2025 was — and is still — supposed to be the year that the movies came roaring back from the various impediments that have thwarted them since the start of the decade.

But as we arrive at the quarter mark of the calendar year, you’d be forgiven for thinking that things seem even more dire than usual. Of the five highest-grossing films of 2025 so far, one of them went straight to streaming in the United States (“Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy”), one was barely released here despite earning almost two billion dollars in China (“Ne Zha 2”), one is about a man whose head is surgically replaced by that of a dog (“Dog Man”), one is about a franchise whose heart has been surgically replaced by that of a streaming platform (“Captain America: Brave New World”), and one has been broadly defined as a massive bomb (“Mickey 17”).

Be that as it may,...