The landing page, with rationale and links to other posts in this series, can be found here. Like Winnie the Pooh, Dumbo is a short movie that probably would have been a little better if it’d had a little more going on. Unlike Winnie the Pooh, Dumbo has little things like “labor disputes” and “the onset of World War II” which get… Read More Disney/Pixar Rankings: 30-26
The landing page, with rationale and links to other posts in this series, can be found here. I think when The Good Dinosaur was released in the fall of 2015, we were all so emotionally exhausted by Inside Out that summer that just about anything would have been extraneous. Certainly viewers rejected The Good Dinosaur, which is a good, solid movie… Read More Disney/Pixar Rankings: 35-31
The landing page, with rationale and links to other posts in this series, can be found here. The first Trousdale and Wise movie to hit the list—their other efforts are The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Beauty and the Beast, so you may need to wait a sec to see them here again—is most of the way to… Read More Disney/Pixar Rankings: 40-36
The landing page, with rationale and links to other posts in this series, can be found here. Somewhere towards the end of this movie, I had to level with myself. I was laughing my butt off at basically everything Jack-Jack did, but as the movie decided to get closer to solving its plot and further away… Read More Disney/Pixar Rankings: 45-41
The landing page, with rationale and links to other posts in this series, can be found here. We’re entering the Wolfgang Reitherman portion of the program, which I’m pretty jazzed about. (Everything from here on out is at least okay, which is kind of a relief…writing about bad movies isn’t super fun.) There’s good and bad… Read More Disney/Pixar Rankings: 50-46
For a brief introduction and a running list of movies covered in this project, click here 55) Sabotage (1936), directed by Alfred Hitchcock I wasn’t ready for Hitchcock to do it, and then he did it anyway. That sounds naive, but the man was called the “Master of Suspense,” not the “Master of Dropping the Hammer,” and Sabotage is… Read More Better than BFI’s Top 100: 55-51
The landing page, with rationale and links to other posts in this series, can be found here. Wreck-It Ralph is not an interesting or good enough movie to deserve a sequel, which is just resoundingly obvious in Ralph Breaks the Internet. Ralph and Vanellope are forced to reckon with their natures in the first movie, and that’s a story… Read More Disney/Pixar Rankings: 55-51
For a brief introduction and a running list of movies covered in this project, click here 60) Alien (1979), directed by Ridley Scott Last year I was in my living room with a cockroach. I thought I saw it duck out from behind my curtains and then run back behind them, and I wasn’t entirely sure that… Read More Better than BFI’s Top 100: 60-56
For a brief introduction and a running list of movies covered in this project, click here 65 Straw Dogs (1971), directed by Sam Peckinpah Why didn’t they call it The Violent Bear Trap It Away? Hee hee. Seriously, though, when that thing finally goes off I gasped. It was not a cute “Oh, merciful heavens” gasp, but one… Read More Better than BFI’s Top 100: 65-61
The landing page, with rationale and links to other posts in this series, can be found here. A fear of what it means to grow old is at the heart of a number of Pixar’s better movies: Toy Story 2 stands alone on this thematic promontory, but there’s applause to be shared for movies like Up or Toy Story 3 or The Incredibles,… Read More Disney/Pixar Rankings: 60-56
Seeing Things Secondhand 