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The best thing about the new 300: Rise of an Empire is that Zack Snyder didn’t direct it. And the worst thing about it is that Zack Snyder didn’t direct it. Allow me to explain myself. Back in 2006, Snyder’s adaptation of Frank Miller’s comic book 300, a macho reimagining of the battle between a small band of Spartans and the Persian army in Thermopylae, made for a most unlikely hit. Sword and sandal movies weren’t exactly big business, but 300 captured something in the culture: The Iraq War was raging, and the film portrayed the beefy, noble Spartan warriors as brave Western heroes holding off a decadent, grotesque, beyond-Orientalized Persian army. Don’t ask me how we managed to see ourselves in the outnumbered. outgunned resistance and our scattered and desperate enemy in the massive, well-armed invading horde; it was a dark time for everybody.Did Snyder...

In a national culture that thrives on irony, detachment, the postmodern hum of advertising, and the communicative cool enforced by technology, good old sincerity — remember that golden oldie? — can seem not just out-of-date but a little embarrassing. Who wants to be caught saying what they mean and meaning what they say, or wearing their heart on their earnest, pleading sleeve? John Carney does. He’s the Irish-born writer-director of Can a Song Save Your Life?, an unapologetically sincere movie that is modeled on the beautiful, almost desperate sincerity of the music-movie that put Carney on the map: Once, that lovely...