10. Turning Red

Turning Red feels like Pixar’s second shot at exploring themes it first broached with Brave, but without the same stumbles that made the 2012 film fall short. The movie stars a teenage Chinese-Canadian girl named Mei who discovers that once they reach puberty, members of her family are cursed to turn into giant, mystical red pandas when they have giant bursts of emotion. When your relationship with your mother is already tense enough for all the normal reasons teenagers go through, adding something as disruptive as an uncontrollable transformation into a giant fluffball is only going to make things more challenging. Turning Red succeeds in exploring these tumultous child/parent relationships because its underlying message isn’t “do what your parents tell you”; rather, it explores the fact that even the most perfectionist of parents are still growing and trying to figure things out themselves. Mei’s mother is dealing with her own traumas while trying her best to help her daughter not make the same mistakes she did, and the film wisely recognizes that no parent or child is beyond learning something new from the other. — KS