Welcome to a new feature I’m hoping to develop in this blog, where I rank everything in particular artist/group’s catalogue from best to worst (or least best in some cases). This is different than a top 5/10/however long list, as those are based on exclusion. Half the fun of reading a top list is to see what doesn’t make it, which tends to take the focus away from the positioning of what does make it. For these posts, everything makes the list, so the discussion is then focused on where. This is an extension of what list obsessives tend to do whenever something new is released by the people we like: mentally place how it compares to everything else they’ve released.
And what better way to kick off this feature than a focus on the absolute best studio making movies today: Pixar Animation. They’ve had an unmatched run of success since the release of Toy Story in 1995, with their name becoming synonymous with quality. The release of a Pixar film is anticipated as much by movie geeks as it is by families looking for the latest distraction for their rugrats, with the releases instantly getting stamped as one of the best releases of the year. So deciding how their feature length films match up will be no mean feat. It’s probably no surprise when I say that I’m an unabashed Pixar fan (especially if you’ve read any of my reviews of their previous films), so be prepared for an onslaught of superlatives.
(more…)
