Gladiator II” isn’t quite the prestige film that the first one, a best-picture winner, was. It’s more a swaggering sword- -and-sandal epic that prizes the need to entertain above all else.

Wolf Hall. I’m not convinced. It’s too posh. It’s too pleased with itself in all its incandescent beauty. There’s velvet and fur everywhere, all the time. And now here we are again, for a second “epic ...

From silent-era surrealist masterworks to comedies from the ’60s and even a harrowing drug drama from the 2000s, these are ...