Smells like team spirit.... It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure this out: If your movie has made $702 million in worldwide ticket sales in its first couple of weeks’ release, as the Disney/Marvel  Studios’ superhero smash-up The Avengers  has done, then a sequel is in order. And maybe another one after that.

Indeed, Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed this week that Avengers 2 is in development, with all of its caped and masked and spandexed castmates signed on. But first, the individual members of the “Avengers Initiative” will get their solo sequels in gear: Iron Man 3, with Robert Downey Jr. back as kabillionaire industrialist inventor playboy wisecracker crime-fighter Tony Stark, is being readied for a 2013 release, while Captain America 2 and Thor 2, starring Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth, respectively, are on board for 2014. (What if the two Chrises switch? Would anyone notice? Would anyone care?)

And Marvel Studios’ president Kevin Feige has gone on record saying that Scarlett Johannson’s Black Widow – the elite Russian intelligent agent Natasha Romanoff who joins forces with SHIELD (and seems to have a thing for Jeremy  Renner’s Hawkeye) – will likely get her own stand-alone movie, too. Johannson has signed on to do so, and has been telling the press “I love the Widow.”

That leaves Mark Ruffalo and his tamped-down interpretation of Bruce Banner, who, if he does get angry, turns big and green and raging. But there have already been two Hulk movies in the new millennium (one each for Eric Bana and Edward Norton). Can the public -- even the comicbook craving public -- support a third?

And anyway, Ruffalo's Banner is so in control of his anger management issues, another Hulk movie might not be warranted. As Downey's Tony Stark marvels (excuse the pun): "You really have got a lid on it, haven't you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?"

Maurice Sendak -- who died Tuesday, age 83, leaving behind a wealth of words and drawings that will live on and on -- had invited the visionary music video maker turned filmmaker Spike Jonze to try his hand at adapting what is perhaps Sendak's best known book,  Where the Wild Things Are.

In an interview with Jonze when his fittingly wild, live-action interpretation of Sendak's bedtime tale came out in 2009, the director talked about the impact Sendak's work had had on his own childhood, and on shaping his imaginative world. In the book, and the movie, a misbehaving kid, Max, is sent to bed without his supper, and somehow journies to a land inhabited by horned, clawed, feathered and unruly giant monsters.

"I would look at those pictures -- where Max's bedroom turns into a forest -- and there was something that felt like magic there," Jonze said in the interview. "Just the power of that creation, when somebody invents something that seems so familiar to you -- that's a strong feeling.... And for me, even at 5, I probably had dreams that were similar to that story in some way."

Read the piece about Jonze and Sendak's collaboration, and the making of the film version of Sendak's 1963 kid-lit classic, here.

In Sound of My Voice, an eerie indie thriller starring (and co-written by) Brit Marling, a woman who claims to be from the future sets down in Southern California, and starts preaching  to a small core of devotees. She has seen the apocalypse, and she is here to teach believers how to survive. Being led blindfolded and shackled to her house, scrubbing down, donning hospital gowns and learning a secret handshake are all part of the process.

There have been a number of cult movies over the years – that is, movies about cults. In last year’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, Elizabeth Olsen delivered what many felt (me included) was an Oscar-worthy performance as an escapee from a hippie-like commune, traumatized by events she was party to there. And just this February, Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd were party to Wanderlust,  a comedy about a couple who stumble on a seemingly idyllic community led by a singing, free-lovin’, bearded dude played by Justin Theroux. Of course, he’s up to no good.

Here’s a chronological list of a half dozen other notable cult pics:

Village of the Damned (1960) – OK, technically not a cult, the gaggle of towheaded, luminous-eyeballed children who inhabit the quaint village of Midwich in Wolf Rilla’s classic scare-flick nonetheless band together in cult-like ways, and compel the people around them – like their parental units – to do things they shouldn’t be doing.

Suspiria (1977) – OK, technically not a cult, the fancy German ballet academy that Jessica Harper wanders into in Dario Argento’s horror classic is nonetheless run by a sinister cabal of single-minded murderesses. Beware those brainwashed ballerinas!

Ticket to Heaven (1981) Super-chilling Canadian drama about a Toronto schoolteacher (Nick Mancuso) who visits a remote California camp where people chant, hold hands and talk about God – and where they’re ringed in by high security fences and locked gates.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)  In which Harrison Ford's whip-snapping adventurer must contend with a band of Indian Thuggee – a deadly cult who worship the Hindu goddess Kali, believe in human sacrifice and give Indy and his gang a really hard time.

Holy Smoke! (1999) Kate Winslet stars as an Aussie backpacker who joins an ashram in India and becomes a devout follower of its guru. Winslet’s worried parents dispatch a professional deprogrammer to wrest her away. Harvey Keitel is the man for the job.

The Village (2004) At first glance,  M. Night Shyamalan’s enigmatic thriller isn’t about anything more than a protective community of late 19^th century Amish/Shaker-types who prefer to keep to themselves. Ha! Forbidden to venture into the surrounding woods, Joaquin Phoenix and Bryce Dallas Howard eventually discover that their village elders run the place with the rigorous rules of, well, a cult. They are not to be trusted -- and neither is Shyamal;an and his trick endings. 

There are hallway walk-and-talks, and gym locker showdowns, and ruminations about romance, to be sure, but also weightier stuff, too: stories of living with cystic fibrosis, about racial tensions, about the discovery of a grandfather's World War II diary.

Now in its fourth year, the Greenfield Youth Film Festival is an ambitious undertaking that brings together students form 26 area high schools – from Berks, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties – offering equipment, technical instruction and encouragement as they wield tripods and lights, cameras and mikes,  putting their dreams and dilemmas,  ideas and images on screen.

On Tuesday, May 1, from 7pm to 9pm at the Keswick Theater, in Glenside, the results of this year’s competition – sponsored by the Greenfield Foundation, in partnership with the School District of Upper Dublin – will be screened for students, families and the public at large. Admission is free. Festival organizers cull from around 200 entries, and will hand out honors in three categories -- fiction narrative, documentaries and experimental. There are also awards for actor and actress, for director, cinematography, score, animation, screenwriting, editing, sound design, visual effects and “best use of a teacher in a movie.”

Instructor/mentors for this year’s fest include R. Eric Thomas, a stand-up dramedian, storyteller, and playwright, and Jon Foy, musician and filmmaker, and winner of a Sundance award for his documentary feature, Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles.

For info: Go to Greenfield Youth Film Festival, or call the Keswick Theater, (215) 572-7650.

It’s called Artsploitation Films, its first three releases hail from India (Gandu), Japan (Hard Romanticker (Hâdo romanchikkâ) and Russia (Bullet Collector), and it's based here in Philadelphia. Ray Murray, one of the founding partners of TLA Entertainment and for many years the artistic director of the Philadelphia Film Festival, has assembled a group of investors to back Artsploitation, which plans to release 24 titles a year on DVD and VOD, with the occasional theatrical run thrown into the mix.

Murray, a globe-hopping film festival junkie, is looking for international titles “with an edge” – horror, action, thrillers, offbeat romances. Right now the company’s website is just a logo with contact info, but expect a burgeoning roster of intriguing titles in the coming weeks and months.

Watching the beautifully restored edition of To Kill a Mockingbird on the USA network Saturday night, with its eloquent intro from President Obama,  a touching scene that heretofore didn’t seem all that significant took on a new dimension – as in: was author Suzanne Collins watching this when she dreamed up The Hunger Games?

It’s the scene when little Walter Cunningham (Steve Condit) --  a struggling farmer’s son whose father has been paying off Atticus Finch’s legal fees with foodstuffs from the fields – is invited to have dinner with the Finches. There sits Gregory Peck’s upright lawyer, Atticus, Mary Badham’s tomboy Scout, and her brother, Jem (Philip Alford), watching Walter as he pours syrup all over his plate.  But as the roast is being passed around, and the diners all dig in, there’s a discussion about mockingbirds  and blue jays – it’s a sin to kill the former, but all right to kill the latter, those pesky birds.

And as millions of readers and moviegoers know, the mockingjay of The Hunger Games and its subsequent two books, Catching Fire, and, yes, Mockingjay, figures prominently -- and metaphorically -- in the dystopian Young-Adult series. But there’s more: as young Walter forks into his meal, he tells the Finches that it’s the first piece of beef he’s had in ages. He and his father have been subsisting on “squirrel and rabbit” -- the same diet that Catnip Evergreen, oops, I mean Katniss Everdeen, supplies to her struggling and famished family in District 12.

So, mockingbirds, blue jays, squirrel, rabbits -- in a story where kids wander off into the woods and bad, violent things happen to them?  Even if Collins wasn’t consciously inspired by To Kill a Mockingbird, I’d wager that she had revisited the film some time before she set out to write The Hunger Games.

Narrated by Olivia de Havilland, the Oscar-winning actress who has long lived in France (very long -- she’s 95) I Remember Better When  I Paint – Treating Alzheimer’s through the Creative Arts is an award-winning documentary that has its area premiere Tuesday evening at the College of Physicians, 19 South 22^nd Street.

The screening, sponsored by the College’s Section on Medicine and the Arts, starts at 6:30 p.m. and it’s free--  but registration is required.  A panel discussion follows, with Anjan Chatterjee, Professor of Neurology and a member of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, and the Center for Neuroscience and Society at the University of Pennsylvania,  and Berna Huebner, co-director of the documentary and founder of the Hilgos Foundation, which is dedicated to the art therapy approach depicted in the film.

To register, and for more info, go to: http://better.eventbrite.com or call (215) 563-3737

To Kill a Mockingbird, the 1962 Robert Mulligan-directed classic starring Gregory Peck and Brock Peters, will screen Saturday on the USA network -- a new digitally re-mastered version to be preceded by an introduction from President Obama.

A heartwrenching adaptation of the novel by Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird is set in 1930s Alabama, in a small town where a black man is found guilty of raping a white woman, even though the evidence strongly supports his innocence. Peck plays Atticus Finch, the local lawyer who defends Peters' Tom Robinson. The issues of racism and justice raised by the film continue to resonate – witness the controversy over the shooting death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin.

In 1995, the Library of Congress selected To Kill a Mockingbird for preservation in the National Film Registry. In a statement issued Tuesday, Lee, now 85, said she was honored that Obama will introduce the film’s USA showing, adding, “I’m proud to know that Gregory Peck’s portrayal of Atticus Finch lives on - in a world that needs him now more than ever.”

There’s no mistaking the inspiration for the movie-within-a-movie in the Oscar-winning The Artist in which best actor winner Jean Dujardin leaps across the Spanish tile roofs of a hacienda, clad in black and sporting a mask, and then jumps on a horse to make his getaway. Dujardin and his director, Michel Hazanavicius, were homage-ing The Mark of Zorro,  the 1920 Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckler, por supuesto.

And so, mark your calendars – with a big, bold “Z.” On April 13 at the Rotunda in University City, and again on May 22 at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute, the rollicking Spanish California adventure classic will be screened with live musical accompaniment from Brendan Cooney, the pianist, composer and perpetrator of Not-So-Silent Cinema. Cooney’s original score blends flamenco, tango, salsa, mariachi and jazz elements, and he’ll be joined by trumpet (Patrick Hughes), bass (Josh Machiz) and guitar (Alban Bailey).

For info on The Mark of Zorro screenings, go to: www.notsosilentcinema.com