Up

A feisty septuagenarian teams with a fearless wilderness ranger to do battle with a vicious band of beasts and villains in this computer-animated adventure scripted by Pixar veteran Bob Peterson and co-directed by Peterson and Monsters, Inc. director Peter Docter. Carl Fredricksen is a 78-year-old ...more

At its honey-sweet, but never cloyingly sentimental core, UP is a “carpe diem”-championing fable intended to move the moral minds of impressionable young audiences. Its message is painted with broad strokes, but crafted by Pixar’s visual virtuosos and filmmakers committed to the doctrine “Story First,” UP resists pandering altogether. It is wildly creative, genuinely profound, and pretty damn brazen, too: How many youth-targeted films can you name who count a curmudgeon as their hero? Carl ...more

There might not be a more dependable name in all of Hollywood than Pixar, and their tenth animated feature, Up, continues the studio's remarkable hot streak. As is usually the case, the premise is elegantly simple: in order to fulfill a promise to his dearly departed adventure-loving wife, senior citizen Carl Fredricksen (Ed Asner) flies to South America by hitching thousands of helium balloons to the house they built together. As silly as that may sound, director Pete Docter captures the ...more