David Edelstein

You have to sympathize with the makers of Sully, director Clint Eastwood and screenwriter Todd Komarnicki. The focus of their story is Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger's aborted Jan. 15, 2009, flight, which lasted only 208 seconds. He flew out of New York's LaGuardia, hit a flock of geese, and made an unprecedented landing on the Hudson River, saving all 155 passengers and crew members.

I have some reservations about the documentary Life, Animated, but they can't undermine how moved I was watching its subject, Owen Suskind, who has autism, figure out how to navigate the world using Disney cartoons as a reference point.

The writer-director Whit Stillman's Love & Friendship is an improvement on its source, Jane Austen's novella Lady Susan.

That's not quite as heretical as it sounds. Austen wrote the book early in her career, before Pride and Prejudice. It wasn't published in her lifetime. The title isn't even hers — it didn't have one.

Given the recent expression of anger about the lack of racial diversity in American cinema, it's nice to be able to tell you about Jay Dockendorf's very fine indie feature Naz & Maalik, in which the title characters are African-American teenage boys who also happen to be devout Muslims who also happen to be gay.

That's three outsider perspectives, which is a lot even for an indie. But the point is not representation for its own sake. The triple layer of alienation from mainstream culture makes for an excitingly fresh slant.