tick...tick...BOOM! (2021)

This sat on my Netflix list quite a while before I actually looked at the description. The title and poster image didn't grab me, but then I saw that it was a musical directed (not composed) by Lin-Manuel Miranda. And at about two hours, short enough for a comfortable night's viewing.

In 1990, 29-year-old Jonathan Larson (Andrew Garfield) is a bit of a starving artist, waiting at a New York diner but failing to pay his energy bills. He badly wants the sci-fi musical he's writing to be a Broadway hit, but he's stagnating on a key song advised by Stephen Sondheim (Bradley Whitford) in a workshop. As the deadline draws near, Jonathan neglects everything else, including girlfriend Susan (Alexandra Shipp) and gay best friend Michael (Robin de Jesús).

Encanto (2021)

I decided that my last feature of the year should be something that promised to be uplifting. And preferably short, since I got a late start. This one's 109 minutes, about 19 of which are end credits, with no mid- or post-credit sequence.

It's tricky to gauge the era -- we see donkeys and no cars -- but the place is a Colombian village. Thanks to what is attributed only to a miracle, the Madrigal family lives in a house with a life of its own, and not in a scary way. The Casita, as they affectionately call it, can also endow each Madrigal child with a different superpower in a sort of coming-of-age ceremony, but Mirabel (Stephanie Beatriz) was denied for some reason. Now 15, she tries to maintain a positive outlook despite her relatives tending to feel ashamed of her. Then the miracle shows more compelling signs of fading, between the Casita developing cracks and the family powers gradually becoming unreliable. Will Mirabel save the day, or is she, as her matriarchal grandmother (María Cecilia Botero/Olga Merediz) believes, the cause of the trouble?

Hamilton (2020)

For all the popularity of the Broadway musical, I was reluctant to check it out. Anachronistic music and blatant racial/ethnic inaccuracy in a story based on true events seemed like punchlines, yet it was clearly not played primarily for laughs. Weirdness without humor is often off-putting. Then I remembered liking Jesus Christ Superstar and decided I had no excuse.

This is not really an adaptation of the play but a screening of a 2016 production thereof, complete with the sounds of a then-live audience. It covers a period roughly from the first time Alexander Hamilton (Lin-Manuel Miranda, who also wrote and composed it) met Aaron Burr (Leslie Odom, Jr.) to, well, the last time. You should already know what that means. If you badly need an early U.S. history lesson, let's just say for now that he helped George Washington (Christopher Jackson) in the Revolutionary War and became Secretary of the Treasury.

In the Heights (2021)

That's right: For the first time in 16 months, I went to a movie theater. My parents went with me, making a point to pick the local theater most in need of support. They had already seen the play; I haven't.

The title refers to Washington Heights, a Manhattan neighborhood that's home to many from Puerto Rico, Cuba, and especially the Dominican Republic. The narrating protagonist is Usnavi de la Vega (Anthony Ramos), a struggling late-20s shopkeeper who, despite encouragement from teen cousin Sonny (Gregory Diaz IV) and friend Benny (Corey Hawkins), can hardly work up the nerve to ask out frequent customer Vanessa (Melissa Barrera). Others have their own considerable troubles: Benny's employer, Kevin (Jimmy Smits), will do anything to pay Stanford tuition for his daughter Nina (Leslie Grace), but Nina would rather drop out; and Daniela (Daphne Rubin-Vega) has to move her salon for lower rent. Indeed, a recurring theme is that the block's culture is fading away as businesses close and people move out. And we viewers get plenty of advance warning of a multiday Heights-wide power outage, which sure won't alleviate anyone's stress during a heat wave.

Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

I made a point to rewatch the 1964 Mary Poppins first. Good thing I did, because judging from my memory, I must have dozed off during "Stay Awake" and missed all the rest as a kid. Pity: It seems more enjoyable to an immature mind with little idea how actual adults behave. I feel like I got more out of Saving Mr. Banks. Still, there was enough of merit in MP to keep me interested in the sequel.

In 1934, some 24 years after Mary left the Banks estate, her former ward Michael (Ben Whishaw) is a flaky banker and widowed father of three on the verge of losing their old house if he can't find a share certificate. His sister Jane (Emily Mortimer) lives elsewhere in London but pays frequent visits to help. Michael's two oldest kids, tweens Annabel (Pixie Davis) and John (Nathaniel Saleh), have had to grow up a bit in the year since their mother died, and youngest Georgie (Joel Dawson) can be a handful. Before long, the titular event happens, and the ageless mage (Emily Blunt) intends to do the Bankses a good turn once again.

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.