Inspired by the true story of the “Butcher of Mons” who murdered five women between 1996 and 1997 (and was never caught), the new Belgian thriller “Megalomaniac” is an artful and unrelenting look at madness and murder through the eyes of a psychopath. What sets this film apart from the tonnage of serial killer films in existence, is the fact that writer/director Karim Ouelhaj examines the “sins of the father” rather than going for another procedural.

Stewart Thorndike, the writer and director of the new horror film “Bad Things” loves “The Shining.” Thorndike really loves that picture and doesn’t want his audience to forget it, so he reminds us over and over again.

While many a great film has been crafted out of homages to other works, it helps to have an endgame regarding your screenplay.

These proceedings start out well enough

It’s been a bit of a long road for Israeli filmmaker Guy Nattiv, whose new film about Golda Meir’s turbulent days during the Yom Kippur War of 1973 is dramatized in “Golda.” Working from a script by Nicholas Martin (“Florence Foster Jenkins”), the film casts Oscar-winner Helen Mirren as the embattled prime minister battling both foreign armies as well as an essentially all-male military power structure around her. “Golda” also shows

The creators of the new horror film “Cobweb” and I are simpatico regarding the sad state of the modern horror film. My lack of patience with the unoriginality and lack of craft in most of today’s horror pictures is never-ending. In the twenty-first century it is rare to find a filmmaker who knows how to use mood to right effect. Make no mistake, there are some very talented horror filmmakers working today. Directors such as Jennifer Kent, James Wan

Written by Allison Schroeder and Greg Ruka and directed by Tom Harper, the new Netflix action thriller “Heart of Stone” is the dictionary definition of ludicrous.

Gal Gadot (trying hard to emote but coming off stiff as a board) stars as Rachel Stone, a technician for MI6 whose handler is Parker (Jamie Dornan, truly one of the most dreadfully uninteresting actors working today).

Thanks to a certain current blockbuster film, almost everyone is now familiar with J. Robert Oppenheimer, the so-called father of the atomic bomb. And while Christopher Nolan’s film starring Cillian Murphy does indeed touch upon the fact that Soviet spies worked alongside him at Los Alamos, what became of those spies is not discussed in “Oppenheimer.” However, “A Compassionate Spy,” the new documentary from Steve James (“Hoop Dreams"

As critics, we must review a film’s cinematic merit first and its politics second. In my film reviews and articles, I always try to do just that.  Alejandro Monteverde’s runaway box office hit “Sound of Freedom” wants the opposite. This is a film that wants viewers to focus on its politics first and any cinematic value second. Or maybe even third. Or maybe it is just interested in its own politics.

The screenplay (co-written by Rod Barr