Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is OK. Mostly it feels like a box-ticking exercise for Indy fans. Frenetic opening scene that could be the grand climax of another action movie? Yep. Fedora and whip? Yep. Snakes? Hordes of gross insects? Hundreds of skeletons in a catacomb falling on top of our hero and heroine? Yep, yep, yep. Don’t forget about connecting scenes with a map and a moving dot.

It is a far better attempt than 2008’s disappointing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but still a bit short of the original trilogy back in the 1980s. At least I did get invested in the story enough that I got an appropriate laugh at how Helen — Dr. Jones’ goddaughter — resolves the dilemma at the climax when Indy wants to (can’t go on without spoilers). And I did tear up at the final scene despite being fully aware it was another box being ticked.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3, on the other hand, is a terrific film. It also ticks a lot of boxes — after all, I am Groot! — but the story is much more compelling, revealing the backstory of Rocket Raccoon. On the other hand, the third Indiana Jones movie is the best except for the first, too. Maybe a fourth, or fifth, Guardians of the Galaxy movie 25 or 40 years after the first would also feel unnecessary.

It is kind of nice to check in with familiar characters to see their happily-ever-after, but if I want to relive the joy of watching Indiana Jones again, it’s more likely than not that I’ll haul out Raiders of the Lost Ark or Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade.

I’ve just watched Bill Nighy in Living, playing the part (Watanabe/Williams) that Takashi Shimura originated in Ikiru (To Live) back in 1952.

The newer film is remarkably faithful to the original Akira Kurosawa masterpiece, adapted by the brilliant Kazuo Ishiguro, essentially telling the same story — still set in the 1950s — for a modern audience.

Given a terminal diagnosis, a stiff older bureaucrat attempts to come back to life, finally seizing an opportunity to help some neighborhood mothers in their effort to have a small playground built in a bombed-out ruin.

The story parallels the original, right down to Watanabe/Williams’ fellow bureaucrats, after his funeral, pledging to learn from his example only to be bogged down by the quotidian once again, and recreating the legendary scene of Watanabe/Williams swinging in his playground and singing the sad folk song that he had asked a tavern musician to play earlier in the film.

Nighy — as Shimura before him — is one of those sometimes underrated treasures who deserves to be considered among our finest actors.

Living (currently on Netflix) is a quiet, slow-developing film and therefore not for everyone, but like Kurosawa’s original, it was definitely for me and moved me to the core.

At its core Everything Everywhere All At Once is a sweet movie — a kind movie — and of course an insane movie. The insanity is why I loved it.

It seems everyone these days is doing movies about the multiverse, where every choice leads into its own universe. What would have happened if you took that other job or didn’t get that divorce? Somewhere there’s a universe where you made the opposite choices and everything played out differently.

Here, all of the multiverse is under threat, and somehow Evelyn Wang — played brilliantly by Michelle Yeoh — is at the center of it all. Everything, everywhere, all at once, somehow depends on Evelyn stopping her daughter Joy from building a bagel. Googley eyes also play a key role.

Not everyone will love the nuttiness of this film as much as I did. I can see someone throwing up their arms and saying, “This is just insane.” My response would be, “Yeah, I know. Isn’t it great?”

Yeoh is always wonderful, and here she is absolutely believable in an unbelievable role. Three of her colleagues are nominated for Oscars in supporting roles — Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis — and if it were up to me I’d declare a tie and give the two awards to the three of them. After last week’s Screen Actors Guild awards, Yeoh and the film itself are the front runners for Best Actress and Best Picture, and while admittedly I haven’t seen any of the other films and performances, I certainly would agree they would be worthy choices.

But you could tell everyone wasn’t thinking about winning awards when they made this picture; they were just having fun. And that is why you really have to see this film when you can. It’s just fun, and we need more of that these days.