Snowden - 1 smiles

"Snowden," directed by Oliver Stone and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is surprisingly dull. However, make no mistake: Snowden's motivation for blowing the whistle on the US government's spying on everyone is simple: He was watching his fellow citizens' privacy made extinct by a shadow government he was helping to created. He was abetting a crime and he knew he had to do something. You have to wonder by Stone felt the need to make this movie since the definitive film had already been made. The 2014 Oscar-winning documentary, Citizenfour, directed by Laura Poitras, is a movie with all of the drama and thrills you could want because it was shot in real time, when the world was just learning about Snowden and the information he had. It seems Stone assumes you've seen Citizenfour so he doesn't take time to take you into the real world of Edward Snowden.

As Poitras knew, the story of NSA's mass collection of information from the laptops and cellphones of private citizens is a complicated one and there's no way to make it simple. Nonetheless, "Snowden" relies on every manner of movie convention and emotional shortcut. Snowden, played by an earnest Gordon-Levitt, is an eager-seeming, vaguely cocky 20-something, not the cerebral Snowden of the interviews Poitras did with him in a Hong Kong hotel room in June 2013 that went global just as the first stories by The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald (Zachary Quinto) and Ewen MacAskill (Tom Wilkinson) were being published. The romance between Snowden and Lindsay Mills (Shailene Woodley), who now resides with him in Russia, takes up too much of the running time, but that contributes to the 'conventional movie' feel. "Snowden" is about what a citizen owes his country when that country's actions are criminal. Stone's filmmaking is so off that you are likely to forget what the real issues are.

Sully - 3 1/2 smiles

"Sully," written by Todd Komarnicki and adapted from the book Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters (co-written Chesley Sullenberger and Jeffrey Zaslow) and directed by Clint Eastwood, is a movie more interested in offering a complete portrait of Captain 'Sully' Sullenberger and the investigation that followed his landing an airplane on the Hudson River on January 15, 2009 than simply retelling the situation and offering praise for his actions. Tom Hanks stars as the title character, a pilot who faces the toughest 208 seconds of his life on the day that his plane is struck by a flock of birds, knocking out both engines. Alongside his co-pilot Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart), Sully makes an intense water landing; the passengers are safe but Sully's reputation isn't. It's clear from the NTSB investigation that follows, Sully's decisions are so scrutinized that it looks like they're determined to find pilot error. After all, computer simulations say that he could have made it back to La Guardia or to nearby Teterboro Airport in New Jersey.

Hanks is excellent in showing how the pilot handled the incredible stress, doubts and mental anguish as he faces an onslaught of media requests; that he was plagued by lack of sleep and nightmares and suffered post-traumatic stress syndrome. In the media, Sully was often portrayed as a resolute hero. In the story, we find an introspective Sully to can't help but relive those 208 seconds, wondering if he endangered lives when he could have made it back to an airport. Nonetheless, as one character says to Sully, his heroism was the best news New Yorkers had heard in a long time 'especially with an airplane in it.' With "Sully," we see a true story of human goodness and skill during a time of possible catastrophe.

Kubo and the Two Strings - 4 smiles

I enjoyed "Kubo and the Two Strings" as much as I liked Finding Dory and I would hope that this serious animated fantasy adventure film is included in the Best Animated Film category. The story takes place in a mythical feudal Japan and produced by US-based Laika, whose previous movies include Coraline and The Boxtrolls. This one uses stop-motion animation (as opposed to the more popular CGI) and is an extremely polished example of the style. "Kubo" begins with a prologue that introduces a young woman with a baby arriving on a desolate coast following a harrowing sea voyage. Ten years later and the one-eyed baby Kubo (voiced by Art Parkinson) has grown into a self-sufficient boy who cares for his mother and uses a strange sort of magic to breathe life into origami creations. He uses these characters in stories he tells the local villagers. One night, Kubo stays out later than he's supposed to and forces from his past, his two evil aunts (Rooney Mara) who have been searching for him, seek to take him to his grandfather, The Moon King (Ralph Fiennes). To save himself, he must go on a quest for three items (a sword, a breastplate and a helmet) which will help him fightThe Moon King. His only companions on this journey are an animated monkey charm (Charlize Theron) and a human/beetle hybrid (Matthew McConaughey).

"Kubo and the Two Strings" incorporates themes about the importance of family and choosing the right life path and, while an engaging story, is not light and fluffy like Finding Dory. A village is destroyed and there are scary monsters, including a giant animated skeleton, underwater eyestalks and a flying, fire-breathing dragon, making older children the target audience. And although the images are not perfect Pixar, "Kubo and the Two Strings" is magical.