A super important discussion.

[tacticslion]

Dang it.

Well, Up is amazing. So is Wall-E. And The Incredibles. Cars (much better than most people credit, though it's not "the best"?). Inside Out. The three Toy Story films.

Monsters, Inc. was a really good film that was pleasant, if a tad on the trite side in its ending (but in a good way). Finding Nemo is a phenomenal film that I appreciate as a father in ways that both delight and horrify me (like American Tail does these days).

Cars 2 is actually... really great. I get why it gets flak, but it's a solid film. Brave was great, but it suffered from tonal issues: mostly the trailers sold me a different genre than I ended up seeing, making it less awesome than it deserves. Rattatoui (sorry for the spelling, I'm on a phone that hates every variant) is a shockingly mature film, dealing with family issues, social acceptance, romance, internal politics, children from wedlock, morality, and death, pretty bluntly.

Monsters U. was a pretty fun romp.

The Good Dinosaur had some amaaaaaaazing visuals, solid music, and a powerfully empathetic and understandably flawed father figure... but it felt disoriented and unsure of its final direction or reasoning; and I'd literally seen the whole movie before, more than once (except for those T-Rexes; those surprised me in a good way). A Bug's Life was a fine film, but too "tidy" and trite to be as much of a classic as others, despite my enjoyment.

As I'm going from memory, those are the film's I can recall while sick at present, and the "tiers" of films I'd put them in, rather than exact order. (Though Nemo should probably be one higher - it's just a pain to edit on this phone).

I will say this: I am in love with Up (and my son) to have watched it dozens of times, intimately know many of its mistakes and failures (and there are quite a few) and still rank it among the top films in the bunch. It is a powerful and excellent film that understands people. The love story is perfect, and, frankly, I look up to Carl in many ways - I am unsure if I'd have the fortitude or will to live beyond my wife, even if our relative genetics allowed for it. Also, Up (and Cars) is one of my go-to examples when I show people that Pixar films are not "children" films, but are instead "child-friendly-disguised, but fully adult films" - because daaaaaaaagggyyuuuuuuuuuuum.