There is a scene early in “Blade Runner 2049,” Denis Villeneuve’s hypnotic and heart-bursting sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1982 future-shock detective movie “Blade Runner,” where two men crash through a wall. One is the bulbous Sapper Morton (Dave Bautista), who is one of many humanoid robots known as replicants, and the other is the slender, trench-coat-wearing assassin known simply as K (Ryan Gosling), who the LAPD dispatches to “retire” (i.e. kill) rogue replicants.

It’s grisly work (the swift, savage scuffle between Sapper and K ends with an eyeball being washed in a sink) made all the more nauseating by the fact that K is a replicant himself. Designed by the wan industrialist Niander Wallace (Jared Leto), he has been programmed to obey—even if that means, as Sapper puts it, killing his “own kind.”

Once he has completed his murderous task, K is free to climb into his flying Peugeot and soar home to his sterile apartment in Los Angeles. But then he spots something. Beneath a pale, leafless tree lies a cluster of small yellow flowers. Plucked from the ground, they have nothing left to do but shrivel. Yet K slips them into a plastic bag before heading home.

Can you blame him? Like Scott’s film, Villeneuve’s unfurls in a misery-laden future where pollution has eclipsed sunlight, ceaseless rain and corporate greed pummel crowded streets, and police officers like K, known as blade runners, have normalized state-sanctioned murder. No wonder K wants to find and preserve something beautiful; in this ghastly, failed state, it’s just about the only rebellion he’s capable of.

At times, beauty has been a problem for Villeneuve. His first English-language U.S. release, “Prisoners” (2013), received effusive reviews from critics like The New Yorker’s David Denby, who dubbed it “a thriller that digs into the dark cellars of American paranoia and aggression.” Yet the film was so joyless and brutal (remember its awful images of Paul Dano’s mutilated skin?) that watching it less like moviegoing than self-flagellation. Villeneuve certainly dug into those cellars, but they revealed less about American aggression and paranoia than they did about his own sinister imagination.

Yet the opposite was true of “Arrival,” Villeneuve’s Oscar-winning science-fiction film from last year. Shadowy, moody, and steeped in slow-churning terror, that movie wrung plenty of chills from its eerie premise (an egg-like alien spacecraft hovers above a field in Montana; a linguist, played by Amy Adams, is tasked with translating the language spoken by the squid-like beings inside). But it also swelled with crescendos of compassion as Adams extended a hand into the unknown, daring to believe that the menacing creatures before her might have something to offer humanity.

That same impassioned idealism courses through “Blade Runner 2049” (which is based on characters from Philip K. Dick’s novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”). The movie may be packed with horrors—from a sweatshop filled with child workers to a hand being squeezed against shattered glass—but there is so much more. Bravery. Kindness. Sacrifice. Love. These forces light up the film as much as the gleaming 3D advertisements for Sony and Coca-Cola that illuminate Villeneuve’s Ridley-ized L.A.—and they’re some of the many reasons why the sequel, in some ways, transcends Scott’s original.

Here are five more.

1. K and Joi’s relationship deepens the series’ meditation on artificial intelligence

“Fuck off, skinjob.” That crude insult is hurled at K by a fellow cop as he walks down the halls of LAPD headquarters. It’s a jolting jibe that alerts you that while K is surely one of the handsomest and best-dressed dystopian investigators (if there’s any movie that can turn men onto fur collars, it’s this one), he is also a pariah—which makes him different from Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), the blade-running antihero of Scott’s film.

Deckard spent much of “Blade Runner” in isolation, whether he was moping around his cluttered apartment or scouring the streets of Los Angeles for replicants. In that respect, he was much like K. Yet Deckard also grew unsure whether he was man or machine, whereas K understands he’s a human-shaped facsimile from the start and longs to be more.

You might think that superficially, K’s certainty would simplify the sequel (the original “Blade Runner” argued that the line between the real and the synthetic is porous; how fitting that its hero blurred that boundary). But K’s desperation to be human (like the Tin Man in “The Wizard of Oz,” he doesn’t feel complete without a “real” heart) injects “Blade Runner 2049” with painful yet joyous feeling—especially in the midst of K’s strange but sweet romance with his holographic girlfriend, Joi (Ana de Armas).

K’s existence is peppered with reminders that he’s little more than a walking-and-talking weapon. As he ascends the stairs to his apartment, a woman calls him a “tinplate soldier” and even his superior officer, Lieutenant Joshi (Robin Wright, smoldering with icy wit), damns him with faint praise be declaring that sometimes, she’s forgets he isn’t human (gee, thanks).

Inside his apartment, however, K is free to use artificial trimmings and trappings to create the best approximation of a normal human existence that he can. The day he slays Sapper winds down with him listening to Frank Sinatra smoothly croon his way through “Summer Wind” and enjoying the attentions of the pretty Joi, who pretends to cook meat and fries for him and coos, “I missed you, baby sweet.”

Is K’s bond with Joi the equivalent of a flesh-and-blood romance? Hardly. Still, there’s something glorious about the moment when he presents her with an “emanator,” a skinny device that allows her to escape the confines of their apartment. For the first time in her life, she’s able to sojourn to a dark rooftop and feel the electric thrill of rain touching her skin—an image that brings a tender expression to K’s stiff features.

Literally, that moment is hollow (if K is a computer, Joi is a calculator); emotionally, it’s a wonder. K and Joi may be second-class citizens in the eyes of callous overlords like Joshi and Wallace, but they take their happiness where they can get it. Society may deny them the right to be called humans, but it can’t stop them from clinging to small but ecstatic scraps of magnificence, like holding each other while the rain beats down.

2. The mystery of the missing child expands the “Blade Runner” mythos

It turns out that the tree where K finds those lone flowers hides a secret: a box full of bones. They look human, but they belong to Rachel (Sean Young), the elusive, glamorous replicant who became Deckard’s lover in the first film. Apparently, Rachel has been dead for decades, but an examination reveals evidence that she may have left something behind: a child.

You can’t overstate just how revelatory it is that a replicant—even just one—could procreate. For Joshi and Wallace, the very idea is a threat; for K, it represents unexpected and miraculous possibilities for his future; and for the replicants as a species, it crystallizes the irrefutable of the wrongness of their enslavement. Scott’s film never shook the foundations of its futuristic society; watching “2049,” you get to watch the pillars of that foul dystopia begin to quake.

It’s in the best interest of Joshi to hold them in place. “The world is built on a wall the separates kind,” she declares imperiously. “Tell either side there’s no wall—you bought a war. Or a slaughter.” She recognizes that if replicants realize that one of them conceived a child, it could inspire them to rebel against their masters. Thus, she sends K to “erase” the child.

Wallace sends his own replicant to probe the mystery: the slick, impeccably groomed Luv (Sylvia Hoeks, whose ferocious cool could probably turn the Terminator to ice). Luv, however, has a different set of orders: Wallace wants her to abduct the child, who he believes can make possible his dream of adding a procreation feature to his replicants. Like Joshi, he wants to insure the supremacy of the human race, but via different means: by birthing countless new slaves so humanity will have the manpower to “own the stars.”

But who will pay the price for Wallace’s ugly ambition? It doesn’t take long for K to wonder if it might be him. A series of clues—a date carved into that tree, a toy wooden horse buried in a furnace—force him to consider that he may be Deckard and Rachel’s son: a “real boy,” as Joi puts it. That prospect fills K with terror (if it’s true, he tells Joi, he’d be hunted by someone like him).

Yet he can’t resist seeking out Deckard, who he has never met before. Nothing can change the fact that K is a replicant, but he seems to believe his existence would have more value if he was born instead of made (“To be born is to have a soul, I guess,” he says).

It may be that K also glows at the idea of being the only one of his kind to have a true mother and father. But the beauty of “Blade Runner 2049” is that it shows that the existence of a replicant child has meaning that extends beyond one life. Unbeknownst to K, Wallace, and Joshi, a replicant uprising is brewing under the leadership of Freysa (Hiam Abass), a one-eyed revolutionary resplendent in an ebony gown. If even one replicant can conceive, Freysa declares, “[W]e are our own masters.”

To some, that idea may not make sense—just because Rachel could give birth doesn’t mean that Freysa and her followers could do the same. But Villeneuve understands that the meaning of the child is symbolic. As much as it’s a threat to Wallace and Joshi, it’s a reminder to the replicants that they deserve the same rights as humans. And that gives them what the androids of Scott’s film never had: a reason to rise up not as individuals, but as a people.

“A couple years ago, I was sitting around going, ‘Why is no one thinking about our mother?’ Not your mother, not my mother, but our mother, this mother who gives us life. And I was like, ‘I want to tell her story.’ She gives us all this love, she gives us a home, she gives us endless gifts, yet we treat her like shit.”

That’s what director Darren Aronofsky told an audience at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival that had just seen “mother!,” his transcendent, apocalyptic freak-out about a selfless homemaker, a vain poet and the ravenous mobs who storm their pristine, isolated Victorian home.

It was a message worth repeating, but Aronofsky didn’t need to vocalize it. His depiction of human hubris and ecological decay is so clear-eyed and ruthless that “mother!” registers not just as a home-invasion horror show, but as a scalding allegory of humanity’s vicious abuse of the Earth.

It would be foolish to suggest that there is only one “right” interpretation of “mother!” Since the movie’s release on September 15, myriad theories have been blurted out (it’s about religion! It’s about celebrity culture! It’s nonsense!). But to get caught in the whirl opinions and objections is to miss the point.

At the core of “mother!” is an outraged, deeply felt portrait of how we have devastated our planet via war, global warming, and pure, lethal idiocy. It may re-harness the psychological terror of Aronofsky’s “Black Swan,” but it has as much in common with that Oscar-winning cine-nightmare as it does with “An Inconvenient Truth.”

In other words, if you aren’t too busy vomiting after the end credits have rolled, you’ll probably feel like joining the Sierra Club or melting your car keys. Here are five reasons why.

1. It’s meant to be taken symbolically, not literally

Flames engulf a woman as a solitary tear trickles down her scorched cheek. Once the fire has cleared, a smiling man gingerly places a crystal atop a skeletal apparatus. Then, a house builds itself, complete with a woman whose long brown hair is woven together in a single braid. “Baby?” she calls out.

Those moments begin “mother!” and probably made most viewers ask what the heck they were watching (a horror movie? A romantic melodrama? A supernatural home-improvement TV show?). Yet as natural as it is to wonder exactly what genre the movie belongs in, the answer is kind of beside the point.

As “mother!” evolves from a tender tale of marital unease to deluge of chaos in which war rages through that pale, immaculate house, it becomes clear that what matters is not what kind of story it is, but what it means. From the first shot to the last, Aronofsky makes sure that we understand that this is not a tale whose events are meant to be taken literally, but to symbolize a greater idea.

That greater idea is embodied by Lawrence’s character, who is known simply as “mother” (without that cheeky exclamation point). Her husband (Javier Bardem) is a poet whose house was apparently consumed by a fire, inspiring mother to undertake a one-woman restoration. Now, she spends her days painting the not-quite-finished house and cooking for the poet. “I want to make a paradise,” she declares in her chiffon-soft voice.

Since this is a Darren Aronofsky movie, paradise is never really an option. The arrival of a coughing surgeon (Ed Harris) and his smarmy wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) brutally upends the carefully calibrated ecosystem that is mother’s world. Like excrement luring plump flies, the surgeon and his wife draw a string of unwanted, volatile guests to the house, setting the table for a depraved, kinetic third act that’s like the sprawling last half of “The Dark Knight Rises” crammed into a few rooms.

“Mother!” is strewn with clues that its maelstrom of story and character is designed to do something more than stoke fears of domestic anarchy. No one in the movie has a name a proper name, a clearly defined occupation (the poet’s writing is cloaked in mystery; the surgeon doesn’t seem to do any surgery), or a personality that can’t be summed up in two words. The characters are not so much human beings as they are representations of concepts that range from brittle kindness to slinky egotism to bludgeoning greed.

The same goes for the house. While “mother!” was filmed in Montreal, there is no suggestion that the movie takes place in Canada or anywhere else. It seems to exist in a nowhere world devoid of cell reception, television, internet, or rain. Similar to mother and the poet, the house registers as a spectral abstraction—a representation of idyllic innocence just waiting to be corrupted. It could mean anything.

Well, not anything. The vagueness of “mother!” is what gives it the freedom to symbolize something, to be a clean canvas on which massive ideas can be painted—starting with who mother is the mother of.

2. Mother and her house represent Earth

An azure-skinned mutant, a teen gladiator, and a rug-cutting widow are among the physically and emotionally draining roles that Lawrence has embodied in her swing-for-fences-and-shatter-them career. Yet those performances pale next to the grandeur of her glassy vulnerability and cathartic fury in “mother!,” which requires her to give voice to not only to one person, but to an entire planet.

The semantics of her character are dizzying. You could argue that mother and the house are, respectively, Mother Nature and the Earth; you could argue that those two entities are one and the same (in The New York Times, Melena Ryzik noted of Lawrence, “the sounds of the ravaged house—like creaking floorboards—are her voice, digitally manipulated”). But the point is that together, they create a physical representation of both our word’s beauty and the many ways in which it has been sundered.

Among Earth’s many remarkable qualities are its ability to pull off the double act of being both planet and doormat. In what amounts to likely the lamest gift exchange in the history of the universe, this world has provided humans with food, air, water, and the Canadian Rockies, while humans have given it terrorism, nuclear power, plastic grocery bags, and Jar Jar Binks.

Mother certainly knows a thing or two about unfair trades. She cleans, makes tea, and puts up with surgeon and his wife having sex in front of her face; in return, mother is ignored, belittled, and slut-shamed in her own house. The surgeon’s wife may whine, “You give and you give and you give. It’s just never enough,” but if anyone has reason to say that line, it’s mother. Like our planet, she provides us with “endless gifts” (to use Aronofsky’s phrase) and receives only abuse and neglect.

She also has little choice but to endure it—even though she’s pregnant throughout much of the movie. This is a key component of the film’s allegory. One of the most tragic things about Earth is that while it is mighty in both size and gravitational force, there is little it can do to protect itself; it can hold a moon in its orbit, but it can’t do much to stop an arsonist or an oil spill.

Similarly, mother is tough, but often timid. And while the movie may have been more satisfying if she was as ruthless as Charlize Theron in “Mad Max: Fury Road,” the power of Aronofsky’s allegory would have been diluted if mother didn’t look terrifyingly vulnerable while crawling through the ruins of what was once her home.

She is not, however, entirely helpless. When threatened, this planet’s last resort is to keep us at bay with the mighty weapons at its disposal—including fire, water, and the ability to move the earth itself. In a way, mother does the exact same thing, ending the movie in a whirl of destruction that is at once damnation, salvation, and revenge upon those who have spited her forbearance, devotion, and love.

3. The poet represents humanity’s complacency

When Aronofsky was in seventh grade, he composed a poem about Noah’s Ark. “The rain continued through the night and the cries of screaming men filled the air,” he wrote, offering a premonition not only of his waterlogged 2014 biblical epic “Noah,” but an enduring fascination with religion that also bubbled to the surface of 2006’s “The Fountain” and “mother!,” which casts Bardem’s poet as a formidable but lackadaisical God.

But “mother!” isn’t about God. The poet’s evolution (he goes from forking over his creations to his fans to being horrified by their violent, possessive adoration) may contain traces of divinity, but Aronofsky uses religious narratives mainly as vessels to ferry environmental concerns. Just as the wayward astronaut Tom Creo (Hugh Jackman) turned out to be God, but not really, in “The Fountain,” the poet embodies an all-too-earthbound failing: the nearly unbelievable complacency that has long greeted global warming.

Complacency has been the default mode of our ever-inventive and ever-bumbling species since the hole in the ozone layer was discovered in the 1980s. Despite a Mt. Everest-sized pile of evidence that climate change is caused by human activity (according to NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2016 was the warmest year on record globally), too many people still ignore alarming klaxons like the melting of the glaciers in Glacier National Park.

The poet takes a similarly blasé attitude toward mother’s concerns about their increasingly out-of-control houseguests. After mother rebukes him for inviting the surgeon to stay the night without asking if it was all right with her, he insists that he didn’t “think it would be a big deal.” Of course he didn’t. Even after the surgeon’s eldest son (Domhnall Gleeson) deals his own brother (Brian Gleeson) a mortal blow that leaves mother with a seriously gross mess to clean up, the poet invites even more of the surgeon’s family to swing by. Surely, he believes, nothing else could go wrong.

That belief is a disease that has escalated the effects of global warming. “Mother!” mirrors its onset by revealing how the poet’s idiocy leaves mother to be defiled by acts of violence that are at once awful and awfully absurd. Which underscores Aronofsky’s point: That our species’ role in climate change is both horrendous and ludicrous.

4. The houseguests represent pollution, war, and extremism

So, did you hear about that “F”? Of course you did. The fact “mother!” was branded with that dreaded (coveted?) grade from CinemaScore, the organization that proclaims itself to be “the industry leader in measuring movie appeal among theatre audiences,” has already cemented itself as part of the movie’s legend. For “mother!” lovers, it can be construed as proof of the film’s perverse power; in the eyes of nonbelievers, it’s probably evidence that Aronofsky had made a weird little curiousity unworthy of serious thought.

But how could “mother!” have received any other grade? Its villains aren’t an unknowable apparition like the Joker in “The Dark Knight”—they’re us. Mother may dominate the action (she’s in every scene), but as the personification of pollution, war, and extremism, the visitors who invade her home are stand-ins for all of humanity (and yes, that includes people like this critic who have enough disposable income to buy tickets to high-brow films directed by Darren Aronofsky).

Pollution is represented in a literal sense by the surgeon, who is told not to smoke in the house and does it anyway. But it also emerges in the Cain-and-Abel story of his two sons, whose battle leaves a blood stain that would probably flummox even the most vigorous Bon Ami users. Spongy and acidic, it burns a hole in the floor and eats away a chunk of the basement wall—the spot where the destruction of the house is later triggered. You can probably figure out what real-world environmental catastrophe that represents.

The poet’s fans spread destruction of a more visceral variety. A scene where a child pees on the floor is just the beginning—soon, the fans start stealing and smashing mother’s possessions. This draws cops and SWAT teams to the premises, but they prove to be more or less useless against a rising crescendo of insanity that includes fighting, a protest march, and Kristen Wiig as a very cheerful executioner.

Aronofsky unleashes this pandemonium more or less in real time (while mother is in labor, no less). Yet so much happens so rapidly that you feel as if you’re watching the history of an entire war funneled through the house. By allowing us to view acts of savagery not as isolated headline grabbers, but as part of a chaotic continuum, Aronofsky forces us to appreciate the ludicrousness of war like no other twenty-first century filmmaker has.

Extremist faith figures prominently into this insanity. So speedy is Aronofsky’s pacing that in a matter of minutes, we see the fans craft what appears to be a religion that honors the poet (and is centered around the refrain, “His words are yours”). Supposedly, this fealty comes from a place of deference, but it culminates with an unbelievable act of barbarism committed against the film’s version of Jesus (more on that later), transforming an already-unsettling movie into one of the most disturbing visions of human cruelty put to screen.

Does that make “mother!” an anti-religion movie? Not necessarily. Aronofsky’s point is not that religion is inherently evil, but that devotion can easily give way to costly extremism—and that in the end, it’s paid for by people like mother and, yes, Christ himself.

5. The ending is a wake-up call for all of humankind

Many of the best films of 2017 are upstanding models of do-gooder cinema. “Beauty and the Beast” attacked the xenophobia aroused by Dan Stevens’ movingly empathetic “monster”; “Wonder Woman” delivered some sharp jabs at gender inequality; and both “War of the Planet of the Apes” and “Dunkirk” unleashed harrowing indictments of fascism that, despite being rooted in, respectively, the future and the past, felt tailor-made for this age of bigotry and covfefe.

“Beauty,” “Wonder,” “War,” and “Dunkirk” are all fine, sensitively directed movies. But they share one mistake: They all end on a redemptive narrative grace note that cries out: Hey, no matter how bad things get, the good will triumph (after a reasonable number of heroic sacrifices), the wicked will be punished, and Gal Gadot will inject a dose of idealistic spunkiness into November’s “Justice League.”

These messages of hope are pleasantly reassuring (although even Gadot probably won’t be able to redeem the notoriously troubled “League”). They also make it easy to dismiss the horrors that these films depict. Why, for instance, should you bother donating to a chimpanzee sanctuary when “War for the Planet of the Apes” assures you that a snowy avalanche will conveniently decimate the human race, leaving Andy Serkis and his fellow mo-cap monkeys free to march into a sunlit promised land?

By contrast, Aronofsky deserves credit for making a movie that doesn’t temper its activism with optimism. With fire-and-brimstone passion, “mother!” demands that we embrace pacifism and environmentalism—or else. It’s a loud, bloody bully of a movie and while its belligerence seems to have infuriated some moviegoers, be honest: Asking people nicely to please, please recycle doesn’t always work. Sometimes, what we need is righteous, Aronofskian rage.

That rage nears its zenith as mother gives birth to her child, a boy (you can call him Jesus 2.0). Desperate to please his ravenous fans, the poet insists they show off the newborn; as any sane person would, mother objects to the prospect of revealing their boy to a crowd of destructive psychopaths (one of whom sexually harassed her while she was in labor). “I’m his father,” the poet dopily protests, to which mother simply replies, “I’m his mother!”

And so begins a stare-off. The poet doesn’t attempt to take the boy; he simply sits in a chair, glaring at mother and waiting for her to fall asleep. For hours, she fights to stay conscious…then falls prey to exhaustion. When she awakens, she finds the poet stupidly presenting the boy to his disciples, who go from worshiping the child (here goes nothing) to accidentally breaking his neck (be warned: it gets worse) to feasting on his remains.

Inevitably, the poet insists that his fans are “sorry” and that mother should “forgive them.” Her response? “NO!” So immense is her rage that it splits the floor in two, freeing her to rush to the basement and defend herself in the only way she can: by burning down this house that she has loved and nourished.

What’s left to say after witnessing such horrors? First of all, “Yikes.” But once your shock dissipates like a cloud of dust, you are left with only one thought: This is what will happen to our planet if we push it. Even the most forgiving mother can only take so much; eventually, she will snap and by then, half-hearted concessions like reusing a water bottle will be worth less than a rusted penny.

Unless we do something more. And who could not after watching “mother!”? The movie makes personal that which is too sweeping and terrifying to comprehend. Our planet, our home, is so vast that it’s easy to ignore its suffering. But there’s no ignoring the moment when mother tells the poet, “I gave you everything. You gave it all away,” or the image of her body aflame in her world, daring us to do better in ours.

Author bio: Bennett Campbell Ferguson is a freelance film critic and culture writer based in Portland, Oregon. In addition to reviewing films for Willamette Week, he founded the blog T.H.O. Movie Reviews, which he also edits.

A teenage boy walks through a sterile hallway, a bouquet of flowers clutched in his hand. A girl looks up at him. “You should go in,” she declares. So the boy walks across a long, metal bridge toward a woman who lies asleep, looking half dead.

You wouldn’t be alone if you assumed that extravagant, surreal scene was ripped from a mournful epic directed by Darren Aronofsky or Terrence Malick. Yet it comes from a more compact source: “Submarine,” Richard Ayoade’s 2011 adaptation of Joe Dunthorne’s novel of the same name.

Ayoade’s “Submarine” is about small things that feel emotionally big. Its protagonist, Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) is a kid who has a home near the Welsh coast, a creepy-but-cute girlfriend named Jordana (Yasmin Paige), and plenty of time to stare meaningfully at the ocean. Yet his seemingly idyllic life is on the verge of deflation—not only because his bond with Jordana begins to sour, but because his father, Lloyd (Noah Taylor), is clinically depressed and his mother, Jill (Sally Hawkins), has her eye on Graham Purvis (a deliciously smarmy Paddy Considine), the pompous mystic next door.

Are Oliver’s troubles serious, or just vestiges of his privileged upbringing? A little of both, Ayoade hints. His script is filled with melodramatic lines that leave Oliver exposed to our mockery (Oliver says that his dunderheaded pal Chips, played by Darren Evans, reminds him of “the brave men who died in the first World War”), but it also has plenty of grandiose moments, like that scene on the bridge—scenes that take Oliver’s youthful (but no less profound) fears of death and loneliness seriously (the title is an odd but apt reference to Oliver’s sense of alienation).

That merging of mockery and empathy that makes “Submarine” one of the rare sterling romantic comedies to emerge from the current decade (the others are “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” and “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World”). But it’s so much more than that. It’s a ballad of a father and a son, an ode to first love, a beautifully retro fantasia (the film is set in a vaguely defined past where Oliver listens to a cassette tape and “Crocodile Dundee” plays at a local movie theater), and above all, a story of a boy who tries to be a better man than he thinks he is.

Those are just a few of the reasons why “Submarine” has now endured in the annals of romantic cinema. Here are six more.

1. It’s perfectly cast

Like brand-name stars dropping in to play Stormtroopers in a “Star Wars” movie, the four lead actors of “Submarine” popped up in “The Double,” Ayoade’s (even better) second feature. Their cameos were a surprise treat, but they also crystalized Ayoade’s nostalgic streak. Clearly, he wasn’t ready to let go of the performers who anchored his feature debut just yet, and who can blame him? In Roberts, Paige, Hawkins, and Taylor, Ayoade found four actors with the comic timing of Chaplin in “Modern Times” and the fearless vulnerability of Chaplin in “City Lights.”

That’s certainly true of Roberts, who narrates the film and has no trouble leaning into Oliver’s penchant for overstatement. While hosting Jordana at his parents’ house for a night of sex and dessert, he declares, “To us—and a wonderful evening of lovemaking.” The line could have been creepy, but Roberts make sure we hear the desperation beneath the “romantic” bravado—the sound of a kid who is determined to look suave, but doesn’t have a clue.

You hear it again during Oliver’s blundering attempts to repair his parents’ marriage (“Me and dad have discussed it, we both want to make this marriage work,” he announces to his mother in a lordly fashion. “Are you with us?”) and while it’s hilarious, it also makes it more poignant when Oliver’s kiddish gusto is stripped away in the third act.

That stripping is spurred largely by Oliver’s relationships with the main women in his life: his mother and Jordana. Paige and Hawkins fill those roles effortlessly (they skillfully play into the insecurity and irritation that Oliver arouses in both women). Yet it’s Taylor who emerges as the film’s supporting standout. If you’ve witnessed the nauseating sight of him chopping off Jaime Lannister’s hand as if it were a limb of an oak tree, so much the better; it’ll make Lloyd’s psychological impotence all the more tragic.

Lloyd’s depression shows in his features. His hair looks overgrown, his body looks frail, and he has the vacant gaze of a man who missed his breakfast for a week. He’s such a sad sack that he’s funny, but Taylor makes sure we don’t miss the seriousness of Lloyd’s illness. When Jill asks Lloyd for his opinion on her hair while the family watches television in the living room, Lloyd stiffens painfully; he’s so drained that the prospect of expressing even a barely significant opinion terrifies him.

Thus, we have two romances unfolding at once: one between Oliver and Jordana that brims with possibility, one between Lloyd and Jill that seems to be wheezing to a close. It’s because the actors play each moment so sincerely that you care about the fate of each relationship, making it seem as if these people were your friends, family, or just someone you spotted while peering into that living room, where nothing and everything is at stake.

2. Ayoade masterfully uses subjective storytelling

In 2010, a wave of rigorously ambitious films—Christopher Nolan’s “Inception,” Edgar Wright’s “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” and Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan”—attempted to envision mental space as visual space. The camera may never lie, but what if, those directors asked, it captured events not as they actually happened, but as they were seen through the eyes of damaged, delusional characters?

It wasn’t exactly a fresh idea, but the three directors injected it with fresh creative blood—thereby paving the way for Ayoade to fill “Submarine” with strange, deeply subjective images that alert us that we not watching an objective portrait of Oliver’s life: we’re watching an objective portrait of what Oliver’s life feels like to him.

Our first clue arrives when Oliver confesses that he wishes a film crew would follow his “every move,” adding that at this particular moment, he’d like to the see the camera “craning up.” Yet he concedes that “unless things improve, the biopic of my life will probably only have the budget for a zoom-out.” Sure enough, the camera zooms out in that very scene, leaving us with the impression that Oliver is, in a sense, directing “Submarine” (an opening message in which Oliver himself encourages American viewers to watch the film “with respect” suggests as much).

By that account, we must allow Oliver to be the canniest editor since “Citizen Kane”-era Robert Wise. Mysteriously, the film skips over moments that might cause Oliver undue embarrassment, including when he loses his virginity and when he takes a pummeling from a bully before a crowd of his schoolmates. The result is a movie that is fueled by the fascinating friction between Oliver (who wants to appear noble and crafty) and Ayoade (who wants to rip away Oliver’s posturing to reveal the self-doubt beneath).

Luckily for us, Ayoade turns out to be more than a match for his protagonist. He understands that while fantasies may reveal desires, they also reveal weaknesses—plenty of which figure into an early scene where Oliver imagines how people would react if he died. It’s a lurid fantasy of self-love (concluding with Oliver dressed in an Obi-Wan-style robe, signaling his “glorious resurrection”), but it also reveals his greatest weakness: he feels so alienated from his parents that the only way he can imagine securing their attention and affection is by vanishing.

In that moment lies the secret of Ayoade’s brilliance: He allows Oliver to color the movie and gets under his skin at the same time.

3. It offers a complex perspective on masculinity

The patriarchy, what is it good for? Even less than you’d think, according to an incisive 2011 article by New York Times film critics Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott, which tallied up the various archetypal clichés that men in modern movies slide into (the categories were “the big baby,” “the brave boy,” “the bachelor,” “the husband,” “the hero,” and “the wimp”). “The movies may be male dominated,” they wrote, “but the images of men are surprisingly narrow.”

That remains true in 2017 (although Ryan Gosling wrote a fascinatingly complicated chapter in the history of cinematic masculinity in Terrence Malick’s “Song to Song,” in which he wielded a gun and wore a women’s leopard-print shirt). But in 2011, “Submarine” offered an unusually nuanced potrait of what it means to be male with its portrayals of both Oliver and Lloyd.

Oliver is not manly in the traditional sense of the word. He doesn’t play sports and he isn’t physically imposing, but he tries to achieve some kind of masculine dominance through aggressive pretentiousness (he obnoxiously badgers Jordana to read a stack of books that includes “The Catcher in the Rye”). But that facade dissolves when we learn that Jordana’s mother has cancer—a revelation that causes Oliver to shrivel and shirk his boyfriendly duties.

If anything, Lloyd is more cowed. Though he attempts to pump Oliver up with some tough-guy rhetoric (“You go get ’em, killer”), his depression makes it difficult for him to mold himself into the willfull partner that Jill desires. Certainly, Lloyd compares unfavorably to Graham, who gamely flatters Jill (Lloyd rather pathetically recalls that he once wooed a woman by ripping off his vest).

These frailties are striking in a filmic age defined by the steroid-boosted biceps of Marvel and DC superheroes. And remarkably, Ayoade refuses to insinuate that Oliver and Lloyd should solve their problems by simply manning up. In the end, the important thing is not that they embody some outmoded view of what it means to be masculine, but that they live with honor and compassion—which, for Oliver, turns out to be easier said than done.

At one point during the hellish climax of “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (1991)—James Cameron’s fire-and-brimstone sci-fi classic, which has been re-released in 3D—all hope seems lost. The film’s undulating villain, a shape-shifting robot known as the T-1000 (Robert Patrick), is face to face with his target, John Connor (Edward Furlong), in a steel mill, and since John is a 10-year-old and the T-1000 can turn his hands into weapons with no more than a thought, it’s a battle that promises to be monumentally one-sided.

Until, that is, John’s mother Sarah (Linda Hamilton) shows up. Wounded and baring her teeth in anger and pain, she doesn’t look ready for a fight, yet she enters the fray anyway, firing bullet after bullet at the T-1000. It doesn’t matter that this monster seems invincible; he’s not getting near her son.

No moment in “Terminator 2” transfixes quite like that searing clash between mother and machine. The early “Terminator” films may self-consciously dabble in various chambers of philosophical thought (patriarchy versus matriarchy! Fate versus free will!), but their appeal has always been the potency of their suave, brutal fight scenes and feverish emotional outbursts (“Fuck you!” Sarah tells the T-1000 after he stabs her).

The first film in the series, “The Terminator” (1984), loyally adhered to that principle, presenting a pleasantly bare-bones tale of Sarah attempting to outrun Arnold Schwarzenegger’s sunglasses-loving killer cyborg. Yet for all its pleasures, “The Terminator” pales next to its sequel, which chronicles a grander showdown between human frailty and artificial perfection—and welds together a powerful portrait of Sarah as she rises from the ashes of torture and imprisonment to become the last woman standing between humanity and an A.I. revolt (one that has probably given iPhones some nasty ideas).

The emotional core of this saga is Hamilton’s ferocious performance (her Sarah and Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley are arguably the mothers of Charlize Theron’s Furiosa). But it’s also because of the following six reasons, which not only explain why “Terminator 2” is superior to its predecessor, but why it’s one of the gutsiest, most exhilarating, and most moving sequels of all time.

1. It has a more complex story than the first one

If there’s one thing film critics deserve a medal for, it’s wrestling with the severely twisted plot of the “Terminator” saga; the stories of the first two films may breeze by onscreen, but putting them in writing is like trying to force a German Shepherd into a cereal box. Nevertheless, a critic has an obligation to try, so here goes.

“The Terminator” begins in a future made barren by a nuclear crisis and a war between machines and the world’s human survivors, who are led by a much-older John Connor. On the precipice of defeat, the machines concoct a Marty McFly-style scheme: send Schwarzenegger’s Terminator (who appears human) back in time to kill Sarah before she gives birth to John—a mission foiled by Sarah, who defeats the Terminator, becomes pregnant with John, and grows obsessed with preventing the so-called Judgment Day that will become a catalyst for war.

By the time that “Terminator 2” begins, that dream has all but dried up. Between films, Sarah has been forced into an asylum (apparently on account of her ravings about the Terminator) and John is being raised by foster parents (Xander Berkeley and Jenette Goldstein, sporting a dowdy post-“Aliens” makeover). However, Sarah gets another shot at completing her mission when John and a new, benevolent Terminator (also played by Schwarzenegger) bust her out of the asylum, effectively enlisting her in a war against the T-1000, who the machines of the future have sent to slay John (got all that?).

We are presented, in short, with a more intriguing reality than in the first “Terminator.” Traumatized by being brutalized and told that she’s a liar, Sarah has become a being of pure rage (the mansplaining disavowals of her conviction that the end is nigh have the same misogynist bent used to silence Barbara Stanwyck in 1954’s “Witness to Murder”). That puts her at odds not only with the Terminator (who reminds her too much of the menace that stalked her in the first film), but with John, who comes to see the kindly new Terminator as a father figure.

All of this is a shock after the original film, in which the original Terminator was a portrayed as a single-minded hunter and Sarah as his resourceful prey. By mangling (in a good way) his original story formula, Cameron created a vision of Sarah, John, and the new Terminator as a factious family forced to unite in the face of annihilation—while reimagining Sarah as a warrior who tries to reconcile the demands of a world that degrades her, a destiny that torments her, and a son who just wants her to love him.

2. It features one of the best acting ensembles in sci-fi cinema

Furlong, Hamilton, and Schwarzenegger may never eclipse Hamill, Fisher, and Ford in the pantheon of legendary movie trios, but they’re one of the downright coolest ensembles in sci-fi history. That’s not to say that they’re flawless—Furlong is an occasionally awkward screen presence in the film and it’s difficult to decide whether Schwarzenegger has a gift for an acting like a robot or is simply a robotic performer. Yet the actors gave tough, to-the-point performances, making it impossible to imagine the film without them.

Schwarzenegger gets the best entrance of the three leads: he emerges into the movie stark naked, strides into a bar, and tells a particularly hairy patron, “I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle.” Normally, it would be a frightening request, but Schwarzenegger delivers it with matter-of-fact stiffness that makes it seem oddly funny. That deadpan vibe is among the most popular and effective comedic weapons in the movie’s arsenal—and makes it all the more striking when Schwarzenegger tempers it with a melancholy edge that makes you wonder if the Terminator is as mechanical as he appears to be.

Furlong, by contrast, is pure gee-whiz, I-can’t-believe-I’m-in-this-movie gusto. His performance isn’t subtle, to say the least; John’s histrionic reaction when he learns his mother plans to commit murder (“She’s gonna blow him away!”) is one of many Furlong moments good for an unintentional laugh. Yet the actor’s greenness somehow feels fitting, perhaps because there’s something palpably authentic about his unvarnished, boyish bravado.

That makes him an ideal foil for Hamilton, who is perfect as a mentor so determined to shape her son into a soldier that she hasn’t taken the requisite time to mother him. When he and the Terminator rescue her from the asylum, she cruelly tells John that it was “stupid” to risk his life to help her—which triggers a clash between Sarah’s single-minded determination and John’s hunger for affection that the actors make reverberate with scalding, cathartic vigor.

Cameron deserves credit for feeling out that moment of intimacy amidst the movie’s high-tech carnage. That he cares so deeply about the emotional gulf between Sarah and John is part of why the movie works—and why, as in all the best blockbusters, there’s something more than the world at stake.

3. Its action is fueled by emotion

If zippy choreography was all that was required for a fight scene to find its rhythm, every director in Hollywood would hire “Matrix” mastermind Yuen Woo Ping and sit back. But like Christopher Nolan, Cameron understands that action means nothing if it’s not an extension of what a character is feeling. He knows that we don’t just want to see flashy punches and kicks; we want to see fights that reveal something about the people fighting (the way that the crop-dusting scene in “North by Northwest” peeled back Roger Thornhill’s steely reserve to reveal both his panic and his cunning).

It is in that spirit that “Terminator 2” attacks the senses, rolling out a series of shootouts and chases that often serve as the living embodiment of the characters’ inner lives—particularly Sarah’s. When she attempts to escape the asylum, you feel her exhilaration as she delivers savage payback for the indignities she has suffered there; when she finally faces the T-1000 at that steel mill, each bullet that she fires is like a burst of defiance, fueling her belief that it’s not too late to reshape her destiny (and the world’s).

In terms of fight choreography, “Terminator 2” also impresses. But that’s less important than the fact that at every given moment, you don’t just see each character fighting—you know what they’re fighting for.

There is a moment late in “Dunkirk,” Christopher Nolan’s ferociously vivid account of the evacuation of over 300,000 cornered British soldiers from France during World War II, when a man accepts that he is going to die.

He’s a naval commander named Bolton and since he’s played by Kenneth Branagh, every word he speaks carries a calm dignity that would have made Alan Rickman crack a sly smile. Yet as a German plane swoops overhead, the formidable Bolton realizes that these are his last moments and closes his eyes, surrendering to his fate.

It’s odd that one of the most memorable parts of a film about stratospheric triumph (it has been speculated that if the evacuation had failed, the war would have tilted in Hitler’s favor) is a moment of defeat.

Then again, Nolan (who also wrote the film) has never been one to let expectations ruffle his impeccable blonde coiffure. He is, after all, the filmmaker who made sweet narrative music out of a backwards murder mystery in “Memento” and bizarrely and beautifully turned a bookcase into a cosmic conduit between an estranged father and daughter in “Interstellar.”

“Dunkirk” (which uses composite characters) shares some time-bending DNA with Nolan’s previous films (more on that later), although it’s certainly an earthier affair. Superheroes may fascinate Nolan (note his three dates with the Dark Knight), but the daredevilry in “Dunkirk” isn’t like anything from the average comic book. Here, there are no skyscrapers to leap off of—there’s just soldiers struggling to survive, whether they’re trying to escape a torrent of saltwater pouring through bullet holes in a boat, or swimming to safety after a torpedo strike.

“Dunkirk” is also, like all of Nolan’s films, great fun (along with “Gravity” and “Mad Max: Fury Road,” it’s one of the zestiest suspense thrillers of the decade). Yet it succeeds because rather than simply entertain, Nolan immerses you in the terror, sacrifices, and betrayals that his characters endure.

Along with the following six reasons, that’s what makes “Dunkirk” (which takes its title from the French town that British forces were stranded in and around) one of the greatest war films ever made—and why it makes you care so deeply about moments like Bolton accepting defeat as his world crumbles around him.

1. It reveals character through action

The characters of “Dunkirk” don’t talk much, which makes them rarities in Nolan land. All of his previous films feature multiple scenes where men (and, unfortunately, only the occasional woman) pause to ruminate on an thorny topic (like, in the case of “Batman Begins,” how to respond when your hometown is beset with a serious ninja infestation). But the heroes of “Dunkirk” don’t have time for delicate verbal tête-à-têtes; that kind of thing is a luxury when you’re stranded on a beach in northern France, vulnerable to bombings while you wait to be picked up.

You might think that without his famously baroque dialogue (one of the delights of Nolan’s films is that’s he’s unafraid of grandiose, heartfelt declarations like, “Once you’re a parent, you’re the ghost of your children’s future”), Nolan would about as useful as Batman without a grappling hook. Yet in “Dunkirk,” he proves himself so shrewd an observer of human behavior that the idea of a wordier version of the film seems superfluous and pointless.

That’s because when it comes to the soldiers, Nolan is attentive to every flicker of feeling, every decision. When Tommy (Fionn Whitehead)—the British private who is the film’s protagonist—and a silent soldier named Gibson (Aneurin Barnard) hoist a stretcher bearing a wounded comrade in the hopes that he’ll be their ticket aboard a boat bound for England, Nolan makes you feel their hunger for escape; when a shell-shocked victim of a U-boat attack (Cillian Murphy, playing a character identified in the credits only as “shivering soldier”) abruptly bats away a cup of tea, you feel the panic simmering inside him; and when the steadfast Spitfire pilot Farrier (Tom Hardy) wordlessly makes a momentous decision in his cockpit, it’s easy to make out the moment when he commits to his choice (even though his face is covered by a smothering pilot’s mask).

These harrowing scenes are shuffled together in a multi-tiered time frame (the land-based action lasts a week, the sea-based action lasts a day, and the air-based action lasts an hour). But unlike “Memento” and “Interstellar”—which approached time as a Rubik’s cube to be wrestled with and unlocked—“Dunkirk” unfolds smoothly and clearly, allowing the actions of the soldiers wash over us.

That’s a feat that the Nolan of years past might not have managed, but in “Dunkirk,” he proves that he understands the power of letting an audience lean back and absorb his creation, rather than spinning a web of puzzles that he has to talk them through (not that there’s anything wrong with a wordy Nolan puzzle, as this critic and any Nolanite will tell you).

2. It’s an exhilarating and profound suspense thriller

While the ghosts of myriad films loom over “Dunkirk” (the fragmented scope of D.W. Griffith’s “Intolerance” is referenced by Nolan’s suave time jumps), Nolan made clear in an “Access Hollywood” interview that there was a particular film that he wanted it to be different from: “Saving Private Ryan.” While he praised Steven Spielberg’s “amazing film,” he added that “it has the language of horror and you take your eyes off the screen…we realized what we want is suspense, we want a film that you can’t take your eyes off and just pull you in, keep you there the whole time.”

Mission accomplished. “Dunkirk” successfully sucks you into a whirlpool of tension because Nolan uses suspense not only to create an addictively entertaining experience, but to draw us close to Tommy and his comrades. Suspense, after all, is the language of feeling, and by forcing us to feel the desperation of the characters, Nolan offers us a deep appreciation not only of noble men like Farrier, but compromised souls like Alex (who is improbably and skillfully played by One Direction’s Harry Styles), a soldier so terrified that his self-interest rises to toxic, destructive levels.

Like all suspense thrillers, “Dunkirk” is powered by a question (will the soldiers survive?) and generates its extraordinary passages of armrest-clenching unease by complicating that question with obstacles.

In the air, the challenge is Farrier’s broken fuel gage (which forces him to write notes in white ink on his dashboard to remind him how much fuel remains); at sea, Murphy’s nameless man threatens a civilian named Dawson (Mark Rylance), who has taken his boat to aid in the rescue effort with help from his son Peter (Tom Glynn-Carney) and his pal George (Barry Keoghan); and on the beach, Tommy’s turbulent search for a boat bound for England is foiled by seemingly ceaseless crises (the first of his potential rides home sinks).

There’s no time to rest, in other words, which marks yet another way in which “Dunkirk” diverges from Nolan’s past work (some of the best parts of the “Dark Knight” trilogy were the quiet moments shared by Christian Bale and Michael Caine—who makes a garbled vocal cameo in “Dunkirk”—in the shadows of the Batcave). But it’s a necessary departure because it was arguably the only way to create the illusion that you’re on the beach with Tommy and company, waiting for a rescue that at times seems as if it will never come.

3. It uses sounds and images to transport you to another time and place

While the war for the best sound editing Oscar promises to be brutal next year (the deliciously bug-filled soundscape of James Gray’s “The Lost City of Z” is just one of an army of contenders), “Dunkirk” arguably has the year’s single best sound effect: the sharp but soft noise of a soldier setting his helmet down on the ground so he can take a drink from a hose—a tangible, unmistakably real detail that makes you feel as if you could step through the frame and onto a real street in France, circa 1940.

It’s just one of many ways that Nolan, who shot the movie on large-format film, uses his discerning eyes and ears to immerse us in a bygone era. Sometimes, that means going for an obvious but effective flourish (the rough, pummeling clang of the film’s first barrage of gunfire is unforgettable), but “Dunkirk” also deploys subtler transportive tricks, like when cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (effectively recycling a technique he and Nolan used to film the battered spaceships of “Interstellar”) brings the camera so close to an airplane that you feel as if you can make every detail of its outer shell.

That precision calls to mind Nolan’s summation of his approach to his Batman movies in Film Comment: “You want to really understand what things would smell like in this world, what things would taste like, when bones start being crunched or cars start pancaking.” Well, no cars get pancaked in “Dunkirk,” but Nolan’s attention to detail (which is enhanced immeasurably by the gorgeously grainy look of Hoytema’s cinematography) has the same effect: It temporarily overrides the fact that you’re watching a series of artificial images flit across a screen.

Or, to put it another way, the difference between watching most 2017 Hollywood films and watching “Dunkirk” is akin to the difference between spooning down a bowl of frozen yogurt and gobbling up a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream in a waffle cone.

In the eerie opening scene of Matt Reeves’ wonderful new film “War for the Planet of the Apes,” a pack of human soldiers hides in a forest, waiting to attack a group of horse-riding apes who look strange, even menacing, from a distance. Yet from harrowing start to moist-eyed finish, “War” draws us close to its highly evolved title characters, daring us to look into their eyes and declare that they’re less civilized, cunning, and compassionate than we are.

Typically, sequels don’t dare audiences to do anything besides sit back and stare at stale, zombified genre tropes. But 2017 has hardly been a typical year for movies (any year that plays host to “Dunkirk,” “The Lost City of Z,” “Song to Song,” and “Wonder Woman” is off to a scorching start) and “War for the Planet of the Apes” is hardly a typical franchise installment. It’s too brutal, honest, and heartfelt to deserve that classification.

It is, in other words, the finest sequel of 2017 so far (note to “Blade Runner 2049” director Denis Villeneuve: your move). Here are eight reasons why.

1. It offers an unforgettable and insightful portrait of a post-apocalyptic Earth

By the time that “War of the Planet of the Apes” begins, humankind has become a specter of itself. The scientific exploits of Will Rodman (James Franco) may have unleashed ultra-smart apes like the noble chimp revolutionary Caesar (Andy Serkis, who leads a cast of ape portrayers who act via motion capture so bedazzling that “seamless” is too crude a descriptor) in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” (2011), but they also led to the creation of the so-called Simian Flu, which decimated a vast swath of the human race. As a result, our species has been apparently been reduced to little more than two warring military gangs, one of which is led by the Colonel (Woody Harrelson), a crazed dictator who in one scene fondly recalls the time he shot and killed his son.

A hefty chunk of the film follows Caesar and several of his ape allies (including the kindly, billowing orangutan Maurice, who is effortlessly embodied by Karin Konoval) as they search for the Colonel, who has slaughtered Caesar’s wife Cornelia (Judy Greer) and his eldest son, Blue Eyes (Max Lloyd-Jones). To find him, they have to wander across a world that seems to have lost its industrial sheen—there are no cities or towns in sight and the most notable remnant of the America we know and love/hate is a battered, ancient-looking Coca-Cola truck.

It’s a world that may, for some viewers, recall David Denby’s dismissive description of the largely unspoiled moon Pandora in James Cameron’s “Avatar”: “True, there’s no reality TV or fast food, but there’s no tennis or Raymond Chandler or Ella Fitzgerald, either.” Then again, you could reverse Denby’s argument in the case of “War.”

The Earth depicted in the film may not have any ice cream sandwiches or “Star Trek” DVDs (to each his or her own favorite vestiges of commercial civilization!), but there’s no factories or freeways either. In an oddly beautiful way, this shattered shell of the Earth is a wonder because there’s room to stop and relish the kinds of magnificent details that get smothered by the average megalopolis, like the sound of waves washing against a shore when Caesar and Maurice discover a young, mute, and apparently orphaned girl (the astonishing Amiah Miller, who recently turned 13).

At Maurice’s calm insistence, she is adopted into an ape family that soon expands to include Bad Ape, a chimp who wears a sporty vest for most of the film and is played by Steve Zahn (who beautifully injects the character with goofy bravado) and presents the girl with a gift: the shiny logo of a Chevy Nova. It’s a wink at the original “Planet of the Apes” film from 1968, which is based on a novel by Pierre Boulle and also featured a character named Nova—a name that, sure enough, the girl in “War” seems to adopt.

Yet this isn’t the same kind of fussy foreshadowing that made Matthew Vaughn’s “X-Men: First Class” so irritating; it’s a statement about the film’s faith that the Earth can be bettered. The Nova logo may have once adorned something to be bought and sold, but in “War,” it becomes a comfort to a frightened girl, serving a higher purpose in the same way that the apes live more principled (and more ecologically responsible) lives than their human rivals.

The logo, in other words, encapsulates the possibility that the de-coporatized, rewilded realm of “War for the Planet of Apes” is not only a fallen world, but a better world.

2. It explores divisions on both sides of the apes vs. humans war

The best summer blockbusters are explosion-filled milestones in what could pretentiously (and aptly) be called “the cinema of moral ambiguity.” The original “Star Wars” trilogy tested Luke Skywalker by revealing thwarted goodness beneath Darth Vader’s gleaming mask; the Jason Bourne series showed an ex-CIA assassin trying to atone for his in-cold-blood crimes; Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” films tapped the rippling tension between Peter Parker’s steely code of honor and his selfish (and completely understandable) desire for friendship, love, and intimacy.

And now we have “War for the Planet of the Apes,” which muddies its moral waters with a fascinating depiction of infighting among apes and humans alike (thanks to the film’s multilayered screenplay, which Mr. Reeves wrote with Mark Bomback). The war of title, it turns out, is not just about two factions trying to tear each other’s throats out, but how both sides are confronted by a war at home.

Among the apes, discord has taken root thanks to the now-dead Koba (Toby Kebbell), the chimp and ex-laboratory specimen who emerged as Caesar’s nemesis in 2014’s “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” (which Reeves also directed). In “War,” he has been reduced to a taunting apparition in Caesar’s nightmares, but his embittered, tarnished spirit lives on in the Koba followers who have chosen to side with the humans rather than submit to Caesar-administered justice.

It’s chilling to watch these apes reduced to little more than property (the heart-breakingly dehumanizing designation “DONKEY” is written on their backs). But if their chosen path has resulted in a tragic rift among apekind, the humans are in no position to judge, since many of them are so alarmed by the Colonel’s ruthlessness (more on that later) that they decide to attack his snow-crested military base.

The apes and the humans, in other words, are not monolithic opposing forces—they’re factions riddled with factions. And in age an age when America (where “War” is set) is split into so many warring tribes (Bernie Democrats, Hillary Democrats, Trump Republicans, anti-Trump Republicans, anti-everything Americans sick of the whole thing), that’s both painful to watch and profoundly apt.

3. Its visual effects are peerless

One of the less-forgivable Oscar blunders of the current decade is the cringe-worthy 2012 moment when Ben Stiller and Emma Stone presented the Academy Award for best visual effects to “Hugo,” Martin Scorsese’s smarmy, over-determined reconstruction of Brian Selznick’s novel/graphic novel “The Invention of Hugo Cabret.” The injustice still stings, not only because “Hugo” didn’t deserve the award, but because “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” deserved it more.

There’s little left to say about gobsmacking effects in “Rise”—doubtless you’ve heard critics sigh over the amazingly graceful movements of the apes, or the fur so textured that you could imagine reaching a hand through the screen and running your fingers through it. But it is still refreshing to report that with incomparable aid from the special-effects company Weta Digital, Reeves has cemented and expanded the sterling breakthroughs of “Rise.”

You see that not only in the remarkable scenes where Serkis and Harrelson’s menacing interactions transcend their flesh-and-pixels origin, but in each glimpse of Caesar’s beautifully expressive face, not least of all when he passes judgment on a group of captured humans. The stoic anger and determination set into his hardened, bearded visage is captured so clearly by Serkis and Weta that instead of thinking about how Caesar is largely a child of CGI, you simply believe in him as a man determined to defend his species and his family. If (as before) the Oscars can’t be bothered to honor that achievement (both Serkis’ and Weta’s), it’ll be their loss.

4. It explores the folly of putting your faith in a single leader

It’s hard to believe that there was a time when James Franco was the marquee star of “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” The shimmer of his presence may have helped lure viewers to what at the time seemed like a dubious franchise resuscitation, but for all his talents (and any actor who can leap lithely from “Spider-Man” to “Spring Breakers” is talented), he was eclipsed by Serkis’ Caesar long before he left the franchise.

That said, you could argue that Caesar himself becomes eclipsed in “War.” He may command the respect of many of his fellow apes—he is their paterfamilias, their general, their spiritual icon—but after the deaths of Cornelia and Blue Eyes, he becomes tormented and vengeful, which blunts his effectiveness as a leader. As a result, “War” is able to explore how Caesar’s comrades fill the leadership void he leaves behind and tellingly refuses to pit Caesar against the Colonel for a climactic, mettle-testing confrontation (at least a physical one). Neither man gets to determine whether their species will flounder or flourish—that responsibility falls to their followers.

All of which seems to be Reeves’ way of suggesting that there’s folly in placing your faith in a single leader. Quite rightly, he prefers the communal heroism of characters like Maurice, Nova, and Bad Ape—people who band together, fight for survival, and, you know, actually get things done.

During a drive from Chicago to Los Angeles, Jonathan Nolan told his brother, Christopher, about a story he was working on—a story that would change both of their lives. It was a tale of vengeance shadowed by loss: The saga of a man incapable of making new memories hunting for the criminal who murdered his wife.

Jonathan’s story (which was published in Esquire under the title “Memento Mori”) got his brother’s attention. Not only that, but Christopher ultimately adapted the concept for the screen as “Memento,” a Southern California neo-noir that received two Oscar nominations (for Christopher’s script and Dody Dorn’s editing) and became famous for its audacious backwards narrative (which begins with its protagonist, Leonard Shelby, played by Guy Pearce, completing his bloody-hearted mission, then doubles back to dissect the events that lead up to the kill).

“Memento” was released domestically in 2001 and in the years since, both Christopher’s and Jonathan’s stock in the entertainment industry has gone stratospheric (as writers, the brothers collaborated on several of Christopher’s films, including “The Dark Knight,” “Interstellar,” and “The Prestige”). Yet despite the increasingly flashy achievements of both men, “Memento” remains a milestone in their respective careers—for the following six reasons and beyond.

1. Its backwards narrative captures its protagonist’s fractured state of mind

In our current era of suffocating Marvel bombast, it’s almost unbelievable that a film as unconventional as “Memento” was ever greenlit. Yes, Christopher Nolan quickly proved himself with the masterfully menacing “Following,” but the idea of making a film that opens with an ending and closes with an opening must have seemed daunting. After all, emotions are linear by nature; at the time, how could audiences have been expected to invest in a film filled with feelings that coursed like a river backpedaling against its own current?

Very easily, it turns out. While you’d think the reversed chronology of “Memento” would keep moviegoers at an emotional distance, having to watch each scene without knowing what occurred before it actually draws you close to Leonard by forcing you to feel the same frenzied paranoia and general discombobulation that he experiences. You may be confused, for instance, when the movie abruptly cuts to a frenzied chase where Leonard runs from a man with a gun, but that’s exactly the point, since Leonard doesn’t know what’s going on any more than you do.

2. It’s a whodunit with a moral dimension

The name “John G.” wafts through “Memento” like the scent of a burning corpse, and it should: It’s the only identification Leonard has for the man who murdered and raped his wife (Jorja Fox). But while most directors would have waited till the film’s end to reveal John G., Nolan chose to begin “Memento” with Leonard shooting and killing Teddy (Joe Pantoliano), the cop he believes to be John in disguise. Thus, “Memento” becomes not a quest for revenge, but a quest for the knowledge of whether or not Leonard killed the right man.

That mystery makes “Memento” fascinating both narratively and morally. In storytelling terms, it allows us to make sense of Nolan’s reversed chronology—even though we don’t witness the events of Leonard’s life in chronological order, the film still progress in a fairly straight line from a question to an answer (there is a secret in Leonard’s past, in turns out, that is the key to ascertaining Teddy’s guilt or innocence).

And on moral grounds, trying to decide whether Teddy is guilty molds what might have been an assembly line story of vengeance into a more nuanced film that asks not only whether Teddy’s fate was just, but whether revenge is ever just.

3. It’s a crowd-pleasing thriller

While Christopher Nolan’s work is often discussed in maddeningly pretentious terms, his films are anything but. They may be brainy, but they also throb with adrenaline and usually include a heroic, applause-worthy triumph, like Christian Bale making a leap for freedom as he escapes the gaping prison pit that nearly swallows him whole in “The Dark Knight Rises.”

Needless to say, the grief-soaked “Memento” is a far more pessimistic work than that bellowing summer blockbuster. Yet it’s also a crowd-pleaser in its own right because despite its modest budget, it’s packed with flourishes of theatricality that make it not so different from the darkly giddy reinterpretation of Batman that Nolan and Bale engineered with “Rises” and their other “Dark Knight” films.

Like that flamboyant superhero saga, “Memento” boasts a bevy of crowd-pleasing elements. It features an alluring, multifaceted femme fatale (Carrie-Anne Moss’ sneaky Natalie), a romantic quest (there’s an intoxicating glamour to the image of the impeccably dressed Leonard hunting for the slayer of a gorgeous woman), and a hairpin twist that does not much pull the rug out from under your feet as cause your brain to momentarily leap out of your skull.

Which, painful-sounding metaphors aside, is a pleasurable experience. Because while the themes of “Memento”—existential confusion, grief, rage—are heavy, they are also part of a carefully wrought puzzle narrative whose knotted intricacies dare us to take up the challenge of working them out. Which makes “Memento,” in the best way possible, the cinematic version of a night of Scrabble or Clue.

4. Nolan’s clever use of visual clues enriches the movie’s narrative

From a very incriminating hammer in “Following” to that meddlesome spinning top in “Inception,” Nolan has always had a knack for filling his movies with objects that tell stories. It’s a creative fetish of sorts and in “Memento,” it manifested in an intriguing set of clues: the wordy tattoos that Leonard uses as his life guide.

The most memorable of the mantras engraved in Leonard’s flesh is, “JOHN G. RAPED AND MURDERED MY WIFE,” which is burned into his chest. It’s a constant reminder of his quest for vengeance, though it’s also hints at Leonard’s fallibility in a chilling fashion. Because while he assumes that the tattoo is based on truth, how can he know? What if it was a prank? What if he was never married? Nolan’s point is that there’s no way to be sure and that the faith Leonard and humans in general put in physical evidence is radically misguided.

For Nolan, such clues are also tools for generating sharp pricks of suspense—as evidenced by the moment when Leonard, while talking on the phone, realizes that he has a tattoo that reads, “NEVER ANSWER THE PHONE.” As we read those words, we’re instantly plunged into a maelstrom of intoxicating uncertainty (is the guy he’s talking to on the phone a threat?). The unknown, it turns out, is not just the intellectual terrain “Memento” explores: It’s another reason why the movie is fun to watch.

5. Guy Pearce’s performance brings humanity to the film’s esoteric story

If you want a clear illustration of Nolan’s evolution as both a storyteller and a humanist, try contrasting “Memento” with “Interstellar,” his tear-stained 2014 space odyssey. In both films, a man attempts to complete a mission in the name of someone he loves, but there’s a crucial difference: In “Memento,” Leonard’s wife is seen only in vague, fleeting flashbacks, whereas Murph—the daughter of Matthew McConaughey’s zealous astronaut in “Interstellar”—is imbued with vivid, emotionally textured life by the gifted young actress Mackenzie Foy (as well as by Jessica Chastain and Ellen Burstyn, who play the character as an adult).

To put it more bluntly: Murph is a human being and Leonard’s wife is a storytelling device. To Nolan, she apparently matters only because her death fuels Leonard’s macabre journey, which likely contributed to the director’s reputation as a head-over-heart filmmaker (a reputation he refuted beautifully with swelling, unbridled emotions of not only “Interstellar,” but “Inception,” and the “Dark Knight” trilogy).

All of which placed an unfair burden onto Pearce’s shoulders. Since Leonard’s wife is a non-entity (unlike Marion Cotillard’s slain spouse in “Inception,” whose specter is a constant, haunting presence), Pearce had to convey the weight of grief with—arguably—little help from Nolan.

And while it was a momentous task, he makes you see Leonard not only as a hunter, but as a widower, especially during a wrenching interlude where Leonard burns some of his wife’s belongings and declares, “Can’t remember to forget you.” It’s a great line, but it’s still not as great as the image of Pearce’s anguished face illuminated in the flickering light of the flames, reminding us of the loss that lurks behind Leonard’s rage.

6. It brilliantly deconstructs the concept of revenge

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.

Is “Memento” a revenge thriller? Superficially, yes. But dig beneath the movie’s embittered surface and you’ll find something more: an anguished, wise, and deeply unsettling moral tale that fills the phrase, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,” with fresh urgency.

That urgency begins to percolate during the film’s unnerving final sequence, in which Teddy reveals a secret that undermines Leonard’s entire existence: That Leonard’s wife was raped, but not murdered (Teddy also claims that she was diabetic and that she died because Leonard gave her an insulin overdose). Teddy then explains that when hunting down and killing the rapist didn’t satisfy Leonard, he allowed Leonard to believe that the attacker was still at large so he wouldn’t have to relinquish the thrill his quest for vengeance.

Naturally, Leonard rejects this explanation. But Teddy remains adamant and even says that Leonard himself is complicit in the deception and has hidden information from himself in order to prolong the chase. Enraged, Leonard storms away and plants evidence that Teddy is the attacker, thus giving himself a new target to track down and revealing that in the film’s first (last?) scene, he did in fact kill the wrong man.

Or did he? Given that Teddy could easily dupe a man in Leonard’s condition, it’s possible that his story is designed to cover his tracks. But if it’s the truth, Leonard’s entire journey is a sham meant to stave off his grief and burnish his ego.“You’re living a dream, kid” Teddy tells Leonard, playing on our suspicion that Leonard’s manly seething over the loss of his wife is based not only in grief, but in a desire to imbue his pained existence with a self-serving, tragically noble romanticism.

Which is Nolan’s way of reminding us that the heady thrill of retribution is always too good to be true. You could call that hypocrisy (since “Memento” mines Leonard’s hunt for joyous suspense), but that doesn’t mitigate the horror of watching Leonard drive away from Teddy, embracing a journey that’s chillingly devoid of a righteous purpose. “I have to believe my actions still have meaning, even if I can’t remember them,” Leonard tells us. But the tragedy of his life is that has no meaning because despite what he has chosen to believe, he exists to help only one person: himself.

Author bio: Bennett Campbell Ferguson is a freelance film critic and culture writer based in Portland, Oregon. In addition to reviewing films for Willamette Week, he founded the blog T.H.O. Movie Reviews, which he also edits.

There is a moment in Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” (1982) when Rick Deckard (a detective played with disgruntled bravado by Harrison Ford) stares at a photograph. Yet he doesn’t just stare: Using a computer, he enhances the image and studies it so intently that he looks like one of the movie’s legendarily obsessive fans—or a devotee of Darren Aronofsky’s “The Fountain” (2006), that director’s spiritual sequel to Scott’s masterwork.

On their gorgeously shadowy surfaces, “Blade Runner” and “The Fountain” appear dissimilar; after all, the former is a seemingly straightforward tale about Deckard hunting replicants (AKA humanoid androids) in Los Angeles, circa 2019, while the latter is an unruly triptych that’s part conquistador adventure, part contemporary romance, and part lonely interstellar crusade.

Yet despite those notable differences, the two films are soul siblings, and not just because they’ve trekked along the same pop-cultural trajectory (from the lower echelons of box office charts and into the worshipful gazes of hard-core cinephiles).

The following list delves into the visual, thematic, and emotional concerns shared by these two unearthly films (also: unless otherwise noted, any mention of “Blade Runner” will refer to the so-called “director’s cut” of the film). And while it represents only a single step toward understanding their intricacies, it is a step that leads deep into two of the most thrillingly bizarre and beautiful worlds ever put to screen—and into the minds of the passionate and idiosyncratic directors who imbued them with life.

1. Both films challenged their audiences with difficult-to-understand narratives

“Blade Runner” seems to elicit gasps of both bafflement and awe, a duality that Ryan Gosling (who stars in the forthcoming sequel “Blade Runner 2049”) perfectly described while recalling his initial reaction to Scott’s film. In an interview, he explained that “it wasn’t clear how I was supposed to feel when it was over.

It made me question what it meant to be a human being. It made me question my ability to recognize the hero from the villain. It was this nightmarish vision of the future, but sort of presented in this romantic, dreamlike way.”

In other words, despite the simplicity of its core conceit—detective hunts robots—“Blade Runner” is a complicated creature. That’s because Scott went out of his way to make the film nearly impossible to interpret, namely by scattering it with perplexing motivations (the scene where Rutger Hauer’s slick, smiling replicant Roy Batty saves Deckard’s life is still an eyebrow-raiser), peculiar symbolism (including Scott’s origami fetish), and scenes hinting that Deckard may be a replicant, which have proved so attractively ambiguous to viewers that not even Scott’s definitive statement that Deckard isn’t human has resolved the matter (the waters of debate are also muddy because Ford disagrees with his director).

It’s arguable that “The Fountain” is even more complex. While “Blade Runner” benefited from the clarity of its ultra-linear narrative, Aronofsky’s film is packed with disorienting time shifts, which begin when we meet a conquistador called Tomas (Jackman). Tomas is searching for the Tree of Life, yet when he nears his destination, Aronofsky pivots to the perspective of an astronaut named Tommy (Jackman again).

Tommy is aboard a bubble-like spacecraft carrying a now-dying Tree of Life toward a star called Xibalba, which he believes will heal the tree (a word of advice to the skeptical: Just go with it). But before you can wrap your brain around that cornucopia of weirdness, Aronofsky redirects his attention to a younger Tommy (who else but Jackman?), who works as a scientist and is searching for a cure that will save his ailing wife, Izzi (Rachel Weisz), who has a brain tumor. Whew.

Throughout the film, Aronofsky shuttles his way through these disparate plot tributaries, teasing us with questions about how they’re connected (he weaves the outer space and conquistador stories together with a particularly ingenious flourish).

Sometimes, it’s daunting to watch him work it all out, but that’s what makes “The Fountain” so intoxicating—like “Blade Runner,” it forces you to sit up and wrestle with the mysteries nestled in its narrative, giving you the giddy feeling of being a participant in the surreal action unfolding onscreen.

2. Both films feature breathtaking visual design

Both Scott and Aronofsky have often displayed a hunger to unleash “the big WOW”—a phrase that New York Times critic Manohla Dargis used in her review of James Cameron’s “Avatar” and that this critic defines as the feeling that washes over you when you witness Darth Vader’s star destroyer soaring over the camera in the first “Star Wars,” or any other moment that leaves you shivering at the wonders that cinema can create.

It’s a feeling that Scott and Aronofsky worked brutally hard to manufacture in their own films, and saying that they succeeded is like saying that Yoda is merely adequate in a lightsaber duel.

For Scott, getting to “WOW” meant joining forces with artist Syd Mead and production designer Lawrence G. Paull, a collaboration that made “Blade Runner” one of the most visually seductive films in cinema history.

Among the movie’s achievements are a super-vertical vision of Los Angeles poetically drenched in gorgeous grime and rain, as well the illusion of a seemingly endless night (save for a segment of the film that is set at sunrise). This gave Scott a chance to play with light and shadow in wondrous ways, as he did by having some heavenly illumination pierce the atmospheric gloom of Deckard’s apartment during his mournful encounter with the ethereal replicant Rachel (Sean Young).

“The Fountain” has a similarly fanciful quality, even in its contemporary scenes. When seen through Aronofsky’s eye, a moment as ordinary as Tommy and Izzi gazing at the stars from their backyard takes on an eerie poetry worthy the film’s more obviously dazzling moments—including the scene where Tomas slowly strides through a chamber lit by the gleam of floating lamps and the unforgettable sequence where Tommy’s twisting body is framed in silhouette against a deep-black starry backdrop as he exercises aboard his strange spaceship.

There are plenty of other visual details worthy of dissection in “Blade Runner” and “The Fountain,” like the mysterious photos that adorn Deckard’s piano and the spreading, smeary smoke that Aronofsky uses to mark the passage of time. But it’s worth remembering that both films deliver what any director capable of creating a fresh big WOW offers: beauty for its own sake.

3. Both films establish their ideas through repetition

“Repetition” may be regarded by many as pejorative term (especially among piano students taunted with howls of, “Practice makes perfect!”), but it’s also a storytelling tool that “Blade Runner” and “The Fountain” employed to potent effect. It’s what enabled Scott and Aronofsky to make films that function as both stories and as geometrically precise tapestries knitted together by carefully chosen motifs.

The most memorable of these is the now-famous video billboard from “Blade Runner,” which is emblazoned with images of geishas. It’s introduced in the sequence where Deckard is apprehended by Edward James Olmos’ sartorialist cop Gaff, but it resurfaces during other scenes as well (what appears to be the same billboard is shown in a prelude to the gruesome showdown between Deckard and Batty).

Like the film’s other notable recurring element (the sound of a woman singing in a painfully high-pitched voice), its frequent appearances have a lulling, hypnotic power, suggesting that the excesses of the bleak future the film depicts have lulled its residents into a docile daze (which Deckard’s drone-like obsession with his job attests to).

Aronofsky’s use of repetition in “The Fountain” has similar thematic weight: It’s designed to show us the connections between all three Jackmans. This is illustrated by several sets of mirrored images seeded throughout the story, including the following:

1. In one scene, we see Tommy driving while the camera flips over, a visual trick that is repeated as Tomas rides on horseback.
2. Aboard his spaceship, Tommy is shown staring upward at Xibalba, an image mimicked by a shot of the younger Tommy staring up at a light fixture.

These linked images highlight the fact that Tomas and the two Tommys are essentially undertaking the same journey. The victories they yearn for—finding the Tree of Life, curing Izzi, reaching Xibalba—may vary, but in trying to achieve them, each man is attempting the same thing: To accomplish something beyond human control.

It all started with a superhero in search of a paramour. During the preproduction phase of 2002’s “Spider-Man,” director Sam Raimi was looking for someone to play Mary Jane Watson, the copper-haired aspiring actress whose toughness and compassion make her the love of her knight in shining spandex’s life.

It wasn’t going well, co-producer Grant Curtis later wrote in his book “The Spider-Man Chronicles”—until, that is, Raimi remembered a meeting he’d had with Kirsten Dunst.

What would she and Peter Parker/Spider-Man actor Tobey Maguire be like together? Raimi decided to find out, and Curtis recalls that he even went so far as to take a plane to Germany with Maguire, who had strep throat, so the actor could do a screen test with Dunst. “Kirsten’s audition, and her onscreen chemistry with Tobey, was captivating,” Curtis wrote. “Search over.”

That may sound like a lot of work to find the right damsel for a comic-book character to rescue from distress. But recruiting two actors who can convincingly convey the ecstasy and agony of falling in love isn’t easy because when it comes to movies, romantic chemistry remains elusive, ephemeral, and barely understood.

A combination that sounds intriguing on paper can sometimes fall flat (think Christian Bale and Maggie Gyllenhaal in “The Dark Knight”), while a match-up that at first glance makes little sense can be stunningly seductive (think Bale and Anne Hathaway in “The Dark Knight Rises”).

Which is what makes cinematic chemistry fascinating—we know it when we see it, yet we can’t predict where it will sprout. That’s why the couples on this list are so entrancing. They may be pairings that initially seemed unlikely, but all of them yielded onscreen romances for the ages.

10. Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves in “The Lake House”

Just as good acting is no guarantee of chemistry, bad acting is no guarantee that chemistry won’t manifest. Case in point: Keanu Reeves, the perpetually wooden “Matrix” star whose unguarded sweetness has miraculously compensated for his hilariously stiff delivery on numerous occasions. He’s so charming that he’s almost good, though he’s even better when paired with Sandra Bullock.

Bullock and Reeves first collaborated on “Speed,” in which they played characters falling in love at the wheel of a runaway Los Angeles bus. By contrast, “The Lake House” placed them in a more sedate world: the titular glassy dwelling, where their characters live at different points in history. He’s in 2004, she’s in 2006, and they communicate by letters through a magical mailbox (just go with it, why don’t you?).

Editor Lynzee Klingman deserves credit for crafting the actors’ unforced intimacy; by placing pieces of their respective voiceovers in conversation, she creates disarmingly personal exchanges of thoughts and feelings. Of course, it wouldn’t have worked without Bullock and Reeves, who finally get to cross paths physically in a scene where they dance in a backyard at night to Paul McCartney’s “This Never Happened Before.”

Neither actor speaks much in that scene. Yet they’re so at ease with each other that they manage to convey the thrill of meeting someone who understands you, someone who can elevate you emotionally in a single conversation. Their chemistry registers so clearly that it becomes a testament to the principle that “The Lake House” is founded upon: That two people coming together means more when they’ve been apart.

9. Scarlett Johansson and Joaquin Phoenix in “Her”

Tired of seeing Johansson typecast as a soulless seductress in hollow blockbusters like “The Avengers” and “Ghost in the Shell”? Then check out this flawed but moving futuristic romance from Spike Jonze, in which Johansson plays Samantha, a perky “operating system” who falls in love with her kind, mustachioed owner, Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix).

By all rights, this tale should have been skin-crawling—Samantha is little more than a voice floating in the ether of the internet, which gives Theodore’s lust for her a pornographic flavor. Yet the combination of Johansson’s bubbly optimism and Phoenix’s wounded sensitivity creates a poignant portrait of two emotionally stunted souls finding tangible hope in their (virtual) embrace—even though their relationship isn’t destined to last.

8. Patton Oswalt and Charlize Theron in “Young Adult”

Sometimes the best way to see who an actor has chemistry with is to see who they don’t have it with. Take Theron, for instance, who stars in this black comedy as Mavis Gary, a venomous YA novelist wooing her married ex-boyfriend (Patrick Wilson). There’s not a whiff of heat between Theron and Wilson, and there’s not meant to be—their relationship mainly exists to highlight the crackling romantic tension of Theron’s scenes with Patton Oswalt, who plays Matt, a disabled former classmate.

Every time Mavis and Matt meet, you feel as if something is being unlocked in both of them. Matt is one of the few people who recognizes Mavis for the self-absorbed monster that she is (in one scene, she cruelly and hilariously demeans a book store worker by snarling, “Whatever, book man!”), allowing Theron to exude the relief of a woman grateful to have at least one friend who she can hang out with without pretending to be a decent person.

In accordance, Oswalt uses his performance to show how Mavis’ meanness arouses both Matt’s disgust and delight, leading to his regretful but inevitable declaration of love: “Guys like me were born loving women like you.”

7. Adam Driver and Golshifteh Farahani in “Paterson”

Yes, chemistry can be generated by an exchange of zippy one-liners, an embrace on the edge of a ship, or a woman locking lips with a guy who’s danging from a strand of spider webbing. Yet romance can also emerge from seemingly small moments—moments like the scene in “Paterson” where Laura (Farahani) announces to her husband, a poet and bus driver named Paterson (Driver), that they’re having quinoa for dinner.

The bond between Laura and Paterson is remarkable in its oddness; whether they’re in bed, at the dinner table, or lounging in their modest living room, and they don’t seem able to talk freely. Yet Driver and Farahani skillfully act out scenes featuring simple but powerful acts of affection, like Paterson supporting Laura’s dream to play guitar, or Laura raging at their dog, Marvin, after he snacks on Paterson’s poetry notebook.

The result of these moments of compassion and the quiet tenderness of Driver and Farahani’s performances is something extraordinary: A portrait of a couple whose inability to fully put their love into words doesn’t diminish its intensity.

6. Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon in “Walk the Line”

An even better combo for Phoenix. While he’s impressively charismatic and belligerent as Johnny Cash, the movie endures because of his interactions with Witherspoon, who plays June Carter. Not only do they sing together with relish, but the clash between his rugged brooding and her tangy spunk is undeniably alluring.

Just watch them together when Johnny makes a veiled attempt to hit on June and she ultimately demolishes him like a lumberjack splitting an oak tree. The whole scene is scabrous yet indecently seductive, and neither one of them would have it any other way.

There is a moment early in “Spider-Man 3” that offers a neat summation of the film’s fiery critical reception. It begins as sunshine is pouring into the apartment of Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire), the “anonymous urban crime fighter” (as A.O. Scott brilliantly described him) known as Spider-Man, followed by a cloud of gloom bursting in: Peter’s girlfriend, MJ (Kirsten Dunst), who announces that her performance in the musical “Manhattan Memories” has received a withering review.

If Peter were equipped with sharper social skills, he would have taken this setback as an opportunity to dish out some boyfriendly comfort. But instead, he cheerily brushes MJ off (“This is something you’re gonna have to get used to”) and knocks the review by declaring, “That’s a critic,” a line delivered in a dismissive tone that suggests that Peter is about as fond of critics as he is of supervillains like Doctor Octopus.

It’s a scene that offered an eerie premonition of “Spider-Man 3”’s fate: When it was released in 2007 (May 4 of this year will mark its tenth anniversary), the film was lambasted with the kind of rage usually reserved for Joel Schumacher and Brett Ratner.

And while the movie remains barely certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, a quick scan of its reviews reveals high-profile detractors like James Berardinelli (who drew blood with a blunt declaration: “’Spider-Man 3′ is a chore”), Roger Ebert (who accused the film of having “too many villains, too many pale plot strands, too many romantic misunderstandings”), and even the movie’s director, Sam Raimi (who entered the fray by summing up his own work in one word: “Awful”).

Raimi’s shockingly candid condemnation was a powerful reminder that the movie had evolved into a pop-cultural punching bag. Yet it also ignored that while “Spider-Man 3” (which, like all the Spidey films, is based on comic book characters created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko) has plenty of messy and overly melodramatic moments, it isn’t awful: It’s a vibrant, romantic epic thrillingly charged with emotion and adrenaline. That’s why the following list offers not a groveling apology for a much-derided blockbuster, but a defense of a movie that, while far from perfect, deserves to be reappraised by audiences and critics alike.

1. It’s a fascinating portrait of a good man becoming corrupt

It all begins with the landing of a meteorite, out of which oozes some inky-looking goo. What is it? Where did it come from? At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter because it’s a metaphorical McGuffin (described in the film as an “alien symbiote”) that ignites the core story of “Spider-Man 3”: the intensely virtuous Peter’s transformation into a vengeful and abusive bully who is just as repellent and cruel as the very villains he fights.

This grim turn spirals out of the end of “Spider-Man 2,” in which MJ becomes a keeper of Peter’s superheroic secret. The fierce kiss they share in the last scene of that sequel is a rare moment of joy for Peter, a comic-book character whose life has never been as comic as he might hope—especially since the murder of his beloved Uncle Ben (Cliff Robertson)—and it feeds into the beginning of “Spider-Man 3,” when New Yorkers have finally embraced Spider-Man as their protector, inspiring Peter to crow, “People really like me!”

Until they don’t, that is. Drunk on his sudden surge of success, Peter grows increasingly callous. He hounds MJ with condescending lectures; he shamelessly grooves to the thrill of having spider-fans; and in a move that’s shocking coming from a superhero whose monogamy is as central to his identity as fighting crime, he dons his spider-suit and smooches a police captain’s daughter, Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard), in a publicity stunt performed in full view of MJ.

The worst part is that these follies are just a prelude to the near-psychotic wrath that blossoms in Peter after he gets a phone call from the NYPD summoning him and his Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) to meet with Gwen’s father, George Stacy (James Cromwell).

It turns out, Stacy explains, that Uncle Ben was not murdered by Dennis Carradine (Michael Papajohn), the crook Peter hunted down in the first film—the killer was actually Carradine’s partner, Flint Marko (Thomas Haden Church). And, just Peter’s luck, Marko has gained the ability to morph into sand, which turns out to be a lot scarier than it sounds (when he absorbs enough sand, he turns into a monster bigger than an eighteen-wheeler).

Under most circumstances, Peter’s comparatively humble superpowers (as always, he shoots webs, swings from skyscrapers, and yes, does whatever a spider can) might not be enough to bring Marko to justice. But that’s before the symbiote engulfs Peter, blotting out the scarlet sheen of his Spider-Man costume, amping up his strength, and blackening his psyche.

As a result, Peter doesn’t just become more powerful—he sheds his inhibitions as well (as we witness in a montage where he leers at women he passes on the street with the relish of a monk who has long yearned to fling off his robe).

Peter’s new gifts come in handy in his fight against Marko, though the effects of his transformation are best seen in a cataclysmic scene at the jazz club where MJ works. There, Peter coasts on a symbiote high and picks a fight with a bouncer, resulting in the unnerving sight of an ordinary man tussling with a guy who he doesn’t realize is a superhero. “Peter, stop!” MJ shouts.

And then he hits her.

Everyone goes still in that moment—including Peter. So much of his life has been about trying to protect and honor this one woman. And now, she’s lying on the ground because of him.

There’s a debate to be had about whether “Spider-Man 3” absolves Peter too swiftly (redemption is easy when supervillains give you the opportunity to play the heroic rescuer). But give credit where credit is due: Working with Maguire, Raimi mounted a magnificently complex exploration of how vicious impulses can slumber beneath the polite veneers of even the most moral people.

That’s what makes the symbiote so terrifying—Peter was already sinking before he donned it. There was no need to create evil; it was just a matter of amplifying what was already there.

2. It features one of Tobey Maguire’s finest performances

The unraveling of Tobey Maguire’s acting career is one of the most regrettable developments in twenty-first century cinema. In the current decade, he’s had only two significant roles—Nick Caraway in Baz Luhrman’s sugar-high version of “The Great Gatsby” and Bobby Fischer in Edward Zwick’s “Pawn Sacrifice”—and he deserves better (don’t forget that Maguire is the same actor who once held his own against none other than Michael Douglas in “Wonder Boys”).

Then again, it’s easy to understand why filmmakers have trouble figuring out what to do with Maguire. With his wide-eyes and high-pitched voice, he often seems like an over-sized, talking baby chipmunk—you’re not sure whether to hug him or call the exterminator. But that made him perfect for “Spider-Man 3,” in which Raimi tapped the well of ambiguity and menace that Steven Soderbergh mined in “The Good German” (in which Maguire played a nasty American in Berlin).

Maguire’s trademark has always been his gift for deft emotional expressiveness, which comes into play during a tender conversation with Aunt May when Peter announces that’s he’s planning to propose to MJ. “A man has to be understanding and put his wife before himself,” May tells him. “Can you do that?” As he responds, all it takes is one look—a slight, smug smile—for Maguire to reveal that Peter is staring to be consumed by noxious cockiness, which is perfectly punctuated by his eerily suave reply to May (“Yeah, [I] think I can”).

It’s nuances like that that make Peter’s corruption believable. Yet Maguire also shines when he cuts loose, especially during the lighter moments in the jazz club scene. It’s great fun to watch him slick down his bangs, don a dark jacket, swagger into the club, and then announce his apparent entry into show business by playing a rockin’ piano solo, swinging from a chandelier, and—in what Peter clearly imagines to be a sexy manner—declaring, “Now dig on this!” before he breaks into a slow dance with Gwen that ends up being as self-parodying as it is seductive.

Maguire, in other words, is unafraid of looking unvarnished, despicable, and ridiculous, and the comedic flourishes in his performance turn out to be one of the most important functions of the film’s face-from-grace narrative.

That’s because unlike “Revenge of the Sith,” “Spider-Man 3” doesn’t play its hero’s turn to the dark side as a grim slog; it makes the grotesque journey light and funny, keeping you entertained and in sympathy with Peter until the reality of his awful actions comes crashing down on him after he smacks MJ.

It’s riveting to watch Dunst channel MJ’s sadness and disgust as she watches Peter’s principles crumble. Yet “Spider-Man 3” is ultimately a Maguire showcase, especially when he does a seamless about-face as Peter’s rage is overtaken by shame. “Who are you?” a horrified MJ asks. “I don’t know,” Peter shakily replies, and it’s a testament to the man behind the mask that you believe him.

3. It features some of the “Spider-Man” trilogy’s best production design

“Spider-Man 3” compels partly because of the evocative locations it unfolds in. Peter’s run-down apartment signals his isolation from the prosperous world of his best friend, corporate titan Harry Osborn (James Franco); the gleaming, seemingly unsupported staircase that MJ descends during her performance in “Manhattan Memories” is a wonder, yet also shows us how far she has to fall; and the skeletal, under-construction skyscraper where the film’s final battle unfolds is a beautiful maze of metal beams with a fragility that evokes the perilous emotional states of nearly every character in the film (and offers plenty of places for a hungry symbiote to hide).

These settings are also enticing because they’re ravishing but never distracting. That’s down to the practiced eyes of production designers Neil Spisak and J. Michael Riva (who died in 2012), who achieved a remarkable sense of visual balance by channeling the cartoonish look of countless Spider-Man comics, yet never allowed the film’s interiors and exteriors allowed to outshine the thoughts and feelings of the men and women who inhabit them.

Best of all, the film features one of the most iconic set pieces of the trilogy: The Gothic spire Peter kneels upon after striking MJ. Grimy, and framed against a stormy sky like an outstretched arm, it looks like something that belongs in Batman’s morally murky world, and that intertextual friction reminds us how much Peter has changed—and how far he has to go to be worthy of the mantle of Spider-Man once more.