Oh, boy, is Star Trek Into Darkness fun. Never mind the “into darkness” thing; J.J. Abrams is still connected to the joy and hope at the core of Gene Roddenberry’s original vision. And see it in IMAX if you can.

My review appears in today’s NOW, along with my interview with John Cho; you’ll also find me chatting with Michael Shannon about The Iceman. (Sadly, the interview took place last fall at TIFF, months before his career-defining work at Funny or Die. I will try to follow up when Man of Steel comes around.)

I’ve also got a few words about the Chris Marker retrospective down at the Lightbox this week. It’s brilliant stuff; please go see as many of those as you can.

Despite being an utterly facile and wrong-headed interpretation of the novel on which it’s based, Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby pulled in $51.1 million this weekend.

It still placed second to the behemoth that is Iron Man Three, which stayed in first with $72.5 million domestic and $89.3 internationally — and a cumulative global total of $949 million, which I believe puts it second only to The Avengers in Marvel Universe success stories.

I hear Warner’s retooling Kiss Kiss Bang Bang to be the story of the twin brother Tony Stark never knew he had. Which means Val Kilmer could one day play Moon Knight.

Actually, now that I’m thinking of it …

Boy, there’s a lot of stuff opening this week. It’s almost as though the other distributors have decided that Gatsby movie might not appeal to everyone after all.

At Any Price:  Rad is one of the few people who had any patience for Ramin Bahrani’s generational drama at TIFF, though he still has reservations. Apparently Dennis Quaid is quite good. I dunno, I’ll catch up to it on disc.

Blackbird: On the other hand, Rad did not much like Jason Buxton’s broody drama about a teenager (Connor Jessup) whose idle threats lead him into a Kafkaesque nightmare of persecution and shame … but neither did I, for that matter. And yes, I know it won Best First Feature at TIFF last year, but so did Antiviral, so come on.

The Good Lie: Nobody director Shawn Linden is back with another ensemble thriller about buried secrets and old grudges. Susan took it, for which I am grateful.

Graceland: Susan found more to love in Ron Morales’ Filipino thriller, which sounds an awful lot like High & Low from the chauffeur’s point of view. And that sounds interesting, if you ask me.

The Great Gatsby: Leonardo DiCaprio glares, Carey Mulligan stares, Tobey Maguire shares and nobody — nobody — cares. I wish I’d thought of “Baz Luhrmann beats off ceaselessly” last week instead of yesterday, because NOW would totally have let me use it.

I Declare War: Another Canadian film about kids and violence, Jason Lapeyre and Robert Wilson’s surreal action exercise was frequently discussed in tandem with Blackbird at TIFF, and now it’s opening in Toronto on the same day. Rad finds a little more to like in this one.

The Manor: After its triumphant premiere at Hot Docs, Shawney Cohen’s documentary gets a commercial run at the Bloor. You probably haven’t seen it yet, so get on that.

Room 237: John insists that Rodney Ascher’s study of Shining analysis is a documentary, but I’m not so sure — there are points when it feels like a subversive attempt to blow up the very art of cinema from the inside. And it feels like a pretty worthy goal, in the moment.

Skull World: Justin McConnell’s doc about an eccentric Ontario metalhead’s quest to become a TV star on the back of a truly ridiculous idea might find favor with the same audience that loves FUBAR and Beauty Day, but I’m really tired of people shouting into a handheld camera.  Something has to happen for me to care, man.

Slaughter Nick for President: There are few things stranger than the star of a syndicated ’90s detective series finding out he helped topple an Eastern European regime. But that’s the story Rob Stewart is telling, and it’s surprisingly credible.

Tyler Perry Presents Peeples: Kiva holds this meet-the-parents comedy — starring David Alan Grier and Craig Robinson as De Niro and Stiller, respectively — in more contempt than most critics hold the movies Perry actually directs. Ouch.

There, that’s everything. Or you could just see Iron Man Three again.

The Movies section of NOW is full of good stuff this week, but only some of it is mine. (John jumped on Room 237 at TIFF last fall, and has spun some great coverage out of it, like this interview with director Rodney Ascher and this fun Top 5 of puzzle movies.)

Me? Oh, I’ve got stuff to do. I talked to Rob Stewart, c0-director and unlikely subject of the documentary Slaughter Nick for President, and there are a few reviews to which I’ll provide links tomorrow. But the real bounty comes next issue.

You’ll see.

Boom! Iron Man Three made a very big splash in North America, pulling in $175.3 million domestically for the second-biggest opening since The Avengers. (It pulled in another $175.9 million in its second weekend of international release, which ain’t no small potatoes.)

Everything else was left in the dust. Second-placer Pain & Gain made $7.6 million; 42 made $6.2 million. None dare challenge the great Tony Stark and his flying metal pals. (Really, it’d be a suicide mission.)

And don’t worry about the weird spin on the linked box-office coverage, which tries to build some suspense around whether Robert Downey, Jr. will return for further projects; of course he will. He loves attention just as much as his alter ego does.

Oh, come on. Of course there’d be no one foolish enough to take on Iron Man Three this weekend — even if it wasn’t arriving with the smashing success of The Avengers behind it, you just do not get in the way of Robert Downey, Jr. when he’s wearing that armor.

More to the point, it’s also pretty damn great, and it deserves every last million it stands to earn. Let’s see how high this baby can fly.

Oh, also opening this week, presumably as counterprogramming options: Kon-Tiki and Still Mine. Both decent enough, in their way. But neither of them is Iron Man Three.

With me running around banking interviews at Hot Docs and Iron Man Three scaring everyone else away from the megaplex, things are pretty calm in this week’s NOW.

But I do have a couple of interviews around the small Canadian drama Still Mine, talking to the wonderful Genevieve Bujold in the paper and to co-star James Cromwell and writer-director Michael McGowan in an exclusive web Q&A (which finally went up a day after it was supposed to).

See? I do stuff!