Cultlike celebrities of a certain size sometimes cross the line between unsettling narcissism and unsettling narcissism with top notes of pathology. This may not be news, even if they make the news fairly regularly, but the frustrating new film “Opus” treats the toxic intersection of fame and infamy as a big reveal unto itself.

It’s a sleek enough experience visually, and the songs composed for “Opus” by Nile Rodgers and The-Dream are pretty tasty. This is the first feature from filmmaker Mark Anthony Green, who wrote and directed and undoubtedly pulled a few ideas for “Opus” from his ego-navigation experience as a celebrity journalist.

Premise: After a nearly 30-year hiatus shrouded in mystery, the ’90s pop legend known throughout the world as Moretti — bigger than Dylan, a pale white Prince with a wardrobe inching toward the interstellar — has produced his magnum opus, an album so major it’s almost too special for human ears. Moretti launches this album by way of a lavish but exclusive junket held at his remote Southwestern compound, which is staffed by serenely puttering acolytes in thrall to the Scientology-esque religion Moretti subscribes to, known as Leveling. (His followers are Levelists.)

The half-dozen who were lucky enough to be invited include five media poseurs Moretti has known a while, including the sycophantic editor of a Rolling Stone-type music magazine. For reasons unknown, a low-mid-level staffer of that same magazine, Ariel, has been invited as well. She’s played by Ayo Edebiri (of “The Bear”). Moretti is played by John Malkovich, because who else?

Consigned to providing her boss with a few atmospheric details for his story, Ariel can’t help but notice just how strange the goings-on appear. Cellphones are collected from everybody, with the promise of a return later. Moretti likes his guests unshaven, all over, so there’s a non-negotiable grooming policy enforced.

From there it’s one small step to the first disappearing-guest act, and “Opus” lurches from a satirically insufferable album-release party to a bloody nightmare. It does this while letting the audience get dangerously ahead of the narrative developments. Malkovich certainly holds his own, though there are times when his singular, sidewinding performance energy has a way of sapping a scene’s overall rhythm and pace. The supporting cast is a good one, with Murray Bartlett, Juliette Lewis and others filling in the blanks of their thinly conceived characters. Edebiri’s the anchor here, but the material is the material, and the material only goes so far.

It’s a familiar set-up by now: take a swank, remote compound, add an ultra-exclusive guest list and an escalating barrage of bloodletting, a la “The Menu” or last year’s undervalued “Blink Twice.” “Opus” has its moments. But even the surprises aren’t especially surprising.

“Opus” — 2 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for violent content including a grisly image, language, sexual material and brief graphic nudity)

Running time: 1:43

How to watch: Premieres in theaters March 13

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

Pretty good Oscars show on Sunday! Long, yes, at three hours and 45 minutes. Adrien Brody’s best actor acceptance speech for “The Brutalist” took three hours and 43 minutes of that, or felt like it. But the evening’s pace was steady, first-time host Conan O’Brien kept it moving (though he yelled a lot, as if there were no microphones involved) and the eventual big wins for Sean Baker’s “Anora” were A-OK with me.

My predictions, on the other hand? A personal worst-ever, with 13 correct picks over 23 categories. To wit: Do not listen to this man’s predictions (though I went 21 for 23 last year). Yet rarely have I been so pleased with being proven so wrong in so many categories.

Seven thoughts about Sunday night:

1. “Anora” now enters its “yeah? prove it” phase: Expectations have been officially inflated regarding the film that won for best picture, best director, best actress (Mikey Madison), best original screenplay and best editing. Writer-director-producer-editor Baker made history, and as the Oscar-winning editor of his own picture, he got off a good zinger about salvaging his director’s film in the editing stage.

The history part: Not since Walt Disney in 1954 has a filmmaker won four Oscars at the same ceremony, though Disney won for four different films. That year found the movie industry in a defensive crouch due to the rapid and increasingly affordable rival medium of television. In 2025, it’s still in a defensive crouch. Indie stalwart Baker, who made his shape-shifting wonder of a rom-com about a Brooklyn exotic dancer and the son of a Russian oligarch on a $6 million budget, spoke Sunday about where we are now while picking up his directing Oscar from presenter Quentin Tarantino.

“Where did we fall in love with the movies? At the movie theater,” he said. “Right now, the theatergoing experience is under threat. Movie theaters, especially independently owned movie theaters, are struggling. And it’s up to us to support them.” His “battle cry,” he added, is this: “Filmmakers, keep making films for the big screen. I know I will. Distributors, please focus first and foremost on the theatrical releases of your films.” This needed saying out loud. He also asked audiences to continue seeing films at the theater.

2. “Anora” deserved everything it won: I only wish supporting actor nominee Yura Borisov had won for his note-perfect portrayal of the cryptic Russian henchman dispatched to break up the marriage between the coked-up, ne’er-do-well son (Mark Eydelshteyn) of shadowy Russian wealth and the Brighton Beach sex worker Anora (Madison). If for whatever reason you may not want to take a chance on “Anora” because of the language or the sex or whatever, you might try one of Baker’s excellent earlier works, “Tangerine” or “The Florida Project” or “Red Rocket.” They’re also about sex workers, at least in part, and also about a lot more — the human comedy in every shade of every color.

3. For historical context, “Anora” is a period piece: It is set in 2019. If it were set today, deep into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, would it work at all, especially given the newfound American allegiance to a former adversary? Tellingly, Oscars host O’Brien’s material steered almost entirely clear of anti-Trump zingers, at least by name. Referencing the “Anora” wins, O’Brien made one effective exception: “I guess Americans are excited to see somebody finally stand up to a powerful Russian.”

The movie has also become an intriguing point of debate. Some have claimed Baker’s film plays into propagandistic Russian hands, with its depiction of the Russian oligarch class and, in particular, the sympathetic portrayal of the empathetic Russian henchman. Others simply cannot understand what critics, especially female critics, see in it. On that front, start with NPR’s Aisha Harris and Slate’s Dana Stevens.

4. One disappointment: When I say “Anora” deserved everything it got, I mean it, with an asterisk. “Nickel Boys” remains for me the most startlingly original feature of 2024, and it won zero Oscars. Which hurts, but the film still exists, and gradually it will be discovered by more of us.

5. Did “Wicked” deserve better from the Oscars? No. It won for costume design (Paul Tazewell, the first Black recipient in this category and a prior Tony Award winner for “Hamilton”), and for production design (Nathan Crowley). The latter I’d argue should have gone to “The Brutalist” and production designer Judy Becker. With “Dune: Part II” excepted — that’s a massively budgeted fantasy that feels entirely human-made by real artists — the 2024 movie year produced its most vital work on budgets a fraction of the size of “Wicked.”

6. Not sure about that James Bond dance number: In several Academy Awards shows of my youth, the “007” dance routines — cheesy, prolonged versions of the franchise’s opening credits — made for instant camp, or an excuse to go to the kitchen or somewhere. Sunday’s Bond spectacular, featuring a blur of scenic slaughter from clips culled from seven different decades, was the tribute no one asked for except perhaps Amazon Studios, the new keeper of the franchise.

7.  Can an Oscar secure a documentary a distributor in 2025? We’ll see: “No Other Land,” the heartbreaking collaboration between Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers, is still looking for a fuller life in theaters as of March 3, 2025.

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

Thirty-five films into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I wonder if Cumbersome would be the more accurate c-word in MCU. What will it take in 2025 to make one of these movies really interesting? Or a massive hit? Will “Thunderbolts,” arriving in May, answer those questions?

Based on the Super Bowl-aired trailer, that one looks very much in the spirit of “Deadpool & Wolverine,” last year’s second-biggest moneymaker after “Inside Out 2.”  “Deadpool & Wolverine” got the box-office job done ($1.3 billion worldwide) by odd-coupling two marginalized Marvel superheroes who heckled their own movie for two hours and seven minutes, with just enough last-minute heart to provoke some shock and awwww. People went.

Up against that, what chance does the earnest, glumly chaotic fourth “Captain America” feature, “Captain America: Brave New World,” have, really?

“Brave New World” gives Anthony Mackie his first starring turn as Sam Wilson, former flying sidekick to Chris Evans’ Captain America. He is now the wielder of the shield and a valiant if heavily burdened remnant of the now-disbanded Avengers. Harrison Ford takes over for the late William Hurt as Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, newly elected U.S. president, seen early on taking tiny little tablets in secret.

Ross is determined to distinguish his first 100 days in office with the successful signing of a peace treaty with Japan and other nations, built on equitable sharing of the limitless resources promised by the emergence (at the end of the 2021 film “Eternals”) of the mighty undersea big rock candy mountain known as the Celestial mass. The mass is made of wondrous adamantium, similar to Wakanda’s coveted vibranium.

But Ross has a past, and some vengeance-minded prior associates suffered for it. The much-experimented-upon adversary known as The Leader (Tim Blake Nelson, in mini-“Megamind” latex) controls seemingly half the planet by computer hacking acumen or, more dramatically,  “Manchurian Candidate”-brand mind control.

Director Julius Onah, working from a screenplay credited to five writers plus the usual reshoots, follows Wilson and his eager sidekick Joaquín (Danny Ramirez) as they tangle with enemies of shifting allegiances, from Oaxaca to the Indian Ocean to the White House Rose Garden. The excellent Giancarlo Esposito rolls in as Sidewinder, like The Leader a survivor of insidious Tuskegee-tinged medical experiments in superhero/superkiller enhancement.

It may be too forgiving to say that the MCU movies benefit from having recently rewatched several of the narratively pertinent earlier MCU movies. It’s surely true, but at some point it’s just busy work, as well as foisting story-tracking clarity onto the viewer and off of the filmmakers. This script has a lot going on, but after a while you may feel like Ford looks in certain shots: committed in theory, struggling to engage in practice.

There’s a seriously cautious approach taken here to what should’ve been seized. Wilson is defined, however sketchily, as a man internally torn and troubled, regarding the burden of expectation that comes with his relatively new Captain America gig. He’s working, reluctantly, with an American president in thrall to dark forces and violent impulses. It’s no secret that Red Hulk makes an appearance in “Brave New World,” illustrating what can happen when a testy world leader with anger management challenges has had enough of the diplomacy game.

Oddly, neither Mackie nor Captain America foregrounds the action sufficiently, at least for me. Mackie’s a strong and subtle actor and he meets expectations even when the material doesn’t. But we wait for the inevitable, just as Captain America must: a routine action climax, featuring a newly engorged Ross trying to kill the all-too-human Wilson underneath a Washington, D.C., street lined with cherry blossoms. And you know? It’s nothing special. We’ve seen literal dozens of MCU action climaxes along these lines. “Brave New World” may be more human-scaled than most, but in terms of kinetic filmmaking technique, it rarely rises above the usual, punishing visual/digital noise.

The movie wouldn’t feel human at all, really, if not for the convincing emotion bond established between Mackie and Carl Lumbly as Isaiah. The job pressure Mackie’s loyal American warrior acknowledges at one point may not need underlining as having a racial component. That stuff’s not in the cards right now anyway. Instead, while we wait for “Thunderbolts” to arrive, #35 offers a few stray diversions as it sorts through plot strands and ties up loose ends while keeping other loose ends loose. Because so many future Marvel movies depend on it.

“Captain America: Brave New World” — 2 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of violence and action, and some strong language)

Running time: 1:58

How to watch: Premieres in theaters Feb. 13

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.