Next batch of Pixar films after the Monsters Inc. prequel

God sitting through previews of upcoming animated movies last night was motherfucking painful.

Unless you have children, there is no reason NOT to walk into movies 20 minutes late to miss the trailers.

Independent Woman Bo Peep was good angle

She was a survivalist!

I heard/read a great take on the Toy Story movies as workplace comedies. Woody is established early on as sort of a manager, the guy in charge, barking orders and giving directions. The first movie is about the arrival of a new employee and how to integrate him into the team. The second movie is about Woody considering a promotion with better pay and fewer duties at a different company, but ultimately deciding to remain loyal to his team. The third one is about a hostile takeover leading to Woody et al. jumping ship to a new start-up (Bonnie). And the fourth movie is about Woody coming to grips with aging out of the workforce and embracing retirement.

there were a few moments that felt almost a bit Black Mirror-ish...Forky trying to kill himself, the defective and broken toys living in the antique store forever, the fact that a kindergartener can just create sentient life...I feel like the film's cuteness and humor was able to gloss over all that but the more of these they make the more it kinda delves into that world

I watched this with my kids (4 & 2) so I only got to pay half attention, but it was pretty funny. I assume I missed some good stuff while my kid was trying to climb over the seats. the stuffed toys played by Key & Peele were pretty good, I'm glad they did an ad ahead of time where they play the K&P valet characters cuz I was gonna say

Anyone have any thoughts on Onward? Doesn't seem to have been discussed here much, if at all. Haven't seen it yet but planning to rectify that soon.

Soul is out later this year and sounds v promising, looking forward to that one.

Onward is remarkably unremarkable.

Onward was fine, my 9 year-old loves it and has watched it dozens of times. It's not top tier Pixar, but I also think it dropped from the conversation pretty quickly. I'm not sure a traditional run in a non-pandemic year would have improved it's rep all that much. But I think part of it is the curse of Pixar expectations, Onward didn't break any new ground in animation style/techniques (i.e. nailing Sully's hair in Monster Inc. or the underwater stuff in Nemo) and the story was pretty pat compared to say, Coco. All of which makes it sound like I'm lukewarm on it, but I'm not, I thought it was enjoyable.

I loved it. I tend to get very invested in dead dad stories anyway, but this one resonated in many unexpected ways.

i quit ten minutes in.

I have access to disney+ but I don't feel like watching anything after Coco.

Toy Story 4 in HDR is gorgeous.

There was a little discussion of Onward in the streaming services thread. I was surprised to really enjoy it - my favorite of the uh three movies I've watched this year

Soul is really really good I thought!

Yeah, I enjoyed it. I went in with fairly low expectations, for Pixar anyway, but I liked it. Much better than Onward and a pretty sweet story, for the most part.

a pretty sweet story, for the most part.

With a fairly nuanced message. It certainly is in their more thoughtful, 'adult' category of films, along with Ratatouille and Wall-E.

I was concerned it would be too close to Coco, given the premise (afterlife & music!), but the texture and themes were very different.

Disney charged full price for mulan but soul is up for free with disney+? i guess the mulan experiment failed.

Onward was "free," too. But you're right, if they could have charged more for it I imagine they would have.

Glad to hear this is possibly better than some of the things I've, well, heard.

seems to be a growing consensus on Twitter that Disney has an issue with letting black people be black people through a whole movie. Haven't watched it yet myself.

Yeah, Princess and the Frog was pretty bad on that front. "We have the first black princess! And ... now she's a frog."

We liked it. I especially enjoyed the moment when Dorothea tells the fish in the ocean parable.

I thought the story was sweet in this one, but man, the lighting on Pixar movies is SO beautiful at this point. All of the little reflections and diffuse light everywhere added up to an almost-overwhelming version of NYC, where every time they started to zoom out, I was just flooded with sensory overload and emotion.

Soul was excellent, one of their best works imo. Felt like they improved on the headier concepts from something like Inside Out and markedly improved it

Character poses alone were off the charts good, and the script had me guffawing throughout

Rachel House is great in this btw

I feel like this will benefit from a second viewing where I’m not quite as anxious about the outcomes of various parts. It’s actually pretty stressful on the first watch!

the script had me guffawing throughout

Yes it was extremely funny.

Oh my god, I absolutely *loved* this. My favorite Pixar film since ... Ratatouille and WALL-E? It was absolutely gorgeous, and the perfect capper to a crap year. I wish I could have seen it on the big screen.

Watched this with the whole family. Some very good jokes but contra some here I didn't think it matched Inside Out, which had multiple bravura performances; then again I don't think this movie was really going for bravura performances. The things I liked best about it (the very fast, very good jokes about 22's various mentors & the Knicks) were the things I felt the movie was doing out of obligation (though very well!) whereas what I felt the movie really cared about was a basic "enjoy the little things" message that didn't really ring for me.

oh man i loved this - it kinda hooked into me like lowlevel therapy, i guess i was just in the right headspace. Really, really great.

I feel like this will benefit from a second viewing where I’m not quite as anxious about the outcomes of various parts. It’s actually pretty stressful on the first watch!

― sound of scampo talk to me (El Tomboto), Saturday, December 26, 2020 6:46 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

interesting you say this, I actually thought the stakes felt kinda low throughout, I mean the main character dies in the first 15 minutes! I liked this a lot, the message that constant striving is bad and mediocrity is meaningful is something that really resonates with me, but I thought there was something of an economy to the story (comparing to, say, inside out) that left a little to be desired. and whatever happened with chloe??

some fun and somewhat cringe nuggets, loved the knicks reference, tina fey voicing a black character after the 30 rock blackface thing was uh, no comment I guess. thought the whole thing overall was really tightly done, looked great, kind of a minor pixar but 4/5 for me

Soul was one of the most unexpectedly Buddhist films I'd seen in a long time.

I enjoyed Soul. My gut reax is that I didn't like it as much as Inside Out or Coco (definitely) and maybe even Onward ... although I might just be saying that because I cried more at Onward. (I cried at Soul, but a little less than I expected to.)

I thought it was sweet, maybe a bit low-stakes, with a good message, which I took more as "appreciate day-to-day life" as opposed to "mediocrity is meaningful". For me, the message felt very similar to Up, i.e. quit looking for more because it's the people/relationships/experiences/memories you're having now that matter.

Agree with the comment about beautiful light in Pixar movies, how NYC was portrayed, etc. I was struck by the way Terry moved through the real world.

I guess I feel similarly to k3vin ... and good call on what happened to Chloe?

quit looking for more because it's the people/relationships/experiences/memories you're having now that matter.

But do follow your ambitions if that makes your happy - as long as you're aware there's a balance. A nice antidote to the standard Hollywood messaging (which was hammered in when I watched the inferior La La Land a day later, an interesting unwitting companion piece).

I found the lost souls rather haunting, I feel like I've been there myself a few times.

Like Inside Out, I thought it gained a lot of power from literalizing somewhat abstract concepts like lost souls. And the simplicity of it all I think was part of the point. Joe in a lot of ways is making things complicated by thinking there is a specific purpose for his life, a specific goal, and anything less is failure. But as 22 learns via the little things, it's the journey, not the destination. Sort of reminded me a tiny bit of ... Defending Your Life?

Inside Out is good, too, but for some reason it didn't fully work for me, at least as much as I remember it. I loved Coco, which at the least was absolutely gorgeous and moving, but one reason I may prefer this one, or at least like it equally, is the lack of a villain. I love it when these movies can get away with losing the baddie.

Who was Chloe? There's not even a Chloe in the full cast and crew in IMDB.

maybe I got her name wrong — the trombone kid that joe mentors

the lack of a villain is a good observation, the movie still works despite lacking that convention, it just seemed to take from the urgency a little. idk, I have to think about it it some more

it’s connie I think

Oh, the trombone kid? I don't think we really need a follow up with her, the movie more or less takes place in one day. 22 getting a chance to play the mentor for once is the story being told there.

Btw, one of my kids asked if her name was 22 because she was the 22nd soul (we know she's been around for thousands of years) and, if so, if she used to be a caveman.

Also, I found all of the cat stuff hilarious. Just the idea of a guy being chased down the sidewalk by an angry and howling fat cat is inherently funny to me.

also thought basically all the jokes landed to some degree or another, I enjoyed the self-deprecating anti-MBA bullshit from the jerrys especially

Again, been years since I've seen Inside Out, but I do remember that one had a "Chinatown" joke, which in 2015 felt a little ... hoary. But this one had a funny pizza-rat joke. And also a good joke about finding a half-consumed Slurpee on the Subway. And also a joke about a man in a cat's body instinctively licking his butt before realizing what he was doing and grimacing. And I want to go back and freeze-frame the name tags of mentors in one fleeting scene. We caught Aretha Franklin's name, but that's it.

Several Ghibli films don't really have a villain either, or at least not one that remains straightforwardly villainous. I wonder if Pixar was inspired by that.

Pixar and Ghibli have had a close relationship for years

yeah this was exceptional. hard to even rank Pixar films for me; I like this as much as I liked Coco and Ratatouille and Up.

probably goes without saying, but the music was lovely in Soul. the jazz, for sure, but i really loved the synth-y stuff in the moment and thought it fit perfectly with otherworldly setting when they weren't in the city. (i didn't know of the Batiste or Reznor/Ross involvement until watching the credits, for whatever that's worth.)

Yeah, who would have ever guessed that one day Trent Reznor of all people would wind up an Oscar winner scoring a Pixar film?

I mean, he was Up above it

the synth parts of the score reminded me of that Eno music app “Bloom” - such pretty sounds

definitely heard the Eno in there. Music works super well in this I thought.

On first watch, "I like this as much as I liked Coco and Ratatouille and Up" seems about right!

i watched Ratatouille for the first time today & it’s nice and all but i just can’t get past the whole rat thing. ugh. #NotForMe

my Pixars are prob Toy Story & Monsters Inc.

I do like Ratatouille a lot.

I pay very little attention to movies, Pixar, etc., but looking at the list of their films, I feel like I should go back and watch The Good Dinosaur because I saw it with my kids and thought it was *awful* and they don't really make too many *awful* movies.

Is it generally considered a clear dud in their catalog? I remember the whole thing being just pointless and clunky and boring and weird.