With the dangerous and complex struggle against Islamic extremism stretching relentlessly, terrifyingly, and, seemingly, endlessly ahead, there’s plenty of room for an intelligent movie that shows how fear, disaster, and fury could lead us all into totalitarian temptation. “V for Vendetta” is not that movie. To be sure, as should be expected of a film produced by the maestros behind “The Matrix” and based on the ideas and imagery of a pioneering graphic novel, “V for Vendetta” is visually stunning. Even better, instead of some handsome, hapless Keanu stumbling and mumbling through his role, there’s the rumpled, brilliant Stephen Rea [...]

To understand the origins of the mutant mayhem that is Alexandre Aja’s new version of “The Hills Have Eyes,” it helps to begin with a detour into the old, nasty Scottish legend, the legend of Sawney Bean. Like the finest old, nasty Scottish legends, it’s certainly old, probably bogus, and undoubtedly nasty. Sawney, it’s said, was a brigand who lived in a cave with a large, feral, and incestuous brood that only emerged from their lair to rob, murder, and, well, eat, innocent passers-by, unseemly behavior even in Scotland, a country not noted for its refined cuisine. Many hundred years [...]