‘Leah’ os a lovely grace note in the middle of Bruce Springsteen’s 2005 album Devils & Dust, an otherwise somber collection. This song isn’t exactly ‘Walking on Sunshine,’ but compared to some of the downers on this record, it may as well be.
Springsteen has released a lot of good albums in the 15 years since Devils & Dust, but I’d call this record his last great one. It has an intimacy and power you don’t encounter very often.
Continuing my countdown of every Pixar movie…
#1. Toy Story 3 (2010)
(up one spot from previous ranking)
I’ve written about this film twice on the blog already, once when it first came out and again earlier this year, as part of my countdown of favorite films of the 2010s (it was #9).
I’m providing links to both of those posts above and won’t bother repeating all of my points here.
Continuing my countdown of every Pixar movie…
#2. The Incredibles (2004)
(down one spot from previous ranking)
Even after a decade of Marvel releases, Brad Bird’s The Incredibles remains the greatest superhero movie ever made.
This tale of a family of “supers” forced to live underground by a government that doesn’t appreciate them is just as thrilling and inventive 16 years after its release as it was the day it came out. And the marital and family dynamics that set it apart from typical action fare are just as resonant.
Continuing my countdown of every Pixar movie…
#3. Coco (2017)
(up seven spots from previous ranking)
Coco was the film that made the biggest jump from my original Pixar ranking to this one. While I enjoyed it the first time, for some reason it didn’t click with me the way it did now.
It took Pixar 19 years to have a non-white protagonist (granted, toys, cars, monsters and fish aren’t white, but the actors portraying them all were). They made up for it beautifully in Coco, not just casting an entirely Hispanic cast, but diving into Mexican culture in ways both big and small. It reminds me of the care and respect the creators of Moana showed in depicting that film’s Polynesian culture.
Continuing my countdown of every Pixar movie…
#4. Up (2009)
(up five spots from previous ranking)
My revisit of Up was one of the most rewarding surprises of this exercise. I hadn’t seen the film since its 2009 release, and my memory was that the film didn’t live up to its famously powerful opening.
And yes, that opening sequence is astounding. After Carl and Ellie meet as children, a wordless montage traces their entire lives together, through good times and bad, until death ultimately does them part. One of the top five Pixar sequences ever, no question, and possibly number one.
Meet Me In Montauk 