Sequels are the cruelest of all film phenomena. Held in contempt by their creators, by the industry at large and by audiences, we nonetheless live in desperate hope exactly because our expectations are so low. And then, BAM! Sucker-punched again, sucker! No matter how low your expectations, Hollywood can always go lower.

rated R: Sarandon has a great scene as the radical Solarz, in which she conveys a lifetime of both passion and doubt to whippersnapper reporter LaBeouf. Redford, meanwhile, seems very old. Sometimes that is used to good effect, and his physical frailty increases the tension as he dodges his pursuers. But, sometimes, we’re just afraid he’s going to trip on something.

This is old-school science fiction in a 21st-century wrapper. Stylistically, it’s a twin to last year’s “Prometheus,” with the digital animation sharing a certain shiny gravity, but it does not suffer from the complete nonsense that so cruelly downed that Ridley Scott vessel.

Rated R: It seemed a strange gamble, for an established filmmaker like Raimi to entrust his cult hit legacy to an unproven first-time director like Fede Alvarez. With a whole new cast, and a marginally bigger budget, what could Alvarez possibly hope to accomplish with this that the franchise hadn’t already? Now that the results are in, the question maybe shouldn’t be “Why is someone remaking this movie?” but more along the lines of, “Why isn’t everyone remaking this movie?”

Rated PG-13: Making toys based on movies is a time-honored tradition, but making movies based on toys is a much rarer and trickier proposition. It’s such an unnatural reversal that it sometimes feels as wrong as having your food come up your esophagus instead of going down.

Rated PG: James Franco is Oscar Diggs, a traveling carnival magician, Edison-style tinkerer, con man and flirt. He’s got some goodness in him, but he doesn’t let it distract him because he wants to be a great man, not a good man, and he believes those things are mutually exclusive.

Rated PG-13: Unfortunately, these magic beans were obviously a Monsanto strain, a hybrid carefully bred to thrive in a modern environment of clichés without offending anyone, but not meant to actually be nutritious for our imaginations, or even be able to take root beyond the immediate viewing. Leaving us hungry, we just have to keep consuming movies in hopes of finding one that actually sustains us.

As if it isn’t hard enough to keep track of your favorite cable series, which might or might not be on a channel you subscribe to, and your favorite offerings from the BBC, which might or might not make it to BBC America in a timely manner, now there’s a top-tier television series that isn’t on television at all. “House of Cards” is only available streaming on Netflix, and it’s worth chasing down.

Rated R: Based on the novel “Flashfire” by Donald E. Westlake, “Parker” follows the adventures of the eponymous thief (Jason Stratham) with a very exacting professional code as he tries to get back his share of the Ohio State Fair by buying a house from Jennifer Lopez. Or something like that. There is a heist at the beginning involving a lot of clowns (including Michael Chiklis) and some hay, and then after that they shoot Stratham but not very well because he wakes up in the hospital and hoo-boy, is he mad.

Rated R: The subject of the hunting and killing of Osama bin Laden is an uncomfortable one at best, and something that seems distasteful for a mainstream movie. It is the story of the most powerful nation in the world trying to find one man for 10 years, torturing quite a few people along the way, and then killing him. Whether that was revenge or justice or simply for the greater good, it happened outside the legal system, and the world cheered.

"Absolutely nothing has been left to the imagination. To put it more succinctly, they have not just adapted “The Hobbit,” which would have been great, but instead they have spun out a wildly baroque Middle Earth pornography using “The Hobbit” as justification. It’s actually quite awkward.

Rated R:  Adapting a classic is always a puzzle. If it’s a classic, it must have elements that are universally relevant, characters or themes that remain powerful across the decades or centuries. But as time passes, the reading of the work inevitably changes; what was contemporary at the time becomes part of the identity of the work. “Anna Karenina” tackles this challenge with gusto.

Rated PG: “Life of Pi” is a movie about a young man trapped on a boat with a tiger. If that’s not enough for you, it’s also a movie about storytelling and religion, and a showcase for just how powerful computer animation can be in the right hands.

Rated PG-13: Let’s start with the premise: the United States has been invaded by North Korea. Originally, the movie’s invaders were slated to be Chinese, but as China is now a lucrative film market, North Koreans were substituted at the last minute to avoid offending potential Chinese consumers. North Korea’s complete lack of a foreign movie market apparently makes it a safe choice for a villain. There is some sort of subtle message in this substitution that speaks more clearly to the fears of a foreign takeover than anything contained in this implausible and confused movie.

rated PG-13: “Skyfall” is the 23rd  Bond film, 50 years after Sean Connery originated the role in “Dr. No.” A lot has happened in those 50 years, both to the world and to Bond, and it’s fairly stunning to ponder the overall success of the franchise. That the same characters and themes which entertained audiences in 1962 would still be relevant today is difficult to fathom, but “Skyfall” proves that in the right hands, they certainly are.

Rated R: It has become our position that the best thing one can do to prepare for a movie these days is to smuggle in some delicious food. This only makes sense, really, since the food at most theaters themselves is not only expensive, but so junky that you’ll just end up feeling queasy before the previews even finish. Fortunately, there are usually a variety of restaurants nearby where one can find something both more satisfying and far more economical (one of our favorites is a big, fat, hot burrito). Stuff it in a jacket pocket or purse, buy your ticket and try not to fondle your food guiltily as you go past the ticket-taker, and voila!

Rated R: Not only do the stories range across roughly 500 years of past, present and imagined future, but they are all distinct stories in different genres, too. For instance, in the 1930’s a gay character struggles to find his place in the world of classical music, while in 1973 a reporter digs to uncover the secret being covered up at a nuclear power plant. In the future, a science-fiction story has us racing across the sky in hoverbikes as an artificial human finds her destiny.

In addition to being the most exciting movie about going through customs ever made, “Argo” is a great historical-political thriller, drawing us into history at the outset and then keeping us trapped throughout the film in that terrible moment in time that was the U.S.-Iranian hostage crisis.

Her explosion of hair is like a bomb constantly detonating, and as she faces each challenge alongside the other denizens of The Bathtub one could read her story as simply that of a little girl coming of age, or as the origin myth for a future hero of this quasi-fantastical land — if there even need be a difference. A grown-up Hush Puppy would be as at home in a Mad Max movie as in a Lifetime special.

Rated R: The documentary is packed with interviews with giants of the movie industry: Martin Scorcese, Robert De Niro, Peter Bogdanovich, Ron Howard, Peter Fonda, all of whom got their starts working with Corman, where they learned about budgets and making do and making it up as you go along, all the tools that let them define movies as we understand them today. It’s hard to imagine how differently all these careers would have unfolded — if at all — without Roger Corman.