Sketch, from Angel Studios

Experts say children should express their emotions, but not in the case of this little girl. It would be a lot safer for Amber Wyatt and everyone around her if she just kept her feelings bottled up, like the rest of us grown-ups over thirty. Unfortunately, her therapeutic notebook filled with fantastical monster drawings undergoes a massively disruptive magical transformation in director-screenwriter-editor Seth Worley’s Sketch, which opens tomorrow in theaters.

Wyatt still openly grieves her recently deceased mother, but her father Taylor and slightly older brother Jack believe they must put on a brave face, for her sake. It hardly helps that her realtor Aunt Liz has Taylor sterilizing the house of all family remnants, to facilitate its sale. Initially, the school counselor was somewhat alarmed by her sketchbook, especially considering the monsters usually torment her obnoxious classmate Bowman Lynch, but everyone understands he is a total brat, who probably has it coming.

Through an unfortunate chain of events, Wyatt’s notebook accidentally winds up in the enchanted pond behind their house. As a result, all her outlandish creatures come to life, in all their crayon, marker, and charcoal-rendered glory. Jack knows that pond even better than Amber, since it cured his hand and fixed his phone, which gives him a bad idea that he knows might be wrong, but he just cannot shake it. Regardless, he must focus on keeping his sister alive when her creations attack their school bus.

Worley invests Sketch with a DIY charm that faithfully reproduces the childlike colors and textures of Wyatt’s sketchbook, while still looking distinctly cinematic on-screen. Those monsters were a tricky ask, but the effects and design teams really pulled it off.

Indeed, the surefooted Worley nicely tweaked all the film’s balances. Despite the heavy emotional themes, the film never feels cloying or overly sentimental. Indeed, he much more adroitly fuses the fantastical elements with heavy themes of family grief and healing than maudlin A Monster Calls or I Kill Giants.

The cast also generally hit the right notes. Kue Lawrence is appealingly earnest and down to earth as Jack Wyatt, while Bianca Belle is keenly sensitive, sometimes to the point of neurotic distress, to a very believably human extent, as little Amber. Kalon Cox is appropriately annoying, in a non-shticky kind of way, as Lynch.

The Last Rodeo, from Angel Studios

There is probably no more annoying expression than “this isn’t my first rodeo,” because most of the people who say it have never even been to a rodeo. This is definitely not Joe Wainwright’s first rodeo, but considering the state of his beat-up, broken-down fifty-years-plus body, it could very well be his final hurrah—period. However, he is not doing it for glory or vanity. He risks life and limb for family in Jon Avnet’s The Last Rodeo, which release tomorrow in theaters, from Angel Studios.

Wainwright is a former three-time bull-riding champion. Unfortunately, he did not walk away from his last ride. He was carried. In many ways, Wainwright’s life is like a country song. His beloved wife died, leading him to recklessly drink and bull-ride, which nearly killed him. However, his devoted grown daughter Sally helped patch him back together. In the years since, he has been sober and a model grandfather. Consequently, when young Cody is diagnosed with a rare and precariously positioned brain tumor, he takes it as hard as his daughter.

Their insurance will not cover the entire cost of the surgery (which quickly turns into surgeries), but the national bull-riding championship is scheduled for the coming weekend. Technically, all past champions are invited to appear. Of course, nobody expects them to compete and Wainwright never bothered to reply, but he can’t think of any better options. So, Wainwright convinces his old friend, trusted “bull-fighter,” and fellow Afghanistan vet Charlie Williams to help him mount his sudden comeback.

Sure, The Last Rodeo probably sounds predictable, but the same can be said for most films. Regardless, this is definitely a character study. Avnet and his co-screenwriter star, Neal McDonough show viewers what it is like for cowboys when age catches up with them. Rugged masculinity faces a tough challenge when faced with mortality. However, Avnet and McDonough still celebrate Wainwright for fighting the good fight.

In fact, Last Rodeo is notable and laudable for spotlighting three recognizable character actors in prime feature spots. McDonough has always been a reliably steely or flamboyantly villainous supporting player, but Angel has given him well-deserved opportunities as a leading man (following-up on Homestead). This could be his career-best performance, powerfully embodying Wainwright’s physical toughness and the painful feelings he has trouble expressing.

The King of Kings, from Angel Studios

For millions of families, reading A Christmas Carol is a holiday tradition. For Charles Dickens’ family, it was reading The Life of Our Lord, which he also wrote (obviously based on Biblical sources). However, the rest of the world would not be able to read it until 1934, after the death of his four children. It was a major literary event at the time, but the novella has sadly fallen out of fashion. Yet, the story is timeless and Dickens remains perennially popular. Animator Seong-ho Jang adapts Dickens’ adapted story and depicts its first telling in The King of Kings, released by Angel Studios, which opens this Friday in theaters.

If you do not know the basic events of the life of Christ by now, either your Sunday School teacher should be ashamed, or you are just a heathen. Dickens and Jang give us all the highlights: the manger, the fish and loaves, the moneychangers, and indeed the Last Supper (which is currently having its movie moment). However, it is all seen through the eyes of Dickens, his son Walter, and their fat cat, Willa.

Initially, the naughty Walter disrupted his father’s staged reading of A Christmas Carol with his King Arthur make-believe games. However, at the behest of his eternally patient wife Catherine, Dickens tells him the story of a far greater king, who eventually inspired the legend of King Arthur—even though he was not really a king in the traditional sense.

Some of the business with Walter and Willa gets a little too silly, but the episodes of Jesus’s life are handled quite nicely. Jang and English-language co-writer Rob Edwards (who co-wrote Disney’s Treasure Planet and The Princess and the Frog) fully explore the drama of each memorable story, but always in a respectful way. The film is undeniably reverent, but it never feels stilted or sermon-like. Arguably, Jang’s film is more successful than its 1961 namesake at realizing Biblical stories as big-screen entertainment.

Unfortunately, the character design is a little clunky. Apparently, people had honking big noses back during the days of antiquity. However, there are several visually arresting sequences that appropriately invoke awe and “mystery,” as the term is understood in a Biblical context. Indeed, these include every big crucial scene, such as the crucifixion.

The all-star voice cast is also quite a surprise, starting with Kenneth Branagh, who probably covers the greatest range, from comedy as Dickens, the exasperated father, to hushed devotion, as Dickens, the faithful Christian. Uma Thurman also brings warmth to the somewhat slap-sticky prelude as kind-hearted Catherine.

Without question, the voice of Jesus represented a tricky bit of casting, but Oscar Isaac turned out to be a wise choice. He definitely sounds like an “important voice,” but he is not instantly recognizable. Likewise, Forest Whitaker has the right modestly devout tone for Peter. Sir Ben Kingsley and Pierce Brosnan lend their commanding vocal talents as High Priest Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate, respectively, while prolific voice-over artist Fred Tatasciore (whose credits include The Day the Earth Blew Up and JLA Adventures: Trapped in Time) can be heard as Pharisee Eleazar.

Brave the Dark, from Angel Studios

Much to his colleagues’ bewilderment, Stan Deen believed helping students, even the difficult ones, was a bigger part of a teacher’s job than advancing a political ideology or marking time until retirement. Weird, right? Admittedly, Nathan Williams was a tough case, but the teen had some horrible breaks. Clearly, it takes more effort to get involved, but Deen does so anyway in Damian Harris’s Brave the Dark, released by Angel Studios, which opens this Friday in theaters.

Most likely, Deen eventually reaches Williams, because you rarely see films made about people who attempt good deeds, but failed. Deen was already popular with students, because he did the easy stuff, like college recommendations, so well. More perceptive than other teachers, Deen slips Wiliams a candy bar during one of the early scenes, because he can tell the teen is hungry. Abandoned by his fosters and grandparents, Williams has been living in his car for months. He only joined the track team, so he could shower in the mornings.

When Williams gets busted for an ill-conceived burglary, only Deen comes to check on him. The teacher shocks his colleagues and confuses Williams by personally taking responsibility for him and inviting him into his home. Inevitably, returning to school as jailbird entails further frustrations and cutting rebukes. Plus, it is hard for the teen to believe Deen just wants to help, rather than working an angle.

Mostly likely many critics will have no problem feeling much cooler than Brave the Dark. Some might dismiss it as TV-movie fare and stereotype it as another “faith-based” release from Angel Studios. Yet, it should be noted the film never mentions God, Jesus, or any religious figure. Instead, it is about accepting personal responsibility and offering compassion on a person-to-person basis. Constantly, Deen is asked why get involved? Why not let the system take care of Williams. Of course, “the system” has already done quite a job on the unfortunate teen.

As a director, Harris also has the benefit of his brothers, Jared and Jamie, who are terrific as Deen, and Williams’ parole officer, Barney, respectively. They both look like they belong in Lancaster, PA, even though all three are sons of the legendary Richard Harris. As Deen, Jared Harris is achingly earnest, yet so understated, some shallow critics will not notice how good he is. The other on-camera Harris is tough and smart, but also fair. He’s not the PO you want, he’s the PO you need. Both demonstrate that decency is not boring to watch on screen—quite the contrary.

Homestead: Preppers from Angel Studios

In William Forstchen’s One Second After, it was an electro-magnetic pulse that unleashed havoc across America. It was a slightly more conventional nuclear bomb in Jason Ross & Jeff Kirkham’s Black Autumn novels. This film (and the forthcoming streaming series it sets up) adapts the latter, but fans of the former will surely feel at home during Ben Smallbone’s Homestead, from Angel Studios, which opens this Friday in theaters.

Like the survivors, viewers have a very incomplete picture of the Armageddon that transpired, but apparently a boat loaded with nuke’s detonated off the California coast, right before a cyber-attack (reportedly from Russia) brought down the power grid along the Atlantic coast. As a result, panic swept the country, overwhelming governments at every level. However, Ian Ross was prepared.

The wealthy prepper had converted his Rocky Mountain “Homestead” ranch into a doomsday compound with farmland, vineyards, and extensive stores of supplies, including, of course, guns. He also hired a security team of former special ops to keep them safe from marauders.

Jeff Ericksson is very good at his job, maintaining a secure perimeter. However, Ross’s wife Jenna argues in favor of letting more survivors into Homestead. Some of Ericksson’s men adamantly oppose, with a vehemence that is a bit alarming. Ross is somewhere in the middle, mindful of his limited resources, but also recognizing their human plight. As for Ericksson, he general agrees with his men, but he also has his family at Homestead, including his wife Tara and three children, so he worries about what kind of community they might grow up amidst.

So far, his oldest son Abe has taken to Homestead quite well, but it is mainly due to Ross’s home-schooled daughter Claire. It most respects, the teenaged Ericksson remains just as snippy and churlish towards his father as ever. Before long, legit bad guys also try to gate-crash, including a government bureaucrat (very much in the mold of Ghostbusters’ Walter Peck) who thinks he has the right and authority to commandeer Homestead’s supplies.

Frankly, it makes sense Homestead is set in the Rockies, because the mountainous region would likely have a very high survival rate. The population density is low, the rate of gun ownership is high, and Mormons on the Utah side would have three months off food on hand, as per Church teachings. Without question, it depicts prepping and survivalism with much more intelligence than the recent Year 10, but it is not as cerebrally speculative as Earth Abides.

It is also nice to see Neal McDonough playing a good guy, like Ross, who is much more reflective of his values than the villains he often plays. In fact, he is perfectly cast as the steely rancher, who accurately predicted the physical needs of survival, but had less foresight when it came to the human element.

Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin., from Angel Studios

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is one of the most influential theologians of the 20^th Century. He was also one of the most important leaders of the German resistance to Hitler. This was not an ironic coincidence. His religious studies directly forged the convictions that compelled him to defy the National Socialists. That causal connection is explored in-depth throughout director-screenwriter Todd Komarnicki’s biopic, Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin, from Angel Studios, which opens Friday in theaters.

Komarnicki starts way back when Bonhoeffer was a boy in short-pants, as biopics often do, but in his case, they were lederhosen. However, there is good reason to show the young Bonhoeffer grieving his beloved older brother’s death in WWI. We also see his rigid, upright father Karl starting to question Germany’s militant propaganda. Flashing forward several years, we find Bonhoeffer a bright seminarian, studying abroad in Harlem, where he discovers jazz and the charismatic preaching style of Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. His American friend Frank Fisher also introduces him to both racial injustice and the organized campaign to defeat it.

Altogether, Bonhoeffer receives quite an education that convinces him the staid German Lutheran Church needs something like another Reformation, to reconnect it to the common people. However, when he finally returns home, he discovers his church is even worse than he remembers it. In his absence, the German Lutheran establishment has been thoroughly coopted by the Nazis, whose approved priests literally spew propaganda from the pulpit.

When the prodigal seminarian rises his homecoming sermon, Bonhoeffer gives a fiery condemnation of what he justly describes as militant blasphemy. Obviously, it is a Rubicon-crossing moment for him, but also for his friend, Pastor Martin Niemoller, who will soon top Bonhoeffer’s sermon with his own blistering indictment. Soon thereafter, the Gestapo arrests Niemoller, launching Bonhoeffer’s career as an underground organizer, international consciousness-raiser (or truth-telling propagandist), and Resistance collaborator.

Admittedly, the “Spy” and “Assassin” parts of the subtitle greatly overstate matters, but they are highly marketable buzz-words. “Pastor. Rebel. Martyr” probably would have been more accurate. Regardless, Komarnicki deserves some sort of honor for staging what most the top two most electrifying homilies ever immortalized on film. Ironically, even though this film tells Bonhoeffer’s story, the quote many viewers will recognize will be Niemoller’s “First they came for…” poem.

Fortunately, both Jonas Dassler and August Diehl do the words of Bonhoeffer and Niemoller full justice. Dassler’s slow-building performance aptly suits the film, because his scholarly reserve steadily blossoms into a rather forceful, if still bookish, charisma. Likewise, Diehl nicely portray the guilt-driven zeal of Niemoller.

Moritz Bleibtrau’s unshowy supporting turn as Karl Bonhoeffer might be overlooked by many less-thorough critics, but it is quite poignant in subtly quiet ways. Plus, Clarke Peters adds a lot of old school religious energy as Rev. Powell. However, all the National Socialists are rather undistinguishable and interchangeable. Perhaps Komarnicki did not want to elevate any of Bonhoeffer’s tormentors, but the film would benefit from a stronger antagonistic figure.

The Shift, from Angel Studios

Maybe we aren’t trapped in a digital matrix. Maybe the Devil “shifts” people between alternate parallel realities instead. The Mephistophelean character never exactly calls himself that, but the so-called “Benefactor” definitely sees himself as a rival to the Man Upstairs. It turns out faith-based science fiction finds a way to give dystopian and multiversal themes a new twist in director-screenwriter Brock Heasley’s The Shift, produced by Angel Studios (the Sound of Freedom distributor), which opens Friday in theaters.

Kevin Garner was finance shark who found redemption when his future wife, Molly, approached him on a dare. Thanks to her influence, he went back to church and started acting like a good husband and father. However, the death of their young son sent him spiraling down again. That is when Satan/The Benefactor approaches Garner.

It turns out, Garner has been his go-to guy in every other dimension, becoming his Faustian enforcer, to enjoy all the hedonistic perks that position entails. He can’t “shift” anyone though. Only the Benefactor’s secret “shifter” operatives, with their special shifting bracelets, can slip innocent victims into an alternation reality.

 

Much to the Benefactor’s surprise, this Garner turns him down, because he still has faith.  As punishment, the Satanic overlord shifts Garner to his grimmest, most dystopian reality, where his evil powers are openly recognized and feared. Forced to live underground, Garner clings to the hope that he can reunite with Molly in another reality.

The conclusion is a little clunky, but the guts of The Shift have some surprisingly fresh multiversal science fiction elements, especially the way the dystopian characters relate to their alternate selves. Heasley’s Job-riffing script definitely reflects an Evangelical Christian perspective, but it goes for long extended periods without appealing to faith. Of course, the Devil is evil and nasty all the way through, but the same could be said for plenty of secular horror movies.