Several days ago, the Oscar nominations were announced. Among the many categories where an Academy Award can be won, one particular standout is Best Animated Feature. In fact, the two most recent films that I saw in theaters were animated films: Moana and Sing. Only the former got a nod, and it's pretty clear to see why.

The title character, Moana (newcomer Auli'i Cravalho), is the daughter of the leader of her people on Motunui, a small island in the Pacific Ocean. From an early age, after an enchanting encounter with the ocean (whose personified as an actual character), she displays a yearning for the ocean which is consistently frowned upon by her father. As she grows older into a teenager being prepared to be the next leader, her island is slowly being devastated by the spread of death that has occurred since the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson). With the help of her mischievous grandmother (Rachel House in a standout performance), she takes a long-forgotten boat past the reef that surrounds the island to find Maui and return the mystical stone that he stole, which resulted in the spread of the devastation and the birth of a lava demon.

My description of the synopsis probably isn't doing the movie justice. It's a movie that must be seen and experienced. Disney has been on one extraordinary streak of good/great films that really got started with Tangled in 2010. Since then, their batting average has been phenomenal, and Moana continues that streak.

The animation is phenomenal: packed with so much detail that it demands repeat viewing. Also, the music is catchy and at least a couple of the songs will get stuck in your head, particularly Maui's self-congratulatory anthem "You're Welcome" (Moana's soliloquy song "How Far I'll Go", revived in the credits and sung by Alessia Cara, was also nominated for an Oscar). Perhaps best of all, the film has several fully realized characters, particularly Moana, her grandmother and Maui. Moana is one of the best Disney Princesses they've created yet: not only is she empowered, spirited and strong, but she's also allowed vulnerability and moments of doubt. The relationship between her and her grandmother is one you want Disney to have in all of their movies. The movie isn't perfect, but Moana helps solidify Disney's current place in the animated movie field.

On the other side of the coin is Sing, the latest from Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment (if you needed any hints, the Minions from Despicable Me show up before the movie starts). A koala named Buster (Matthew McConaughey) grows up enchanted with the theater and grows up to own the same theater he first fell in love with. The problem is, he's a lousy owner, running flop after flop while barely hanging on by a thread financially. He hopes to turn his fortunes around with a singing competition. This idea attracts talent ranging from a teenage punk-rock porcupine named Ash (Scarlett Johansson), an overworked, underappreciated mother pig named Rosita (Reese Witherspoon), a Frank Sinatra-type crooning and sax-playing mouse (Seth McFarlane), a young gorilla in his dad's gang but more interested in singing and has a soulful voice to boot (Taron Egerton), and an elephant who has spectacular pipes and equally spectacular stage fright (Tori Kelly). There's just one problem: thanks to the clumsiness of Buster's iguana assistant (director Garth Jennings), the prize money is $100,000, which Buster doesn't have.

It's about as zany as you'd expect, and there's no attempt to turn the anthropomorphic animal world into some kind of allegory, like what Zootopia did. It's really just a cute diversion, with a plot that's well-worn and a string of stars giving reasonably good performances, Jennifer Saunders as an old diva sheep being a particular standout. There's a ton of music, as you'd expect, but many of the things fleet by after a few seconds. Some of it's funny, some of it isn't. There's one especially weird running gag where this group of Japanese girl foxes keep showing up to the theater and performing for some reason. Because they can't understand English and they think they're in the show? It's an odd joke that didn't have any place in the film. Still, it's a cute diversion.

Though the films differ greatly in quality, there are perhaps a few similarities. Apart from the flood of music, it's interesting to see that animated films are throwing in at least one story line about women getting the treatment they deserve. Ash is in a relationship with her band mate, and he treats her like garbage. Buster also misjudges Ash by thinking she would do well as a teeny-bopper because she's a teenage girl. After breaking up with her boyfriend, and Buster discovering that she can write her own material, she shreds the stage righteously. Rosita tries to juggle her overwhelming life of too many children and a worthless husband with the singing competition, and it works until her Rube Goldberg system goes awry. With the help of her flamboyant German pig song-and-dance partner Gunter (Nick Kroll), she blossoms onstage and belatedly gets the kind of attention her husband should've been giving her in the first place. Perhaps it's being more in line with the zeitgeist, but it's clear that we can expect major women characters to exude various shades of feminism in today's animated movies.

Disney won't be releasing a new movie this year, with Universal and Illumination have already rolled out the first trailer for Despicable Me 3, with Trey Parker being the supervillain who's even more of an relic of the 1980s that you would think possible. If Disney continues their winning streak, anything's possible. We still have yet to see if Universal and Illumination can evolve like DreamWorks did and become a serious player in the animated film business.