Now Playing: CIVIL WAR Divides, STING Scares, ARCADIAN Bites

Busy Friday at the box office! The Screen Anarchy team has spent the past week reviewing new films. Here's a recap of what's new in movie theaters. Click each review to discover more about each movie, including official site(s) and trailers, where available:

Civil War
Read the review.

J. Hurtado saw the film during SXSW last month and noted that writer/director Alex Garland "has never been one to spoon feed his audience, and while Civil War may be the most obvious of his films, it still has very little interest in telling its audience what to think. ... It's a tragic film, an exhilarating film, a powerful examination of our culpability and complicity in the acts we observe. With an award caliber performance from Kirsten Dunst as its beacon, Civil War is one of the year's best films and will likely inspire much needed conversation when it hits theaters next month."

Sting
Read the review.

Andrew Mack loved this movie, as do I, and he summed it up very nicely in the conclusion of his review: "As Sting grows so do our fears. How big will it get? What will happen then? Is anyone safe? The answers are very, a lot, and nope. Sting is best seen with a crowd, I imagine. I've watched it twice at home, between my fingers over my eyes. "

Be sure to check out (or bookmark) Mr. Mack's two interviews, and then its young star, Alyla Browne:

And here's a link to all our Sting coverage.

Arcadian
Read the review.

To say J. Hurtado was busy during SXSW is an understatement, but he found time to watch and review Nicolas Cage in the survival horror film: "A post-apocalyptic survival horror with strong character work and some incredible monsters, Arcadian packs an emotional punch rarely seen in a creature feature like this." Having seen the film for myself, I second that emotion.

All You Need Is Death
Read the review.

Shelagh Rowan-Legg was quite enamored by this folk horror piece from Ireland: "Writer and director Paul Duane crafts a creeping and disturbing tale of what it means to harness the power embodied in a folk tale - not so much folk horror itself, but the implications when its lore is not respected, its secrets not kept when they were clearly meant to be."

In Flames
Read the review.

Shelagh was also quite taken with Zarrar Kahn's feature debut: "In Flames is an intense psychological horror, one that tightens its vice with a slow and deliberate intensity that challenges the viewer to feel what it's like to have your every move, every thought questioned, mocked, until you are backed into a corner with no way out."

Also: Andrew Mack enjoyed a conversation with director Zarrar Kahn that is very much worth your time.

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This past Monday, we also caught up with two films that opened in theaters last week:

Housekeeping for Beginners
Read the review.

"If nothing else, this movie could very well be the best representation of any home party thrown by a slightly dysfunctional but loving family," according to Olga Artemyeva.

The First Omen
Read the review.

"Topicality, relevance, or urgency alone or collectively, of course, aren't enough to elevate any film, regardless of its intent, into must-watch status or even watch-whenever-it-hits-streaming status, but it's also hard to deny as a factor in favor of The First Omen. If only The First Omen had been a standalone horror film, unfettered by the limitations and demands of a half-century-old series, it might have belonged in the first category and not the second," Mel Valentin wrote in his review.

Now Playing covers international and indie genre films that opened this week in movie theaters.