‘28 Years Later’
Spike (Alfie Williams) is 12 and growing up in a Britain that is overrun by hostile, zombie-like wretches, turned into monsters by a highly contagious virus. A rite of passage involves going out and killing one with a bow and arrow — the country, which is sealed off from the rest of the world, has regressed to a preindustrial stage. We saw how it all started almost a quarter of a century ago in Danny Boyle’s influential “28 Days Later” (which also just landed on Netflix), and this sequel, for which Boyle reunited with the screenwriter Alex Garland, is even better. In addition to being masterfully shot and edited, the new film has a bonkers vibe that stitches together new spins on zombie lore (they can mutate and have sex) and poetic riffs on pagan horror. Jodie Comer as Alfie’s troubled mother and Ralph Fiennes as a mysterious survivor provide sterling support in roles that don’t go where you would expect. The ending essentially sets up Nia DaCosta’s “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,” a sequel due on Jan. 16. That movie cannot come soon enough.
‘Star People’
Rent or buy it on most major platforms.
On March 13, 1997, a good number of Arizonans were equally mesmerized and perplexed by strange lights moving in formation across the night sky. The phenomenon, which became known as the Phoenix Lights, was said to be caused by military training in the area, but many remain unconvinced. It’s that incertitude that the director Adam Finberg, himself a Phoenix native, explores in his story of a young woman, Claire (Kat Cunning), who saw the lights as a child. She remains obsessed by them and spends nights in the desert, taking photos of the sky. One day she gets a tip that the lights may have been spotted again, and she goes to the desert to investigate, accompanied by her new influencer boyfriend (Connor Paolo) and her drug-addicted brother (McCabe Slye). While the question lingers of whether there is life in the great out-there, Finberg smartly sets up the sci-fi elements against our current reality: the multiplying intense-heat advisories, the desperate people entrusting their lives to smugglers to cross the border, the armed militia patrolling the desert. Whether the aliens come from outer space or across a border, “Star People” is about the stories we need to tell ourselves to survive in an unsettled world.
‘Same Day With Someone’
Aug. 8 is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for museum curator Mesa (Jarinporn Joonkiat). First, a catastrophic accident with potentially devastating diplomatic and financial repercussions unfurls at an exhibition she oversaw. Then her fiancé, the handsome airline pilot Tul (Man Trisanu Soranun), abruptly breaks up with her.
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