It’s inarguable that the pioneering work of Marie and Pierre Curie changed the world, for both good and ill. “Radioactive,” the new film starring Rosamund Pike and Sam Riley as the late-nineteenth century Parisians, gives us a brief on the life, and, yes, the deaths, largely due to radiation poisoning, of the couple that is part love story, part scientific procedural and, somewhat strangely, decides to also jump through time (more on this later).

It would be ungracious to deny that David Fincher’s “Gone Girl,” lengthy as it is, whizzes past, keeping us highly entertained throughout. I haven’t read the book on which it is based so I don’t know if the structural change that has apparently caused an uproar is for the better or not. Anyway, both book and screenplay are by the same author so she’s entitled to doing what she wants with either.

Homer’s memorized recitals of the stories of the heroes and gods certainly required a attention span. The Wrath of The Titans certainly does not. It demands only the attention typically demanded by modern Hollywood blockbuster screenwriting. But would Homer, in all his “As I lay dying, the woman with the dog face wouldn’t close my eyes as I descended into Hades”-ness, been better served by less longwindedness and more