The 10 best Pixar movies, according to IMDb

While Soul came out only two years before the publication of this article, it still makes sense why IMDb users would regard the film so highly. Soul tells the story of Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx), a New York jazz pianist who finally lands a major gig before an accident causes his soul to be separated from his body. Now Joe must get back to his body with the help of a rebellious unborn soul named 22 (Tina Fey).

Monsters, Inc. is one of Pixar’s older films and also one of its more beloved. The story is set in a world where monsters travel into the real world to scare kids so that they can power their city. However, top scarer James “Sulley” Sullivan (John Goodman) and his smaller, one-eyed best friend, Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal), get stuck with a little human girl named Boo (Mary Gibbs), who they must now return home before the Child Detection Agency (CDA) gets to her first.

While not as old as Monsters, Inc., Ratatouille is still a timeless Pixar classic. Set in the picturesque city of Paris, the story revolves around a talking rat named Remy (Patton Oswalt) who loves cooking so much that he teams up with a restaurant garbage boy named Linguini (Lou Romano) to become the best chef in Paris.

You may be surprised that Finding Nemo is so low on the list, but that just speaks to the high bar Pixar sets for itself with each new release. The story is about an overprotective clown fish named Marlin (Albert Brooks) who lives in the Great Barrier Reef with his only son, Nemo (Alexander Gould). After scuba divers capture Nemo, Marlin and a forgetful regal blue tang named Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) travel across the Coral Sea of Australia to get his son back.

Even though it’s an animated movie about talking fish, Finding Nemo features some particularly frightening scenes that may be too intense for little kids. Even so, these scenes heavily factor into the movie’s themes about learning to let go and trust other people’s judgment. Director Andrew Stanton successfully incorporates funny moments in between the film’s more emotional scenes, resulting in a film that lingers in the memory long after the credits have rolled.

Even in a decade when Pixar mostly put out sequels, the studio still delivered at least one amazing original movie in the 2010s: Inside Out. This film revolves around five personified emotions — Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), and Disgust (Mindy Kaling) — who all live inside the head of a young girl named Riley (Kaitlyn Dias). After Riley’s family moves from Minnesota to San Francisco, these emotions need to help her adjust to her new home.

Pete Doctor co-wrote and directed Inside Out five years before co-writing and directing Soul, and just like with the latter, the former takes complex themes such as how emotions work and presents them in a way that kids can not only understand, but also think about long after the credits roll. Even if the plot of Inside Out feels similar to the plots of other Pixar movies, that doesn’t matter because Doctor and company manage to keep it engaging by personifying the different parts of Riley’s brain. For example, everything Riley imagines exists in a theme park called Imagination Land, which features several exciting attractions including a forest full of French fries and a living room where the floor is lava (literally). It’s no wonder why the film is so beloved.

Of course, this list of best Pixar movies includes the film that started it all. Toy Story centers on a cowboy doll named Woody (Tom Hanks), the leader of a group of toys that comes to life whenever their owner Andy (John Morris) is not around. However, the arrival of a spaceman action figure named Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) threatens Woody’s position as Andy’s favorite toy.

It’s not surprising that Up would appear on this list. The 2009 Pixar classic stars the late, great Ed Asner as Carl Fredricksen, a grumpy old man who attaches balloons to his house so that he can fly it to a beautiful waterfall in South America. However, Carl is soon wrapped up in another predicament involving a young stowaway named Russell (Jordan Nagai), a talking dog named Dug (Bob Peterson), and a large bird named Kevin.

Even though this movie is technically aimed at younger audiences, it somehow has one of the saddest openings of any movie ever. Some people believe that the opening is the only good part, but the rest of the film offers a fun and exciting tale about how you can find an adventure anywhere at any time. Aside from Best Animated Feature, Up was nominated for four other Academy Awards including Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture, making it the second fully animated film to be nominated for the latter after 1991’s Beauty and the Beast.

It makes sense that Pixar’s first foray into science fiction is the No. 2 movie on this list. WALL∙E tells the story of a lone waste-collecting robot who cleans up the Earth after humanity abandoned it 700 years prior. However, WALL∙E meets a reconnaissance robot named EVE, who he develops feelings for and eventually follows across the galaxy.

Some readers may be surprised that 2017’s Coco is at the top of this list, but it’s still completely understandable why that’s the case. Set during the Mexican holiday known as Day of the Dead, the film follows a 12-year-old boy named Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez),= who loves music, even though the rest of his family hates it. Miguel soon ends up in the mystical Land of the Dead, where he meets several of his ancestors, including the famous Mexican singer Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt).