Sofia Boutella plays Kora, a former Imperial guard now on the side of the rebellion, in director Zack Snyder’s “Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver.” (Photo courtesy of Netflix.) If there’s an overarching reaction to director Zack Snyder’s deadeningly self-serious space opera “Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver,” it’s this: That’s all there is?!? The first chapter, subtitled “A Child of Fire,” arrived on a cloud of Netflix-provided hype last December, billed as Snyder’s triumphant return to big-budget action movies and the start of a world-building franchise. If you want a sense of how wel ..read more

Alisha Weir plays a 12-year-old kidnapping victim who turns the tables on her captors, in “Abigail.” (Photo by Bernard Walsh, courtesy of Universal Pictures.) A down-and-dirty horror movie with a surprisingly upscale cast, “Abigail” delivers a fair share of shocks, gross-out moments and enough humor to make it digestible. We’re given just as much information as we need to start: Six criminals, none of whom know each other, have been assembled for a particular job — to kidnap the ballet-loving 12-year-old daughter (Alisha Weir) of a rich man, and hold her for 24 hours while daddy pays a $50 mi ..read more

Henry Cavill plays Gus March-Phillips, leading a motley bunch of lethal experts in an unauthorized mission against the Nazis in director Guy Ritchie’s “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” (Photo by Dan Smith, courtesy of Lionsgate.) It’s clear watching the rollicking World War II spy adventure “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” that director Guy Ritchie and his actors, led by Henry Cavill, were having a fun time. I just wish we, in the audience, were having as much fun. It’s 1942, and the United States has just entered the war. Unfortunately for Britain, they have been delayed in hel ..read more

Louis (George MacKay, left) and Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) meet in a 2044 dance club — one of the many eras where their paths cross — in director Bertrand Bonello’s “The Beast.” (Photo courtesy of Sideshow/Janus Films.) Technology meets reincarnation meets predestination in “The Beast,” a strange and oddly seductive dive into eccentric science fiction from French writer-director Bertrand Bonello. The movie introduces us to Gabrielle Monnier (played by the great French actor Léa Seydoux), who in 2044 is exploring the possibility of having her DNA “purified” — a process that will, she’s told, allo ..read more

Arthur (Josh O’Connor, right) has a tender moment on the beach with Italia (Carol Duarte) in writer-director Alice Rohrwacher’s drama “La Chimera.” (Image courtesy of Neon.) The past is ever-present for the characters in director Alice Rohrwacher’s “La Chimera,” a grandly raucous and sometimes melancholy drama about life and death and the regrets and joys in between. Some of what we learn about our haunted protagonist, an Englishman named Arthur (played by Josh O’Connor), comes out in small doses — but to summarize, he’s just returning from prison, for reasons that eventually become apparent ..read more

Paul Wuthrich plays Elder Norman Seibold, tasked with finding Latter-day Saint missionaries stranded in Germany just before World War II, in writer-director T.C. Christensen’s drama “Escape From Germany.” (Image courtesy of Remember Films.) Few artists have expressed their faith through their work the way Utah filmmaker T.C. Christensen does — and the Latter-day Saint themes of such movies as “The Fighting Preacher,” “Love, Kennedy,” “The Cokeville Miracle,” “Ephraim’s Rescue” and “17 Miracles” are strong and heartfelt. The same is true for Christensen’s latest, “Escape From Germany,” in whic ..read more

Kid (Dev Patel, right) delivers a midair double kick to an opponent in the ring in “Monkey Man,” a revenge thriller directed and co-written by Patel. (Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures.) At some point in actor Dev Patel’s incendiary directorial debut, the supercharged revenge thriller “Monkey Man,” we meet a gun dealer, who makes an appealing offer: “You like John Wick? I have the same gun from the movie.” Certainly there can be comparisons made between Patel’s man-with-no-name character (identified in the credit crawl only as “Kid”) and Keanu Reeves’ unstoppable black-suited killing machi ..read more

Edith Swan (Olivia Colman, center) and her mother, Victoria (Gemma Jones, right) are startled by the wild behavior of their neighbor, Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley), in the comedy “Wicked Little Letters.” (Photo by Parisa Taghizadeh. courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.) As a lover of the old Ealing Studios comedies, those dry-humored English comedies of the ‘50s and ‘60s, I never thought to imagine what one would be like with long streams of curse words — but that’s what director Thea Sharrock’s subversively amusing “Wicked Little Letters” provides. Based on a true story, Sharrock and screenwr ..read more

Margaret (Nell Tiger Free, right), a young nun in training, is startled by the Abbess, Sister Silva (Sônia Braga), in a moment from “The First Omen.” (Photo by Moris Puccio, courtesy of Twentieth Century Studios.) It’s an intriguing movie-watching exercise to try to figure out why the people behind “The First Omen” wanted to create a prequel for a movie that otherwise would have disappeared down the memory hole. Richard Donner’s 1976 horror thriller “The Omen,” coming just two years after the success of “The Exorcist,” wasn’t all that remarkable — other than the fact that big-name stars like ..read more

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