Tag: Pixar

  • Brad Bird’s The Incredibles 2 traps superheroes in motels and courtrooms

    Brad Bird’s The Incredibles 2 traps superheroes in motels and courtrooms

    Brad Bird’s The Incredibles 2 sure went down easy when I saw it in a theater a few months ago, but it suffers on rewatch on the small screen. And needless to say, it was shortly rendered wholly obsolete by the best animated superhero movie of all time, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. While the real […]

  • Brad Bird Steals His Own Movie in Pixar’s The Incredibles

    Brad Bird Steals His Own Movie in Pixar’s The Incredibles

    Like writer/director Brad Bird’s Ratatouille, The Incredibles is a virtually perfect movie. Bird’s astonishing one-two punch for Pixar builds on the animation studio’s reputation for deep emotional resonance already earned by Andrew Stanton’s Finding Nemo and later reconfirmed by Wall-E. But Bird’s films add a welcome maturity that proves the medium of animation can be, […]

  • Andrew Stanton’s Finding Nemo is childlike but not childish

    Andrew Stanton’s Finding Nemo is childlike but not childish

    Andrew Stanton’s Finding Nemo immediately preceded Pixar’s slightly more sophisticated collaborations with director Brad Bird, The Incredibles and Ratatouille. But despite being one of Pixar’s more overtly kid-oriented films, Andrew Stanton’s Finding Nemo is rife with anxiety and death. In the tradition of its spiritual ancestor Bambi, which also famously features a mother’s arbitrary murder […]

  • Think Different: WALL-E

    Think Different: WALL-E

    With the delightful WALL-E, Pixar continues its as-yet unbroken winning streak of instant-classic films for all ages. While my personal favorites are Brad Bird’s darker and more psychologically complex The Incredibles and Ratatouille, Andrew Stanton’s WALL-E is easily also one that will resonate decades hence with children of all ages (as the saying goes). Other […]