Director Domee Shi, in her feature film debut, demonstrates how well she can translate live-action filmmaking techniques into animation and take full advantage of the animation medium. She sustains a very balanced use of color where the school looks fluorescent green, which contrasts with the red on Meilin when she turns into a red panda. Other creative touches take direct inspiration from anime, which goes on to influence the music, action poses, and adorable, highlighted eyes. It's incredible how brave Pixar has become at this point to utilize such stylized animation in a way that doesn’t distract from the story.
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In regard to the subject matter, Meilin’s body is going through unusual changes, and her parents and friends remain so supportive of her. Meilin is a rather complex main character for a family film; she genuinely wants to prioritize family yet at the same time sees a boy band concert as her coming-of-age ritual. The story of this Chinese-Canadian tween is made even more special by the fact that it was directed by a Chinese-Canadian woman, who in turn tastefully explores the issues that come with a Chinese family moving into a new country, particularly in how it causes tension across generations. Bottom line: Turning Red is exactly what Disney needs right now to appeal to more mature audiences and represent more minority groups who need their stories to be heard.

PG (DV)
Comedy/Fantasy
1 hr. 40 min.

Watch it for FUN.
​Watch it to feel HAPPY and SAD.

The two leads, Gary (15 years old) and Alana (25 years old), share an absolutely irresistible chemistry with one another that generates a careful ebb-and-flow of tension throughout the film. Gary feels sexually drawn to this woman who’s a full decade older than himself and tries to sound older than his age while motivated by his lustful puppy love. Whereas Alana knows how to describe a water bed to make it sound sexual, making her the perfect counterpart to Gary. The witty screenplay does more than just create engaging dialogue—it comments on the gas shortage crisis, which feels uncomfortably similar to today’s issues of limited natural resources.
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With more social themes like that explored, as well as the subtle use of fashion, director Paul Thomas Anderson makes everything about Licorice Pizza just scream the 1970s. The layers of authenticity lead to the credibility of the unbelievable story, and with the pitch-perfect acting, it could almost pass as a dramatized documentary. Overall, this work is pure genius; Paul Thomas Anderson mixes together these ingredients that to a sane person sound repulsive and makes them work in a way that bursts your bubble about our economy’s health, which in fact hasn’t changed much over the past fifty years. Other directors have managed to argue why pineapple on a pizza works, but Anderson used this movie of his to prove how licorice on pizza could work.

R (DLS​)
Comedy/Drama
2 hr. 13 min.

Watch it to THINK.
​Watch it to feel HAPPY.

This ambitious study on the unexpected virtue of ignorance tells its story with what is made to look like one long continuous take without any edit cuts. The clever tricks utilized to pull off this illusion included time-lapses to transition to a different time of day and letting objects move across the frame to hide swipe transitions between cuts. These shots lasted anywhere between 9-16 minutes long, and 90% of the film was digitally altered in some way, such as by removing the camera crew from the mirrors the actors constantly looked into. These mirrors were essential to achieve Iñárritu’s vision because they helped crop the actors without needing to cut or change the camera position, doubling as narrative symbolism to represent the ego of whoever is looking into those mirrors.
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Besides being an endeavor for the production crew, this narrative style was also a challenge that stretched the skill of the cast. Michael Keaton and Edward Norton both act their hearts out when they’re together, while Emma Stone delivers a monologue that’s guaranteed to ignite goosebumps. Yet there’s so much more that makes this movie so great: the dialogue is brilliant, the musical drum score is awesome, and the cinematography is among the most gorgeous ever put to film. There’s just so much about Birdman that makes it everything a movie should be, while also being a needed push for the potential of art.

R (DLSV​)
Comedy/Drama
1 hr. 59 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to THINK.
Watch it to LEARN.
​Watch it to feel HAPPY.

This is certainly the worst of all the Toy Story movies, yet Toy Story 4 still continues the series’ tradition of revolutionizing the animation industry with its technological breakthroughs. The toy characters of course all have their familiar toy-like ways of moving, with the new challenges added from the new set of characters, including Bo Peep’s elaborate stunts, the awkward Forky, the plushy Ducky and Bunny, the creepy Gabby Gabby, and her ventriloquist dummy henchmen. But the animation achievements are far more ambitious than that: The lights from the sun and the carnival all look scarily realistic, which in turn makes the textures on the toys, with all their minuscule scratches, look more lifelike than actual live-action does.

​When creating the antique store, over 10,000 items were built with varying degrees of aging; to complete the atmosphere, new software was developed to create the cobwebs. The camera further pushed for the photorealism by using filming techniques previously only used in live-action; this doesn’t just include the handheld camera system used in previous Pixar films, but also the imitated look of an anamorphic lens. These techniques mean in the near future, the line between animation and live-action could blur to the point where the two sides become indistinguishable from each other. These ambitious strides in utilizing the computer to recreate the real world prove how much more room for growth this beloved franchise has potential for still.

​G
Comedy/Fantasy
1 hr. 43 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to THINK.
​Watch it to feel HAPPY, SAD, and AFRAID.

It had been eleven years since the second movie, meaning the target audience of the first Toy Story, that being kids born in the early 1990s, were now ready to start college, just like Andy in this movie. Although Toy Story 3 still carries the same old issues of having no logical sense from the past two movies, there are still plenty of wonderful merits at play. For starters, the technology finally passed the point of creating realistic human characters that didn’t appear uncanny, with more controls in each character model than ever before. Yet even with this freedom of giving an impressive range of facial expressions, all the characters, particularly Spanish Buzz and Lotso the teddy bear, still presented their own unique animation challenges.

​Better still, Pixar revolutionized a new system for creating the fabric for clothes, which was important because this movie had three times as many toys as the very first movie. Even the use of lights, camera, and audio was quite ambitious for an animated film, seeing how they all stylistically harkened back to other more mature Hollywood genres, such as prison movies or film noir, while still keeping the playful, adventurous, at times dangerous tone that a Toy Story movie should have. The finished product ended up making multiple generations of people cry, because, in a way, the series had truly grown up with its original audience, and it was time to say goodbye.

G
Comedy/Fantasy
1 hr. 40 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to THINK.
Watch it to feel HAPPY, SAD, and AFRAID.

Toy Story 2 had to preserve what made Toy Story an instant classic, which wasn’t easy considering the first movie already shook up the entire animation industry. Yet this sequel became an excellent showcase of how much the CGI technology had improved in only four years. The scope is much greater this time around, with the toy characters now going through an apartment complex’s air vents, into a toy store, and on airplane tires! Also noteworthy is the video game-based opening scene where Buzz Lightyear goes on a mission to another planet—a sequence containing multiple lighting and rendering effects the first movie couldn’t achieve.

​Then of course there’s the animation of the toys; every new toy character moves in a way that’s true to the material they’re made from while also matching their personality, the Barbie dolls perhaps being the most hilarious example of the animators’ talent! Though even that wasn’t as tricky as animating the humans, especially since there were more that had to be created in the backgrounds, and with more detail. As a bonus, the adventurous music adds some unexpected emotion backed up by the heart-wrenching song, “When She Loved Me” by Sarah McLachlan. All these components ultimately helped this sequel surpass the quality of the original in virtually every way, proving that animated films could be just as mature as a live-action movie made for adults.

G
Comedy/Fantasy
1 hr. 32 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to feel HAPPY and SAD.

It’s the very first fully computer-animated motion picture, but Toy Story mostly sticks out for its wonderful appeal to anyone of any age. With this movie being the first of its kind, the animators only could do what was possible with the technology available, meaning the architecture had to be made mostly from straight lines touched up with lights and texture. As far as making these toys move, it was tricky for the animators to find points of reference, since toys can’t move in real life. So one of the ingenious techniques they used to help figure out the movements of the green army men was to nail shoes on boards and film themselves walking in them—just a taste of Pixar’s immense creativity.

​​Yet even that wasn’t nearly as difficult as animating the humans or the dog, which looked impressive for the time, but the technology still wasn’t quite ready to create appealing humans or animals. There clearly was a lot that Pixar had to prove in this revolutionary motion picture of theirs, but the real reason it became so beloved immediately was because the story always came first in the production. Since the computer was used as a tool rather than the centerpiece of the film’s existence, everyone can now enjoy the privilege of laughing and crying from this lovable warm-hug of a movie that in turn shook up the animation industry forever.

G
Comedy/Fantasy
1 hr. 21 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to feel HAPPY.

Under the wing of DreamWorks, The Bad Guys pulls off the miraculous task of taking role models that would come off as horrible by another animation studio and yet somehow making them into positive influences on kids. Yet there’s just as much heart to please the grownups as well as professional animators, starting with its opening scene that is a continuous shot focused on a casual conversation in a diner, like in Pulp Fiction. There are also fun car chases similar to those found in The Blues Brothers and elements found in heist movies like Reservoir Dogs.
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As for the animation, the refreshingly bright backgrounds are made from splotches of paint while the special effects tricks create 2D smoke with lines drawn on the computer graphics to resemble a comic book illustration. The eyes of the characters are intentionally given no lighting or texture, yet still glow brighter than anything else in the frame. The way the city skyline is rendered with its haze and sun flares are intentionally meant to resemble an instantly recognizable look for Los Angeles, the city this movie takes place in. The animators furthermore had the challenge of translating live reference footage of dancers into anthropomorphic animals who had to do those same dances. With all these elements brought together into a satisfying whole, DreamWorks Animation created an exciting little movie that parents and their kids can have fun watching together.

PG (DV)
Comedy/Fantasy
1 hr. 40 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to feel HAPPY.

It was first a 2010 short film, then shortly after, it became a children’s book, and now, it’s the most adorable stop-motion movie ever made, as well as the most technologically ambitious. While films in the past have put hand-drawn animation over live-action before, and CGI characters are currently everywhere, never before has stop-motion puppetry been used to this detailed of an extent with technology that’s well ahead of its time. This medium of animation is known for being such an enormous task, and sure enough, this little movie was so complex that it took the storyboard artists three years to create the animatic.
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When creating the props for the film shoot, anything that the cute little shell interacted with had to be either rigged with materials that could be animated or remade from scratch with bendable materials. These props included plants, a couch, and even the dust on a table while these little characters were ice skating on top of it. The animated components in each frame had to be filmed separately from the live-action environment, meaning before they were combined in post-production, they had to match one another perfectly in light, composition, and even camera focus. No other movie exists like Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, and in time, it should pick up momentum and go on to inspire other special effects artists as they acquire a plethora of brand-new tools in their toolkits.

PG (D)
Comedy/Fantasy
1 hr. 30 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to feel HAPPY and SAD.

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the producers of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, created yet another animated feature film with a distinct visual art style, this one having photographs that are hand drawn, light programmed to behave like paint, and a cast of characters that look like insane caricatures. Decorating this art style are splashes of what look like doodles from a school journal, be it hearts popping up for a moment when somebody hugs another, tiny little dinosaurs in a secret handshake, or a cat filter covering someone’s face. They are the kind of visuals that erase what’s normal and leave behind only what’s ugly.

​The absurd look of the animation fits the tone of the story, which throws around a joke per second while also not shying away from how deeply personal it was to everyone who helped make it. After all the brilliant doses of humor, the director comes right out at the start of the end credits and says he based the Mitchell family on his own imperfect family, just like how everyone who made this movie is from a weird family of misfits. At the end of the day, that is how every filmmaker got their start, which proves why The Mitchells vs. the Machines, in all its self-aware glory put on by a bunch of professionals simply having fun together, is among the best American animated movies ever made.

PG (V)
Comedy/Sci-fi
1 hr. 54 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to feel HAPPY and SAD.