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A now-balding Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks) and his toy buddies returned this year for the fifth installment of this blockbuster Pixar franchise, which kicked off in 1995. This time the pull-string cowgirl Jessie (Joan Cusack) takes center stage, with Woody out in the world searching for abandoned toys. Jessie wants her human owner, Bonnie (Scarlett Spears), to find a friend who also loves imaginary play. Her plan is derailed when Bonnie’s parents give her Lilypad (Greta Lee), a talking frog-shaped tablet. It’s love at first scroll, and Bonnie is immediately more interested in screen time than playtime.
Woody, Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), Forky (Tony Hale) and Karen Beverly the knife (Melissa Villaseñor) return to help Jessie. And new characters come in to spice things up: Evil Bullseye (Alan Cumming), the villainous counterpart to Woody’s horse, Bullseye; Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris), a little girl with toys of her own; a GPS toy hippo named Atlas (Craig Robinson); Snappy the camera (Shelby Rabara); and a potty-training game called Smarty Pants (Conan O’Brien).
The lesson of setting aside our devices to reclaim a sense of play isn’t a new one, but it’s a good one. Andrew Stanton (“WALL-E”) and Kenna Harris wrote and directed.
The little yellow ovate blobs known as Minions returned this year for the third film in the “Despicable Me” spinoff “Minions” franchise, and this time these babbling mischief-makers are wreaking havoc in Old Hollywood.
In this installment, it’s the 1920s, and the Minions crash the set of a film that’s being directed by the European auteur Max (voiced by Christoph Waltz). They become silent film stars as beloved as the real-world silent comedy greats Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, but their fame fades as sound is introduced.
Two Minions, Henry and James, decide to direct a monster movie instead, so they conjure a real green monster called Goomi (Trey Parker) who, on the surface, is not very scary. Goomi helps them find monsters who are more frightening — Phillips (Bobby Moynihan) and Howard (Phil LaMarr) — but has a secret plan to unleash an even scarier creature, Irene. The Minions end up having to fight the monsters themselves when they discover Goomi’s plot, and it becomes a movie within a movie with action, adventure and plenty of nods to Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Jeff Bridges voices the studio-boss brothers Elwood and Frank, and there’s a robot alien named Dort (Jesse Eisenberg) who falls for the human suffragette Debbie (Zoey Deutch). Allison Janney voices a Hollywood-history tour guide, and the film titan George Lucas makes a cameo. The “Minions” co-creator Pierre Coffin directed, and he also voices the Minions. Coffin wrote the script with Brian Lynch (“The Secret Life of Pets”).
As a child, I loved the 1983 comedy “Mr. Mom,” starring Michael Keaton as a dad who must (gasp!) take over the household duties when his wife (Teri Garr) becomes the moneymaker. Decades later, “The Breadwinner,” which came out in May, doesn’t modernize clichéd notions about domestic duties, but it’s entertaining enough to engage tweens and young teenagers who like tales of family high jinks.
The comic Nate Bargatze stars as Nate Wilcox, a guy who sells Toyotas while his wife, Katie (Mandy Moore), stays home and takes care of everything related to their three daughters: Gracie (Stella Grace Fitzgerald), Hadley (Birdie Borria) and Sam (Charlotte Ann Tucker). When Katie becomes a “Shark Tank” entrepreneur after her invention gets funded, Nate must take over the parenting duties while she travels to South Korea for work.
He fumbles and stumbles through the most basic duties, like making toast or washing dishes (which he does with a power tool). Will Forte is a roofer who becomes close to the family, and Colin Jost plays a fellow stay-at-home dad. Kumail Nanjiani brings the laughs as Nate’s jealous co-worker at the dealership. Eric Appel (“Weird: The Al Yankovic Story”) directed, and Bargatze wrote the script with Dan Lagana.
The 2016 animated film “Moana” features songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda and has inspired many a Halloween costume. A decade later, the Polynesian Disney princess gets the live-action (with C.G.I.) treatment. While the story is pretty much the same, it’s a visually lush version of the original.
Catherine Laga‘aia steps into the title role of the princess who sets off on the high seas despite the protests of her protective father (John Tui). She teams up with the shape-shifting, tatted-up trickster demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson, reprising his role in the flesh) to restore the glowing green object that is the heart of the goddess Te Fiti. The giant crab Tamatoa (again voiced by Jemaine Clement) and Moana’s pet rooster, Heihei, return as well.
The theme of finding your voice has universal appeal for children of any age. Thomas Kail (“Hamilton”) directed. Jared Bush, who wrote the 2016 version, wrote the script with Dana Ledoux Miller (“Moana 2”).
In this 2025 animated fantasy from the Nordic studio Anima Vitae, a tween named Thomas (Owen de la Hoyde) is desperate to hang out with his cooler older siblings. His brother Miki (Tom Hudson) and sister Ceci (Tori Johnson) would rather sleep late or scroll on their phones than play with Thomas. One day, he follows them to a rickety old building and, as he’s trying to prove his bravery, falls and injures himself, losing the ability to walk.
Enter Fleak, a fuzzy magenta creature who whisks Thomas into a magical alternate dimension. Thomas can walk again in this surreal world, but homesickness soon pulls him back. In the process, he rejects his own shadow — a symbol of his desire to belong — only for it to follow him into the real world. By banding together with his siblings to tame the threat, Thomas finally embraces his shadow, realizing he never had to work to earn his family’s love.
Jens Moller directed, and Mikko Pitkanen and Luca Bruno co-directed. The screenplay was written by Antti Haikala, Melli Maikkula, Ilja Rautsi and Teemu Auersalo.
