Hidden Figures (2016) — PICK

Lion (2016) — PICK

Silence (2016) — PICK

By far my favorite of the three, albeit also the most difficult, is Martin Scorsese’s powerful Silence, based on the acclaimed novel by Japanese Catholic Shusaku Endo.

Andrew Garfield (Hacksaw Ridge) and Adam Driver (Paterson) star as a pair of dedicated Jesuit missionaries who go to 17th-century Japan looking for their mentor (Liam Neeson).

What they find is a community of hidden Christians suffering under excruciating persecution.

Silence raises tough questions about faith and culture, persecution and fidelity, and what it means to affirm or deny Christ. I’ve written two long essays about it (both available at NCRegister.com and DecentFilms.com), and I’ll continue to ponder it for years to come.

Hidden Figures relates the untold story of black female mathematicians (Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe) at NASA’s segregated Langley Research Center during the 1960s space race. One, Katherine Goble Johnson (Henson), is tapped for an all-white-male research team crunching numbers to put astronaut John Glenn into orbit.

From Catholic director Theodore Melfi (St. Vincent), Hidden Figures tells an important story in an entertaining, if sanitized, way.

Then there’s Lion, starring Dev Patel (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) as Saroo Brierley, an Indian-born man who was separated from his home and family at the age of 5 and eventually adopted by an Australian family — but as an adult managed to relocate his home village by scouring Google Maps images for landmarks matching his childhood memories. As with Hidden Figures, critics will find fault, but the true story is its best asset.