The Opening of WALL·E

Leave it to Pixar to deliver one of the most devastating critiques of consumer capitalism in a children's movie. The opening of WALL·E (2008) is a near-wordless masterpiece: a solitary trash-compacting robot, an Earth buried in the wreckage of human consumption, and more emotional intelligence than most films manage in two hours. Equal parts Chaplin, Kubrick, and environmental horror. A.O. Scott called its opening a “cinematic poem of such wit and beauty.” I know this because his review was nearly as brilliant as the film itself.