Angel and the Badman, Appropriately from Angel Studios

Arguably, the original 1947 film was the first “revisionist” Western, even though it starred John Wayne. James Edward Grant’s classic suggested violence was not always the way. However, the better path it offered was that of the Bible. It never got too preachy and neither does this new remake (the second). Regardless, you had better keep God or your guns close, preferably both, in Julio Quintana’s Angel and the Badman, from Angel Studios, which opens tomorrow in theaters.

Quirt Evans is a bad man, but he is far from the worst of the worst. He was almost a dead man, but Marshal McClintock saves him, hoping he will lead him to his former associates in the Laredo gang and their stolen Confederate gold (considering how many CSA gold shipments went missing, it is no wonder the South lost the war). Unfortunately, McClintock never bothers to treat Evans’ gunshot wound (courtesy of Laredo and his men), so he would have died anyway, had his horse not wandered to the Worth ranch.

The Worths are hardy, hard-working, God-fearing stock, but their menfolk tend to die young, so widowed Irene Worth really wants to marry off her grown daughter Penny to a nice, stable, and boring boy. Penny Worth is not so enthusiastic about the idea and her sassy Grandma Harriet is vocally opposed. She is a handful, that one. Then, Penny suddenly finds herself nursing the delirious Evan back to health, because that is the Christian thing to do.

Evans is grateful. He is also mindful his presence could bring trouble to the Worth family. However, he finds himself getting emotionally attached to the family, despite what he considers their hopeless naivete. In fact, he even “convinces” wealthy land-owner Frederick Carson to undam the river, so it flows through the down-stream irrigation channels. Carson even thanks Evans for it, once he meets the Worths. Nevertheless, the Laredo gang is still out there, looking for Evans and the gold.

Quintana’s Angel and the Badman might be the best Christian-themed film of the decade. The Worths’ faith plays a critical role in the film, in terms of both character development, character motivation, and key plot points. Yet, the film never feels preachy or stilted. Perhaps the faith content might not even register for some viewers looking for a good Western, which is quite a neat trick.

It is also nice to see Tommy Lee Jones return to peak form, as McClintock. Angel and the Badman won’t be remembered as his best film, but it showcases vintage Jones. Seriously, we know he can play a U.S. Marshal and McClintock is exactly the kind of sly old dog he was born to portray.

Carrie, on Prime Video

Carrie White and Godzilla are a lot alike. They are both monsters that people created through their wrath and sins. However, Godzilla has been a lot easier to franchise. The King of all monsters even worked as a Saturday morning cartoon. Carrie has been a lot harder. Remember the Broadway musical? Of course, it was only a matter of time before someone tried a streaming series, despite the failed 2002 TV-movie-backdoor pilot. Unfortunately, the angst is heavier than the horror in creator-showrunner Mike Flanagan’s eight-episode Carrie, which premieres today on Prime Video.

Sadly, Carre’s father immediately dies, leaving behind his secret family. That brings in cops and social workers, which means the home-schooled Carrietta White must now attend public high school. Oh, lucky her. Of course, queen bee mean girl Chris Hargensen starts bullying White immediately. At first, her bestie Sue Snell figures it is just par for the course, but she soon feels sympathy for the fragile White.

As fans would expect, when White experiences extreme stress, the walls start to shake and desks start to rattle. She is not yet fully aware of her own powers, but as times goes on, she secretly hones her telekinetic abilities.

Naturally, everyone streaming Carrie wants to see how well the new production stages the madness of prom. While Flanagan teases viewers with some in media res flashforwards in episode one, he makes them wait seven episodes, until the season finale. Rather bizarrely, his adaptation borrows from the 2002 TV movie, also using video-taped interviews with prom survivors as a framing device. However, he takes the interrogations in a very different direction. (Showing a theater marquee for a Brian De Palma retrospective is also a nice touch.)

Presumably, to pad out eight episodes, Flanagan adds a conspiratorial element. Yet, after he teases it at the end of the season opener, he hides it for the next four episodes. Instead, he focuses on White’s rough adjustment, which is largely defined by bullying. Consequently, the first five installments play out like a punishingly long After School Special. Frankly, except for the final episode, this Carrie is never scary—not even a little bit.

Ironically, this sabotages the big pay-off everybody knows must be coming. By devoting so much time to “Carrie goes to Riverdale,” Flanagan regularly depicts the good faith efforts from Snell, her boyfriend Tommy Ross, and her gym teacher Rita Desjardin, to ease White’s transition and discourage the mean girls’ bullying. Additionally, Flanagan and his co-writer inevitably humanize her tormentor, Hargensen, through her parents’ divorce and the embarrassment of her imploding wealth. In the various films, the prom is a logical crescendo, but in the series, it doesn’t really make sense that everything suddenly explodes, even if certain super-secret characters directly contribute to the combustion.

Dolph: Unbreakable, the Documentary

If Stallone is the “Italian Stallion” and Van Damme is “Muscles from Brussels,” you would think Dolph Lundgren would have a nickname like the “Swedish Lynx.” Nevertheless, he has always been one of action fan’s favorites stars, even though his films have varied widely in quality (as Lundgren would be the first to admit). Yet, the 2020’s represented a career renaissance for the actor. Consequently, fans were amazed to learn that while he was simultaneously filming new films in the Aquaman and Expendables franchises, Lundgren was also battling cancer. Director-screenwriter Andrew Holmes chronicles the action star’s life and career, with a special focus on his cancer treatment, in Dolph: Unbreakable, which releases today on VOD.

There is a lot more to Lundgren’s story than many people probably realized, starting with the abusive childhood he endured (and eventually revealed in a TedTalk). Young Lundgren’s living conditions improved when he was packed off to his grandparents, but he continued carrying the emotional weight well into his adult life.

Nonetheless, the teen Lundgren rebounded, mastering Karate and earning a Fullbright scholarship. However, his physique and martial arts chops led to bodyguard gigs, including celebrity clients like Grace Jones, whose interest was more than professional. Through Jones, Lundgren experienced the international party scene. He also started making movies, quickly eclipsing her film career with his breakout performance in Rocky IV.

Admittedly, Lundgren’s subsequent career has had ups and downs. Holmes covers Rocky IV at length and gives due time to Masters of the Universe, The Punisher, Universal Soldier, and the original Expendables. Most of the rest of his output is rather a blur, but there is no denying Lundgren’s indomitable work ethic. Understandably, Holmes largely structures the film around Lundgren’s cancer fight, but also devotes attention to Lundgren’s work in therapy to overcome the long-term emotional trauma of his father’s abuse.

Perhaps some viewers will feel Holmes lets Lundgren off the hook for his infidelity and drug use a little too easily, but he has clearly made peace with his two grown daughters (who duly appear in the film), so who are we to argue? Regardless, his documentary profile is briskly paced and includes insights from just about everyone you would hope for, including Stallone, Van Damme, fellow Expendable Randy Couture, and Arnold Schwarzegger. Admittedly, it would be interesting to hear Jones’s take on her relationship with Lundgren and fans that follow current marital arts cinema would have appreciated insights from Scott Adkins, but four Expendables (five with Lundgren) is a solid assembly.

Private Eyes West Coast, on CW

They started out flirting while sleuthing, like Remington Steele or Bones. Now they are married detectives, like Hart to Hart or McMillan & Wife, except they retired from their detective business and moved to British Columbia to raise their little rugrat, Declan. Yet, murders keep happening around them, like on Murder She Wrote. Naturally, old detective habits die hard in the pilot episode of co-creators Jennifer Kassabian & Sarah Dodd’s Private Eyes West Coast, which premieres tonight on CW.

As some Canadians might remember, Matt Shade was a former hockey player, who started working for the detective agency Angie Everett inherited from her father. After five seasons of cases on Private Eyes, they finally settled down and started a family together. It turns out to be a bigger family than they expected when Everett’s prodigal half-brother Will Federgreen latches unto them, to provide comic relief. At least he is readily available for babysitting.

In fact, Federgreen sits from Declan, so Shade and Everett can enjoy their first post-baby date-night, but what do think happens at the restaurant? Unfortunately, Everett’s friend is discovered holding the knife. Of course, Everett wants to clear her name and Shade agrees to help, because what choice does he have, really?

06:30, on ChaiFlicks

The crimes against humanity committed by Hamas on October 7th were unusually well documented. The killers themselves live-streamed their atrocities and murders. There is no excuse for ignorance. If you haven’t watched their footage due to your delicate nature, that is, in a way, an acknowledgement of their cruelty. However, in some ways, this documentary makes it easier for the audience to confront the horrors of 10/7. Instead of taking viewers to scenes of Hamas’s carnage, it uses miniature models, much like those Rithy Panh employed to tell his family’s story during the Cambodian genocide in The Missing Picture. Nevertheless, the savagery of the attacks remains inescapable in Alon Daniel’s 06:30, which premieres today on ChaiFlicks.

The survivors Daniel assembled were just ordinary people. They were married couples, teenagers, and music fans enjoying the Nova Festival. Many were also kibbutzniks, who among Israelis are considered most likely to support a peaceful two state solution. Many endured serious injuries and in some cases avoided death through sheer luck. In numerous cases, they survived thanks to the sacrifices of loved one.

Ironically, subsequent to the production of 06:30, it has been revealed that a teenage hostage’s story was even more perilous than the film suggests. That is saying a lot, considering the young man fully explains how he was shot in the stomach and nearly starved during his captivity. However, Ynet News later revealed that his father was a Muslim Arab Kibbutz member, which might have been considered treasonous by his son’s Hamas abductors, so his parents kept his father’s identity secret during the hostage-release negotiations.

Beyond Fest ’26: Marge (short)

When it comes to serial killers, criminologists often debate nature vs. nurture. It is something Sadie also wonders about. Her mother was a serial killer, so if she inherited some of that predisposition, will she pass it onto her unborn baby? Regardless, Sadie should stop smoking already as she ponders this question in director-screenwriters Michael Prieto & Julia Kern’s short film Marge, which just premiered at this year’s Beyond Fest.

Flashing back to the era of picture-tube televisions on wheels, Sadie remembers a significant night with Marge—not “mother.” She insisted Sadie refer to her by her first name. Clearly, motherhood was a surprise to Marge, but apparently, she largely accepted it. However, she did not let it prevent her from pursuing her hobbies.

Usually, she keeps her victims out of sight. However, things will get a little messy this night. The violence that erupts is pretty intense, but what makes the short film so disturbing is the ambiguity of Sadie’s response. It is hard to judge whether the grown Sadie looks back on her mother’s crimes with feelings of horror or kinship—and that is definitely a scary take on the making of serial killers.

Of Dogs and Men, on ChaiFlicks

Sixteen-year-old Dar does the worst kind of doom scrolling. She constantly streams the atrocity videos posted by Hamas mass-murderers, searching for evidence regarding her abducted mother’s fate. She is powerless to help her mother, but tries her best to find the family’s missing pet dog Shula in Dani Rosenberg’s Of Dogs and Men, which premieres tomorrow on ChaiFlicks.

Rosenberg’s film has been described as a dramatic-documentary hybrid. However it is labeled, it is viscerally realistic. Rosenberg filmed scenes on and around the Nir Oz kibbutz, so the destruction viewers see was indeed wrought by the terror attacks. Nevertheless, Rosenberg established a firm rule against using homes where real murders or abductions were perpetrated. He also cast several actual survivors in roles that very much reflect their own harrowing experiences. The premise was “scripted,” but much of dialogue was improvised. Some conversations even mention names that might sound familiar to viewers, especially if they watched Montana Tucker’s The Children of October 7.

Tragically, we will never see Dar’s mother, but we hear her disembodied voice, as the young teen reads passages from the abducted woman’s journal, which she recovered from the rubble of her home. Like many Israeli parents, her mother sacrificed herself to protect Dar. Not surprisingly Dar now wrestles with guilt, desperation, and potential grief as a result.

Throughout Of Dogs and Men, Rosenberg refuses to engage in propaganda. Instead, he wrestles with Israel’s soul-searing national tragedy, while also offering compassion for Gazans as well, whether they reciprocate it or not. In fact, in a sort of “best case” fantasy, Dar imagines a Gazan boy adopting Shula, who was last seen chasing the terrorists who kidnapped her mother.

Ironically, young Ori Avinoam is the only professional in the cast, but she is so convincing as traumatized Dar, it is both profoundly impressive and deeply troubling. Clearly, she can place herself in Dar’s position, which is a heavy burden for a teen her age.

Nora Lifshitz, a real-life pet rescuer who would not look out of place in New York’s Alphabet City, also dramatically contradicts the convenient stereotypes of Israelis. She is a hipster with razor-sharp attitude and a giant heart.

The Last First: Winter K2, in The Epoch Times

THE LAST FIRST: WINTER K2 captures the majesty and deadliness of the Himalayan peak, while addressing issues of accountability. Armchaiir mountaineers should watch it instead of ill-advisedly trying to summit K2 for themselves. EPOCH TIMES review up here.

April X: Original Cyberpunk SF

First, April had a troublemaking twin brother. Then she had several zonked-out, unstable clones. She didn’t ask for any of them. Unfortunately, her brother Baxter failed her, but maybe he can save her best clone in Michel K. Parandi’s April X, which opens today in theaters.

Baxter and his hackery pal Ronny did some business with Klein the gangster, but it turned out badly for them. (It turned out even more poorly for the patient that bought their defective synthetic heart.) That put Baxter in Klein’s debt. April hoped to do a deal with the shadowy Tetris, to help buy his way out, but instead, she disappears.

Years pass, as Baxter drinks and sub-optimally works as a driver for Klein. Then he sees April. Initially, he is angry, assuming she abandoned him, but then he realizes it isn’t her, at least not entirely.

April was an ideal candidate for cloning, because she had the unique ability to record her dreams with crystal clarity. Those dreams constitute massive downloads of data that made April who she was. Unfortunately, the more Tetris downloads, the more unpredictable his April clones get. Consequently, he keeps their memories light, so they compliantly serve in his “clubs.” However, April X was already exhibiting unstable and rebellious behavior, even before she meets Baxter.

April X works surprisingly well as an original cyberpunk concept. Parandi and screenwriter Jack Coulton do some nice world-building using Post-Soviet Romania (where production took place) and Russia as a starting point. Yet, in one scene, the AI-looking cityscape appears to incorporate an architectural behemoth inspired by the empty hulking Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea.

Regardless, there are indeed a lot of cool speculative elements, but the gangster business is rather standard issue. Still, Baxter’s relationship with Klein is a bit more complicated and nuanced than viewers might expect.

Infirmary, on Shudder

In the horror genre, ever since Poe published “The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether,” just about every shrink working in an asylum loses their minds, like it is a predictable occupational hazard. Apparently, something like that happened at Wilshire Infirmary. It has been closed for years, but it still employees a skeleton staff, primarily consisting of security guards—or at least it did, until the events of this film. Luckless Edward Yoon’s first night will be a rough one in Nicholas Pineda’s found footage horror film, Infirmary, which premieres today on Shudder.

Ms. Ambrosia Downey hired Yoon believing he was a veteran, but his reluctance to fill out her VA paperwork immediately causes viewers to suspect a case of stolen valor. If so, better Yoon work in Wilshire, rather than a real hero. For one thing, his supervisor will be Lester Wooley, a bitter ex-cop, who has some rather mean-spirited hazing up his sleeve. There will also be junkie intruders hoping to find drugs, or possibly something more sinister.

True to found footage conventions, viewers entirely watch the drama unfold either through the extensive security cameras or the security guards’ bodycams. For a long-abandoned institution, their surveillance gear is first-rate. Of course, that is super-helpful for cobbling together a found footage movie.

Frustratingly, the full first half of the movie moves along slow as molasses, because it is dominated by Wooley blowhard bullying, with only the occasional hint of something more evil afoot. Yet, when Pineda starts teasing the Wilshire’s sinister backstory, the film starts to intrigue. Frankly, even though Infirmary clocks in just shy of 90 minutes, it feels like the opening episode of a much bigger story.

One Day in People’s Poland, on OVID.tv

September 27, 1962 was a day like any other in Communist Poland. It was typically oppressive and typically well documented. Listening to excerpts of secret police reports selected by Polish documentarian Maciej Drygas might make viewers wonder if everyone in Poland was under constant surveillance during the Communist era. For all practical purposes, everyone had to assume they were. While it does not seem like a hugely significant day from our historical vantage point, it was pretty awful for many average Polish citizens, as primary sources attest in Drygas’s short documentary, One Day in People’s Poland, which premieres today on OVID.tv.

Every word in this film was in some way recorded in 1962. It starts with an early morning police report regarding anti-Communist graffiti defacing the wall of the Chinese embassy. It was a rather punky but amusing act of defiance. The mystery offenders also did a thorough job of it, because the authorities literally had to chisel sections out of the stone wall.

More ominously, there are multiple reports from the Security Service, regarding their surveillance targets. One poor woman went to three different stores in hopes of finding salt for sale. She never got her salt before the Party arrested her.

Considering this day was chosen for its averageness, Drygas’s film should dispel several misconceptions. First, it demonstrates widespread discontent with Communism, well before the Solidarity movement rose to prominence. There are several cases of anti-Communist graffiti, also including a few choice words left on the wall of a train station bathroom.

It also proves just how desperately poor the country was under Marxist economics. The lack of basic necessities was even a national security concern for one military inspector, who reported “25% of soldiers have no shoes whatsoever.” We can only imagine what happened to a truth-teller like him.

Violated Letters, on OVID.tv

Handwritten letters still feel like a much more personal statement than e-mails or texts. Therefore, the interception and censorship of a private letter feels like a much more personal intrusion than snooping on e-mails. The Polish Communist regime did so, by the tens of millions. In fact, internal Communist Party reports boasted of the volume of their internal surveillance and argued for increasingly draconian punitive applications. Viewers can hear (and read subtitles of) those reports along with dramatic examples of the censored correspondence in Marciej Drygas’s short-ish documentary, Violated Letters, which premieres today on OVID.tv.

Every word in Violated Letters could be considered a historical document. Essentially, it shares stylistic and compositional similarities with Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam, The Ordinary Thing, and other previous documentaries, in which off-screen voices read letters accompanied by archival video from the period under consideration. There is not a strict narrative as such, but the selected texts illustrate the sweep of Twentieth Century Polish history.

Drygas starts with poor Polish peasants complaining about the brutality of the occupying Soviet Red Army, and ends with the censorship office’s 1989 instructions regarding how to hide or dispose of evidence of their crimes. Sometimes, Drygas incorporates eye-witness accounts of traumatic historical events, like a Polish soldier mobilized for the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. Yet, there are small-scale disasters, like the woman unable to obtain a passport to visit her sick mother abroad, who asks a friend to send her a bereavement notice as a ruse.

By far, the most heartbreaking correspondence must be the letter sent by a young boy to the figurehead president, begging for clemency for his father, Karol Chmielowski, who had been sentenced to death. More than any other letter, young Chmilowski’s illuminates the regime’s petty cruelty.