Inside Out (2015) — PICK
The Ninth Day (2004) — PICK

The best animated family film in years and one of the best Catholic films in the last dozen years are among the latest home-video releases. Since I don’t want you to miss the Catholic film, I’ll cover that one first. (I’m pretty sure you won’t miss the other one!)  

Rescuing another remarkable Catholic film from limbo, Ignatius Press brings The Ninth Day back to DVD. From German director Volker Schlöndorff, it’s a loosely fact-inspired World War II drama about a priest imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp’s “priest block” who is released from the camp, but only for nine days.  

The horrors of the Dachau “priest block” — ironically called the world’s largest religious community, with something like 3,000 Catholic clergy and religious, 100 Protestant pastors and 30 Orthodox clergy — are drawn from the prison diary of a Luxembourg priest who really was furloughed from Dachau for nine days.

The film pits a fictionalized version of this priest, played by Downfall’s Ulrich Matthes, against August Diehl’s Nazi officer. Like Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, The Ninth Day uses a World War II setting as an arena for a dialogue between faith and conscience on the one hand and ultimate evil on the other.

The film comes with a booklet reprinting my own 2004 review of the film and my interview with the director.

Pixar’s Inside Out, written and directed by Pete Docter, is a magnificent triumph: a return to the era of Pixar greatness not seen in six years (specifically, not since Pixar’s last film by Docter, Up).

So many things contribute to the film’s amazing power. It’s a rare family film with no villain, centering on an imperfect but basically happy intact family going through a tough time. It is a wise and wounding depiction of growing up, a story of growth and loss, with real stakes and real consequences.

It’s the story of an 11-year-old girl named Riley, but also of a quintet of emotions inside her head: above all, Joy and Sadness (Amy Poehler and Phyllis Smith), as well as Fear, Anger and Disgust. Joy rules Riley’s inner world until a tiny crisis, with shattering implications.

Pixar has long been guided by Walt Disney’s philosophy that for every laugh there should be a tear. Inside Out is Pixar’s definitive statement on this sensibility, for it is literally about the relationship of Joy and Sadness.