Being that the only notable new release (at least in local theaters) this past weekend was Wonka, a moment of reflection presented itself. Not to dismiss Willy’s origin story; to the contrary, I’ve long immersed myself in the source material and the revelatory 1971 adaptation. I’ll continue to skip Tim Burton and Johnny Depp’s portrait-in-rictus from 2005, thanks very much. Furthermore, as an ardent admirer of director Paul King’s visionary work on The Mighty Boosh, I trust he has brought an appropriate degree of joyfully uncomfortable psychedelia to bear on the proceedings. And it has been rather pointedly pointed out that I may be a Chalamet stan (the youth will let me know if I’m using that correctly), dating back almost a decade. Regardless, something about an overwrought, ostensibly playful musical drawn from a bygone era but shot through with modern touches failed to compel me to action. And by action, I mean the 10-minute trip to the theater. Instead, I once again moodily pondered a year gone by and found more than a few movie things for which to be thankful. Of course, the centerpiece of the year, the flashpoint of much contentious conversation, was and is Barbenheimer. In a moment that felt fresh and hopeful and completely manipulated, Barbie and Oppenheimer, two movies that could not be more different, landed at the summer box office and ostensibly announced the return of movies. I remain skeptical (if not cynical) as always, but the resounding successes of those two ambitious, modern but also traditional projects serve as a convenient emblem of a year of new work by established voices, possibly to the detriment of some of the quieter stuff. Through the end of last year, even, the hangover of the plague lent a tentativeness to theatrical releases. The conglomerates in control of the means of distribution remained trepidatious about box office returns. Moreover, the “failure” of some ongoing franchises seemed to throw the conventional wisdom into question. And so we lived in a mini-epoch, a sort of truncated ’70s/’90s during which unlikely movies found life, both out in the world and in the living room. But now the movies are back, or at least it has been a rather noisy year. And to be fair, there have been some lasting favorites released into the world, a precious few of which I did not see on the big screen. As the…