28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026)

Score: 3.5 / 5

The unpleasantness of Danny Boyle's usual style is mitigated here by a daringly beautiful attempt by Mia DaCosta to inject artistry and -- dare I say -- beauty into a world overrun by zombies. There was no way the titular set would have been built for Boyle's 2025 return to the franchise if more wasn't to come. The bone temple, a glorious and instantly iconic memento mori for the characters of 28 Years Later, deserved a film of its own, rife with arcane rituals, demonic drag, and deeper thematic merit than this franchise has ever had. And, thankfully, DaCosta was exactly the right person for the job.

Pitfalls and all, this material has never been my favorite, even within the fairly specific genre of post-apocalyptic zombie horror. The Rage virus, groundbreaking in its 2002 debut, is now so familiar in conceit that writer Alex Garland and the creators have needed to add new kinds of zombies and start categorizing them by mutation, yet another typical problem in this subgenre. With its attempt at edgy immediacy through shaky camerawork and more or less natural lighting, the series has never quite managed to achieve visual artistry on par with its occasionally sophisticated themes. DaCosta, approaching the whole affair almost as a dark fantasy, helps us view the world with more awe. Which is unexpected and a bit jarring, as this is the first entry to be temporally connected to the setting of its predecessor. How many franchises do you know of in which the third entry is, itself, a planned trilogy?

That's not to say this film isn't as gratuitously, viscerally cruel as the others. The story concerns young Spike (Alfie Williams), who starts in a bad place immediately following the events of the previous film. If you recall, a grotesque group of parkour thugs under command of "Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal," a seemingly sociopathic cult leader (Jack O'Connell), saved Spike from a group of the infected, inviting the wee lad to join them. It does not bode well, and the opening of The Bone Temple solidifies our fears as Jimmy orders Spike to fight to the death against his Fingers (the name he gives his tracksuit-wearing followers, who individually have variations of the same name like "Jimmima" and "Jimmy Shite"). It is revealed to us that they believe Jimmy's father is "Old Nick," the Devil, and this blood sacrifice merely a regular occurrence in their lives together. Spike survives and is inducted into their order as a new Jimmy, but his life gets more violent and less safe by the day. Even when he cautiously befriends Jimmy Ink (Erin Kellyman), who tries to help shield Spike from their most barbaric acts and from Jimmy Crystal's wrath, it's a far cry from safety.

Thankfully, the film crosscuts Spike's journey with that of Dr. Ian Kelson, played again by Ralph Fiennes in full command of his considerable craft. His introductory scene is a montage of him collecting rotten corpses in what appears to be an eccentric routine to continually improve the bone temple he's constructed; he goes about the macabre affair while absentmindedly singing hits from Duran Duran (the opening is "Girls on Film," which when I finally recognized nearly slayed me dead). Kelson lives in a bunker beneath his temple and spends the remainder of his time studying Samson, a giant of a zombie who apparently craves the sedation from Rage provided by drug darts Kelson uses. While under the influence, Samson is placid and Kelson develops what amounts to a friendship with him. Whether through teaching Samson language or dancing to the music, Kelson will make the connection.

Fiennes is magnetic in this role: a crazed humanist, a generous and hospitable mad scientist, an artist in every way yet alone and humble, the character he has constructed is impossible to nail down, and he constantly surprises us in his demeanor. He's also the saving grace of the film, which spends far too long tormenting young Spike (and us, by extension). When one of the Fingers spot Kelson and Samson chumming it up one day, he's sure he's seen Old Nick and demands an audience from Jimmy Crystal, who suddenly knows he's made quite a pickle for himself. Thus intersect the two plotlines of the film just in time for its magnificent climax.

This was never meant to be a character study, so the snippets of flashbacks to the "before times" of Kelson and Samson didn't really work for me, though we definitely needed more ways to connect with them. But even with these, none of the characters really feel fleshed-out by the screenplay or in performance. Other than Kelson. Fiennes takes a mostly nonverbal character and turns him into a fountain of stimulation. When, in the climax, Kelson performs as Old Nick in order to satisfy his unwelcome, threatening audience of Fingers, Fiennes is dressed in some kind of demonic drag (a cross between War Boys in Mad Max and the Cenobites from Hellraiser) performing Iron Maiden's "The Number of the Beast" in a drug-induced rave replete with mosh pit and pyrotechnics. It's electrifying to behold. It also introduces a wholly unexpected theme of religious theatrics into consideration, one that deconstructs the artifice even as it elicited audible laughs from me, mostly due to Fiennes's otherwise deadpan, quietly monotonous delivery of his lines out of character. Though he so often plays the villain, we must never forsake his profound gift for comedy.

By film's end, DaCosta has done something rare in film. She crafts a visual and aural experience meant to push us along to the point of questioning, earnestly, how and why God would allow such horrors on earth. That's a dark place to go, even with fun and scares along the way. But the sensation I had, upon a recent rewatch, was not that of nihilism or despair. And, no, I'm not talking about the ending, which offers yet another obnoxiously optimistic little cliffhanger ending reminding us that there's another installment yet to come; that just pissed me off, yet again. No, the hope I felt was far more spiritual and human. In a cast of characters basically rendered dead inside from their hopeless, interminable existence, we're made to feel that Kelson actually made a difference. No spoilers here, but the film's proper finale (before that inexcusable stinger) validates and valorizes his life as an ethical doctor in this hellscape and offers encouragement to viewers feeling a similarly bleak outlook on a world gone mad.

The Green Knight (2021)

 Score: 5 / 5

As dense and ambiguous as its source material, The Green Knight is a cinematic masterpiece. Writer/editor/producer/director David Lowery, whose work has never been less than visionary, this time turns his unique aesthetic on medieval legend to stunning effect. Lowery tends toward the folksy, shifting ghost stories (A Ghost Story) and fantasies about dragons (Pete's Dragon) into gritty, tangible dramas tinged with mythic tropes, set in vibrant, rural landscapes. His abilities are only heighted in this new film, as his focus on the Arthurian story smartly disregards the romanticism so often bound to the genre in art. Rather, he leans into the Romantic (specifically Dark Romantic) inclinations of the story, which feels much more historically accurate and believable than your typical Camelot fare.

An intimate epic -- the rarest kind -- of life, death, and the mess of what comes in-between, The Green Knight focuses tightly on its main character, whose name was interestingly excised from the title. Of course, the story is based on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the famously indecipherable 14th-century poem that bridged the gap between British storytelling and French chivalry. Perhaps reproduced most famously (and lastingly) by J.R.R. Tolkien, the tale notoriously eschews simple interpretation. Its characters, specific enough to be grounded and relatable, are surely meant to mean something, but the poem denies any easy allusion or allegory; it gives almost no hints to thematic insight or symbolic analogy. Taking his lead from this enigma that has been frustratingly studied for most of a millennium, Lowery seems to take lots of ideas from scholarly and artistic sources and simply says a resounding "YES" to all.

As such, the movie could have been a sort of "yes, and" improvisatorial mess. Instead, it's a "yes, and" of equally well-baked if somewhat inaccessible ideas, handled by a master storyteller at the top of his game.

And what a story it is. Sir Gawain, a young knight (played to devastating perfection by Dev Patel, who buffed up quite a bit, thank you very much), awakens in a brothel with his lover Essel (voluptuous and brilliant Alicia Vikander) before hurrying to court. It is Christmas Day, and King Arthur (Sean Harris) is celebrating in his darkened throne room with Queen Guinevere (Kate Dickie). He invites Gawain, his nephew to sit at his side; we get the impression Gawain is a relatively new knight and eager to please his uncle-king. Arthur seeks to know more about his nephew, and asks him for a story of the brave Sir Gawain; Gawain has none to give, for he has not yet proved his mettle at the Round Table. Thus begins a classic bildungsroman, the coming-of-age adventure that will make Gawain a man and, more important, a proper knight. Right?

With much of the movie, the answer is debatable. For indeed Gawain embarks on his trial shortly thereafter. Into the festive atmosphere walks the titular green knight, a terrifying figure with Ralph Ineson's demoniac voice, seeking a knight to play a game. Whatever harm a man causes the knight, he will repay "one year hence." Jumping up at the challenge, Gawain takes the knight's axe in hand and lops the knight's head clean off. Sure that this will earn him his manhood and honor, he nearly shits himself when the knight calmly picks up his head, which reminds the room of the deal, before riding off into the wilds. Is he a man yet, or will he be in a year? Is he a dead man walking, for surely he cannot survive a similar attack? What will his code of honor allow him to do in the next year? If superhero movies have taught us anything in the last two decades, it is that the choices we make in the interim make us noble, rather than any acts of valor in battle. What will Gawain do?

And without a breath of ado, Lowery skips the full year and we're back with Gawain as he prepares to go find the "Green Chapel" and face the Green Knight's doom. We aren't given any reason to think he has changed at all during the year, and so in his final days alive, we're treated to his journey. He won't learn many lessons -- at least not in the traditional, moral sense -- and he won't really meet many people. His slice of life, we might say, is far darker than your typical pilgrim's progress or odyssey. As he wanders through the British countryside, the world is shown to be far stranger and more complex than he (or we) are prepared to handle. Weird things, violent things happen and there is often no rhyme nor reason; at each step Gawain is tested, but are the tests of his knighthood, manhood, humanity, or simple existence? In one scene he might be assisting a ghost reclaim her head, and in another he's casually watching giants walk off into the fog. Each feels profound and significant, but they operate on entirely different thematic levels.

I could talk (and have, elsewhere) for hours about each scene, character, and special effect (of which there are remarkably few). We could discuss the thematic conceit of three, and how Lowery has added two original new mini-stories to lead up to the central story of the source material, the exchange of winnings in the Lord's house (featuring Joel Edgerton). We could talk about the talking fox, the cruel and unhinged scavenger (Barry Keoghan), deforestation and climate change, politics and the exchange between have and have-nots, ghosts and giants and women. We could talk about the gorgeous cinematography by Andrew Droz Palermo, the stunning costumes (I want that yellowish cloak!) by Malgosia Turzanska, and especially the haunting, screeching, churning music by Lowery's longtime composer Daniel Hart. We could talk about Sarita Choudhury's mesmerizing and much too-brief performance as Gawain's mother, Morgan le Fay, and the deconstructed vision of women in power a la Shakespearean tragedy. We could talk about the Lady's speech (also Alicia Vikander, in a genius choice of cast doubling) of what exactly the color green represents, which takes place during what could be the sexiest scene but which ends up being the most didactically illuminating and spiritually grounding interaction in the film. And we could gush for ages about the amazing, wordless 15-ish-minute climax, as Gawain's life-to-be flashes before his eyes.

But it would take books to fill it all. This is the kind of movie that will, certainly, engender some of the best scholarly film writing this year. But it's also the kind that will, by design, resist that very impetus. It's made to be talked about afterward, in our own private Round Tables, where everyone's insight, interpretation, and impressions matter. Lowery knows exactly what he's doing here, which is to say that he's comfortable making a consummate work of art through storytelling; it grows faster and -- dare I say -- greener as it takes root in the mind, grows into outside ideas informed by the experience, and eventually rots into a potent memory of colors, sounds, and images. Equally important, I think, are the ideas the film's structure and formal elements suggest but will likely never be articulated in most discussion circles, such as the passage of time revealing an innate judgment by nature on the failing human condition. (I note this based on one of the many shots in the film I simply cannot shake nor understand, when a bound and gagged Gawain lies on the forest floor as a spinning camera shows him decayed and dead before reversing and returning him to living flesh.)

So no, this isn't the most purely entertaining movie of the year, if you're entertained by simplicity or action. But it might be the smartest movie yet this year, in that it only makes any sense if you dedicate yourself to a subjective reflection on it. Does it turn its female characters into sex- or power-crazed witches, or are they proto-feminists exerting their will in a male-dominated world? Is Gawain so determined to be honorable that he's willing to die for it, or is it a performance of policed masculinity he pursues for his own satisfaction? Does the film's setting on Christmas suggest the adventure is a salvific allegory about hope and integrity, or is this a darkly pagan story about man's doomed place in nature? Can we see chivalry as a righteous code for civilization, or are we pushed to question its efficacy against the evils inherent in man? Again, we can really only say "yes, and" to these ideas as presented by Lowery and team. Because as Gawain learns, and we by proxy, the only value or meaning in the world is that which we ascribe to it.