JUMANJI (1995)

Long before this season's big blockbuster release Minecraft, videogames have informed the art and culture of modern movies. Our latest repertory series Pictures of Pixels, which anticipates the April 4 release of Minecraft on IMAX, illustrates the lively and dynamic relationship between games, gamers, and an array of memorable cinematic achievements.

Thirty years before players got trapped in a game with Minecraft, the original Jumanji inverted that equation: Robin Williams delivers an underrated performance as Alan Parrish, who gets yanked into a mystical jungle board game as a teenager and doesn't make it out until decades later, when the chaos of the jungle follows him. Loaded impressive CGI antics as animals overtake suburbia, Jumanji remains a delightful family-friendly blockbuster (with an early Kirsten Dunst performance to boot).

Williams' surprisingly tender performance doubles as a metaphor for a man resisting the end of his childhood innocence. The movie's lively adaptation of the children's book of the same name anticipated an era of gamers whose obsessions follow them into adulthood, and remains a significant achievement in Hollywood spectacle all these years later.