Toy Story

#112 at the time of writing.

The genre of digitally animated movies owes a huge debt to Toy Story - the first feature film to be entirely computer animated. If this film had been rubbish, the genre might have sputtered and struggled to get going. But with an unblushing emphasis on character and story, animation giant John Lasseter's Pixar (using Steve Jobs' computers) deservedly exploded onto the scene and never looked back.

The early Nineties: Terminator 2 had shown that digital trickery could be used to great effect; Lawnmower Man proved that digital effects were no substitute for a crappy story. After a couple of limp decades, Disney were experiencing a resurgence of success with musical animated features such as Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. Enter a quirky non-musical feelgood film about toys that come to life, and boom - cartoons are cool again, for adults as well as children.

Re-watching this for maybe the tenth time recently, I continue to be struck by just how wonderful it is. The jokes! The characters! The phenomenal voice work from Tom Hanks! It hasn't aged at all. And it's hard to believe that such a high quality movie could possibly have been matched - perhaps even outdone - by its two sequels. (The best trilogy of all time?)

The story of Toy Story's production, and the hiccups along the way, makes fascinating reading.

My Neighbour Totoro

#159 at the time of writing.

I enjoyed this the first time I watched it; it felt light on plot but very zen - the journey was atmospheric without there needing to be much of a destination. However since my two-year-old daughter fell in love with it and demanded to watch it with me every morning for a week, my appreciation has grown deeper and deeper.

The DVD box back does a good job of summing up my feelings towards this film: "Conceived as a family film without conflict and suffused with the carefree pleasures of the summertime... My Neighbour Totoro shows Japanese animation's famous Studio Ghibli at its very best, and is an elegy to two ever-fading miracles: the fairytale world of childhood and the disappearing countryside."

This was originally released as a double bill with Grave of the Fireflies - another film I'd love to watch (and also on IMDb's Top 250). The 25th anniversary edition is in cinemas now.

This was also one of Roger Ebert's favourite movies. He said: "...it would never have won its worldwide audience just because of its warm heart. It is also rich with human comedy in the way it observes the two remarkably convincing, lifelike little girls... It is a little sad, a little scary, a little surprising and a little informative, just like life itself. It depends on a situation instead of a plot, and suggests that the wonder of life and the resources of imagination supply all the adventure you need."

Totoro, the forest spirit, now features in Studio Ghibli's logo and even made a cameo appearance in another all-time great "children's" film, Toy Story 3.

(Whatever you do, don't click on this.)

Toy Story - The Best Film Trilogy?

I stumbled across a fascinating analysis that attempts to identify the best film trilogies according to both IMDb voters and professional critics.

The conclusion is that IMDb voters rank the following trilogies as the best of all time:

Lord of the Rings
Star Wars (original 3)
Godfather
Toy Story
Indiana Jones

The order changes if you only count the top 1000 voters, but those are still the top 5.

Astonishingly, but deservedly, professional critics (as collated by Rotten Tomatoes) rate none other than the Toy Story trilogy as the best of all time. Their top 5 includes most of the trilogies preferred by the plebs above, plus the Trois Couleurs trilogy.

It's a great article, with graphs and everything. Have a look!

Toy Story 3

#9 at time of writing.

Wow. I haven't laughed out loud so often, and cried so hard, since... well, since Up. But if you exclude Pixar, since ever.

That's right. I'm a grown man and I bawled my eyes out.

Pixar are the masters - nay, the gods - of story. With Toy Story 3, they once again excel themselves. There is not one moment that allows your attention to flag, and the plot masterfully achieves that most challenging of goals (as taught by Terry Rossio): it's decisive, set-up, inevitable and yet genuinely unexpected.

This wonderful threequel complements and augments the first two films beautifully, whilst simultaneously laying a fair claim to being one of the best animated movies ever. Indeed, IMDb voters have propelled it into the top 10 movies of all time, of any genre. (With Inception currently at #3, July 2010 is proving to be a month of astonishingly high-quality film releases, at least as far as IMDb voters are concerned.)

The emotional core of Toy Story 3 is provided by the question: What happens to Andy's toys when he grows too old to play with them? A typical Pixar mix of loss, jealousy, hope and high-jinks follows, with an ending that will reconnect you to your inner child - and perhaps have your real children wondering why you are sniffling and teary-eyed over a bunch of toys.

Thank goodness Pixar and Disney made up. When they split over creative differences in 2004-2005, Disney started up an animation division titled 'Circle 7 Animation,' which would have been in charge of churning out sequels for Pixar films without consulting Pixar. The original plot for Toy Story 3 was going to be about Buzz Lightyear having a defect and being shipped to Taiwan to be fixed, and the other toys shipping themselves to Taiwan to rescue him. Judging by Disney's decidedly mediocre record with sequels, we should be grateful that Pixar are back in charge.

Finding Nemo

#112 at time of writing.

A better children's film has never been made. Well, except for maybe Toy Story. And The Incredibles. And, well, you get the idea. Pixar rock.

I have been lucky enough to go scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef. It was fantastic, the stuff of dreams. Coral so colourful it could have been designed by Walt Disney. Clams so big you could believe that they'd swallow you whole. The occasional troupe of reef sharks minding their own business. Big tubular things straight out of an H. R. Giger nightmare.

Pixar captured it all, and made it larger than life. But that's entirely incidental. The story and the characters are what make this film unforgettable - even to the extent that every now and then my girlfriend still flits around the house singing in Dory's voice, "Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. What do we do? We swim, swim. Ha ha ha ha ho ho..."

And what fun this must have been to research! The production crew were apparently all treated to visits to aquariums, and diving trips to Monterey, Hawaii and Australia.

As you can see, Finding Nemo doesn't just appeal to kids. And it definitely appeals to me.

Mine!

The Incredibles

#80 at time of writing.

Pixar are a phenomenon. They blasted into the box office with Toy Story, redefining what could be done with computer animation. They followed it up with A Bug's Life, which was at least as good as DreamWorks' contemporary computer-animated ant movie (what are the odds?), Antz. Then, against all odds, they outdid the first Toy Story film with its sequel. For an encore, they produced Monsters, Inc. - a triumph of imaginative comedy.

That's when they pulled out the big guns. Finding Nemo was mind-blowing. Beautiful, touching, hilarious, epic... and absolutely impossible to follow.

The trailers for The Incredibles aroused excitement and cynicism in equal measure. Yay! Another Pixar film! But superheroes? Surely they've lost their touch after a lucky run. Surely after their first five near-perfect films they'll slip up, or lose momentum.

Couldn't be more wrong. The Incredibles is just that. Incredible.

The sheer number and variety of characters, scenes and textures raises the bar sky-high for computer animated films. The idea is simple enough: a family of undercover superheroes, while trying to live the quiet suburban life, are forced into action to save the world. But the result is sublime. A supremely comic and stunningly imaginative blend of the mundane and the fantastic. It makes me want to get up from my seat and dance. Or double over laughing. Or shed a gooey sentimental tear.

This summer, Pixar's seventh feature film will be released, Cars. Yay! Another Pixar film! But cars? Surely they've lost their touch after a lucky run...