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The Disney streaming platform has hundreds of movie and TV titles, drawing from its own deep reservoir classics and from Star Wars, Marvel, National Geographic and more. These are our favorites.
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Of all the companies to enter the streaming wars, Disney has significant advantages with Disney+. It can draw from a deep vault of its own animated and live-action movies and from popular shows on its own cable networks — as well as from company properties like Marvel, Pixar, National Geographic and Star Wars. And that’s not counting the platform’s slate of original TV shows and movies.
That’s a lot of material: nearly 500 films and 7,500 TV episodes at the time of its debut. Below is our guide to the 50 best titles on Disney+, arranged in reverse chronological order with an eye toward variety. As the service continues to build its catalog, this list will change too. (Note: Streaming service sometimes change their libraries without notice; we’ll do our best to keep up.)
Here are our lists of the best movies and TV shows on Netflix, the best of both on Hulu and the best movies on Max and Amazon Prime Video.
The fraught relationships between masters and apprentices have always been a major part of the “Star Wars” franchise, in which the fate of the galaxy often rests in generational tensions and partnerships cleaved by the dark side of the Force. Set at a moment when the New Republic has a tenuous grasp on power over the evil Empire, “Ahsoka” follows the title character (played by Rosario Dawson), a former Anakin Skywalker apprentice, and her strong-willing protégé Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) as they face a new threat from an adversary (Lars Mikkelsen) exiled to deep space. They fight with two lightsabers. Mike Hale wrote that the series will “satisfy any viewer’s appetite for unencumbered entertainment.”
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It’s hard to believe there was a time when the future of Disney animated features was in doubt, but the studio had withstood a decade of box-office disappointments after “Snow White and Seven Dwarves” before the swooning “Cinderella” reversed its fortunes. Drawn with the visual lushness of Walt Disney in his prime, the film became the gold standard for princess stories to come, casting Cinderella as a beauty whose dreams are rooted in the humility forced upon her by an evil stepmother and two vain, scheming stepsisters. Bosley Crowther admired the film’s “extravagant story-book terms, matching the romance of the fable with lushly romantic images.”
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While the multi-verse and other mythological developments have hampered other franchises within the Marvel cinematic universe, the third installment in James Gunn’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” series thrives by giving extra attention to a single character, Rocket, the wisecracking raccoon voiced by Bradley Cooper. As Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) and the Guardians are still mourning the loss of Gamora during “The Snap,” a new threat called the High Evolutionary emerges from Rocket’s past, and new revelations about his traumatic origins come to light. Our critic Maya Phillips was less impressed, but she still found “glints of joy in the more mundane and ancillary quibbles among the found family of misfits.”
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A “Phineas and Ferb” for the ever-so-slightly younger set, this energetic and lightly absurdist animated sci-fi comedy champions confidence and ambition through the bite-size adventures of a risk-averse heroine. Voiced by the “Moana” star Auli’i Cravalho, Hailey Banks keeps a journal listing hundreds of whimsical things she would love to do — but hasn’t found the nerve to do. That changes when a messenger from the future arrives to inform her that she must complete the entire checklist in order to save the world, which lends urgency to silly tasks like riding the Zero Graviton at the local fair or burning through the pile of gift cards she has been given over the years.
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The popularity of “Black Panther” and its tech-visionary kingdom of Wakanda has helped bring the Afrofuturism of George Clinton and Sun Ra to a wider audience, as evidenced by this surprising anthology of science-fiction shorts from animators across the diaspora. Although the “Kizazi Moto” project was initiated by the South African studio Triggerfish, the creators and shorts cover a range of different regions, from a Ugandan plain with herds of cyborg cows to a coastal city threatened by massive (yet surfable) waves. The series’s combination of wild mythology and varied animation styles brings it in line with more adventurous Disney+ experiments like “Star Wars: Visions.”
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After “Shrek” made a killing by mocking fairy tale conventions, Disney answered with “Enchanted,” a musical comedy that smartly parodies the innocence of classic princesses while suggesting that the real world could still use some of their romantic optimism. Amy Adams is a delight as Giselle, a beauty who is ready to marry the dashing Prince Edward (James Marsden) until she is expelled from Andalasia by an evil queen (Susan Sarandon). She arrives in New York City as an overdressed fish-out-of-water, but she can still summon pigeons and rats to make dresses out of upholstery and charm a cynical single father (Patrick Dempsey) into believing in love again.
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Spun off mainly from “Captain Marvel,” which fashioned some light commentary on immigration and refugees from an alien genocide, this Marvel series feels like a cross between the ’80s mini-series phenomenon “V” and a more two-fisted John le Carré spy fiction. It also finally puts the spotlight on Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, who comes back to Earth from a sojourn in deep space to face a renegade faction of shapeshifting Skrulls who seem determined to stoke a planet-threatening conflict among humans. Marvel regulars like Cobie Smulders, Martin Freeman and Don Cheadle have beefier roles, too, alongside heavy-hitting newcomers like Ben Mendelsohn, Olivia Colman and Emilia Clarke.
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It took 13 years for James Cameron to direct a sequel to “Avatar,” the highest-grossing film ever made, but his talent for world-building and science-fiction/adventure hasn’t wavered a bit in the interim. “Avatar: The Way of Water” returns to the verdant, screen-saver splendor of the planet Pandora, which is again under attack from humans (or “Sky People”) who are using militarized technology to suppress the peaceful Na’vi. Having plunged into the sea for “The Abyss,” “Titanic” and multiple documentaries, Cameron seizes the opportunity to explore Pandora’s aquatic wonders. A.O. Scott thought the younger characters gave the film “the buoyant, high-spirited sincerity of young-adult fiction.”
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Drawing equal inspiration from crude matinee serials and icons like Errol Flynn and Humphrey Bogart, this tomb-plundering adventure from Steven Spielberg set a new standard for the genre and offered, in Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones, a sardonic hero with soul. With a comic-book World War II serving as a backdrop, “Raiders of the Lost Ark” pits Jones against the Nazis in the race to find the Ark of the Covenant, an archaeological treasure of such inestimable power that it could turn the war decisively. Vincent Canby called it “one of the most deliriously funny, ingenious and stylish American adventure movies ever made.”
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Turning Kwame Alexander’s novel-in-verse into a TV series threatens to flatten its distinct poetic language, yet “The Crossover” does its best to preserve the rhymes through Daveed Diggs’s voice-over narration, and the series is smart about the adjustments kids and parents have to make when their plans go awry. Middle school is awfully early for boys to carve a path to the N.B.A., but for Josh (Jalyn Hall) and J.B. (Amir O’Neil), the twin sons of a former Los Angeles Lakers star (played by Derek Luke), it feels like predestination. On-court disappointments, a romantic rivalry and their father’s shaky health, however, knock them off their path.
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In this winning throwback to the John Hughes teen comedies of the 1980s, Mandy Yang (Peyton Elizabeth Lee), a disaffected high school senior with her eyes on Harvard, dismisses Hughes favorites like “The Breakfast Club” and “Weird Science” as sexist, but she (and the film) cannot transcend their trappings. When her best friend, Ben (Milo Manheim), shows an interest in attending their ’80s-themed prom, Mandy pities him enough to ask him out but intends to keep him firmly in the friend zone. It’s no great surprise where “Prom Pact” goes from there, but it is brightened by Lee’s lovable performance and by frisky supporting work from comedy vets like Wendi McLendon-Covey as Mandy’s mother and Margaret Cho as her guidance counselor.
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The 21st century already has three different Spider-Man series with Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield and Tom Holland each squeezing into the Spidey suit. But Maguire and the director Sam Raimi’s trilogy remains the gold standard. “Spider-Man 2” stands out for the ambivalence Peter Parker feels about his double life as a broke college student and overburdened crime-fighter, and for a terrific villain in “Doc Ock” (Alfred Molina), a scientist whose experiment in an alternative energy source goes horribly awry. A.O. Scott called the film a reminder of “what vibrant, intelligent and sincere popular filmmaking looks like.”
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It isn’t quite right to call the destination dining in this documentary series Werner Herzog-like, given its emphasis on the luxuriantly picturesque, but its host, Kristen Kish, a former “Top Chef” winner, usually has to catch several plane and boat rides to get to each stop. In 45-minute episodes, Kish visits such far-flung locales as a converted radio station on an island between Norway and the North Pole, a Panamanian cloud forest and Brazilian fjord where meals are prepared and eaten at sea. She usually finds that the chefs, cut off from traditional suppliers, have to get creative in making the most of their immediate surroundings.
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As computer animation became the dominant format at Disney and other major studios, “The Princess and the Frog” brought the company to its hand-drawn roots, evoking New Orleans of the Roaring Twenties with exceptional color and warmth. It also offered Disney’s first Black princess in Tiana (Anika Noni Rose), a waitress whose dreams of owning as restaurant are derailed by her bayou quest to help a prince break a curse that has turned him into a frog. The film’s reputation has improved over the years, buoyed by its vibrancy and jazz-infused songs, as well as the aspirations of a heroine who wants to be more than royalty.
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Despite 18,000 miles of coastline, Japan has been slow to embrace surfing culture, in large part because its libertine, individualistic nature runs counter to the traditional rigors of Japanese society. But the new generation of athletes documented in this compelling eight-episode series looks to change that perception, starting with the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, the first time surfing was a medaled event. “Chasing Waves” follows several pro surfers from Japan, including a couple of serious Olympic hopefuls, and reveals in visually luscious detail the country’s potential as a surf Mecca.
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The daredevil nonfiction director Matthew Heineman has a habit of throwing himself into dangerous situations, like following drug-war vigilantes in “Cartel Land” or citizen journalists in Syria squaring off against ISIS in “City of Ghosts.” In his gripping new documentary, Heineman examines America’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan from the perspective of an Afghan general who faces the impossible task of stabilizing the country against overwhelming Taliban forces. Nicolas Rapold wrote that the general’s perspective allows Heineman “to tell an emotional story that feels as significant as any analysis of troop numbers.”
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As industries and settlers continue to encroach on once-protected areas of the Amazon rainforest, the threat to the land and identity of Indigenous people has increased in kind. Alex Pritz’s gorgeous on-the-ground documentary gives this crisis a human face in “The Territory,” which embeds itself with the Uru-eu-wau-wau as it responds to the murder of a 33-year-old tribal leader, the hostile policies of president Jair Bolsonaro, and a population that has dwindled to around 200 people. Though the “save the rainforest” movement has been in effect for decades, wrote the critic Claire Shaffer, “no recent film captures the immediacy of the threat better.”
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Throughout the 1970s and ’80s until their deaths near Mount Unzen in Japan in 1991, Katia and Maurice Krafft were the world’s most recognized volcanologists, a colorful duo known for getting dangerously close to eruption sites. The mesmerizing documentary “Fire of Love” draws from the vast trove of footage they left behind, underscoring their Jacques Cousteau-like journeys to lava rivers with insight into their professional and romantic bond. A.O. Scott appreciated the director Sara Dosa’s balanced approach, which “preserves their work and their idiosyncratic, unforgettable human presence.”
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Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer as a kind of hoops follow-up to the inspirational sports-movie hit “Remember the Titans,” “Glory Road” adheres to Disney formula in chronicling the true story of Don Haskins (Josh Lucas), the coach at Texas Western (now the University of Texas at El Paso) who assembled the first all-Black starting five in N.C.A.A. basketball history. But it is richly satisfying nonetheless, with a cleareyed view of racial discrimination in the Deep South in the mid-60s and a thrilling Big Game finish against Adolph Rupp (Jon Voight) and his all-white Kentucky Wildcats. A.O. Scott admired the film for “showing just how momentous that game was.”
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Carving out another small slice of the “Star Wars” universe, this prequel series takes place before the events of “Rogue One,” the 2016 stand-alone movie about the Rebel mission to swipe plans for the Death Star. The show’s creator, Tony Gilroy, who co-wrote “Rogue One,” brings back Diego Luna as the thief turned spy Cassian Andor and follows his journey from cynicism to fierce resistance as the Alliance forms to beat back the Galactic Empire. By far the most compelling spinoff series since “The Mandalorian,” “Andor” succeeds, according to our critic Mike Hale, because its makers “like a lot of things better than they like “Star Wars.”
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It took four decades for Steven Spielberg to make a musical, and “West Side Story” seems to bridge an even larger gap in time, modernizing the stage classic while reviving the dazzling spectacle and craft of a much earlier age in Hollywood. In many respects, it improves on the 1961 Best Picture winner, including Tony Kushner’s thoughtful reworking of the book and the better-developed Puerto Rican characters. Several individual performances also add shine, led by the newcomer Rachel Zegler as Maria, the tragic heroine of this gangland “Romeo & Juliet.” A.O. Scott called it “bold, surprising and new.”
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As Woodstock became a generational event in the summer of 1969, with an estimated 400,000 attendees and a feature film, the six-week Harlem Cultural Festival unfolded in Mount Morris Park to much less media fanfare. But “Summer of Soul,” from Ahmir Thompson, better known as Questlove, makes the case for its significance as a musical and political revelation. The documentary unearths stirring footage of Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Mahalia Jackson, Sly and the Family Stone and others performing at an anxious time for Black people in America. Our critic Wesley Morris called it “a mind-blowing moment of American history.”
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For parents of very young children, “tolerable” tends to be the low bar that shows have to clear. But this delightful Australian cartoon about a family of dogs living in Brisbane appeals to all ages with its imaginative playtime scenarios and its genuinely clever and sweet observations about domestic life. The episodes are a digestible seven minutes long, enough time for low-key vignettes about, say, a chaotic wait for a takeout order or about when Bluey, the oldest child, dreams of being a fruit bat. In an NYT Parenting column on favorite TV shows for kids, “Bluey” was “by far the most popular reader submission.”
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Living in the impossible lushness of a Colombian paradise, the Madrigals are a family in which everyone has magical talents, like super-strength, healing powers and the ability to communicate with animals. “Encanto” focuses on the one Madrigal without any special gifts and her touching quest to figure out what role she has in the family dynamic. With songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda that cover a wide emotional spectrum, this whimsical and heartfelt film is also a feast for the eyes. Our critic Maya Phillips calls the computer animation “some of the best from any major studio in the last several years.”
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Culled from over 60 hours of footage and 150 hours of audio around the making of the Beatles album “Let It Be” and the extraordinary rooftop performance that followed, Peter Jackson’s three-part, nearly eight-hour documentary may be a fans-only proposition. But those fans will be treated to a unique creative journey, chronicling the ardors of songwriting and recording at a moment when a great collaboration was coming to an end. Jackson’s focus on process requires patience, but once these lads from Liverpool step onto the London rooftop of their Apple Corps headquarters, the catharsis of their final live performance is fully felt.
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Wes Anderson’s second attempt at stop-motion animation, after 2009’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” applies the same meticulousness to an original entertainment that uses whimsy and adventure to mask dark themes about a future teetering on the brink of authoritarianism. With a “canine flu” epidemic gripping Japan, its demagogue leader sends the nation’s dogs to quarantine on a garbage island, underestimating their frisky resilience and camaraderie. Manohla Dargis called these droll pups “surprising, touching and thoroughly delightful company.”
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Although “The Mandalorian” takes place between the events of “Return of the Jedi” and “The Force Awakens,” this thrilling sci-fi-adventure series makes a virtue of simplicity, casting off the dense mythology that has burdened the “Star Wars” brand. Most of the blessedly short episodes are about a Clint Eastwood-like bounty hunter (Pedro Pascal) and his precious charge — popularly known as Baby Yoda but officially known as the Child — who square off against various galactic beasts and cutthroats. Mike Hale called it “well paced and reasonably clever, with enough style and visual panache to keep your eyes engaged.”
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Let’s face it: Of the 34 (and counting) seasons of “The Simpsons,” only about the first nine are truly great. But that impressive run had such a cultural impact that quotes from and references to it have become a linguistic shorthand. The creator Matt Groening and his animators conceived the Simpsons and the town of Springfield as an endlessly elastic source of colorful characters and sharp jibes about American families, institutions and values. Our critic called its animation “ingenious” and its scripts “consistently inventive.”
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Disney live-action films don’t exactly have a tradition of gritty realism, but with “Queen of Katwe,” the director Mira Nair scrapes some of the gloss off the rousing true story of a Ugandan girl whose prodigious gifts as a chess player allow her to see the world beyond a Kampala slum. By taking the time to detail the day-to-day struggles of a desperately poor family, Nair adds power to the girl’s efforts to maneuver around the board. If “Hoosiers” made you cry, predicted A.O. Scott, “‘Queen of Katwe’ will wreck you.”
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Crossing the leisure-time sibling dynamic of “Phineas and Ferb” with a much smarter version of the comic mysteries of “Scooby Doo,” this lively and sweet animated series is about Dipper and Mabel Pines, 12-year-old twins who are shipped away to the middle of Oregon to live with their crazy “Grunkle” Stan. Stan runs a beaten-down tourist trap called the “Mystery Shack,” which becomes the nexus of supernatural happenings. Voiced by Jason Ritter and Kristen Schaal, the twins have a winning banter that’s underscored by real affection.
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Four decades after it went off the air, Jim Henson’s “The Muppet Show” might seem alienating to younger generations, who will not only scratch their heads over the dated pop culture references but might also be unfamiliar with the variety-show format. Yet Henson’s beloved creatures have stood the test of time, and there’s no better showcase for them than this delightful patchwork of sketches, musical numbers and silly interstitials. “The Muppet Show” has been difficult to access over the years — this collection offers all but two of the original 120 episodes, many of which were unavailable on DVD — so this is a great chance to sample classic moments or skip ahead to favorite characters.
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Saturday morning cartoons were always short on educational opportunities for children, but ABC decided to do a public good by producing “Schoolhouse Rock!,” a series of three-minute animated interstitials that proved to be surprisingly sticky mnemonic devices. Disney+ doesn’t have the complete run of episodes — it has 51 of the 64, the vast majority made in the mid-1970s — but it has all the classics, including the call-and-response of “Conjunction Junction,” the heart-rending multiplication song “Figure Eight” and “I’m Just a Bill,” a civics lessons that was parodied on the “Simpsons” episode “The Day the Violence Died,” which is also available on the service.
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The first full-length animated feature remains a treasure and an institutional touchstone, establishing the outsized clashes between good and evil, the comical interludes and the lush house style that would endure as Disney hallmarks for decades. A princess’s beauty, a queen’s vanity, a magic mirror, a poisoned apple and a cottage full of diminutive miners are among the classic elements plucked from the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale. Our critic called it “sheer fantasy, delightful, gay and altogether captivating.”
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The original production of this audacious pop musical from Lin-Manuel Miranda was a near-impossible ticket on Broadway, but now it comes to streaming as a vital and stubbornly optimistic ode to the American experiment. Leading a cast of mostly Black and Latino actors, Miranda plays Alexander Hamilton as an immigrant made good, a “young, scrappy and hungry” embodiment of an emerging nation. “Hamilton” has been described as a hip-hop history, but the music is as varied as the history is idealized and thorny. A.O. Scott wrote that the film is “motivated, above all, by a faith in the self-correcting potential of the American experiment.”
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Death isn’t usually negotiable, but when Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx), a middle-school music teacher, falls down a manhole shortly after booking his first big gig as a jazz pianist, he is willing to defy the laws of heaven to realize his dream. Although this touching and whimsical Pixar movie gets into the bureaucratic intricacies of the afterlife, “Soul” is most affecting as a tribute to the small, myriad pleasures of New York City. A.O. Scott called it “a new chapter in Pixar’s expansion of realism.”
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The most divisive “Star Wars” movie is also one of the boldest and best, defying the orthodoxy of the Jedi traditionalists in order to embrace a more operatic vision of the overmatched Resistance doing battle against the First Order. It starts with the shock of Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) casually tossing a light saber off a cliff and keeps the heresies flowing from there, all in an effort to heighten the emotional stakes for the battles to come. Manohla Dargis called it “a satisfying, at times transporting entertainment.”
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Tucked away in a segregated building at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., in the early 1960s, Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) joins her Black colleagues as a “human computer” until her computational brilliance becomes too valuable for NASA to deny. The irresistible history lesson “Hidden Figures” follows Johnson and two other Black mathematicians as they break down barriers at a crucial time for the space program. A.O. Scott called it “a well-told tale with a clear moral and a satisfying emotional payoff.”
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Disney has spent decades laboring over the creation of more strong-willed heroines, but few have embarked on a mission as consequential as Moana, who travels the seas to save her Polynesian village from environmental ruin. Her adventures are rendered in pleasingly lush ocean blues, and Dwayne Johnson has a fun role as the egotistic demigod Maui. But the true star of “Moana” is the songs, which range from the soaring (“How Far I’ll Go”) to the silly (“You’re Welcome”) to the Bowie-esque (“Shiny”). A.O. Scott wrote that they “anchor the film’s cheery globalism in a specific South Pacific milieu.”
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In this boisterous musical, Julie Andrews descends from the sky to bring discipline and magic to two spoiled English schoolchildren — and she did the same for a studio that had struggled to make live-action fare on par with its animated classics. With a twinkle in her eye, Andrews’s nanny leads the children through chores with “A Spoonful of Sugar” and more whimsical numbers like “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” and “Feed the Birds.” Citing the legacy of P.L. Travers’s original novel, our critic praised it as “a most wonderful, cheering movie.
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The first third of “WALL-E” is a high-water mark for Pixar, quietly and wondrously detailing the solitary life of the only trash-compacting robot left on an uninhabitable future Earth. The film doesn’t drop off much, either, when the robot befriends a sleeker android sent to the planet to search for signs of life — and perhaps hope for surviving humans to return home. “We’ve grown accustomed to expecting surprises from Pixar,” wrote A.O. Scott, “but ‘WALL-E’ surely breaks new ground.”
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Riding high off a nonstop run of hits after “Toy Story,” Pixar gambled on the almost perversely unappealing premise of a Parisian rat with a passion for finessing haute cuisine. But “Ratatouille” pays off in the fast-paced slapstick of loosing a rodent in the kitchen, in its sensual appreciation for food and in its rousing message about pursuing your dreams, no matter your seeming limitations. A.O. Scott called it “a nearly flawless piece of popular art.”
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The director David Lynch shocked the film world by following the hard-R mind-melters “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” and “Lost Highway” with a G-rated, fact-based Disney film about an elderly Midwesterner (Richard Farnsworth) who travels 370 miles on a riding lawn mower to visit his ill, estranged brother. There’s plenty of Lynchian eccentricity and style, however, to his heartfelt slice of Americana, and a genuine conviction in the decency that evildoers in his other films often work to snuff out. Janet Maslin called it “a supremely improbable triumph.”
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The first feature-length Pixar movie was also the first entirely computer-animated feature, representing an evolutionary leap for Disney on par with “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” The sequels would add a more emotional component, but the original “Toy Story” may be the funniest and most fast-paced, scoring jokes off the interplay and adventures of Woody, Buzz and other toys that come to life when they’re not being watched. Our critic called it “the sweetest and savviest film” of 1995.
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The renaissance of Disney animation that started with “The Little Mermaid” peaked with this romance between the book-smart Belle and the tempestuous Beast, a former prince who holds her captive in his enchanted castle until the curse that turned him into a monster is broken. The technical and artistic contributions are first-rate all around, none greater than the songs by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, which include “Be Our Guest” and the title number. Our critic praised its combination of “the latest computer animation techniques with the best of Broadway.”
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Walt Disney Studios had experimented with live-action-animation hybrids for decades before “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” but it never achieved anything close to the fluidity and sophistication of Robert Zemeckis’s one-of-a-kind noir. Through the story of a hard-boiled private detective (Bob Hoskins) who helps a cartoon rabbit on a murder rap, the film pays homage to Disney and Warner Brothers animation while delivering an all-ages “Chinatown.” Its best moments, our critic wrote, “are so novel, so deliriously funny and so crazily unexpected that they truly must be seen to be believed.”
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Unpacking the mythology of countless bedtime stories, this fractured fairy tale from Rob Reiner, adapted from the novel by William Goldman, winks knowingly at the conventions of romantic adventures while paying them off all the same. At its center is a star-crossed love story between a would-be princess (Robin Wright) and a mysterious pirate (Cary Elwes), but much of the fun is at the periphery, like Mandy Patinkin’s hapless swashbuckler and Wallace Shawn’s Sicilian outlaw. Janet Maslin hailed the “delightful cast and a cheery, earnest style that turns out to be ever more disarming as the film moves along.”
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No one can forget the trauma of watching a hunter kill a young deer’s mother. But after that notorious moment, “Bambi” is watercolor poetry, following the fawn as he learns and grows alongside his woodland friends and eventually becomes a father himself. Without spelling it out in a big production number, the film quietly teaches children about the “circle of life” in all its beauty, wonder and occasional loss. “The colors,” our critic raved, “would surprise even the spectrum itself.”
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Disney would come to regret making a sequel to perhaps the greatest children’s film ever made, but Walter Murch’s “Return to Oz” has picked up a deserved cult following over the years for its half-wondrous, half-nightmarish reading of L. Frank Baum’s Oz novels. This time, Dorothy (Fairuza Balk) goes back to a far less enchanting place, with the Yellow Brick Road and the Emerald City in ruins, her old friends turned to stone and the land patrolled by people with wheels instead of hands and feet. Our critic warned that “children are sure to be startled by [its] bleakness.”
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What did the future look like in 1982? This Disney science-fiction-adventure offered one distinctive vision, although not many people flocked to see it at the time. The film has endured as a cult favorite and technological curio, however, presaging inside-the-grid scenarios like “The Matrix.” It also provides a jaundiced look at corporate-controlled tech realms, pitting a computer engineer (Jeff Bridges) against the Master Control Program in a virtual environment. Our critic Janet Maslin praised its “nonstop parade of stunning computer graphics,” even if they weren’t accompanied by more “old-fashioned virtues.”
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When the Italian woodworker Geppetto wishes upon a star that his marionette Pinocchio will become a real boy, a blue fairy brings the puppet to life, but that’s only the beginning of a difficult odyssey before Geppetto’s dream comes true. Modern audiences may be shocked by how dark Pinocchio’s journey becomes, particularly when he arrives at Pleasure Island, but the beauty, horror and moral simplicity of the film are still resonant. The movie bombed on initial release, but our critic praised it as Walt Disney’s “happiest event since the war.”
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