Toy Story trilogy essential viewing for the child in us all

Toy Story 3 is among the most emotional and affecting animated films made to date.

Woody makes a call in Disney Pixar’s Toy Story 3, Saturday, 9.25pm, Disney Movies (404).

Now that the first teaser trailer is out for Finding Dory, the long-anticipated 2016 sequel to Pixar’s 2003 animated smash Finding Nemo (Saturday, 3.40pm, Disney Movies), this is a good time to re-acquaint young people with the original. The movie that brought Ellen DeGeneres back from her dormant career, the movie also stars comedian turned actor Albert Brooks as the protective father in search of his son. The action famously shifts to Sydney later in the film, and the direction of Andrew Stanton (who also co-wrote the script) is peppy and positive.

Later that same day, those same young people have a chance to experience all three films in the trilogy that marks a high point in American animation to date. The original movie, 1995’s blockbuster Toy Story (Saturday, 6.30pm, Disney Movies), features the voice talents of Tom Hanks as Sheriff Woody and Tim Allen as space explorer Buzz Lightyear. This was the first feature-length film from the Pixar studio following a series of acclaimed short animations, and it put the then-fledgling studio on the map.

As second films in trilogies often do, there is a lot of connective tissue to work through in 1999’s Toy Story 2 (Saturday, 7.50pm, Disney Movies). This is the movie that introduced cowgirl Jessie, the iconic doll Barbie and Mrs Potato Head into the mix, and was a wild theatrical success after it was rescued from a straight-to-video fate.

Eleven years later, Toy Story 3 (Saturday, 9.25pm, Disney Movies) proved you can go home again. Among the most emotional and affecting animated films made, it follows Woody and the gang as they realise their owner is headed off to college and mistakenly believe he’s throwing them away. The final half-hour of the movie will bring a tear to the eye of anyone who has ever had to confront life-altering change. (A fourth instalment is set for release in 2018.)

Moving to live action, two recent German films are worth the time to seek out or revisit. First up is Tom Tykwer’s massively influential 1999 import Run Lola Run (Monday, 8.30pm, World Movies). Playing fast and loose with time and space, the film follows a determined young woman in then-contemporary Berlin determined to save her boyfriend from the wrath of gangsters. With its pulsing soundtrack and inventive visual style, the film is a landmark of late-century filmmaking.

Also worth the time is director Wolfgang Becker’s audacious and thoroughly enthralling 2003 German dramatic comedy Good Bye, Lenin! (Thursday, 6.30pm, World Movies). Then-unknown actor Daniel Bruehl stars as a young man from East Berlin whose politically active mother goes into a coma as the wall comes down. On her recovery, he becomes determined to persuade her that the GDR triumphed over capitalism, which leads to some insightful satire on the gulf between the two sides of that barrier.

Toy Story 3 (G) 4.5 stars

Saturday, 9.25pm, Disney Movies (404)

Run Lola Run (M) 4 stars

Monday, 8.30pm, World Movies (430)

Good Bye, Lenin! (M) 4 stars

Thursday, 6.30pm, World Movies (430)