Soul

My favourite film of this compromised year...

A joy-filled delight that would have been only improved by being made available to view in its natural, spiritual home – a cinema.

Deep, witty, and fast on its jazz-loving feet, it doesn't miss a beat.

It's overflowing, like a bright portal into a new reality, with gorgeous details.

It's hard not to want Soul to be all about music, not just as metaphor but as the very real engine that drives the film's characters forward.

Another intuitive, easy-to-embrace metaphor for - dare I say it - the meaning of life.

Amounts to more than technical wizardry and intelligent dialogue.

It’s all very headspinning, and there is real Yellow Submarine quality to the film’s innocent urgency and idealism which take it to the very brink of incoherence. That can sometimes be exasperating but also really captivating, especially in that final visual cadenza in which Docter and Powers are really are going above and beyond the traditional Hollywood ending. It’s a deeply sweet, happy, gentle film.

Visually glorious, frequently very funny and genuinely profound, this is a picture which cries out to be seen on the big screen.

This densely packed, exquisitely executed and just a teensy bit batshit film is peak Pixar. It's a vintage mix of the company's intricate storytelling, complex emotional intelligence, technical prowess and cerebral whimsy on dexamethasone.

Like some of the best jazz compositions, it uses a traditional framework to veer off in many unexpected directions, so that even the inevitable end point feels just right.

While not quite offering the emotional gut-punch it promises, its many ideas never completely cohering, Soul is nevertheless a gorgeous and tender existential trip. It’s full of surprises.