Maybe the greatest feat director Lee Unkrich and co. have achieved with Toy Story 3 – beyond their precision-tuned technical proficiency – is making the characters still matter after such a long absence. It’s been over a deacade since Toy Story 2, and we’ve already been dazzled by game-changers like Ratatouille, Wall-E and Up, but this third instalment doesn’t feel dated one bit. About to embark for college, 17-year-old Andy has to leave his toys behind, causing Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz (Tim Allen) et al, to ponder their future: are they meant to remain loyal to Andy or be passed on to other children? Again, the animation is faultless. A sheer number of new characters are introduced, and they’re all bursting with so much giddy colour and detail your eyes often feel like exploding out of their sockets. If there’s one thing Pixar can be relied on doing is taking things to the next level, and the better-as-it-progresses Toy Story 3 does it stunningly with a harrowing third act that’s the most intense sequence they’ve ever created. Beautiful, action-packed, funny, restlessly inventive and emotionally charged, it’s a near-perfect closure to the franchise that initially put them on the map.