The Good Dinosaur (2015)

Nominated for Best Animated Short   Mostly, I bought this because I didn't think I was going to get any other chance to see the accompanying short, Sanjay's Super Team, which is Oscar-nominated, but it's a Pixar so there's a pretty decent chance I would have bought it anyway just for that.

Let's do the short first.

  Sanjay is a little boy torn between the bright, shiny superheroes on TV and the traditions of his heritage.  While meditating with his father, Sanjay begins to realize that the Hindu gods could be just as badass as an comic book character.

This is cute but I was expecting more of a "wow" factor.  I don't see this taking home a statuette.

On to the dinosaurs.

53 million years ago, the meteor that was supposed to cause an extinction event didn't happen.  So dinosaurs remained and learned to adapt.  Some became farmers, like the family of apatosaurs central to this film.  Young Arlo (Raymond Ochoa) has been charged by his father (Jeffrey Wright) to trap the critter eating their winter supply of corn.  Unfortunately, the critter is much feistier than Arlo was prepared for and both end up washed down the river.  Arlo knows he has to be back before the first snowfall to help his mother (Frances McDormand) bring in the crops, so he sets out to find his way home.  The critter, Spot (Jack Bright), proves to be very handy and loyal, once you get past the feral bloodthirstiness.

This was such an adorable movie.  I get why Inside Out got the nomination.  It's a much more complex story, but the animation in The Good Dinosaur was amazing.  The water looked photorealistic and the scenery was beautiful.  Story-wise, it's not anything you haven't seen but there were little moments here and there to keep it fresh.  I enjoyed this very much.