Pete Docter

The sequel to one of Pixar’s great masterpieces is definitely not as good as its predecessor, but it does deliver a moving and truthful depiction of life with anxiety.

Pixar’s latest movie is an exuberant celebration of life in the face of death.

This could be Pixar’s greatest movie ever.

The directors of ‘Inside Out’ and ‘Frozen’ will replace John Lasseter as the chief creative officers of the two most powerful studios in animation.

Take a seat, Sadness. It’s Joy’s night. That’s because Inside Out triumphed in a very competitive category (that also included Shaun the Sheep Movie and the truly outstanding Anomalisa) to take home the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at this year’s Oscars. It’s the second Best Animated Feature win for director Pete Docter (2009’s Up was the first) and the eighth win for Pixar Animation Studios (the other six, for those keeping score at home, are Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Wall-E, Toy Story 3, and Brave).

There’s a director who has been nominated for six Oscars. He even won once. His 2015 film was a critical and commercial success. It made over $350 million and has a 98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. There’s another director who has been nominated for three Oscars...

Before Joy, Fear, Sadness, Anger and Disgust made the cut, 21 other emotions were considered for Pixar’s Inside Out. In a new special feature from the upcoming DVD for the animated film, courtesy of USA Today, director Pete Docter reveals the various emotions that were initially considered for Riley.

Inside Out isn’t the first Disney project to tackle this concept and director Pete Docter himself knows this. Several decades ago, the Inside Out director worked on the defunct Walt Disney World attraction Cranium Command, which tackles a very similar concept with very different results. Housed in the currently shuttered Wonders of Life pavilion in the Future World section of the Epcot theme park, Cranium Command was a theater show that combined animatronics, film, and animation to literally place the audience inside the human brain of a 12 year old.

It’s been at least five years since the last great Pixar film (or more, depending on your feelings about Toy Story 3). In the interim, they produced a series of sequels — some quite entertaining, but few as transcendently beautiful as the original concepts that turned the studio into the most dependable brand in all of Hollywood. Their latest effort, Inside Out, isn’t just a return to form; it surpasses almost all of their previous classics. It is, from start to finish, one of the best films Pixar has ever made.

I had the great fortune to see Pixar’s Up for the first time at the Cannes Film Festival, when it premiered there in 2009. Cannes is basically the best place on Earth to see a movie; the main theater at the festival has perfect projection and sound and the film’s 3D was so good my palms started sweating during the climactic setpiece because it felt like I was thousands of feet in the air. I’m not going back to Cannes this year (DAMMIT) but those in attendance will get a chance to have a similar experience when Pixar’s newest movie, Inside Out, makes its world premiere at the festival over a month before it opens in theaters.