The very latest trend is something called “the Multiverse”—or so I gather from the fact that there are two movies out right now with “multiverse” either in the title or as the main idea.

The two films are “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” with Benedict Cumberbatch returning in the title role, and “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” starring Michelle Yeoh.

The premise of “Multiverse of Madness” is that there are many universes besides our own, some differing only slightly and some unrecognizably, and the Doctor must travel through them to save a young woman from an evil force that turns out to be a witch.

Another premise of this film is that there will be a Doctor Strange in every universe, be he alive or dead or made of paper. Apparently, out of the infinite number of possibilities that a universe can embody, none of them include the freedom to omit Dr. Strange.

But even more important is the fact that they are all just subsets of the MCU — or Marvel Cinematic Universe.

And not even an infinity of universes gives Dr. Strange the chance to ever meet up with Superman, or Wonder Woman, or any characters from that truly alternate universe: the one belonging to DC Comics.

As a card-carrying Baby Boomer, with better things to do than watch all the (seemingly) hundreds of movies generated by these two worlds, I cannot possibly keep them all straight.

That’s why I viewed this movie with some experts. So it is their insight, not mine, that “Having a ‘Multiverse’ is just a way of getting past a mistake without having to admit you made one” (like, say, having the character Thanos wipe out half of Earth’s population in an earlier movie). “Just call it one universe out of many, and go on your merry way.”

How clever! Still, why not just make more effective use of time travel instead? Or did Superman patent that for the DC Comics world?

There are lots of fancy visual effects in this movie. In one scene — my favorite — some music gets turned into musical notes, which become little pieces of shrapnel. Of course they do. We do not live in an America, right now, where music would turn into feathers or paint or ice cream. In our slice of the multiverse, everything is a fight to the death, and everything is a weapon — even music.

My problem is, it all feels completely capricious. At no point did I think, “OK, we know the rules here and what he can work with — now what? Ooh, that’s clever.” No, there’s always just another multiverse, another trick up his sleeve … and all we are left to do is sit back and admire the CGI.

I found myself on the side of the evil Witch as she lamented, to Strange, “You break the rules and become a hero. I do it and I become the enemy. This doesn’t seem fair.”

Much more interesting is “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” Ironically, this film is currently showing almost nowhere, and isn’t streaming at all. In fact, I had to find my way to a multiverse, I mean a Multiplex, off Brush Hollow Road, to see it.

I understood almost nothing about this film from its reviews, so I’ll tell you: at its heart is a family at a moment of crisis. Michelle Yeoh (star of “Crazy Rich Asians” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) is Evelyn Wang, the owner and operator, with her husband, of a very nondescript laundromat. She is approaching the end of an IRS audit, which the auditor — played brilliantly by an all-but-unrecognizable Jamie Lee Curtis — warns them is “Not going well.”

In fact, the IRS is about to seize the business. But Yeoh cannot keep herself focused on this crisis, because she is facing the even bigger — to her — crisis of having to throw a party for the father who never loved or approved of her, and a grown daughter who refuses to attend because Yeoh cannot admit to Grandpa that her daughter’s “special friend” is really her girlfriend. It’s a lot.

In this movie, as in Dr. Strange, we flip in and out of alternate realities. But in this one, the changes are made clear simply by excellent acting, writing, and directing…with the help of some truly zany costumes, lighting, and action/dance sequences.

This film does not give us any big universal truths, just a real one about people trying desperately to matter to each other.

On the other hand, I cannot tell you what the message of the first movie is at all.

It figures that the wrong Multiverse is getting big box office access.