Moana 2 (2024)

I would have seen this in a theater if only it had a better reception. Nearly everyone deems it not on the same tier as its predecessor, and some make it out to be borderline rotten. But since I enjoyed Frozen II for all its flaws, M2 looked like a fair bet for me.

Moana (Auliʻi Cravalho), now 19, retains popularity on Motunui as a successful wayfinder, but she won't rest on her laurels. A mystical message tells her to search for Motufutu, an ancestral island that storm god Nalo (Tofiga Fepulea'i) sank out of sheer spite. As soon as a human touches it, the curse will be broken and many Polynesians can unite there. Since divine hero Maui (Dwayne Johnson) isn't exactly on call, Moana sets out without him at first, albeit with a lot more company than before: Moni (Hualalai Chung), a Maui-idolizing young historian; Loto (Rose Matafeo), an enthused engineer who seems to have been born in the wrong century; and Kele (David Fane), a reluctant elderly curmudgeon who doesn't trust anyone else to keep the edible plants for the crew. Eventually, they'll go where the sentient ocean can't protect them.

Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018)

I liked Wreck-It Ralph so much that I was almost disappointed to learn of a sequel -- because it might negate my fanfic in the works! Nevertheless, I understood why not everyone thought highly of W-IR. The complaints I've read mostly trace to the same problem: the difficulty of making a family movie about video games. Disney sought to appeal to children, adults, boys, girls, old-school gamers, new-school gamers, and non-gamers. This meant dilution, so some viewers wanted more pandering to their demographic than they got. Thus, I was not surprised that the sequel chose a new titular focus that promised to be more universally relatable, and I was only marginally surprised that both my parents came with me.

Six years after the events of W-IR, Ralph (John C. Reilly), hulking designated villain of early-'80s game Fix-It Felix Jr.; and Vanellope (Sarah Silverman), a player character from relatively modern kiddie racing sim Sugar Rush, maintain a sibling-like close friendship, hanging out together when the arcade's closed for the night. (Apparently, her inability to leave her game has been fixed, even if she still glitches.) When Sugar Rush has a hardware malfunction, all its characters must look for new lodgings and vocations. Ralph and Vanellope hope to save the game (NPI) from a permanent shutdown by entering the Internet and buying a replacement part on eBay. Of course, they need to raise money online fast, whether by gaming or making viral videos. Amid this strain, friendship also gets strained. And as the title implies, Ralph's tendency to wreck things whether he wants to or not still causes trouble.

Moana (2016)

I wanted my last theatrical viewing of 2016 to be a good one, and I wanted to catch this one before it left the theater (still glad my folks and I waited until the crowds had petered out). That said, I had my reservations going in, because Maui looked like an uncomplimentary caricature of Pacific Islanders. Sure, I loved Aladdin (which had two of the same directors) as a kid despite its depiction of Arabs, but Maui's a traditional demigod -- and not from the long-disbelieved Greek or Nordic myths, either. Well, Disney did recruit plenty of at least partly Polynesian actors, so maybe it's not half as politically incorrect as it could be.

Sometime before the first European arrival on the fictitious isle of Motunui, a famine begins. Local legend has it that vanished/vanquished former hero Maui (Dwayne Johnson) inadvertently brought on a spreading curse when he swiped and then lost a stone called the Heart of Te Fiti. At age 16, Moana (Auli'i Cravalho) finally fulfills her desire to sail beyond the reef against the orders of her overprotective father, Chief Tui (Temuera Morrison). The apparently sapient ocean gives her the Heart, choosing her to find Maui and accompany him on a journey to restore it to its proper place. She finds him soon enough, but talking him into a rematch against demon Te Ka takes longer.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

It's hard to get all five local members of my family to agree on a movie, as we do for Christmas. This was a bit of a compromise, with my mom expecting to be bored some of the time despite a female protagonist. (Hey, modern action scenes do go on rather long by older viewers' standards.) Afterward, she said at least she stayed awake and enjoyed some humor. So how does it stand up for a moderate SW fan?

Well, first, let me assure you that it's not the fanfic-esque retread that many viewers perceived Episode VII to be, for better or worse. Ending possibly mere minutes before the start of Episode IV (you know, the first SW film ever made), it tells the story of how the Empire began its Death Star and how the Rebel Alliance learned its key weakness. The title refers to an eventual call sign for a ship containing a handful of rebels on a secret mission. Chief among them is Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), who has a bone to pick with Imperial Commander Krennic (Ben Mendelssohn) for killing her mother and coercing her father, Galen (Mads Mikkelsen), to design the space battle station, starting when she was little.

Zootopia (2016)

Like with The Force Awakens, I had been cautiously optimistic for months. As a patron of the furry fandom (don't read too much into that), I was initially caught between tentative gratitude for Disney possibly pandering to us and/or seeding the next generation...and apprehension that that might be all they were doing. Remember Chicken Little (2005)? It too looked cute, well-rendered, and a bit different from usual, but it bombed due to bad writing. Of course, Pixar aside, that was a less successful era for Disney animations. Once I learned that the co-directors had done Bolt, Tangled, and Wreck-It Ralph between them, I worried less. When people who had seen it started talking, well, animatedly about it, I stopped worrying altogether and got both parents to come along.

For those wondering how the premise differs from other animal-centric Disney fare, consider this: Has Donald Duck ever flown south for the winter? Did Bambi get a job? No, most Disney animals either (a) are nonhuman only in physical appearance, for aesthetic reasons; or (b) go naked on all fours, whether or not we can hear them speak. The mammals of Zootopia have a modern-style civilization but exhibit enough behaviors in common with their real-world counterparts that the makers must have thought hard about who should be what. Contrary to a rumor I've read, they did not inherit the Earth from bygone humans but developed intellect and society on their own -- which, unlike in some fiction I know, means that traditional carnivores limit their primary protein sources to the non-anthropomorphic fish and bugs.

The story follows Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin, best known for Snow White on Once Upon a Time), a rural rabbit who doesn't let lifelong discouragement by others stop her from pursuing her dream job in law enforcement in the big city. Becoming easily the smallest member on the force, she gets a vote of no confidence from Chief Bogo (Idris Elba). Fortunately, the mayor's office promotes affirmative action, letting her push her way into detective work on an otherwise neglected missing-otter case. Her only lead: Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), a conniving, street-smart red fox whose swindles are mostly within the bounds of the law, but not so legal that she can't manipulate him into helping. What they find is more alarming than they expected: numerous cases of predators behaving like their primitive ancestors.