ArcaMax

The problem with "Mercy," the new high-concept action-trash movie from director Timur Bekmambetov, is that the concept and the action are too trashy even for a Bekmambetov project. Those who've been entertained by this Kazakh filmmaker in the past -- probably by his 2008 hit "Wanted," with Angelina Jolie, although almost certainly not his uber-...Read more

"28 Years Later: The Bone Temple" is the fourth installment of Danny Boyle's long-running zombie franchise, and it doesn't disappoint. Writer Alex Garland is still onboard tending the story, and while Boyle has handed off cinematic control to a fresh director, Nia DaCosta ("Candyman"), her taste for bloody mayhem is nearly the equal of his. If ...Read more

Tony Kiritsis fought the law and the law won. This may seem like a weak premise for a high-tension hostage drama, but with "Dead Man's Wire," director Gus Van Sant has turned the Kiritsis case, a true-crime media sensation back in the 1970s, into a comical screw-the-rich underdog tale. He has done this by boldly adjusting substantial facts in ...Read more

I don't know if you realized this, but the Oscars are only 10 weeks away. How excited are you? Not very? A long time ago, back in the 1980s and '90s, the annual Academy Awards ceremony in some years might draw a national TV audience of more than 50 million people. Last year, with the movie industry still wobbling from the COVID-19 pandemic, the ...Read more

Over the course of their decade-plus as a filmmaking team, the Safdie brothers, Josh and Benny, evolved a hair-raising cinematic sensibility. "Uncut Gems," their 2019 breakout, suggested what it might be like to be strapped onto the front of a runaway train with your eyelids stapled to your forehead and your lips flibbering wetly in the wind. It...Read more

Evicting a monster from under your bed is no longer the childhood nightmare it used to be. In scarier times, the afflicted kid might have had to appeal for parental assistance -- always the least likely source of relief -- or maybe improvise some "Home Alone"-style household armaments. In desperation, the unlucky tyke might have needed to hire a...Read more

The characters at the center of "Left-Handed Girl" are like individual stations of the cross on a long road to womanhood. Little I-Jing, for example. I-Jing is 5 years old, and when we meet her she is moving to the Taiwanese capital of Taipei with her mother and older sister. I-Jing's face is like a sun and a moon at once, open and hopeful, and ...Read more

How stoked would you be to see a movie about a teenage Jesus and his creepy new friend, Satan? Especially if the cast included Nicolas Cage (although not, alas, in the Jesus role), and extra-especially if the picture were also a horror movie? How quickly would you be making a beeline for Fandango to nail down a seat for the next screening of ...Read more