The new Pixar movie, Wall-E, is quite an achievement. It's the best film to come out of that production house yet, I would say: A mixture of 2001 and Idiocracy for kids. A love story between two robots, who are really only gendered by their abbreviations. Even then, Wall-E is this very gentle creature who's obsessed with a broadway musical, while the figure coded as being female blasts everything with a laser.

There are really so many things I liked about the movie: The human throwaway characters connected by accident when machinery malfunctions. The way sets were clearly different from each other, but uniquely mindblowing in their different color palettes. The way the point of the main character was to create new livable structures out of garbage.

Even the opening short was good: Embracing this sort of Merry Melodies comic anarchy for a procession of gags in a way I wouldn't associate with Pixar, due to Pixar's Disney association. The way that chaos was sort of greeted as a liberating force in the film itself.

And then the set pieces, oh my god: the dance sequence in outer space, and the use of nondiagetic dialogue to sort of reinforce that. Then, a hundred small moments. The damaged circuit boards. "Cupcake in a cup." Babies isolated from insulated parents.

Jeff Garlin! The music from 2001! Alternately: The large periods of time that would pass without dialogue!

And sure: I'm able to recognize and become distanced by moments of "How are they talking in space?" But I was also able to rationalize around these things: Maybe they can't actually hear each other, and what we're hearing is just what the characters are saying into the void.

This might actually be my favorite movie of the year thus far. We'll see what happens if Synecdoche, New York comes out, but for now: Wow, that was awesome.