The curse of La Llorona, as explained in the fittingly titled The Curse of La Llorona, is a piece of Latin American folklore too juicy to be employed merely as a bridge to yet another feature starring that nasty porcelain doll Annabelle. Alas, director Michael Chaves' supernatural horror film is being marketed as the latest in the “Conjuring Universe” that entails two Conjurings (with a third heading our way next year), two Annabelles (with a third heading our way this June), and last fall's dreary The Nun (with a second, and inevitable third, TBA). Every cinematic series, it seems, has to be capitalized Universe now, but am I alone in wishing that this latest entry had functioned merely as a self-contained planet?

Those trailers suggested Big in shiny red Spandex, and the trailers didn't lie. Director David F. Sandberg's comic-book outing, however, isn't reminiscent of the Tom Hanks comedy merely because it's about a young teen magically transformed into an adult. It's also fast and funny and clever and touching in the manner of Big – so much so that all that's really missing is the sight of Robert Loggia on a giant walking piano. And the giant walking piano actually makes an appearance.

It's kind of like what you'd get if a home-invasion thriller mated with a zombie-apocalypse thriller and gave birth to a subterranean Matrix, with Sigmund Freud and Lewis Carroll serving as godparents and Darren Aronofsky performing the baptism.

Iron Man is sarcastic. Thor is arrogant. Hulk is ill-tempered. Captain America is patriotic to a fault. And Captain Marvel, a.k.a. the human Carol Danvers, a.k.a. the alien Vers, is … female. At least, that felt like the chief takeaway from Captain Marvel, whose filmmakers and star have given us a perfectly respectable comic-book role model while neglecting to make her in any way interesting.