5. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Few heroes have journeys more unusual than Jack Skellington as he attempts to combine Halloween and Christmas into one perfectly festive, frightening (and perpetual) holiday.
Under Tim Burton’s guidance, Henry Sellick’s stop-motion tale became a classic for everyone from sullen Goths to lovers of holiday perennials. It’s just that good of a movie and executes its dissonant concepts beautifully.
4. Toy Story (1995)
It is hard to believe that Pixar burst onto the scene with this unstoppable masterpiece over twenty years ago. A revolution in computer animation, Toy Story also exercised Pixar’s mastery of its storytelling themes, where change and growing up are inevitable and frightening, but also wonderful.
A big part of the credit also goes to Tom Hanks and Tim Allen who made Woody and Buzz the memorably mismatched duo that got audiences talking and kids laughing and kept them that way for years to come.
