Hail Pixar: Toy Story 3 Is Film of the Year

It's only June, but Toy Story 3 already has one call for best movie of the year. In fact, Dan Kois of the Awl goes so far as to declare that “the people of Pixar are currently America's most important filmmakers.” This movie is “totally bonkers,” with loads of crazy scenes—like a mushroom cloud made out of a trillion plastic monkeys—real laughs, and truly exciting moments. And then comes the last 15 minutes, “which I spent bawling, as did every moviegoer around me.”

“Some things that are popular are frauds,” he writes. “But some things, like Pixar movies, are miracles: They are popular because they are actually so f---ing good that they couldn't be unpopular.” Pixar movies are sophisticated, surprising, funny, exciting, and genuinely sad. To make a film that hits all those notes is hard. "To make it with integrity and wit, to never insult your audience—whether that audience is five or 35 or 65—and to do it again and again and again, eleven times and counting. That's a miracle." (More Pixar stories.)