Pixar's latest film, 'Up'. (Disney's Pixar Studios)

As Pixar’s 10th picture, the curmudgeon-meets-chipper-Explorer buddy adventure Up, is released, we count down the studio’s best.

9. Ratatouille (2007): A gorgeously rendered depiction of Paris, starring a creatively inspired rat (voiced by Patton Oswald) who acts as a culinary Cyrano for a clueless would-be chef. It’s plenty pretty, and does that whole “finding your bliss, no matter the obstacles” thing that Disney does so well. But I can’t help thinking that maybe being a rat should be an obstacle to working in a kitchen. Seriously.

8. A Bug’s Life (1998): Like the best of Pixar, it’s a fanciful imagining of an otherworldly society — in this case, the secret, intricate life of bugs — that smacks of adult issues, like caste systems and the forceful fist of the Man. It hasn’t aged quite as flawlessly as some of the other films, and has, perhaps, too much going on. But it’s still hard to go wrong with Kevin Spacey voicing a menacing grasshopper and Denis Leary as a ladybug with anger issues.

7. Toy Story 2 (1999): Buzz, Woody and the gang return for more fun, with the addition of a sweet cowgirl named Jessie (Joan Cusack) and perhaps the most shamelessly tear-inducing moment in Pixar history: Jessie’s Sarah McLachlan-accented memory of being loved, abandoned, rediscovered and then re-abandoned by the little girl she loves. Not since Jackie Paper outgrew Puff the Magic Dragon has growing past childhood seemed so gorgeously sad.

6. Cars (2006): Kind of like Our Town with automobiles instead of people, Cars is a little slower than some of the zippier Pixar flicks. But for a movie about cars, it wears its elegant humanity on its sleeve … er, hood, particularly in the sage, well-worn voice of Doc Hudson (Paul Newman). And that’s an extra-added nugget for the parents, who know that those sage tones belong to a guy who, before he was wise, was the biggest hell-raiser in town.

5. Monsters, Inc. (2001): Another fanciful combination of childhood giddiness and adult realization: What if the monsters in your closet were not only real, but were doing a job? I’m not sure if the kiddies got the nuances that made the movie so wonderful to adults (weaselly work frienemies, a one-eyed monster out of some joyous nightmare with the ordinary name Mike Wazowski), but there’s so much here to make everybody happy.

4. Finding Nemo (2003): There’s no more harrowing Disney movie experience than the “dead mother” story line, and just like Bambi, Pixar’s sea adventure begins with the loss of the titular fish’s mommy. (Do they really need to keep traumatizing the kiddies this way?) But instead of just kick-starting the tale of discovery in the great, wide ocean, it pauses to examine the anxiety of the unknown, where every brilliant blue wave and curiously blinking light might be masking something that’s trying to eat you. Toss in a wise, ancient surfer dude turtle, some scary Aussie sharks and several neurotic aquarium dwellers, and we’ve got ourselves something snappy.

3. The Incredibles (2004): Pixar’s leap into the superhero game covers the familiar themes of the joy of embracing your own weirdness and your responsibility to family and friends with a more serious and menacing story where the bullets and the danger, as Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) explains to her children, are very real. That realization, as well as the presence of fast-talking fashionista Edna Mode, make The Incredibles Pixar’s most adult movie, and one of its best.

2. WALL-E (2008): This, my friends, is how you do a message movie. In between the wondrously happy voice of a young Michael Crawford singing “Put On Your Sunday Clothes” to the screwball robot romance between lonely musical-loving WALL-E and sleek EVE, there’s a cautionary tale about protecting the things we’ve been given (the Earth, plants, the ability to move) and an over-reliance on ease and technology that might, like 2001: A Space Odyssey‘s HAL, decide it needs to maintain order by not maintaining you.

AND AT NO. 1

1. Toy Story (1995): It’s hard for your canon to get better when your first movie’s pretty near perfect. The inner life of a motley toy chest’s crew has all the stuff that makes childhood both awesome — birthdays, newness and adventure — and hard — the heartbreaking prospect that the fun might give way to something depressingly real. When the bravado of Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) is pierced with the realization that he is not only a toy, but a toy that can’t fly, the mood goes from heady to sadly knowing, just like life, and Toy Story goes from sweet and funny to instant classic.