All American: Homecoming (Pilot, Sort of)

It is the same teen angst, but with a different mix of sports. One of the tennis-playing stars of CW’s All American will be visiting Bringston University, a HBCU. Remember college visits? Those were fun if you could afford them. Simone Hicks does not think she will be applying there, but she has to apply somewhere after Princeton turned her down. Highly touted MLB prospect Damon Sims is not planning to apply either, but he is also drawn to Bringston in the backdoor-ish spin-off pilot of All American: Homecoming, which airs Monday as part of the current season of All American.

Sims is trying to avoid the media, who are eagerly awaiting the announcement of which team he might sign with. Ostensibly, he wants to hang with an old buddy on the Bringston baseball team, but there are other reasons (to be revealed later) why he is visiting. It is super awkward when he meets Hicks, but as their paths keep crossing, they start to develop some friendly chemistry. Not too much though, because she is still married to the football star of All American.

Presumably, if you enjoy All American, you will enjoy the Homecoming pilot, especially since it is technically episode S3E17. There are all kinds of romantic melodrama and athletic rivalries. A subplot involving NCAA violations in the Brightson baseball program also add a passably interesting element of topicality. However, writer Nkechi Okoro Carroll frequently includes PSA-like discourses on the importance of HBCU’s and black culture in general that are not smoothly integrated into the script. A character might as well preface them saying: “and now a word from our sponsor.”

First Date: It’s All About Teens, Cars, and Drugs

It is really hard to rebound after messing up a first date. However, shy teenaged Mike has a very good excuse: the drug dealers out to get him. It is nothing personal. They just want the large stash of cocaine hidden in the used car he bought. He is way too nice a guy for this sort of thing, but despite the bad start, he might just make some progress with his longtime crush in Manuel Crosby & Darren Knapp’s First Date, which opens today in theaters and on-demand.

When they were younger, Mike and Kelsey were friends. Now he assumes she is out of his league. Yet, when his best friend Brett tricks him into asking her out, Kelsey says yes. The problem is Mike has no wheels. Again, Brett “helps” out by finding a used car. Unfortunately, the shady Dennis pulls a bait-and-switch, but Mike buys the ’65 Chrysler beater anyway, because it has an 8-track player. We can follow that logic.

It turns out that is not the only extra the car is tricked out with. Unbeknownst to Mike, it also carries a considerable cache of drugs. After realizing there is something wrong with his jalopy, Mike returns to confront the seller, but he finds the place ransacked, Dennis mysteriously missing, and his high-strung wife on a rampage. This ill-fated encounter makes Mike hopelessly late to pick-up Kelsey, but eventually she is pulled into the bedlam too.

Admittedly, First Date traffics in a lot of teen movie cliches and stereotypes, but it does so in a smart way. It also features a more inclusive cast than some of the vintage 1980s teen comedies that probably inspired it. However, the escalating body count and violent edge makes the film feel decidedly contemporary (especially if you live in the current war zones known as New York and Los Angeles). No, this is not your slightly older brother’s Risky Business or Adventures in Baby Sitting.

Moving the Mountain: Documenting the Tiananmen Square Massacre

Today, the CCP celebrates one hundred years of censorship, religious repression, mass murder, and genocide. It is a grim anniversary. June 4^th was also always a day for sad memorials in Hong Kong, but this year, the CCP-controlled government completely banned the annual commemorations of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. The world remembers anyway. We should also remember the great filmmaker Michael Apted (best-known for the 7-Up documentary series, the Oscar-winning Coal Miner’s Daughter, and the Bond film, The World is Not Enough), who passed away earlier this year. Unlike his peers who sold-out to the CCP’s influence, Apted documented the Massacre and its aftermath in Moving the Mountain, which is not on any streaming service (funny that), but it is “findable” online.

In 1994, the Massacre was still vividly raw in the memories of the student leaders who survived. Li Lu serves as Apted’s focal figure, because his life so perfectly encapsulates Chinese history. He was born one month before the start of the Cultural Revolution that eventually rendered him an orphan. He was then the only member of his adopted family to survive the Tangshan Earthquake, enduring the government’s notoriously indifferent and incompetent response. Perhaps understandably, he took inspiration from dissident Wei Jingsheng, who was imprisoned by Deng’s supposedly liberalized regime.

Apted largely chronicles the events from Li’s perspective, but he also incorporates the testimony of his surviving colleagues, Wang Chaohua, Wu’er Kaixi, and Chai Ling. At the time, Moving was mildly controversial for its short dramatizations (mainly from Li’s childhood and his escape from Mainland China as part of Operation Yellowbird), but these passages look pretty conventional today.

Perhaps what Moving does better than other films chronicling Tiananmen is the way Apted fully contextualizes the Massacre in China’s historical timeline. He and Li show how the tragedy of June 4^th was shaped by the Cultural Revolution and the short-lived Democracy Wall under Deng. Conceived as an equivalent of Khrushchev’s De-Stalinization campaign, Deng quickly cracked down on the Democracy Wall when Wei and other activists posted more than mere cosmetic criticism of the government. Apted and the former student leaders he interviewed also convey a vivid sense of the reign of terror that followed the Massacre. In fact, they speculate more students were probably killed during the round-up.

Long Story Short

This is a film Andrew Marvell and Robert Herrick would approve of—or so we assume. Honestly, all anyone ever remembers of them are “time’s winged chariot” and “gather ye rosebuds while ye may.” A procrastinator like Teddy isn’t very good at seizing the day, but he will learn his lesson through drastic fantastical intercession in screenwriter-director-co-star Josh Lawson’s Long Story Short, which releases this Friday on VOD.

When Teddy met Leanne, it was certainly eventful. It took him forever to finally pop the question, but even after he did, he only agreed to set a date because of a mysterious stranger’s meddling. Weirdly, she also gave them a strange, mystical tin can that holds the uncanny and inconvenient power of flashing Teddy forward one year, every ten or fifteen minutes or so.

Much to his alarm, Teddy finds himself skipping over Leanne’s pregnancy, the birth of their daughter, and the increasing tensions threatening their marriage. He also finds himself forgetting their anniversary, over and over. With the help of his ever-loyal best friend Sam, Teddy tries to fix his life and stop the fast-forwarding phenomenon, naturally using Harold Ramis’s Groundhog Day as a model.

Long Story Short is a bit like the dark and downbeat Adam Sandler vehicle Click, but it is funnier, more optimistic, and generally more pleasant to spend time with. Even when things look really bad, Lawson retains the possibility Teddy can still fix things, or at least improve them.

Vicious Fun, on Shudder

These days, being a horror film critic is about the most prestigious work you can do, right? It wasn’t really like that back in the 1980s. The truth is Joel is considered a little weird by most people, including the roommate he carries a torch for. Unfortunately, he will stumble into a real-life horror show when he accidentally crashes a gathering of serial killers in Cody Calahan’s Vicious Fun, which starts streaming today on Shudder.

Joel writes for a magazine called Vicious Fun, but he is actually a very nice guy—and not a lot of fun. Frustrated by his romantic ineptitude, Joel follows his roommate’s new boyfriend Bob to a restaurant, where he gets hammered and passes out in the gents. When he comes to, he encounters a group encounter session for serial killers underway. Don’t call them anonymous, though they are. This meeting is more about professional development than curbing their instincts.

Freaked-out Joel tries to assume the identity of their missing member, but he isn’t very convincing. So much for all his horror movie training. However, Carrie the loner also seems to have her own agenda and she starts saving his butt, at least for a while.

Calahan and screenwriter James Villeneuve’s humor is definitely hit-or-miss, but it hits more frequently than a lot of horror-comedies. The CIA agent serial killer is definitely a hurtful stereotype (but hey, thank you intelligence officers for your service and sacrifice). Frankly, Shudder will also be lucky if they can sneak Hideo, the Japanese cannibal-chef possibly inspired by the subject of Caniba, past the cancelling censors.

Till Death: Megan Fox Gets Divorced the Hard Way

It is like a snowy Weekend at Bernie’s without the 1980’s-style fun. After “celebrating” or at least observing her anniversary, Emma finds herself tethered to a corpse—her husband’s. That will save her the trouble of a divorce, assuming she survives the killers out to get her in S.K. Dale’s Till Death, which opens this Friday in theaters and on VOD.

Emma was grateful to Mark for prosecuting the creep who attacked her. However, after they married, he sold out to corporate law and became an emotionally cruel and controlling husband. There is absolutely nothing fun about their anniversary dinner, until he whisks her away to their upstate farmhouse, to rekindle some of the old magic.

It doesn’t last for long. For reasons that will be spoilery to explain, Emma gets handcuffed to Mark’s dead body. As she drags it around the snowbound house, she finds all the tools, cutlery, and sharp cutting implements have been mysteriously removed. Emma’s clothes were also removed, except for the night gown on her back and her old wedding dress (to send a creepy message). Things are pretty dire, even before her old stalker-nemesis arrives on the scene.

Jason Carvey’s screenplay has its clever points, but it pales in comparison to Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of Gerald’s Game. Granted, Emma finds herself in a tight spot, but she is extraordinarily unresourceful when it comes to detaching herself from her dead-weight hubby. (Presumably, you could just break a bone and then tear through some flesh and cartilage, but we’ve admittedly never been in such a situation.)

Megan Fox is okay as Emma, but the way her makeup stays perfectly in place throughout all her ordeals is truly amazing. Callan Mulvey and Eoin Macken are both pretty creepy as the stalker and the husband. Probably the best performance comes from Jack Roth as Jimmy, the killer’s little brother and reluctant accomplice, while Aml Ameen is stuck playing the dumbest character, the spectacularly unintuitive Tom, Emma’s lover, who of course also happens to be Mark’s protégé.

Gela Babluani’s Sekta

Russians have certainly had their share of personality cults. Of course, Stalin is the most notorious for ruling through his cult of personality, but he really wasn’t that much more extreme than Lenin before him. Clearly, Putin has used them both as models, but he never has never been able to carry the “Dear Leader” mantle with the same credibility. Frankly, that makes any talk of cults in Russia rather gutsy, but Georgian filmmaker Gela Babluani dives in with both feet, depicting not one, but two dangerous and deranged cults in the 8-episode Sekta, which is now streaming on MHz.

Demidov is an aloof alcoholic who does not suffer fools gladly. He is not much fun to be around, but he is an effective deprogrammer of cult-members. He largely operates outside the law, since his M.O. involves the kidnapping of his “clients.” Ironically, there is an undercover cop on his team, Koreyets, who infiltrated Demidov’s operation before he realized the cults they fight represent a far greater danger to society.

Their latest case will be the well-heeled Nika, who has been selected to be a human sacrifice by the Primordial, a powerfully-connected sect led by the shadowy Berk. Her parents demanded Demidov have a nurse present for the deprogramming, so he hired the down-on-her luck Lilya. It turns out Lilya can well relate to Nika’s experiences, because she too was once part of a cult. Lilya was the wife of the wildly psychotic John, but she came to her sense after barely surviving a Jonestown-style mass suicide he orchestrated. Lilya is determined to protect her daughter Kira from her father’s legacy and influence, but there is no denying the girl is a little spooky.

Babluani broke-out internationally with 13 Tzameti and the English remake 13, but at this point Sekta probably represents a comeback for him. It is certainly translates well for Western audience, because it incorporates some mildly supernatural elements into a deeply paranoid thriller. The pacing probably would have been tighter and tenser if the eight episodes could have been condensed into maybe six, but isn’t that always the case?

Battle of the Damned, Starring Dolph Lundgren

It is hard to say whether this film is a good advertisement for the robotics industry, but there is no denying these bots’ utility. A programming error once turned them into runaway killing machines, but they have mostly fixed themselves. They are still a little twitchy, but they are the best hope for a group of humans stranded amid a zombie apocalypse in Christopher Hatton’s Battle of the Damned, which airs tomorrow night on Comet TV.

The shadowy big pharma tycoon responsible for a massive zombie outbreak in Malaysia hires crusty military contractor Max Gatling to extract his daughter Jude before the damage-containing fire-bombing commences. The film keeps telling us these are not technically zombies, but they sure act like them. However, you can kill them with a good slash to the throat. That turns out to be a lucky thing when the mercs run out of ammo and are only left with their Rambo knives.

Pretty soon, Gatling is the only one left, but he remains duty- (and financially)-bound to complete his mission. It turns out Jude has holed up in the enormously cinematic Sultan Ibrahim Building with a rag-tag band of survivors. Their leader, “Duke,” has slipped a little too easily into the role of authoritarian decision-maker. He and Gatling are not going to get along. Just when things look completely dire for our man Gatling, the robots turn up.

Technically, Damned is set in the same world as Hatton’s Robotropolis, which told their origin story. However, even if you saw the previous film, their arrival still comes way out of left field. Yet, you have to give Hatton and the effects team credit for really delivering on the promise of robot versus zombie action. You never have to sit around waiting for something to happen in this movie.

Werewolves Within

Don't think of it as a movie based on a video game, even though it is. Consider it a “werewolf mystery,” like the Amicus-produced The Beast Must Die, which even featured a “werewolf break” to give the audience a chance to guess the lycanthrope. There is no werewolf break here, but there is an unruly cast of suspects stranded together in an isolated location. As a result, they provide plenty of food for the predator in Josh Ruben’s Werewolves Within, which opens today in theaters.

Forest Ranger Finn Wheeler is a tragically nice guy, who has just been transferred to a small Vermont mountain post. He is still in denial regarding his girlfriend dumping him, until he meets wise-cracking Cecily Moore, the local mail carrier. Of course, he kind of blows it with her, but he might get a second chance, when the road to civilization is buried in a blizzard, isolating the small, eccentric community. Unfortunately, there is also werewolf stalking them.

As in a good Agatha Christie mystery, Wheeler and about a dozen of his gun-packing new neighbors must hole-up in the town’s tourist inn. To make matters worse, the powerlines are down and the stand-alone generators have been sabotaged. Naturally, they are going to get picked off, one by one. Yet, Wheeler, the eternal optimist still thinks they can work together to survive.

The setting of Werewolves is similar to that of Ruben’s first film, Scare Me, but the humor is funnier and more consistent. There really isn’t all that much blood and gore in this lycanthropic cat-and-mouse game, but genre fans will still get a big kick out of the way it plays with werewolf conventions.

Melville’s Le Cercle Rouge

The opening quotation is fake, but the soundtrack is totally legit. You might have thought the late 1950s and the early 1960s were the peak of swinging crime jazz and it probably was in Hollywood, but Eric Demarsan really uncorked a classic for Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1970 penultimate film. Georges Arvanitas on piano, Guy Pedersen on bass, Daniel Humair on drums, and the groovy vibes of Bernard Lubat set the noir mood and sound terrific together. Oh, and the film is really good too. Uncut (as it always should have been) and freshly restored in pristine 4K, Melville’s Le Cercle Rouge opens tomorrow at Film Forum, exclusively brick-and-mortar-style.

We know Corey is hardboiled, because he is played by Alain Delon. Ironically, he is about to be paroled early for good behavior. However, one of the crooked prison guards tries to recruit him for jewel heist up in Paris. So much for rehabilitation. Meanwhile, Vogel escapes from the straight-arrow Inspector Mattei, who was extraditing him from Marseilles to Paris. When the two crooks cross paths, Corey helps Vogel elude the dragnet and recruits him for his big heist caper.

They will need another accomplice with sharpshooting skills. Vogel knows just the man: Jansen, a severely alcoholic ex-cop. Of course, Mattei is still on their trail and feeling the heat from the cynical chief of police. There is also the business of finding a fence who can handle that kind of heat.

Cercle Rouge is classic Melville, starting with the unmistakable presence of Alain Delon (who became an international icon in Melville’s Le Samorai). It is slower, more deliberately paced, and longer (140 minutes) than typical caper movies, but Delon makes it work. Fortunately, we have the Demarsan soundtrack to have something to listen to when the cast quietly broods (which is often).

Who Are You, Charlie Brown?—on Apple TV+

Snoopy has been NASA’s semi-official mascot ever since the Apollo 10 lunar and command modules were nicknamed in honor of him and Charlie Brown. They also own Christmas thanks to the beloved TV special and Vince Guaraldi’s iconic soundtrack album. Plus, there were movies and a frequently revived stage musical, but creator Charles M. “Sparky” Schulz remained as unassuming as the round-headed kid he brought to life. Shulz and the beloved Peanuts franchise are celebrated in Who Are You, Charlie Brown?, directed by Michael Bonfiglio, which starts streaming this Friday on Apple TV.

Schulz did not have a particularly happy childhood and he did not do particularly well at school. Parallels between his life and Charlie Brown are not coincidental. However, he discovered he had a passion for cartooning that developed into a specialty for writing and drawing children. Thanks to the everyman appeal of Charlie Brown and Snoopy’s wild flights of fancy, Peanuts caught on big, but Shultz never changed.

Who Are You covers most of the truly pivotal moments in Peanuts history and Shulz’s life, like the Apollo 10 mission, the classic Merry Christmas Charlie Brown, and the continuation of the strip after Shulz’s stroke, but the hour long documentary-tribute really only scratches the surface. There is no discussion of You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown (a huge hit Off-Broadway), the theatrical films, the Christian theological interpretations of Shulz’s writings, Guaraldi’s records and scores, or more darkly, the failed kidnapping attempt of 1988.

So, Who Are You is far from definitive by any stretch, but it wonderfully soothing to revisit Shulz and his cherished characters. In between biographical segments, Bonfiglio incorporates a new animated story, featuring Charlie Brown as he wrestles with home assignment to write an autobiographical essay. Maybe best of all, these segments feature Guaraldi’s “Linus and Lucy” and “Skating.” Arranged by Jeff Morrow, they still sound quite faithful to the classic originals.

Bad Detectives

Los Angeles is home to America’s largest port (by volume) and plenty of corrupt politicians. That makes it a perfect hub for art smuggling. Nic O’Connell and Ping Liu start to suspect the murder of their private investigator grandfathers was related to the case of a stolen Chinese artifact, but to bring the killers to justice, the estranged former besties must work together in Presley Paras’ Bad Detectives (a.k.a. Year of the Detectives), which releases today on VOD.

Despite their affection for their grandfathers Liu and O’Connell are not exactly Miss Scarlet. They are not trained sleuths and they certainly aren’t licensed. However, they can still tell there is something fishy about the accident that killed their grandpas and all attempts from the lazy investigating cops to discourage them have the opposite effect. However, they are still largely spit-balling until the corrupt local assemblyman’s chief-of-staff gives them some direction.

If it weren’t so hard to write clever mysteries, we’d all be Agatha Christie, but we’re not. Screenwriter Chris Johnson certainly isn’t either. The actual murder cases in Bad Detectives are pretty simple, yet the narrative is still rather raggedy. However, what works are the chemistry and relationship dynamics of the two granddaughter-detectives.

Dralla Aierken and Freya Tingley play-off each other well are create distinctive personas as the straight-laced professional Liu and O’Connell, a recently discharged veteran with anger issues. They click together on-screen and it is also fun to watch them interact with their grandfathers’ crusty old employees, even though they only seem to show up to drink tea and booze when the bad guys are safely gone.

Abel Ferrara’s Siberia

Siberia is not just a region of Russia. It is a whole state of mind. It is a psychotic and delusional state, as envisioned by Abel Ferrara. We will see it through the eyes of a lone American bartender, who is growing increasingly alienated from people, society, and his own sanity in Ferrara’s Siberia, which releases today on DVD.

Clint does not understand whatever Siberian Mongolic, Turkic, or Tatar dialects his occasional customers speak and for those of us who don’t either, Ferrara declines to subtitle them. That still does not stop Clint from sleeping with some of them, but sex always builds to a twisted, nightmarish climax in Ferrara’s Siberia.

After a few weird encounters, Clint lights off on a spiritual trek through the tundra, with his trusty sled dogs looking just as confused as viewers uninitiated in Ferrara’s quirks. Arguably, there is the seed of an interesting story in the journey, when Clint periodically seeks out practitioners of the dark arts, presumably in hopes of acquiring the forbidden knowledge necessary for a Faustian bargain that would ease his existential regrets. Of course, Ferrara is not about to spoon-feed us Jack Straw.

There is no sense complaining or arguing over the film’s murky narrative, because Ferrara isn’t playing by those rules. He is taking us through a rabbit hole into the darkest corners of his subconscious. If you are uncomfortable with that than so much the better. Really, this is a film for critics to watch, so they can file bits away to draw on later when Ferrara releases something more accessible. Nevertheless, cast-members like Simon McBurney and Dounia Sichov add a lot of depth and texture playing the shadowy “Magician” and Clint’s wife (seen through dreams and illusions).

Wolfgang (Puck), the Documentary

There is a small army of Food Network stars who owe their gigs and fortunes to Wolfgang Puck. He didn’t quite singe-handedly create the concept of the celebrity chef (as this documentary suggests), but he certainly established a professional template for later chefs to follow. David Gelb (the food documentarian) chronicles Puck’s life and career in Wolfgang, which premieres Friday on Disney+.

If you want to see a film about Wolfgang Puck, this would definitely qualify as one. Gelb covers Puck’s entire life, starting with his difficult childhood in Austria. Puck’s Teagen-esque step-father bullied him to brink of suicide, but he found refuge in a part-time kitchen job. Briefly working with a French chef in-residence inspired Puck to study in France. From there, he was off to American.

Puck was largely responsible for resuscitating the now legendary Ma Maison, but restaurateur Patrick Terrail (who fearlessly appears in the film) was loathe to give a lowly chef credit or an equal stake. As a result, Puck set out on his own, with the help of his partner (and now ex-wife) Barbara Lazaroff (who also participated in the film) opened Spago. (Like Ma Maison, the name of Spago might ring bells with viewers, but they might not know why. The film does a nice job explaining their cultural and media significance.)

False Positive, on Hulu

Horror movies love to corrupt good things. Of course, it is hard to build a film around an evil apple pie, but it is much easier plum the dark side of motherhood. Rosemary’s Baby remains the champion at this, but tons of flicks tried to follow its example. Some were even pretty good, such as Aneesh Chaganty’s Run, Franz & Fiala’s Goodnight Mommy, and Stewart Thorndike’s Lyle. It is debatable whether this is a proper horror film or rather a dark thriller, since it really isn’t scary, despite the sinister turn an expected mother’s pregnancy takes in John Lee’s False Positive, which premieres this Friday on Hulu.

Lucy and her doctor husband Adrian Martin have been trying to get pregnant for two straight years with no success. Finally, he books her an appointment with his old colleague, ultra-arrogant fertility specialist Dr. John Hindle and voila. She’s not just pregnant. She has two healthy boy twins and a smaller, iffy-looking girl. Of course, Hindle and her husband want to abort the girl because you know, patriarchy. (Ironically, their arguments are much like those used by abortion advocates in the abortion debate.)

After the insert-your-own-term-here, everything should be fine, but she feels off physically and emotionally. Martin starts experiencing strange dreams and visions, but nobody takes her concerns seriously. Instead, she finds herself increasingly alienated from her supposed support system.

Of course, you can easily guess some of the skullduggery, because it is mandated by the film’s sexual politics. That is the problem with polemical films. They are so inevitably predictable. Fortunately, Lee and cinematographer Pavel Pogorzelski crafted some nicely eerie-looking scenes, which makes the film watchable. Honestly, if you are okay with laughing through Pierce Brosnan’s smug, preening villainy, then the film is a fair amount of fun.

Tribeca ’21: Settlers

Dirt-farming on Mars makes Uncle Owen & Aunt Beru’s Tatooine farm look lush and luxurious. However, for Remmy’s family, there is no alternative. Frankly, following undisclosed wars and natural disasters, they are looking to have a reasonably sustainable home. That is probably why mysterious outlaws try to take it for themselves in screenwriter-director Wyatt Rockefeller’s Settlers, which screens as part of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Remmy is happy living with her father Reza and mother Ilsa, even though they never see another soul—and apparently never expect to. Then one fateful day, they find the word “leave” smeared across the environmentally reinforced window of their space-age farm house. Her parents fight hard during the siege that follows, but it tragically ends with a long, awkward period of “occupation.”

The invading Jerry seems to think their homestead was once his family’s property. Regardless, he has certainly taken it back. Understandably, Remmy is quite bitter about the situation. Socially withdrawing, she prefers the company of a farm droid. Jerry acts like it is little more than a Roomba vacuuming robot, but Remmy thinks it has more of a persona than that.

Settlers is indeed Western-influenced science fiction, featuring futuristic homesteaders and outlaws, but it is definitely drawing from the slow, moody, and revisionist variety. Perversely, just about every significant event in the film happens off-screen. Initially, that builds a sense of mystery, but it grows frustrating over time.

However, the production design is truly stand-out award-deserving work. The farm-house and out-buildings look slightly ahead of our current time, but still somewhat lived-in and run-down. We rarely see sf like this. In some ways, the interiors even harken back to the original Star Wars (we don’t call it “A New Hope” here).

The Serpent Misfires

You can tell this film must have been sitting on the shelf for a while, because you can see Broadway posters for Spiderman: Turn off the Dark in some of external Manhattan shots. That show closed in early January, 2014. It is easy to understand why nobody was in a rush to release it. Writer-director-lead actress Gia Skova obviously intended it to be a star vehicle for herself, but nobody is effectively showcased in The Serpent, which is now available on VOD.

Lucinda Kavsky (codename: “Serpent”) is a CIA agent, on the run from the Agency, because she discovered the director is completely beholden to a mysterious terrorist mastermind. He even goes into the field, guns blazing, in pursuit of her. Not even a cowboy like Bill Casey would have done that. It turns out she uncovered a plan to implant nanotech explosives in four children that could very well be detonated soon.

The politics of Serpent are probably deeply problematic, but it is hard to tell, because the first half-hour is so roughly helmed and edited, rendering the narrative nearly incomprehensible. Essentially, it seems like Kavsky spends the first half of the movie shooting at one faction of CIA agents and the second fighting another (or maybe they’re the same). Who wouldn’t enjoy watching a lot of dedicated American intelligence personnel getting shot? Russians, I guess.

Apparently, Skova, the former fashion model is following Alexander Nevsky’s example, trying to crack the American market with moderately Russia-boostering straight-to-VOD action movies. (Honestly, I don’t know what was the weirdest part of that last sentence.) At least The Serpent skips the shticky humor of Maximum Impact.

The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard: Also Starring Frank Grillo

Brexit just keeps looking better and better, doesn’t it? Currently, the UK is far out-performing the EU when it comes to vaccinations. It should also be safely out of the crosshairs when a Greek super-patriot hatches an apocalyptic scheme to avenge Brussels’ policies that humbled his country. Europe’s only hope rests in the three characters referenced in the title of Patrick Hughes’ The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, which is now playing in actual theaters.

In The Hitman’s Bodyguard, bodyguard Michael Bryce protected his old contract-killer nemesis long enough to testify against an Alexander Lukashenko-like dictator at The Hague, but he is still haunted by Darius Kincaid’s assassination of his most important client. His shrink wants him to move on to safer employment, but Kincaid’s wife Sonia pulls him back in to save her husband (against both of their wishes).

Even though Bryce has temporarily sworn off guns, he and Ms. Kincaid successfully rescue her hubby from the Euro gangster holding him. Inconveniently, they also kill him before Interpol Agent Bobby O’Neil can recover the sensitive European infrastructure information he acquired for the shadowy mastermind. It turns out the villain is Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Papdopolous, who needs a briefcase full of codes linked to an explosive device that winds up strapped to Sonia’s wrist.

Like its predecessor, HWB is definitely a meathead movie, but it is a rare sequel that manages to be funnier than the original. Obviously, Samuel L. Jackson does his F-bomb-dropping thing as Kincaid—and it is still works as well as ever. Ryan Reynolds probably gets even more laughs as the wildly neurotic Bryce. However, Salma Hayek (who was conspicuously under-utilized in the first film) steals the show as the spectacularly foul-mouthed and hair-trigger-tempered Sonia Kincaid. She is a riot, pretty much literally.

The American Sector: The Berlin Wall in America

In 1987, Pres. Ronald Reagan challenged Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. He declined to do so, so the Germans did it themselves. The remnants of the Wall are like relics, sanctified by the blood of East Germans who were literally killed trying to scale, jump, or in some way circumvent it. Many of the surviving panels ended up in America, but it is not clear how many people who see them every day understand their significance. Courtney Stephens and Pacho Velez document the many American displays of the Berlin Wall in their cinematic essay, The American Sector, which opens today in New York, at the Metrograph.

There are obvious reasons why many sites in America proudly display monument-sized portions of the Wall. For instance, we see panels installed at Eureka College (Reagan’s alma mater), the National Churchill Museum in Fulton, MO (where he gave his prescient “Iron Curtain” speech, coining a metaphor that took physical shape in the Wall), German Armed Forces Command in Reston, VA, and the Wende Museum in Culver City. Whereas, we hear but do not see the Wall display in CIA headquarters, for obvious reasons a press officer duly explains.

However, the coolest display might very well be at the George H.W. Bush Presidential library, where elements are incorporated into Veryl Goodnight’s The Day the Wall Came Down, a statue of horses breaking through the Wall to freedom. Rather aptly, we also see a panel outside the Friends Suwanee Grill, because the enterprising owner bought it at a liquidation auction (sharp-eyed viewers might also notice the Shen Yun sign in his window).

School’s Out Forever

Initially, there was speculation type-O blood might be resistant to Covid-19, but subsequent studies say it isn’t so. However, type O-negative can take heart from their exclusive immunity in Scott K. Andrews’ Afterblight Chronicles YA trilogy. Yes, that’s a right, it’s an apocalyptic epidemic. Doesn’t that sound fun for a change? Sadly, the vibe is not nearly as snarky as the key art suggests. Instead, the end-of-the-world is rather glum business in Oliver Milburn’s School’s Out Forever (based on book #1), which releases in theaters and on VOD tomorrow.

The bad news is a mystery virus is about to wipe out ninety percent of the world population. The good news is Lee Keegan will not have to tell his dad he has been expelled from his elite boarding school. Unfortunately, his mother (a microbiologist working at some kind of secure facility) insists he return to the presumed safety of St. Marks. Since that is where she will come looking for him, that is where he reluctantly goes.

There, he finds his hot-tempered trouble-making mate Sean “Mac” MacKillick is largely running the school, despite the more reasonable advice of Mr. Bates, the last surviving teacher, and the nurse-matron, who is only a few years older than her students. A combination of fear and loose discipline also brings the kids into conflict with a local militia group.

Instead of wise-cracking his way through the resulting chaos, Keegan worries and pouts, which might be more realistic, but is far less entertaining. In fact, the film gets rather dour and downbeat. We have all seen plenty of serious-as-a-heart-attack end-of-the-world viral outbreaks on-screen, going back to the original The Stand, if not before. Frankly, at a time like this, we need to laugh at Armageddon, but Milburn’s adaptation only offers a handful of darkly comedic chuckles here and there.