We actually start with Caesar’s funeral, his body decorated with flowers and then set alight like a Viking, before fast-forwarding “many generations later.” All apes talk now and most humans don’t, reduced to caveman loin cloths and running wide-eyed and scared, evolution in reverse.

Our new hero is the young ape Noa (Owen Teague ) who is like all young adult chimps — seeking his father’s approval (even chimp dads just don’t understand) and testing his bravery. He is part of a clan that raises pet eagles, smokes fish and lives peacefully.

That all changes when his village is attacked not by humans but by fellow apes — masked soldiers from a nasty kingdom led by the crown-wearing Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand, playing it to the hilt). He has taken Caesar’s name but twisted his words to become a tyrannical strongman — sorry, strongape.

Unlike the last movie which dealt with man’s inhumanity to animals — concentration camps included — ape-on-ape violence is in the cards for this one, including capturing an entire clan as prisoners. Proximus Caesar’s goons use makeshift cattle prods on fellow apes and force them to work while declaring “For Caesar!”

Screenwriter Josh Friedman has cleverly created a movie that examines how ancient stories can be hijacked and manipulated, like how Caesar’s non-violent message gets twisted by bad actors. There’s also a lot of “Avatar” primitive naivete, and that makes sense since the reboot was shaped by several of that blue alien movie’s makers.

The movie poses some uncomfortable questions about collaborationists. William H. Macy plays a human who has become a sort of teacher-prisoner to Proximus Caesar — reading Kurt Vonnegut to him — and won’t fight back. “It is already their world,” he rationalizes.

Along for the heroic ride is a human young woman (Freya Allan, a budding star) who is hiding an agenda but offers Noa help along the way. Peter Macon plays a kindly, book-loving orangutan who adds a jolt of gleeful electricity to the movie and is missed when he goes.

The effects are just jaw-dropping, from the ability to see individual hairs on the back of a monkey to the way leaves fall and the crack of tree limbs echoing in the forest. The sight of apes on horseback, which seemed glitchy just seven years ago, are now seamless. There are also inside jokes, like the use of the name Nova again this time.

Director Wes Ball nicely handles all the thrilling sequences — though the two-and-a-half hour runtime is somewhat taxing — and some really cool ones, like the sight of apes on horseback on a beach, a nod to the original 1968 movie. And like when the apes look through some old illustrated kids’ books and see themselves depicted in zoo cages. That makes for some awkward human-ape interaction. “What is next for apes? Should we go back to silence?” our hero asks.

The movie races to a complex face-off between good and bad apes and good and bad humans outside a hulking silo that holds promise to each group. Can apes and humans live in peace, as Caesar hoped? “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” doesn’t answer that but it does open up plenty more to ponder. Starting with the potentially crippling proposition of a key death, this franchise has somehow found new vibrancy.

“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” a 20th Century Studios release that is exclusively in theaters May 10, is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action.” Running time: 145 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

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That was a task for Abe Sylvia, creator, showrunner and executive producer of the new Apple TV+ series “Palm Royale,” streaming now, about a woman’s efforts to enter high society.

Burnett “was curious as to where it goes,” revealed Sylvia, who assured her that she would have more to do.

Fortunately, Sylvia already had a great cast lined up — Kristen Wiig, Laura Dern (also an executive producer), Allison Janney and Leslie Bibb — which impressed Burnett.

“She said, ‘Those are the best ladies in the business. I want to be on set with them. I want to have dinner with them. I’m game.’”

Once he got a yes from Burnett, Sylvia stuck to his word that the role would be worth Burnett’s time.

“I went back to the writers room. I said, ‘We now have Carol Burnett playing this role. We need to make sure it is worthy of Carol Burnett.’” They added more scenes for her character — with dialogue.

In hindsight, Burnett, who turns 91 in April, jokes those coma scenes weren’t so bad.

“I did fall asleep, so it was perfect, although I’d been up since 5 a.m. to get ready to come there and then go back to bed,’’ Burnett said.

“Palm Royale” is based on the novel “Mr. & Mrs. American Pie” by Juliet McDaniel. The series is set in 1969 and follows Wiig as Maxine Simmons, a woman who will do anything to be accepted into Palm Beach high society. For her, the pinnacle is becoming a member of an exclusive club called Palm Royale. In her first scene, Maxine scales a large fence around the property to sit by the pool and order a cocktail.

“She’s complicated,” said Wiig. “You still want to root for her even though it’s like, what is she doing? You want her to get there and you want her to succeed, and she keeps getting in her own way.”

Maxine’s “in” to both Palm Royale and its members is Burnett’s character, Norma D’ellacourt, who she is related to by marriage. With Norma in a coma, Maxine believes her husband will inherit her fortune.

It’s established that Norma is the societal queen bee who seems to know everyone’s secrets and the concern for her health is more surface than sincere. Most would rather she stay in a coma, which Burnett says is understandable.

“You get to know who she is and she’s not a very nice person,” said Burnett, “Those are really a lot of fun to play.”

“Palm Royale” also gave Burnett the opportunity to improvise with Wiig, who shares a sketch comedy background. Wiig is a “Saturday Night Live” alum.

“We would do the script, and then the director would say, ‘OK, do it for yourselves now’ so that we could play. That’s a great gift to any actor,” said Burnett.

Janney plays a socialite who is a lady-in-waiting for Burnett’s throne. Janney, an Oscar winner, says working with Burnett legitimized her career to her father.

“I’m not even kidding. He was so over the moon. I’ve never seen him get excited about anything I’ve done before,” she said.

Not everyone desires to be a part of the upper echelon in Palm Beach. Dern plays Linda Shaw, who has the wealth and family history to be included but scoffs at its superficiality and focuses on social issues like women’s rights.

Because Dern has been fortunate enough to have some exciting roles in her own career, she wants others to have that opportunity.

“Being raised by an actress was a big influence in that want, as we fight for equity in varying ways,” said Dern, the daughter of Diane Ladd. “I think ageism is not talked about enough. Creating opportunity where an ensemble could include Kaia Gerber all the way to Carol Burnett was really exciting.”

The cast also includes Amber Chardae Robinson, Mindy Cohn and Josh Lucas, who plays Maxine’s husband,

Ricky Martin portrays D’ellacourt’s caretaker who also works at the Palm Royale. For Martin, the series gave him an opportunity to perform comedy for the first time and try to hold his own in scenes with “maestros in comedy.”

“I love difficult tasks. I’m a Capricorn,” said Martin. “If it’s challenging, I’m in. I’m seduced by it, and I want to be good at it.”

He learned that less is more when going for laughs. “I didn’t know that was the key until I was surrounded by this group of people,” he said.

Martin would love to still be working at 90, like Burnett.

“She walks onto set and makes everyone feel good. Even in a coma, she makes people laugh without opening her mouth.”

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“It was just a feeling,” Ziggy Marley said of getting his father’s life on screen in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “We explored it without knowing that we definitely wanted to do it because we needed to make sure that the people we did it with was the right people. People who respected what we wanted to do, the culture, the authenticity that we wanted.”

This time, he said, they found the right partners. But it was a gamble for everyone: For Paramount Pictures and the other producers, wanting to do right by Bob Marley’s story, his music and his message and worried what would happen if they didn’t; For Kingsley Ben-Adir stepping into the shoes of an icon; For the family and friends who mined their memories for the more intimate story; And for a director, Reinaldo Marcus Green, who had to bring it all together and make it sing.

Early signs suggest that for moviegoing audiences, it worked. “Bob Marley: One Love” has only been in theaters for a few days, but it is already making waves at the box office. On its first day alone, it made $14 million in North America, a record for a midweek Valentine’s Day debut. As of Sunday it had already made an estimated $80 million globally. Though critics have been mixed, ticket buyers responded with enthusiasm giving the $70 million film the highest marks in exit polls.

“It’s such a rewarding validation of the thing that we set out to do,” said Mike Ireland, the co-president of Paramount Motion Picture Group. “The audience is the ultimate arbiter of every movie and everything you put into the world. And to have them respond in that way? It’s just fantastic.”

The film focuses in on a specific period in Bob Marley’s life, from 1976 to 1978. During that time of political turmoil in Jamaica, the reggae legend survived an assassination attempt, produced his seminal album “Exodus” in an 18-month exile in London, was diagnosed with cancer and returned to Jamaica to reunite with his family and stage the famous “One Love” concert.

“I’m a movie guy,” multi-Grammy winner Ziggy Marley said. “My selfish goal was to have a movie that had entertainment and action. I said to them, ‘I don’t want a boring movie.’ And this period of time was the most active and entertaining.”

The story and script were derived from stories from Ziggy Marley and the legend’s widow, Rita Marley, played in the film by Lashana Lynch, and others who knew him well. They shot on location in the U.K. and Jamaica, where they worked with locals in front of and behind the camera, where many had personal or at least second-hand ties to Bob Marley.

For Green, one of the biggest challenges of a film like “One Love” was getting the patois language right and making it feel real without watering it down. They were, he said, essentially making a foreign language movie but without subtitles. It’s just one of the crucial ways that their largely Jamaican cast and crew added texture and legitimacy to everything.

“We cast, I would say, 98% Jamaicans,” Green said. “We have real musicians as well. It creates that authentic feeling. It doesn’t feel like you’re watching actors trying to play music. You have real music by real musicians.”

The studio and production companies leaned heavily on the local government and film commission for help filming in Trench Town and re-creating Bob Marley’s home exactly as it was.

“You have to get the people of Jamaica’s blessings first for something like this, you know?” Ziggy Marley said. “We couldn’t do it without Jamaica.”

And all hope they helped to contribute to Jamaica’s filmmaking infrastructure. It’s hardly a surprise that the film now holds the record for Jamaica’s biggest opening day ever, surpassing “Black Panther.”

On everyone’s mind was getting Bob Marley right — starting with the music that most audiences will come in knowing and expecting certain things from, and trickling down to the private and internal life of a larger-than-life figure. Ben-Adir learned to sing and play guitar, which he did during filming under Ziggy Marley’s guidance — who wanted an artistic interpretation and not an exact copy. The final film blends Ben-Adir’s voice with archival recordings.

“Kingsley did a good job,” Ziggy Marley said. “He did the work. He really studied.”

Sometimes when families and estates are involved in the biopic process, the life can get watered down and sanitized. But Ziggy Marley and his family went in clear-eyed about wanting to show a real person, flaws and all. And who better to steer the process and the large-scale re-creations of famous concerts than someone who also is an acclaimed musician in his own right?

Ziggy Marley hopes that the film makes “people feel like they are part of the family, part of the crew, part of the band,” he said. “You are inside now. You’re not a fan on the outside.”

But mostly, he said, it’s about the message.

“We’re shedding a light on the idea of unity for humanity, of one love for people,” he said. “That is what we are most proud of, that we are serving a purpose.”

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Or … does the limit not exist?

Forgive us that utterly blatant setup for one of the original’s most famous lines. It’s just that some of them are so darned memorable. Like, “You can’t sit with us!” — screeched. Or when Regina, the haughtiest queen bee ever to carry a cafeteria tray, scathingly tells her minion Gretchen, who’s trying out her new word “fetch,” to “Stop trying to make ‘fetch’ happen. It’s NOT going to happen!!”

But even in “Mean Girls 17,” should it come to that, someone will still be trying to make “fetch” happen. And it’s actually not a bad word to describe the experience of watching the new “Mean Girls” — a slick, fizzy bit of entertainment that’s occasionally delightful and usually fun, even if the translation to 2024 definitely has its rough spots.

If you’ve recently re-watched the first film, you may be surprised here at how many lines remain, word for word. What’s impressive is how many still work – unlike some social comedies that felt right 20 years ago but have scenes that fall with a thud now (see “Love Actually”).

There are exceptions, though. I’ll confess to feeling queasy throughout about the “dumb girl” character who remains in the Plastics, Regina’s social group. There is, thankfully, no more reference to a coach sleeping with a student, which would not have been funny, even with Jon Hamm as the coach. Slut-shaming has been conspicuously toned down – the insult in Regina’s famous Burn Book is now “cow” and not “slut.”

On the other hand, fat-shaming? That’s still there, as when the camera zooms in rudely on the rear end of a character who’s gained a few pounds.

As for the casting, some of it works wonderfully, particularly the duo who introduce the film, which is again written by Fey, with music by Jeff Richmond (her husband), and lyrics by Nell Benjamin. Damian, the beloved character described affectionately by Janis as “almost too gay to function” (but that’s only OK when she says it), and Janis, his best friend, a talented artist whose fallout with Regina left her in the dirt socially, function almost as quasi-narrators. Jaquel Spivey, of Broadway’s “A Strange Loop,” is hilarious and also moving as Damian — you wait for each new line, and he wastes none of them. And Auli’i Cravalho as Janis has a gorgeous voice and charismatic screen presence. (And a huge song, though from the trailer, you wouldn’t know anyone has songs at all.)

Angourie Rice is the new Cady, the Lindsay Lohan role, a home-schooled math whiz who arrives in suburban Chicago straight from Kenya, where her mother was doing zoological research, into the snake pit of high school. Rice is a sweet presence but not as convincing in the “bad Cady” moments as Lohan. As for the Plastics, singer Reneé Rapp, formerly Regina on Broadway, imbues the role with powerhouse vocals and an angrier edge than the excellent Rachel McAdams did — when she’s enraged, boy, you feel it.

Once again, Cady begins her first school day in math class with Ms. Norbury, once played by Fey — and again by Fey! Tim Meadows is also back as the principal; both look older but certainly not two decades.

Cady has a rough entry and ends up eating lunch in a bathroom stall, but is rescued by Janis and Damian. In the cafeteria, she has her first encounter with Queen Bee Regina. “My name is Regina George,” sings Rapp, in some of the show’s best lyrics, “I am a massive deal. I don’t care who you are, I don’t care how you feel.”

The Plastics — Regina, needy Gretchen (Bebe Woods) and intellectually challenged Karen (Avantika) — adopt Cady and teach her the rules: Wear pink on Wednesdays. No tank tops two days in a row. A ponytail? Once a week. Also: You can’t date someone’s ex-boyfriend, because those are “the rules of feminism.” At such moments, one can literally hear Fey writing the line. (Side note: Please come back to the Golden Globes, Tina, and bring Amy Poehler.) (Speaking of Poehler, she is missed as Regina’s “cool” mom, but aptly replaced by Busy Philipps.)

Things go south quickly when Cady falls for Regina’s ex, Aaron, who sits in front of her in AP Calculus (leading to the excellent lyric “Calcu-lust.”) Regina isn’t going to give up Aaron without a dirty fight. So Cady, aided by Damian and Janis, plots to bring Regina down from inside, pretending to be a loyal Plastic.

But at what point does Cady stop pretending and BECOME a Plastic? (Ask Janis.)

Directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. keep the action moving briskly. A key visual difference is technology. In the 2004 film, friends spoke to each other on the telephone, in split screens. Now, of course, gossip and bullying take place via social media. In some ways this makes it all seem more vicious. When Regina takes an embarrassing tumble onstage at the Christmas performance, we witness a social media shaming that is much crueler than anything that happened in the 2004 version.

And yet, it’s believable, of course. One comes away from this latest “Mean Girls” thinking that in some ways things may have gotten better for high schoolers than they were in 2004 — but in other ways, things have only gotten meaner.

“Mean Girls,” a Paramount Pictures release, has been rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association “for sexual material, strong language, and teen drinking. “ Running time: 105 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

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“Magic. Not tricks — the flow of grace,” he says.

You may be convinced you do a little less than 90 minutes later by director Rudy Valdez’s intimate portrait of a man with a magical ability and a story told with few tricks.

“Carlos” is a traditional linear tale, tracing Santana’s formative years in Tijuana, Mexico, his set at Woodstock, his relentless touring and dive into spirituality, climaxing with his triumphant 1999 “Supernatural” album.

It’s lovingly told — and intimate. There is the first known recording of a 19-year-old Santana in 1966 — already a guitar master with a familiar, blistering style — and one later in life in which he delights his children behind a couch with sock puppets.

But some of the most powerful images are several old homemade clips Santana made himself, alone at home just jamming. It’s like hearing the magic flow straight from the source, watching unfiltered genius work while his guitar gently wails.

Valdez uses various images almost like a collage to capture his subject — talk show clips, old concerts, and newly conducted interviews with the master, one at sundown with the icon beside a fire. The only forced bit is a roundtable of Santana’s wife and sisters.

A highlight is watching Santana and his band play in the rain during 1982’s Concert for the Americas in the Dominican Republic. Other directors might show a short clip and go but Valdez lets it play long, a treat.

We see Santana grow up to a violinist father and a fierce mother, who became mesmerized by the blues-rock of Ray Charles, B.B. King and Little Richard. He was pressing tortillas at a diner in San Francisco in the late 1960s — he calls the city a “vortex of newness” — and go to the Fillmore to listen to the Grateful Dead and Country Joe and the Fish.

After being busted trying to sneak into the legendary venue without paying, impresario Bill Graham was so impressed by this skinny guitarist that he invited him to open for the Who, Steve Miller and Howling Wolf.

At Woodstock — he and his band wouldn’t have their debut album out for months more — Santana hits the stage very high by accident (Thanks, Jerry Garcia) and says a little prayer: “God, I know you’re here. Please keep me in time and in tune.” Throughout his set, Santana seems to be wrestling the neck of his guitar, which to him resembled a snake.

His first royalty check was spent on a home and a refrigerator for mom, fulfilling a promise. “It’s better than Grammys and Oscars and Heisman trophies. It feels better than anything,” he says in the documentary.

Inevitably, the fall comes, with the drugs and overindulgence. Shocked by the deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, Santana decides he must choose between heroin or spiritual meditation. He picks the latter, dresses in white, eats healthy, turn to jazz and decides to “surf the cosmos of imagination.”

With enduring hits like “Oye Como Va″ and ”Black Magic Woman,″ Santana was voted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, the first person of Hispanic heritage to be inducted. But he wasn’t done yet. “This Earth time is an illusion,” he argues, after all.

“Supernatural,″ which arrived in 1999 during a Latin pop explosion, won a total of nine Grammys with such hits as “Smooth,” “Put Your Lights On” and “Maria Maria.” He is called a second-act king. Man, he’s a hot one.

Valdez shows real style illustrating that Santana’s bands were far from stable when it came to its lineups — he cleverly shows various different singers belt out the same section of “Black Magic Woman” live — and captures Santana today watching an old concert he did with his late dad. “He’s proud of me and I’m proud of him. And I miss him,” he tells the camera.

Santana deserves to be on the Mount Rushmore of rock and that’s why in so many ways “Carlos” is a corrective to the thinking of people like Jann Wenner, co-founder of Rolling Stone, who overlooked Santana for his new book of transcendent rockers, “The Masters.” A master is hiding in plain sight.

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Welcomed as a trailblazer in 1959 — An adult doll! With actual breasts! — she was nonetheless branded an anti-feminist a decade later when women’s rights marchers chanted “I Am Not a Barbie Doll,” referring to her unrealistic body type (and perhaps ignoring the fact that she was single, a homeowner and a career woman).

As years went by, Barbie had her hits (adopting a more inclusive body type, running for president) and misses (exclaiming “Math class is TOUGH!” — ouch). Through it all, this lightning rod in tiny pink heels remained uniquely talented at reinventing herself.

Which is why it makes sense that now, writer-director Greta Gerwig takes Barbie in more than one direction – in every direction, really – in her brash, clever, idea-packed (if ultimately TOO packed) and most of all, eye-poppingly lovely “Barbie,” the brand’s first live action movie.

Is it a celebratory homage to Barbie and her history? Yes. Also a cutting critique, and biting satire? Yes, too. The film is co-produced by Mattel, and they must have felt skittish about some elements — perhaps not Will Ferrell’s reliably buffoonish Mattel CEO, but a far more serious scene where a young girl accuses Barbie of making girls feel bad about themselves. The movie’s also about gender dynamics, mothers and daughters, insidious sexism … and more.

But the neatest trick is how “Barbie,” starring a pitch-perfect Margot Robbie — and after a minute you’ll never be able to imagine anyone else doing it — can simultaneously and smoothly both mock and admire its source material. Gerwig deftly threads that needle, even if the film sags in its second half under the weight of its many ideas and some less-than-developed character arcs.

In any case, boy — or should we say, girl — life in plastic looks fantastic.

A head-spinning opening credits sequence begins with a Barbie history lesson, narrated by Helen Mirren. Then it’s off to Barbie Land, where Barbie lives in her flamingo-pink Dreamhouse, surrounded by other Barbies in theirs.

Other Barbies? Well, we know how many Barbie versions exist on store shelves, and Gerwig and her writing (and life) partner Noah Baumbach take this one step further: If they’re all Barbies, that means “Barbie” is all of THEM. There’s no one Barbie — although Robbie, who plays Stereotypical Barbie (and also produced the film), is the focal point.

And every day’s perfect for Stereotypical Barbie, who wakes in her heart-shaped bed, waves to neighbor Barbies, and heads to the shower, which is dry (there’s no actual water, wind, sun or gravity in Barbie Land.) Her day’s outfit awaits, perhaps a Chanel number, protected by shiny plastic as in a Barbie box. Then she swoops down her hot pink slide to the pool-with-no-water. The sky above is painted blue, the mountains purple. Gerwig was inspired by old soundstage musicals. Architectural Digest even did a piece on the house.

Equally stunning is “Beach” — a place, and also the name of Ken’s career. (Sorry Ken, we should have mentioned you before the 11th paragraph, but we had so much to say about Barbie). The beach is also apparently where Ken lives, because, have you ever heard of Ken’s house? In any case, a very blond Ryan Gosling gleefully chews the scenery — or, inhales it — and is never better than when conveying Ken’s forced enthusiasm with an edge of desperation plus a sprinkle of menace. Also, when dancing.

Speaking of dancing, one night at Barbie’s “giant blowout party,” she suddenly starts thinking about … death. The next morning she has bad breath, and OMG, her famously arched feet go flat! Also gravity happens, so she falls off her house.

After consulting with Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon — who else?) Barbie heads to LA to solve a tear in the boundary between Real World and Barbie Land, singing the Indigo Girls’ “Closer to Fine,” her signature road song. (The film’s high-powered soundtrack features Dua Lipa, Nicki Minaj, HAIM, Lizzo, Billie Eilish, and many others.) There, she and Ken encounter a world with a wrinkle: Men have the upper hand. No all-female Supreme Court here! Hmm, thinks Ken.

On the run from Mattel, Barbie encounters Gloria (America Ferrera), mother of tween Sasha, who has mixed feelings about Barbie, not to mention Mom. In her spare time, Gloria sketches ideas for new Barbies — as in Thoughts of Impending Death Barbie (not to be confused with Depression Barbie.) Gloria helps rescue Barbie and also proves of crucial help when they later discover that Ken and the other Kens — Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir and others — are up to no good.

There’s so much more, and we’re over our word limit — which may just be the feeling Gerwig had when trying to fit her ideas under two hours. And all her actors: It would’ve been great to see more Issa Rae as President Barbie, Emerald Fennell as pregnant, discontinued Midge, and Michael Cera as Allan-who-can-wear-Ken’s-clothes. In any case, the snappy pace starts to lag.

Not to discount Ferrera’s eloquent monologue, in which Gloria educates newly conscious Barbie about the landmines women face trying to navigate social rules that don’t seem to apply to men, like how to be a mom and also a professional, the need to be “thin” but call it “healthy,” and other things.

And if, Gloria concludes, all this is true for a doll just trying to represent a woman … what does that mean for the rest of us? Which is, perhaps, the essential Barbie dilemma — she’s always been judged by rather impossible standards.

Nevertheless, she persists. All 11.5 inches of her. And now she’s Movie Star Barbie.

“Barbie,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release, has been rated PG-13 “for suggestive references and brief language.” Running time: 114 minutes. Three stars out of four.

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“Oppenheimer,” a feverish three-hour immersion in the life of Manhattan Project mastermind J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), is poised between the shock and aftershock of the terrible revelation, as one character calls it, of divine power.

There are times in Nolan’s latest opus that flames fill the frame and visions of subatomic particles flitter across the screen — montages of Oppenheimer’s own churning visions. But for all the immensity of “Oppenheimer,” this is Nolan’s most human-scaled film — and one of his greatest achievements.

It’s told principally in close-ups, which, even in the towering detail of IMAX 70mm, can’t resolve the vast paradoxes of Oppenheimer. He was said to be a magnetic man with piercing blue eyes (Murphy has those in spades) who became the father of the atomic bomb but, in speaking against nuclear proliferation and the hydrogen bomb, emerged as America’s postwar conscience.

Nolan, writing his own adaptation of Martin J. Sherwin and Kai Bird’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2005 book “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” layers the build-up to the Manhattan Project with two moments from years later.

In 1954, a probing inquiry into Oppenheimer’s leftist politics by a McCarthy-era Atomic Energy Commission stripped him of his security clearance. This provides the frame of “Oppenheimer,” along with a Senate confirmation hearing for Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), who chaired the Atomic Energy Commission and was a stealthy nemesis to Oppenheimer.

The grubby, political machinations of these hearings — the Strauss section is captured in black and white — act like a stark X-ray of Oppenheimer’s life. It’s an often brutal, unfair interrogation that weighs Oppenheimer’s decisions and accomplishment, inevitably, in moral terms. “Who’d want to justify their whole life?” someone wonders. For the maker of the world’s most lethal weapon, it’s an especially complicated question.

These separate timelines give “Oppenheimer” — dimly lit and shadowy even in the desert — a noirish quality (Nolan has said all his films are ultimately noirs) in reckoning with a physicist who spent the first half of his life in headlong pursuit of a new science and the second half wrestling with the consequences of his colossal, world-altering invention.

“Oppenheimer” moves too fast to come to any neat conclusions. Nolan, as if reaching to match the electron, dives into the story at a blistering pace. From start to finish, “Oppenheimer” buzzes with a heady frequency, tracking Oppenheimer as a promising student in the then-unfolding field of quantum mechanics. “Can you hear the music, Robert?” asks the elder Danish physicist Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh). He can, absolutely, but that doesn’t mean finding harmony.

Nolan, whose last film was the time-traveling, palindrome-rich “Tenet,” may be the only filmmaker for whom delving into quantum mechanics could be considered a step down in complexity. But “Oppenheimer” is less interested in equations than the chemistry of an expanding mind. Oppenheimer reads “The Waste Land” and looks at modernist painting. He dabbles in the communist thinking of the day. (His mistress, Jean Tatlock, played arrestingly, tragically by Florence Pugh, is a party member.) But he aligns with no single cause. “I like a little wiggle room,” says Oppenheimer.

For a filmmaker synonymous with grand architectures — psychologies mapped onto subconscious worlds (“Inception”) and cosmic reaches ( “Interstellar” ) — “Oppenheimer” resides more simply in its subject’s fertile imagination and anguished psyche. (The script was written in first person.) Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema render Oppenheimer’s interiority with flashes of images that stretch across the heavens. His brilliance comes from his limitlessness of thought.

Just how much “wiggle room” Oppenheimer is permitted, though, becomes a more acute point when war breaks out and he’s tasked by Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves Jr. (Matt Damon) to lead the race to beat the Nazis to an atomic bomb. The rapid building of Los Alamos on the white-sand mesas of New Mexico — a site chosen by and with personal meaning to Oppenheimer — might not be so different than the erecting of movie sets for Nolan’s massive films, which likewise tend to culminate with a spectacular explosion.

There is something inherently queasy about a big-screen spectacle dramatizing the creation — justified or not — of a weapon of mass destruction. Oppenheimer once called the atomic bomb “a weapon for aggressors” wherein “the elements of surprise and terror are as intrinsic to it as are the fissionable nuclei.” Surely a less imperial, leviathan filmmaker than Nolan — a British director making an American epic — might have approached the subject differently.

But the responsibility of power has long been one of Nolan’s chief subjects (think of the all-powerful surveillance machine of “The Dark Knight”). And “Oppenheimer” is consumed with not just the ethical quandary of the Manhattan Project but every ethical quandary that Oppenheimer encounters. Big or small, they could all lead to valor or damnation. What makes “Oppenheimer” so unnerving is how indistinguishable one is from the other.

“Oppenheimer” sticks almost entirely to its protagonist’s point of view yet also populates its three-hour film with an incredible array of faces, all in exquisite detail. Some of the best are Benny Safdie as the hydrogen bomb designer Edward Teller; Jason Clarke as gruff special counsel Roger Robb; Gary Oldman as President Harry Truman; Alden Ehrenreich as an aide to Strauss; Macon Blair as Oppenheimer’s attorney; and Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer, the physicist’s wife.

The greatest of all of them, though, is Murphy. The actor, a Nolan regular, has always been able to communicate something more disturbing underneath his angular, angelic features. But here, his Oppenheimer is a fascinating coil of contradictions: determined and aloof, present and far-away, brilliant but blind.

Dread hangs over him, and over the film, with the inevitable. The future, post-Hiroshima, is sounded most by the wail of children who will grow up in that world; the Oppenheimers’ babies do nothing but cry.

When the Trinity test comes at Los Alamos after the toil of some 4,000 people and the expense of $2 billion, there’s a palpable, shuddering sense of history changing inexorably. How Nolan captures these sequences — the quiet before the sound of the explosion; the disquieting, thunderous, flag-waving applause that greets Oppenheimer after — are masterful, unforgettable fusions of sound and image, horror and awe.

“Oppenheimer” has much more to go. Government encroaches on science, with plenty of lessons for today’s threats of annihilation. Downey, in his best performance in years, strides toward the center of the film. You could say the film gets bogged down here, relegating a global story to a drab backroom hearing, preferring to vindicate Oppenheimer’s legacy rather than wrestle with harder questions of fallout. But “Oppenheimer” is never not balanced, uncomfortably, with wonder at what humans are capable of, and fear that we don’t know what to do with it.

“Oppenheimer,” a Universal Pictures release is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for some sexuality, nudity and language. Running time: 180 minutes. Four stars out of four.

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On the first day cameras were rolling for “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One,” Cruise drove a motorcycle off an actual 4,000-foot Norwegian cliff and then parachuted down. He did it for you. The least you can do to repay him is watch his movie, right?

If you do give in, you’re in for a treat — a heart-pounding, never dragging, mission accomplished that takes audiences from the frozen Bering Sea to the rooftop of Abu Dhabi International Airport and the narrow alleyways of Venice.

It’s got plenty of facemasks being ripped off, a car chase through Rome, a shoot-out in the desert, a sword fight on a bridge and an intense, runaway train sequence that may top anything the franchise has ever produced.

“This is getting exciting,” one character says early on and you’ll heartily agree.

Christopher McQuarrie returns for the third time as director of the spy series — he also helped write Cruise’s “Top Gun: Maverick” — and he’s brought back love interest/spy Rebecca Ferguson, comic relief buddies Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames, Vanessa Kirby as The White Widow and Henry Czerny as slimy Eugene Kittridge.

Newcomers include Esai Morales as a very bad baddie and Pom Klementieff as his psychotic aide. Hayley Atwell also makes her impressive debut, playing a master thief and possible romantic partner for Cruise’s Ethan Hunt. (If that makes too many love interests, you’d be right.)

The bad guy isn’t a guy this time, it’s a haywire form of conscious artificial intelligence that has infiltrated every nation’s computer systems and represents a Hollywood fever dream of this emerging technology. (And maybe a swipe at CGI, too.)

This AI can foul up every digital device with “the power to bring the world to its knees” — or at least to a pre-internet, analog state. It’s “an enemy that is everywhere and nowhere.” The filmmakers aren’t too keen in giving too many specifics, leaving it an existential threat and giving it the very non-threatening nickname, The Entity.

“Dead Reckoning,” as the “Part One” in the full title suggests, is another action franchise going epic with several-part arcs — like “Spider-Verse” and “Fast & Furious” already this year — and uses a two-part special key as the plot device that everyone desperately needs, like in “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.”

The key here is sought by Cruise, our thief/love interest, a U.S. Special Operations team, Morales’ nasty Gabriel and the arms dealer The White Widow. It soon gets swiped, pickpocketed and seized, jumping from owner to owner like an unwanted Secret Santa office gift.

What’s so special about this key? Somehow, the AI needs it and one estimate of its worth is $100 million, which seems pretty cheap, to be honest. “The fate of the world rests on finding whatever the key unlocks,” we are told. Rhames’ Luther warns his friend: “Ethan, you’re playing fourth dimensional chess with an algorithm.”

If other “Mission: Impossible” outings have sometimes felt that Hunt is, well, a little robotic, this time the filmmakers allow some humanity to peek through. Cruise shows some delightful annoyance at having to sit in the passenger seat as his car careens backward through Rome, like an exasperated Drivers’ Ed instructor after a long day. He also shows a tender side in Venice as he cuddles Ferguson in the twilight and they hold hands on a gondola.

Speaking of that car chase in Rome — the second time this year that the iconic Spanish Steps have been shattered by a brash, hulking U.S. franchise — we get the delightful image of Cruise and Atwell handcuffed together scooting along in a tiny, vintage yellow Fiat 500.

“Is anyone NOT chasing us?” she asks.

All the interested parties come together at one of those big, elegant Eurotrash dance parties with dark lighting, thumping rave music and writhing dancers on platforms that only Hollywood seems to love, a sequence most recently bettered by “John Wick: Chapter 4” in Berlin.

Then a movie that started filming pre-pandemic and has a two-and-a-half-hour runtime, culminates with Cruise’s motorcycle leap, a breathless fight sequence on top of a steam train and then a derailment that forces the good guys to climb through railcar after railcar vertically as they dodge debris, bad guys and even, in a sly move, a falling piano.

Are you possibly not going to accept this mission? Tom Cruise basically flew for you. It would be rude to leave him hanging.

“Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Part One,” a Paramount Pictures release that’s only in theaters starting Friday, is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of violence and action, some language and suggestive material.” Running time: 156 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

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“The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” with its vistas of primary colors, is here to brighten our dreary springs, T.S. Eliot be damned. That there is a swell of enthusiasm for a Mario Bros. movie is a once-unthinkable development. The last time Mario hit the big screen was in the little-remembered 1993 live-action film with Bob Hoskins as Mario, John Leguizamo as Luigi and Dennis Hopper(!) as Bowser. Hoskins called the experience “a f——— nightmare.”

But a lot has changed in the three decades since “Super Mario Bros,” the very first video-game adaptation. A once widely derided genre is now a cash cow. “The Last of Us” is a massive success on HBO. Pokémon and “Uncharted” are box-office hits. With Sonic the Hedgehog already two movies in, Mario is playing catch up.

And “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” which opens in theaters Wednesday, is a spirited and sprightly attempt to race to the front of the pack. A collaboration between legendary video-game designer and Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto and Illumination founder Chris Meledandri (both producers), it’s a drastically more sincere effort to capture the fun and spirit of the Nintendo game.

And visually, it’s a dream. Directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic and their animators have rendered the Mario universe with cartoony splendor, matching the game’s ingenious simplicity with a more robust and equally delightful day-glo palate. If part of the appeal of playing “Super Mario Bros.” and its many off-shoots has always been to be immersed in such a sunny imaginary world — plus the bouncy earworm compositions of composer Koji Kondo — the movie has successfully mirrored that mushroom-stomping pleasure. It makes you … want to play Mario.

That’s because as nice as it is to look at “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” it’s not anywhere near as fun as it would be to play it. It’s a-him, Mario, but it’s no a-masterpiece. The storyline is only a touch above the interstitial bits of plot you usually get between gameplay. With the exception of Jack Black’s grandly lovesick Bowser (he’s part Phantom of the Opera, part Meatloaf-styled balladeer), there’s nothing here that deepens these characters beyond their usual 2-D adventures. Mario may be a modern-day Mickey Mouse but his kingdom is on the console.

“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” begins much like Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing”: in a Brooklyn pizza parlor. There Mario (Chris Pratt, passable despite the outcry) and Luigi (Charlie Day) are struggling to get their plumbing business off the ground. There are a few moments of stereotypical Italian life — pasta and a big family dinner — before the brothers’ attempt to fix a water main break drops them through a portal and into the fantasy realm of the game. (In future Brooklyn-set sequels, Mario will presumably combat waves of strollers and hipsters.)

On the other side, Bowser lords over a Koopa Troop army in scenes that can feel like the most surreal imitation yet of “Triumph of the Will.” But while shrinking or enlarging are possible on this other side of the green pipe, there’s never any mention of the possibility of lives being lost as Mario makes his way through mushroom patches and question-mark boxes. His predicament is just as clear as in the game: He’s been separated from Luigi and he must help save Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) from being forced to wed Bowser.

Game logic often dictates Mario’s movements. The shells of the turtle-like Koopas can be slid around like ammo. And choosing a Mario Kart vehicle is just as difficult a decision. Sometimes, the overlap is less consistent. An invisibility star is the most sought-after item in this adventure, greatly exaggerating its typical usefulness. Those things last for like 10 seconds.

None of this is likely to be enough for anyone to exclaim “Oh, yeah!” while hopping up and down and doffing their cap. But it is an hour and a half’s worth of superlative marketing that will whet your appetite for more Mario back home on the couch. If anything, the — as Mario would say — “okey dokey” “Super Mario Bros. Movie” only reinforces the distance between two wholly different mediums. It may be game-on for video-game adaptations but the Mario main event is still back on Nintendo.

“The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” a Universal Pictures release, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association for action and mild violence. Running time: 92 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

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No one emerges with glory from this syrupy, undercooked story of four older friends who are determined to see Brady lead an astonishing come-from-behind win at the 2017 Super Bowl.

A quartet of our finest actors — Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno and Sally Field— are sacrificed for cheap laughs and unearned poignancy. And Brady, an executive producer, sullies one of his greatest triumphs. That hissing sound you hear in the theater is not footballs losing air but an audience deflated.

Screenwriters Sarah Haskins and Emily Halpern seem to have opened a door into exploring loss, obligation and regret in our sunset years, but fumble badly, instead drifting into the granny-accidentally-takes-an-edible territory.

Up on that screen is an EGOT winner, multiple Oscar, Tony and Emmy owners, a recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor as well as Kennedy Center and Cecil B. DeMille Award honorees. But they are utterly wasted. At one point Field is reduced to participating in pointless hot wings eating contest.

There’s nothing wrong with silly buddy movies or celebrating age on screen and it’s refreshing to see both bundled here. But don’t tell us you’re empowering older people by making them dance The Twist to get past security into the Super Bowl. Add this to the utter misuse of Diane Keaton in last year’s “Mack & Rita,” and we call Hollywood for illegal blindside blocks on people over 70 and a loss of 15 yards.

Very, very loosely based on actual events, the film is so light plot-wise that it threatens to float away. A ticket mix-up pads a few extra minutes but logic is tossed out, like the time our heroines just happen to find four empty seats in a row just at kickoff — at the Super Bowl.

Brady is a constant benevolent presence throughout, whether speaking to Tomlin’s character through one of his bobbleheads or from TV screens in dialogue only she can hear. “This is going to work out,” he promises.

Each of our leading ladies get a single note to develop: Fonda plays the vain, boy-crazy author of Rob Gronkowski erotic fan fiction. Field is the sensible, responsible one. Recent widow Moreno is up for any adventure and Tomlin is the glue holding them together.

When one of the quartet becomes fearful of a recurrence of cancer, Brady becomes her north star and she asks a bust of him what she should do, like a prayer. “He never gives up no matter what he’s up against,” she says. You come to expect a bright halo to appear over Brady’s head.

Director Kyle Marvin fails to build any real tension as he frighteningly shifts from farce to cringe to melancholy, but real footage of the big game is nicely knitted into the second half. The message here is simple: When you’re down, dig deep and go for it. In other words, have the courage to go to a different movie.

At some points the film just becomes a branding opportunity, like for Microsoft Surface and the theme park NFL Experience. “This is better than my wildest dreams,” one of our august actors is forced to say while throwing footballs. When the four later finagle their way into a skybox during the game, one helpfully explains: “You can see everything!” Yes, from up here, you can see terrible writing.

This is a movie that is supposed to boost people in their 70s and 80s but has jokes about fanny packs and Pat Sajak. Co-stars Billy Porter, Sara Gilbert and Guy Fieri somehow emerge OK in small roles but the main heroines tread water in what can only be considered an after-school special for older people.

“80 for Brady,” a Paramount Pictures release that is only in theaters starting Feb. 3, is rated PG-13 for brief strong language, some drug content and some suggestive references. Running time: 98 minutes. Half a star out of four.

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Review: ’80 for Brady’ is a sports film fumble for the ages
 

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