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.

A Quiet Place only has 2-3 minutes of dialogue, with a screenplay of only 67 pages, but it still works tremendously as a blockbuster that continues to challenge what defines popcorn entertainment. Its post-apocalyptic world is built with some frightening sound effects, dark lighting, and a slow-moving camera that are masterfully implemented to generate a sense of urgency. It’s a genius work of utilizing ambiance instead of dialogue to tell the story, and it had proven so effective that the audience in the movie theater was reportedly too afraid to eat their popcorn, thus making noise, while watching the movie.
​
When John Krasinski was brought on to direct, write, and star in this groundbreaking exercise of orchestrating thrills, he pulled greatly from his own experience raising his newborn daughter. His efforts with this hefty project grew even more personal when his casting decisions relied on instinct rather than auditions, as his decision to cast his wife Emily Blunt to play his character’s wife added to the impact of the film’s major events. Also in this cast was Millicent Simmonds, a deaf actress who played the deaf daughter, and she along with a deaf coach on set ensured that all ASL communication between the family was clear and accurate. Ultimately, no movie exists quite like this one, and no movie may ever be quite like it either. Except of course, for its sequel.

PG-13 (V)
Horror/Sci-fi
1 hr. 30 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to THINK.
Watch it to feel AFRAID.

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.
​
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.

Academy Award-winner My Octopus Teacher talks about how a man’s study of a single octopus changed him over the course of a year, and in this time, he never treats the animal like a pet, refusing to even give her a name. This is the feature film debut of director/marine journalist Pippa Ehrlich, which is remarkable considering how difficult production must have gotten with all the underwater filming. With all their work in this gorgeously dense kelp forest of South Africa, the crew documents all the things an octopus wouldn’t commonly be known to do, such as express every emotion a human could express. Then after filming was over, it took them about three months to generate some form of narrative from the recorded content.

​​The finished product gives not just a scholarly analysis of octopus behavior but a strong environmental conservation message that doesn’t come off as excessively preachy; the focus instead remains on the powerful relationship between a man and an octopus. It does what very few documentaries have done in proving that the best way to study an animal isn’t in a classroom but in its natural habitat. The heavy set of emotions that this little movie offers on such a small creature is overwhelming enough to shake up the industry of documentary filmmaking, perhaps by encouraging more underwater filming or by writing more narratives structured around a year-long experience.

G
Documentary
1 hr. 25 min.

Watch it to LEARN.
Watch it to THINK.
Watch it to feel HAPPY and SAD.