is a movie that doesn’t really know what it wants to be. The clan stuff is convoluted to the point of becoming boring, and the “bear” twist takes the film to some odd territory.
There are moments of genuine sweetness between Merida and her mother, and the animation is some of Pixar’s best (those landscapes are gorgeous ), but the story unfortunately falls short. It’s maybe too ambitious for its own good, and when director Mark Andrews stepped in to replace Brenda Chapman (who was shoved off the project ), it feels like he was more interested in bombast and slapstick than the mother-daughter aspect. Which is fine—the action sequences are great—but the film feels at odds with itself as it’s reaching for too much all at once. There are genuine moments of greatness to be found, and the mother-daughter relationship is very much the heart of the film, but unfortunately Brave still feels "unfinished" somehow. Like it didn't quite live up to its potential. — Adam Chitwood
20.) Finding Dory
Finding Dory is resoundingly fine. It doesn't feel like a shameless cash grab, but it's also not full of the vigor and originality that permeates Pixar's best sequels. Co-writer/director Andrew Stanton does a solid job of finding a different kind of story angle here, this time telling the story from Dory's point of view, and while the Finding Nemo follow-up certainly introduces memorable new characters and offers a new setting, there's something about it that just feels...average.
Where Dory shines is in telling a story about living a full life with a disability. Pixar has a knack for thematic throughlines, and Dory is no different as the film leans into Dory's short-term memory loss while introducing a host of other aquatic life with a variety of developmental disorders. The ultimate message is that while disabilities may hinder some aspects of someone's life, they also grant gifts in other ways. It's a nice sentiment, and one that's a refreshing change of pace for the family film genre, and Stanton's handle of this particular throughline is solid.
It's hard to nail down aspects of Finding Dory that fall short. There's really not much that's bad about the film, it's more that it just feels like an extension of Finding Nemo rather than an exciting and fresh new story. And since Nemo kind of nailed everything about sealife from a Pixar/animation perspective, there's not much new that Dory brings to the table aside from the thematic heft. It's certainly not a bad Pixar film, but it's also not a particularly memorable one. — Adam Chitwood
19.) Monsters University
Pixar’s first prequel — a result of the studio’s agreement with Disney that saw Pixar creating one prequel/sequel for every two original films — had the advantage of starting with some of the studio’s most beloved characters and throwing them into a setting Pixar had never tackled before: college. The results are quite good, and kudos to director Dan Scanlon and his team for pulling off the ballsy message of “You can’t be whatever you want to be.” The movie is funny and full of great character designs, and the message is solid, but there’s something about Monsters University that holds it back from greatness. It could simply be that it was released during a period in which Pixar’s track record was most definitely broken— Cars 2 and Brave were nowhere near the levels of greatness we’d come to expect, and few thought Monsters University would be the film to get the studio back on track.
But Pixar’s phenomenal streak in the late 2000s gave us three incredibly emotional films, and while Monsters University is somewhat moving, it lacks the tear-jerking pull of the studio’s most memorable efforts. Perhaps that’s why it didn’t quite leave a strong mark on audiences. — Adam Chitwood
18.) Incredibles 2
Instead of charting new territory and leaving the DNA of the first film behind, Incredibles 2 picks up literally minutes after the first film ended, and tells a story that's squarely focused on deepening the characters we grew to love in writer/director Brad Bird 's 2004 superhero pic. Indeed, it's the family that really shines here as Bird gives Helen room to breathe and explore on her own, while Bob is left to play Mr. Mom. Both characters have interesting, evolving arcs in which Helen learns to trust her family to help take care of each other, while Bob learns just how difficult raising and taking care of a family really is.
On top of all that, Incredibles 2 is far and away the best action movie Pixar has ever made, with Bird crafting show-stopping set pieces that are masterclasses in geography and structure. Bird knows a great action set piece isn't about how big the explosion is, but how impactful it is to the characters involved, and so we get a series of really terrific sequences that show a dynamic range of exciting visuals. Jack-Jack, obviously, is the MVP here, as Bird and his animating team have an absolute blast playing with all of the toddler's powers in hilarious ways.
And yet, Incredibles 2 still doesn't quite feel like "top tier Pixar" material. Bird throws a lot at the wall here thematically — society's addiction to screens, evolving gender dynamics, and even a little bit of Randian "over-reliance on the government to solve everyone's problems" — but none of it sticks in a truly impactful way. The film has a lot on its mind, and it certainly brings up interesting points of discussion, but it's frustrating to see that most of that discussion simply peters out rather than coming to a finite point. And as a result, the film overall is a little forgettable.
But when you're actively watching Incredibles 2 , it's a blast. — Adam Chitwood
Cars is the Pixar movie that you think you hate, but is actually kind of okay. In retrospect, the stink of Cars 2 might have something to do with that, but you know what? It’s not that bad. The problem with Cars is that it lacks significant stakes, so there’s not really a huge sense of momentum. But that’s kind of in keeping with the film’s laid-back tone. The scenery is gorgeously crafted, and while the characters aren’t especially memorable, they’re nevertheless endearing. There’s still the haunting question of “Where the hell are all the people? Did the cars eat them? Why are there door handles?” and the movie has one too many endings, but exploring the loss of America’s working class is actually one of the studio’s most interesting themes, and the laid back, Americana-soaked tone is a refreshing change of pace. It’s alright to admit it: Cars is a sweet and perfectly OK movie. — Adam Chitwood
16.) Onward
Pixar has shown time and again that it really loves the "buddy movie" formula , but with Onward , that formula heavily works in the film's favor. While the story finds two brothers going on a magical quest to resurrect their father for one day, it's really a movie about siblings, and when Onward is focused on being truthful to the strained familial bond between Ian and Barley, it's at its best. The film doesn't really offer any groundbreaking insight or emotionally crushing truth bombs, and that's okay! Not every Pixar movie has to be Inside Out . And director Dan Scanlon beautifully builds out this fantasy world with gorgeous, fascinating detail and plenty of humor. The finale is emotionally surprising in the best way, and Chris Pratt and Tom Holland are perfectly cast. Is Onward a Pixar masterpiece? No, but it's also not a disappointing or lacking effort from the studio either. Sometimes a familiar story told well and with passion is just what the doctor ordered. Onward is comfort food for siblings and/or fantasy nerds in the best way. — Adam Chitwood
15.) Toy Story 4
Right out of the gate, Toy Story 4 had to prove it was worth existing. Toy Story 3 capped this iconic franchise in an emotionally satisfying way, and so audiences were wondering what a fourth entry could possibly bring to the table. As it turns out, there are some substantial aspects to Toy Story 4 that make it worthwhile, even if it ultimately falls short of the greatness of the first three movies.
Toy Story 4 tells the story of what happens when you feel your life's purpose is complete, and how sometimes new chapters reveal themselves only when you're willing to let go of the past. It is, in true Pixar tradition, a challenging message but one very much worth telling, and the film's antagonist Gabby Gabby is one of its best ever (maybe the best Toy Story villain ever?). The Woody/Bo Peep relationship evolves in exciting and surprising ways, and Forky is just a piece of pure brilliance. Indeed, with the spork character, Pixar enters existential territory to hilarious and thoughtful results.
The film does at times feel like it's juggling too much, and the story simply cannot find anything meaningful for many of the iconic Toy Story characters to do—including Buzz Lightyear, who gets the biggest cold shoulder. But this is a story about moving on to new stages of life, so it's not especially egregious, and director Josh Cooley shines in threading the stories of the new characters together in a thematically satisfying way. — Adam Chitwood
In many ways, Luca feels like nothing Pixar has done before. The stakes are refreshingly low (relatively speaking), the world is pretty self-contained, and in this movie it's subtext rather than text where it really gets its power . Director Enrico Casarosa may claim the film is merely about friendship, but at heart this movie derives a lot of power from the homosexual love story at its center as a young sea monster meets another young boy who changes his life forever. The film doesn't go full Call Me by Your Name , but themes of seeking acceptance and finding your own band of outsiders ring true, as does the gut-wreching finale. But even beyond all of that, Luca is really lovingly animated, boasts one of Pixar's best scores (thank you Dan Romer ), and is extremely comfortable telling a story about two young boys trying to win a race in a small Italian town. There's no world-ending matter to be solved, nor some fantastical mythology that's uncovered. Sometimes story in its purest form can be tremendously powerful, and that's certainly the case with Luca . It's just a shame this one was relegated to Disney+ and couldn't be enjoyed on the big screen. — Adam Chitwood
13.) Turning Red
When it comes to coming-of-age stories, Pixar has really perfected the formula but Turning Red introduces so many new concepts that we have yet to see in a Pixar film. From the honest look at a Chinese Canadian family to the female friendships the movie is built on, Turning Red is about so much more than growing up. Director and co-writer Domee Shi , best known for her work on the award-winning short Bao , tells a story about a girl named Meilin "Mei" Lee ( Rosalie Chiang ) who is caught between the freedoms that come with adolescence and also the obligation and filial piety she feels she owes her mother ( Sandra Oh ). One day, after a particularly traumatic event, she wakes up in the form of a giant red panda.
As a metaphor for puberty, the movie even mentions menstruation (another first time for Pixar), Mei's life is turned upside down when she finds out that this is actually a blessing passed down from her ancestor. Whenever she feels an overwhelming amount of emotion, she can panda-out. As Mei and her mother's relationship develops and struggles, Mei finds solace and comfort with her friends. Obsessed with the hottest boy band, 4*Town, the girls are desperate to go to their concert and love the idea of using Mei's newfound powers to earn a little cash with a side hustle. Funny, fresh, and with a protagonist who breaks the fourth wall, there is a lot to love in Turning Red . Like Luca , it finds itself relegated to Disney+'s premium subscription rather than seeing a theatrical release, which is a major disappointment. — Therese Lacson
12.) Toy Story 2
Ranking the individual Toy Story films is tough. The first three are flat-out great, and Toy Story 2 impossibly so. The film was entirely reworked just months before release, with John Lasseter taking over as director and crafting a completely new story that riffs on the culture of toy collectors while also expanding the Toy Story mythology in a way that feels organic. Moreover, the “When Somebody Loved Me” sequence laid the foundation for the emotionally tough territory that Pixar would continue to mine in its subsequent efforts. — Adam Chitwood
11.) Toy Story 3
It's incredible just how good Toy Story 3 is. The film addresses issues as dark as mortality, the passing of time, and broken relationships, and it really goes there with its villain (i.e. no redemption arc), all under the guise of an animated sequel to one of the most successful franchises of all time. Pixar and director Lee Unkrich refused to play it safe, and that decision pays off in spades as the film builds to not one but two emotional climaxes that tug at the heartstrings. These toys aren’t simply co-workers; they’re friends who’ve been to hell and back together, and Toy Story 3 really digs deep into that conceit. It’s also straight-up hilarious. Mr. Tortilla Head is one of the more brilliant ideas Pixar’s ever put on screen. — Adam Chitwood
10.) Ratatouille
Quite possibly one of the most important films to Pixar, Ratatouille was in the development stages when the relationship between Pixar and Disney was at its most contentious, and Pixar was actively seeking another distribution partner. Because of this, 2007’s Ratatouille could have been the first non-Disney effort from Pixar, so the animation studio wanted to make sure they got this one absolutely right. The film also proved that Pixar could weather production difficulties and a change in director without Lasseter himself taking over, as Brad Bird was enlisted to rework the picture following the departure of Jan Pinkava .
The result is one of Pixar’s most “grown up” movies. It’s not often you hear kids clamoring for more Ratatouille merchandise, but Bird and Co. crafted a delicious-looking feature that — taking a cue from its thematic throughline — is not afraid to stand out in a crowd. The theme that "anyone can cook" is perfectly realized, and the marrying of the two subsets of characters—the humans and the rats—works beautifully. — Adam Chitwood
Soul is the most ambitious, most mature film Pixar has made to date, and that’s saying something. The studio has a knack for crafting films that speak emotionally to kids as well as humans, but Soul dares tackle the one subject most other films (animated or not) wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole: what’s the meaning of life? It is heady subject matter and it’s a miracle that Soul works as well as it does. The film really digs deep into the idea that life is what happens while you’re making plans, underlining the notion that if you spend your whole life waiting for it to begin the way you’d always dreamed, you’ll miss it.
It’s a really tricky thing to visualize as well, and director Pete Docter and co-director Kemp Powers do a pretty swell job of bringing the afterlife to life in a manner that’s believable but doesn’t feel too outlandish or specific. The Great Beyond also gives Docter’s team of animators room to get experimental with the design of the film, and indeed from a craft perspective Soul is one of Pixar’s best. From the unique styles of the Soul Counselors in the Great Beyond to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross ’ all-timer score (with brilliant jazz compositions by John Batiste ). It’s a wealth of riches for the senses, which makes it all the more upsetting this film couldn’t be seen in theaters.
The only ding I have against Soul is I don’t quite think it nailed the tonal balance completely, as it morphs into a body swapping buddy comedy on Earth and takes a few detours that hinder the pacing a tad. But throughout, even when it’s not working quite as well as in other parts, it’s brilliantly admirable. The structure is more James L. Brooks than fast-moving animated adventure as it’s a film that’s more concerned with these big ideas than action sequences or getting laughs, and in that regard it feels like a uniquely mature film from Pixar. I would not be surprised if this one rises in the ranks upon subsequent rewatches, but for now it’s firmly in the Top 10. — Adam Chitwood
Pixar has undoubtedly lost some of its shine since its golden years, but Coco is as strong a picture as any that Pixar's made — a wholly original, absolutely gorgeous, and yes tearjerking affair that transports viewers to a world full of wonder and heart.
The latter is the soul of Coco , as Toy Story 3 director Lee Unkrich 's second solo effort is all about family. He wisely immersed himself and the filmmaking team into the Mexican culture, specifically as it relates to Dia de Los Muertos, and the resulting film is one about embracing family in spite of your differences and working to understand each other on a deeper level. This movie has a huge heart, and in that regard, it gets back to what Pixar is so good at: compassion. Compassion for strangers, for outsiders, for those different from you, but here it turns that on its head and zeroes in on compassion for your own family.
The filmmaking here is pretty outstanding, offering up Pixar's most colorful and intricate visual affair yet. Moreover, the original songs are both memorable and moving, and composer Michael Giacchino crafts a score that stands separate from the original songs, but still feels vital to the movie as a whole. It's also funny! Basically, this is classic Pixar, which unfortunately has become a rare case as of late. More of this, please. — Adam Chitwood
Though one of Pixar’s earlier efforts had also ventured into new territory by tackling a highly emotional story point upfront, Up takes the cake for the earliest “bawl your eyes out” moment. The opening montage of Pete Docter ’s colorful and sweetly sad adventure film is not only one of the most emotionally impactful sequences in the history of animation, but also one of the most mature. Audiences young and old equally understand the importance of what’s happening without the need for dialogue or voiceover narration, which speaks to the talent of Docter and his team.
While Up fails to match that emotional high (or low) point in the rest of its story, the film still succeeds as a delightful mismatched buddy picture/tale of loneliness that also eschews tradition in favor of breaking new ground with its geriatric hero. — Adam Chitwood
6.) Toy Story
The film that started it all still holds up after all these years. It’s such a simple conceit—a buddy comedy set in the world of toys—but the filmmaking team executes it brilliantly. What could easily have devolved into a nostalgia fest is treated with plenty of care for character, as the film plays on the audience’s personal memories of childhood toys without relying on it for the emotional hook. It’s easy to forget just how groundbreaking Toy Story was, but looking back at the cinematic landscape that it entered, one appreciates the gumption of this scrappy group of animators and cinephiles who dared to make something so strikingly different. — Adam Chitwood
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The first Cars was one of three racing-themed movies that came out in the summer of 2006, the other two being Talladega Nights and The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift. Of those three, it's by...
Brave Cars 2 Finding Nemo Best Pixar Movies: Ranked From Worst to Best With Pixar's Turning Red currently turning heads, it's time to update the rankings. By IGN Staff Updated: Nov 18,...
Our collective staff ranking, averaged from individual ranked lists, addresses which Pixar films we feel are most exciting, most ambitious, and most moving — the ones that most changed our...
Ratatouille (2007)96%. #10. Critics Consensus: Fast-paced and stunningly animated, Ratatouille adds another delightfully entertaining entry -- and a rather unlikely hero -- to the Pixar canon. Synopsis: Remy (Patton Oswalt), a resident of Paris, appreciates good food and has quite a sophisticated palate.
1,810 votes Released: 1968 Directed by: Peter Yates Senator Walter Chalmers (Robert Vaughn) is aiming to take down mob boss Pete Ross (Vic Tayback) with the help of testimony from the criminal's hothead brother Johnny (Pat Renella), who is in ...more #177 of 392 The Best Movies Based On Books #36 of 100 The Best PG Action Movies #11 of 140
The 38 Best Car Movies Ever Made, Ranked vulture lists Updated July 2, 2021 The 38 Greatest Car Movies Ever Made By Bilge Ebiri, a film critic for New York and Vulture Photo:...
Cars 2 is often cited as Pixar's most cynical moment - a sequel that didn't need to happen, and made plenty of cash regardless of quality. 25. Cars 3 At least it's not Cars 2. The dishonor of the weakest Pixar movie is a photo-finish between Cars sequels, with the third in the series narrowly overtaking its predecessor.
228 titles 1. The Pinchcliffe Grand Prix (1975) G | 88 min | Animation, Comedy, Family 8.4 Rate Reodor Felgen decides that he will enter a car race to defeat his former friend who has stolen his plans for a car. Director: Ivo Caprino | Stars: Wenche Foss, Per Theodor Haugen, Harald Heide-Steen Jr., Leif Juster Votes: 13,755 2. Drive (I) (2011)
Some truly epic car movies from the past include Bullitt, Death Proof, Le Mans, Cannonball Run, Duel, Drive, and a few of the Fast and Furious films (but not all—2 of them made this list), as well as many others. But what happens when the recipe goes wrong?
As for the feature films, let's start by getting the worst one out of the way. 26) Cars 2 (2011) In Cars 2, the Larry the Cable Guy truck gets mistaken as a super-spy and has to save the Owen Wilson car from being killed because of oil. It existed. Let's move on.
26. Cars 3 (2017) . Early reviews of Cars 3 praised the latest installment in the Lightning McQueen saga for, essentially, not being Cars 2, the only Pixar film to receive a "rotten" rating on ...
19) Cars 2 (2011) In Cars 2, the Larry the Cable Guy truck gets mistaken as a super spy and has to save the Owen Wilson car from being killed because of oil. It existed. Let's move on.
Disney Pixar's Cars franchise has become one of the most popular and successful in the history of the company, spanning three different movies and over $10 billion in merchandising sales, the franchise is simply a juggernaut.
However, due to the length of the movie series and the iconic image of the car, James Bond 's Aston Martin DB5 has taken the top spot on this list. The car has appeared consistently through the movies since its first appearance in the 60s, with Daniel Craig's Bond using it even more than Sean Connery.
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The setup of Cars 2 already lends itself to humor: after accompanying racer Lightning McQueen on an international racing tour, goofy Mater finds himself caught up in a James Bond-esque spy mission ...
Cars 2 (2011) Cars 2 is the most universally disliked Pixar movie. It had a budget of $200 million, on par with Pixar's two top-grossing films - Toy Story 4 and Incredibles 2 - but it is the only Pixar film (besides Onward) to not make back its budget in domestic box-office sales. Cars 2 is disjointed, chaotic, and boring.
Marvel Movies Ranked Worst to Best by Tomatometer. ... Cars 2 is as visually appealing as any other Pixar production, but all that dazzle can't disguise the rusty storytelling under the hood.
From the spectacular to the bizarre (and everything, everywhere, in between), here are all of the Best Picture nominees of 2023, ranked from worst to best. Photo : ©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett ...
Pixar. 11. Coco (2017) One of Pixar's most vibrant movies, Coco touches on themes that resonate with a range of audiences: family, culture and chasing a dream against all odds. The animation is ...
Without further ado, I present a complete ranking of all the Pixar movies from worst to best. Editor's note: This article was last updated on March 11, 2022 to add Turning Red. 25.) Cars 2. Image ...