Flight of the Navigator (1986)

I'd heard of this title a few times and knew it to have had a moderately warm reception. When I saw it listed on Disney+, I figured it promised to be uplifting (in more ways than one) and appealing to '80s nostalgia. And short, at 90 minutes.

In Fort Lauderdale in 1978, unaccompanied 12-year-old David (Joey Cramer) falls into a ravine. When he wakes up, eight years have passed, yet he doesn't look or sound any older. Furthermore, he subconsciously has a telepathic connection with computers. A NASA official (Howard Hesseman) soon links him to a captured ET spaceship, which must have transported him at ultra-relativistic speed to an uncharted planet, where his brain was augmented. David doesn't like being taken to a national-secret government stronghold for study, so he sneaks out to the craft -- which opens only for him. A robot in control (Paul Reubens), whom David nicknames Max, identifies him as the navigator. Max needs to copy backup records from David's brain in order to go home; in return, Max promises to drop David off where he wants. Of course, NASA wants them both back....

Divines (2016)

I selected this partly for being very different from anything I'd seen lately and partly for having a runtime of less than two hours, which has grown scarce on my Netflix list. The cover image of a girl with a bloodied face did not exactly draw me in, but it did warn me that this wouldn't be much fun.

In a Romani suburb of modern Paris, high school friends Dounia (Oulaya Amamra) and Maimouna (Déborah Lukumuena), unsatisfied with their likely career options, resort to crime. At first they merely shoplift and sell on a black market. Then they persuade irascible drug dealer Rebecca (Jisca Kalvanda) to hire them for various tasks. They enjoy the pay, but it's a dangerous business, and teens aren't known for their cautious decisionmaking....

The Wild Robot (2024)

With no home Net connection last night, I could think of no better way to pass time than by going to a movie theater. And no other showings at that time tempted me. The premises of this one didn't sound particularly creative, but the reception has been magnificent, even if I happened to have the theater to myself.

An accident in transit leaves a commercial robot, ROZZUM Unit 7134 (Lupita Nyong'o), stranded on a forested, seemingly North American island with no human residents. She studies and masters the language of the animals but still gets no takers on her offer of assistance. She prepares to signal her manufacturer, Universal Dynamics, for pickup, but then an orphaned gosling runt (Boone Storme, later Kit Connor) imprints on her, effectively assigning her to raise him until he can migrate. The gosling, eventually called Brightbill, becomes almost as much of a misfit as his widely feared "mom." But as the task requires protocol overrides, "Roz" learns to care about him as much more than an obligation, and Brightbill can't resent her for long.

The Fundamentals of Caring (2016)

I chose this Netflix original almost at random from my list. The description didn't exactly grab me, but it looked rather different from what else I'd seen lately. At worst, it would waste only 97 minutes.

Seattle ex-novelist Ben (Paul Rudd) registers as a caregiver and, despite inexperience, asks to look after Trevor (Craig Roberts), an 18-year-old from England with a single mom, Elsa (Jennifer Ehle), and Duchenne muscular dystrophy. After a period in which Trevor does little more than watch TV, Ben persuades Elsa to let the two men make the big production of driving to several odd sights Trevor has expressed interest in seeing. Along the way, they pick up young adult hitchhiker Dot (Selena Gomez), who finds instant mutual attraction in Trevor; and then "Peaches" (Megan Ferguson), a woman with a dead car who looks ready to give birth any day now.

Unbroken (2014)

For Veterans Day, I picked the first new-to-me war movie I found on Netflix. I did not know that it was directed by Angelina Jolie and co-written by the Coen Brothers, but those facts would have increased my curiosity.

In 1943, Olympic runner Louie Zamperini (Jack O'Connell) is serving as a U.S. Air Force captain when his plane gives out over the Pacific. For nearly half the movie, he and the other two crash survivors, Phil (Domnhall Gleeson) and Mac (Finn Witrock), are holding out on rafts. Then they get taken as POWs, which is a worse situation in some ways, particularly under the war crime-level command of "the Bird" (Miyavi).

Inside Out 2 (2024)

Why did I wait this long to see a well-received sequel I'd anticipated for nine years? Well, I've gotten squeamish about watching family fare in theaters, where kids might get noisy. Plus, my folks almost never join me at movie theaters anymore and are likely to be tired of Disney from looking after their grandkids. I opted for a Disney+ showing alone.

Shortly after Riley (Kensington Tallman) turns 13, a crew revamps the control center of her mind such that Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale, not Bill Hader), and Disgust (Liza Lapira, not Mindy Kaling) find the panel oversensitive to their touch. More importantly, a host of new emotions shows up: manic Anxiety (Maya Hawke), adorably tiny Envy (Ayo Edebiri), French-accented Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), near-mute galoot Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), and elderly Nostalgia (June Squibb). Anxiety has a big plan to change Riley's behavior and sense of self, and when the first five emotions aren't on board, she literally bottles them up and banishes them to the vault of secrets. They spend most of the movie trying to get back before Riley's life is in shambles.