There’s almost nothing surprising in Gladiator II (or GLADIIATOR, as the on-screen title card reads). Ridley Scott’s sword-and-sandal sequel, nearly a quarter-century after its predecessor won a Best Picture Oscar, is exactly what you’d expect. Scott hits his mandatory, metronomic story beats with precision. The increasingly baroque action sequences oscillate between the uncanny valley and the brutally visceral, each made possible thanks to a liberal ladle of CGI gravy. The talented cast occupy various rungs on a ladder of camp. The dialogue includes gems such as “Let it not be said that the emperor is not merciful.” (Diagram that sentence!)

And yet, as Scott so often does, he wins you over, at least grudgingly, with his octogenarian bravado and his unironic narrative muscularity. There’s a reason that the most memeable moment from Gladiator was the line “Are you not entertained?” Yes, dammit, we are.

In idyllic North Africa, Hanno [not his real name] (Paul Mescal) has it pretty good. He’s got a fat goat, a beautiful wife, and he lives in sunny Numidia (which, to my surprise, turns out to have been an actual kingdom!). But one day those rapacious Romans show up, leading to a banger of an ancient amphibious assault sequence, the sort of grand spectacle that modern special effects can legitimately enhance. Despite being valiant and handsome, Hanno ends up witnessing his wife’s demise and is taken into captivity by troops under the command of General Acacius (Pedro Pascal).

Like all prisoners of war, he’s given the chance to prove his macho mettle in the gladiatorial arena, starting out on the minor league circuit before drawing the eye of Italy’s foremost meat merchant, Macrinus (Denzel Washington). Like I said, you can see where this is going every step of the way. Hanno plots his revenge against Acacius, who he doesn’t know is married to Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), the one-time lover of Russell Crowe’s Maximus and—dun dun dun—his own mother. Hanno is actually Lucius, the son of Maximus and Lucilla who was spirited out of Rome after the events of Gladiator. (If the details of that film are not top of mind, don’t fret: it’s all spelled out quite clearly.)

But you didn’t come here for some tedious lesson about Roman genealogy and imperial succession drama. You came here to watch dudes in leather straps and metal breastplates (if they’re lucky) battle an absurd array of critters, from some sort of baboon-orc hybrid to a ginormous rhino to—yes, the rumors are true—sharks. It’s all very silly and very gory, but it leaves the relatively human-scaled action of the original on the cutting room floor. Besides, the really sweaty, grunting action happens during the pitiless training sessions, which make the idea of a gladiator-themed fitness camp seem like a 21st-century money maker.

Taking the roster spot of Joaquin Phoenix’s sadistic Commodus in Gladiator are the young twin emperors Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) and Geta (Joseph Quinn), who in actual history were in fact co-emperors and brothers, but not twins. The worst thing about Gladiator II is the lazy, borderline homophobic depiction of these two as pasty-faced, mincing, and probably incestuous monsters. Is there no other way to depict power-mad decadence as anything other than queer-coded? If you’re going to do that, you can at least have the decency to let an actor like Washington bring the truly sly sensibility he does to his portrayal of the sexually ambiguous, supercilious Macrinus. As the kids might say: I’m really loving this era for Denzel.

The only other character who even sniffs around subverting a trope is Jubartha (Peter Mensah), the prison doctor for the gladiators who develops a bond with Lucius as well as, apparently, a very early form of germ theory. Besides Nielsen, the only other returning cast member is the great Derek Jacobi, the personification of British-accented Roman intrigue thanks to his role in I, Claudius. Sadly, he’s given very little to do and suffers a disrespectful departure.

There’s a banquet scene in Gladiator II in which a giant rhinoceros’s head serves as a prominent centerpiece at table. I couldn’t tell if it was purely digital or a practical prop, but I hope it was the latter, if only to prompt the image of that rhino noggin hanging on the wall of Ridley Scott’s den as he puffs unrepentantly on a cigar and gazes up at it with pride. A pale echo of its forerunner, this is no great film, but it is exactly the movie its maker intended. There’s a trend of using AI to create “remakes” of iconic films with a 1950s Super Panavision aesthetic. And this film feels like, despite its bloody violence, a throwback to the star-studded, hidebound epics Hollywood churned out decades ago. You can get your bread at the concession stand; here’s the circus.

Murdering the Devil: I have no idea why this 1970 product of the Czech New Wave has been digitally restored and offered up for our approval, but I’m glad it has. Largely a two-character drama set in a single apartment, it’s about a fortyish, single woman (Jirina Bohdalová) who invites over the not-at-all-suspiciously-named Theodore Devil (Vladimír Mensík) for dinner. He turns out to be a slob and a glutton, but she, desperate to avoid spinsterhood, tries her hardest to please him. This is the only film directed by Ester Krumbachová, who co-wrote the surrealist feminist classic Daisies and worked as a costume designer on dozens of other films made during the burst of creativity in the Czech film industry in the 1960s. Sly but quietly furious, it amusingly skewers patriarchal clichés. (Hollywood Theatre, Friday)

Blitz: The London Blitz, to be specific. Director Steve McQueen’s second film in a row to tackle World War II takes a much more populist tack than his four-hour experimental documentary Occupied City. During the Luftwaffe’s relentless assault on London, single mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan) puts her young son George (Elliott Heffernan), as so many parents did, on a train to the countryside. George, however, is having none of it. He escapes and tries to find his way back to his mother, while she tries to look after her own elderly father (Paul Weller) and avoid being murdered by Hitler’s aerial assault. There are some effective and harrowing moments here, mostly involving George: he falls in with a gang of Dickensian corpse robbers who prowl the underground bomb shelters for loot, and later gets swept up in an underground flood. But there isn’t anything very novel about the story or its telling, and Ronan, who was so raw and potent recently in The Outrun, is reduced to playing a type. Heffernan, on the other hand, is very good. (Streaming on Apple TV+)

BLU-RAY SPOTLIGHT

Born on the Fourth of July: Oliver Stone made a career out of cinematically processing the trauma of the 1960s, specifically the Vietnam War, and this is both his most traditional and most radical treatment of those themes. It’s traditional in that it presents a neat biopic about a figure who embodied the American psyche’s journey from jingoistic certainty to bitter disillusionment to righteous action, and it puts America’s #1 movie star (although he wasn’t quite then), Tom Cruise, in the role of that figure. But it’s radical in its subversion of Hollywood tropes, from the idealistic depiction of suburban Long Island childhood to John Williams’s atypically mournful, even cynical, score. Recently released in a new Blu-ray and 4K edition, it’s a fascinating piece to revisit. I’d forgotten how much of the film takes place prior to Ron Kovic’s service in Vietnam, and how powerful and painful the scenes set in the Bronx Veterans’ Hospital following his crippling were. The new disc comes with a previously released commentary track by Stone, as well as another from critic Matt Zoller Seitz, author of a recent book on the director. Seitz, who worked as an extra on the Dallas-shot movie while a student at Southern Methodist University, perhaps unsurprisingly declares Born on the Fourth of July to be his favorite Stone picture. In his commentary, Seitz emphasizes many of the same points as Stone did, but some of those observations do provide valuable insight. Stone mentions how he had many of the indoor sets built slightly smaller than normal in order to emphasize the difficulty the wheelchair-bound Kovic had in maneuvering through them. He also points out that the actor playing Kovic’s younger brother is the son of legendary Hollywood producer Robert Evans—talk about the ultimate nepo baby. The greatest benefit, however, to a rewatch is an appreciation of what a committed and compelling screen presence Cruise can be when he puts his shoulder into it.

STREAMING SPOTLIGHT

Witches: This truly remarkable and disarming first-person documentary explores the relationship between societal and pop-cultural ideas of witchery and the lived reality of women’s mental health issues. Director Elizabeth Sankey bravely uses her own experience dealing with severe postpartum depression as an access point for a consideration of the ways that those types of experiences would have, in the past, been seen as malevolent and unnatural. She weaves a delightful deluge of cinematic witch-clips into her harrowing personal ordeal as a spoonful of sugar, but this is very much a film that contains both rage and sadness over the shameful impacts of ignorance and misogyny through the ages. (Streaming on MUBI)

ALSO OPENING

Wicked: Speaking of witches, the revisionist Broadway smash based on The Wizard of Oz comes to the big screen starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande as the women who would go on to become the Wicked Witch of the West and the Good Witch of the North. (Which might explain why the Northwest has such a confusing moral compass.) It’s 160 minutes long, and only features the first act of the play.

ALSO SCREENING

¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!: Casa Bonita was a beloved, excessive Denver eating establishment, billed as the Disneyland of Mexican restaurants. It was features in an episode of South Park, and after it was forced to close during the pandemic, Trey Parker and Matt Stone mounted a crusade to purchase the place and restore it to its former glory. This documentary chronicles the idealism and inevitable challenges involved in that process. Director Arthur Bradford will be in attendance for a post-film Q&A. (Tomorrow Theater, Friday)

Louder Than You Think: Twice the age of his bandmates and an enthusiastic consumer of every drug known to man, Gary Youn was the original drummer for Pavement. This cockeyed documentary provides a portrait of a true original whose mercurial life can be seen as both an inspiration and a cautionary tale. (Hollywood Theatre, Saturday)

Ayahuasca Now: Maybe not everything Aaron Rodgers says is baloney? This Argentinian documentary follows a group of American military veterans who travel to Peru in order to seek relief from PTSD and the promise of spiritual rebirth. Presented by the Portland Latin American Film Festival (Hollywood Theatre, Sunday)

The ”Milieu” Trilogy: These three Italian crime dramas from director Fernando di Leo have been newly restored in 4K digital, and come with the Quentin Tarantino seal of approval. Caliber 9 [1972] on Sunday, The Italian Connection [1972] on Monday, and Il Boss [1973] on Wednesday. (Hollywood Theatre)

20 Years in the Crypt: Embedded on Tour with Dead Moon: The makers of Unknown Passage, the seminal 2001 documentary about iconic Portland band Dead Moon, compiled over 180 hours of performance footage, some of which, unseen since then, has been incorporated into this additional, brand-new tribute. Toody Cole, the surviving half of Dead Moon, and director Jason Axel Summers will be in attendance for a post-film Q&A and nostalgia session. The following night, Summers will present his documentary I Should Have Been Dead Years Ago, which profiles the similarly uncommercial Australian rock star Stu Spasm. (Hollywood Theatre, Monday & Tuesday)

FRIDAY

• Babette’s Feast [1987] (5th Avenue Cinema, through Sunday)
• Eraserhead [1978] (Academy Theater, through Thursday)
• Good Will Hunting [1998] (Academy Theater, through Thursday)
• Mildred Pierce [1945] (Academy Theater, through Thursday)
• Saboteur [1942] (Kiggins Theatre, also Sunday)
• Seven Samurai [1954] (Hollywood Theatre, in 35mm, also Saturday)
• Vertigo [1958] (Kiggins Theatre, also Sunday & Tuesday)

SATURDAY

• The Birds [1963] (Kiggins Theatre, also Sunday & Tuesday)
• Hundreds of Beavers [2024] (Tomorrow Theater)
• Marnie [1964] (Kiggins Theatre, also Monday)
• Psycho [1960] (Kiggins Theatre, also Monday)
• Rock of Ages [2012] (Kiggins Theatre, sing-along presentation)
• The Wizard of Oz [1939] (Tomorrow Theater)

SUNDAY

• Escaflowne: The Movie [2000] (Hollywood Theatre)
• The Fantastic Mr. Fox [2009] (Tomorrow Theater)

TUESDAY

• After Hours [1985] (Salem Cinema)
• Cisco Pike [1972] (Hollywood Theatre, in 35mm)

WEDNESDAY

• Burden of Dreams [1982] (Hollywood Theatre)
• The Hungry Stones [1960] (Clinton St. Theater)
• RRR [2002] (Hollywood Theatre)