Just last year, the internet was mightily bemused by the discovery that many men are low-key obsessed with the Roman Empire.

He seems to have found one in Normal People’s Paul Mescal, a very fine actor who carries social media trends and fashion movements on his well-turned shoulders, to take up Crowe’s mantle. Mescal plays ...

Gladiator II” isn’t quite the prestige film that the first one, a best-picture winner, was. It’s more a swaggering sword- -and-sandal epic that prizes the need to entertain above all else.