Moana (2016)

In Lin-Manuel Miranda's first post-Hamilton project, he pens some catchy songs that, for me, are the stars of the show. They are unmistakably his, with the unique cadence and clever wordy melodies. Even the Rock can sing, who knew? The animation is beautiful, including a very impressively realistic ocean. Just look at how far animation has come since Finding Nemo. Maui's body tattoos provided comedy but were themselves beautiful. They probably could've sustained their own short film. And let's not forget how important that the protagonist is a woman of color. She takes her destiny in her own hands and becomes a hero. She has real problems that do not revolve around a love interest. She is her own character, fully developed, likable and complex. She's not your typical Disney princess and here's to more characters like Moana.

Furious 7 (2015)

The seventh (that's right, seventh!) installment of the Fast and Furious series takes place post-Tokyo Drift.  It has the same message about family, the glamorous high life, diversity (spoiler alert: they kill off the Asian) and fast cars.  The only difference is they aren't fugitives anymore.  And this one is probably the most ridiculous in its stunts. But perhaps what is so ridiculously insane is the stunts were real, with minimal CGI.  They actually threw these nice, expensive cars out of a plane.  That was a pretty incredible sequence that was exhilarating and well edited.  There are some terrific action scenes. They know what they do best: car sequences, though I could've done without the non-auto fighting scenes.  The Rock has a fighting scene early on, and then does not reappear until the end rather comically.

Of course, we know that this was Paul Walker's final film before his untimely death.  This fact looms over the entire film.  I kind of got the sense that the intention was for Walker's character Brian to die. Brian, himself, speaks a number of foreboding lines that seem to foreshadow his death, but I suppose it would have been a bit harsh and disrespectful to have his character die.  Especially towards the end, you can tell that the stand-in for Brian is not, in fact, Paul Walker, but one of his siblings, though they do look strikingly similar.  Walker does get a fitting send off at the end, with Wiz Khalifa's "See You Again" over a montage of clips from the previous films in the series that remind you just how far this franchise has come.