Split between two settings, two time periods, and two casts, it’s no wonder that John Madden’s The Debt divides so easily into two levels of quality. There’s one part that I like to call a classy, sexy Cold War spy thriller. There’s another part that I like to call “the ending.” Three Mossad agents share an apartment in East Berlin in 1966; two men and a young woman. The cramped quarters in a hostile land breeds danger and romantic tension.

The year is 1993. Nine Cistercian monks live in the monastery of Tibhirine in the Atlas mountains of Algeria. The monks live in good intelligence with the Muslim villagers, farming, making honey, treating patients in their clinic, teaching children. Unfortunately, the precursor—and to us now familiar—signs of fundamental Islam are entering this peaceful community. Murders of foreign construction workers, kidnappings, enforcement of hijab and exactions set the scene. The monks, though clearly in danger, refuse to leave for a less threatening environment despite entreaties from local authorities. Xavier Beauvois’s film tells this true story that takes place over three years in “Of Men and Gods,” which received the Grand Prize of the Jury at the last Cannes Film Festival.

Set during the first wave of the bubonic plague in England, “Death” stars Sean Bean (“The Lord of the Rings”) and Eddie Redmayne (“The Pillars of the Earth”) as a hired gun and a monk, respectively. The church has hired Bean’s character, Ulric, to journey to a remote village that, rumor has it, has somehow avoided being infected with plague. Church heavies are convinced it’s because the village is run by a witch who raises the dead, and they want Ulric and his band of merry torturers to bring her back alive.

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