What to watch: A ‘Redeeming’ Gold Rush love story; ‘Fraggle Rock’

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January’s lackluster slate of new theatrical movies turns us more and more to streaming fare and and indie releases. A few notable films hit theaters this week — the Christian-themed “Redeeming Love” and the character study/drama “Jockey” — but neither is particularly a high-profile film.

My favorites include one for kids (Apple TV+’s rebooted “Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock”) and another that is decidedly not for kids (“Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn”).

“Redeeming Love”: Faith-based historical romances don’t get mentioned much in the mainstream or secular press, despite their formidable fan base. One of the genre’s most respected and popular authors — Francine Rivers — penned the best-selling California Gold Rush novel upon which this high-gloss production is based. Her storytelling powers remain on full display, and director D.J. Caruso fashions a handsome and respectable feature, but the running time here is much too long (2¼ hours) and the film is just too pretty for its own good. Rivers’ story is a loose interpretation of the Gomer and Hosea biblical tale, and in her version the lead character is the hardened and mistreated Angel (Abigail Cowen), the No. 1 sex worker at a nasty 1850s bordello. Angel is cynical and bitter from enduring a torturous childhood and adulthood, none of it explicitly rendered on film but still revealed within the constraints of a PG-13 rating.

For some inexplicable reason Angel attracts the attention of straight-laced, virtuous rancher Michael (Tom Lewis, an actor posed for stardom). Their ensuing courtship is never easy, as Angel’s past comes back at her with a vengeance.

“Love” might be best embraced by the faithful, but it is well made and has much to say about the healing power of love and how we all deserve second chances. Yet its glossy look too often conflicts with and devalues its gritty subject matter, putting a comforting soft focus lens on what should be a brutal story. All that might make “Love” more approachable, but it also strips the story of much of its power and, yes, its glory. Details: 2½ stars out of 4; in theaters Jan. 21.

“Brazen”: While I admire prolific romance novelist Nora Roberts for her utterly readable guilty pleasures and for standing up to outraged readers over casting “liberal” actor Alyssa Milano to play crime writer Grace in this Netflix original, it doesn’t save “Brazen” from being a waste. Milano and costar Sam Page — playing the cute and single detective next door — work well together, but the story is filled with such logic-defying turns as when Grace forces herself into the murder investigation of her sister. Seems sis led a double life as a dominatrix for a cheesy online site, and that’s where the story graduates from ridiculous to laughable, managing to even make leather and lace uninteresting. “Brazen” is worth no more than a laugh or two. And it’s not a comedy. Details: 1½ stars; available on Netflix.

“Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock”: There are no flatulence jokes (at least in the first three episodes). No annoying pitches for kids’ products. What the reboot of the 1983-’87 Muppets song-heavy Fraggle Rock TV series does offer is a steady stream of catchy tunes, well-defined Muppet characters, hilarious situations, incredible puppetry and soundly crafted messages about climate change, overcoming your fears and being true to oneself. It’s a delightful experience, no matter your age. Details: 3 stars; available Jan. 21 on AppleTV+.

“Jockey”: One actor oddly shut out of the awards chatter this season is Clifton Collins Jr. It’s unacceptable, given how he inhabits the soul and body of his character, a worn-out jockey named Jackson Silva who should retire but just won’t. Clint Bentley’s gorgeous, observant feature is more character study than clear-cut drama, and while there are a few plotting slip-ups here and there, Collins’ electrifying performance carries this over the finish line. Molly Parker, of Netflix’s “Lost in Space,” shines in a small but pivotal role as his trainer. Now, if only awards committees would give this best actor dark horse candidate a serious look. Details: 3 stars; opens Jan. 21 in San Francisco, expands to a wider release next week.

“Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn”: The ballsiest satire I saw in 2021 was Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude’s big slap to the face of the obnoxiously pious and judgmental. It opens with an explicit X-rated sex scene that’ll likely have some folks fleeing theaters. Those who stay put and who enjoy adventurous, edgy, and, at moments, brilliant comedy-drama will be rewarded. The long sex scene is integral to the plot since it’s a sex tape that unfortunately goes viral, leading to furrowed-brow outrage and calls to fire school teacher Emi (Katia Pascariu) who is featured in it. Jude is a hyperactive filmmaker and at times he jumps too high, but damn if you don’t admire how he operates without a safety net. With all the book banning going on, “Bad Luck” couldn’t arrive at a more opportune time to needle those so eager to pass judgment on anyone other than themselves. Details: 3½ stars; opens Jan. 21 at the Roxie, which will also offer the film for streaming. The film will also stream at the Smith Rafael Film Center.

“Italian Studies”: Vanessa Kirby’s character wanders around the streets of Manhattan in a fugue state, unmoored since she doesn’t know who she is for most of Adam Leon’s metaphysical snoozer. It’s only 81 minutes long but feels like an eternity or two. Leon’s impressionistic ways worked better in 2012’s “Gimme the Loot” and “Tramps.” Here the structure is so loose and rickety the whole scenario collapses on itself. Kirby is a fine actor, but “Studies” never feeds her enough material to work with as she drifts about, encountering new and old acquaintances. There’s just a lot of random walking and talking and no real action, making us disconnect to everything that’s put up on the screen. Details: 2 stars; available on multiple streaming platforms.

“I Am Syd Stone”: Actor Syd Stone (Travis Nelson) finds his once-promising career stuck in a stream of disposable roles in forgettable movies. When he receives a script that pushes him into new directions, it becomes a moment of truth. Concerned about his image, Stone hides the secret that he’s gay, often to himself and to his girlfriend. That changes when he meets a sweet lawyer (Benjamin Charles Watson) in the hotel restaurant/bar. Originally shot as an episodic series, the six segments have been seamlessly edited into one film by director Denis Theriault. Stone is a caring, touching “coming-out” story that’s tenderly acted by all involved and written and directed with awareness and compassion. Details: 3 stars; available on multiple streaming platforms.

Contact Randy Myers at soitsrandy@gmail.com.

Checking In on Netflix’s Original Movies: January 2022 Edition

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Alyssa Milano in Brazen. Photo: Sergei Bachlakov/Netflix

With the end-of-year cutoff for awards consideration now in our rearview, Netflix is taking January to cool off and unload some under-the-radar titles that won’t require press junkets and For Your Consideration campaigns. The must-see selection presses some hot buttons with a carnal setup as French as can be, but this month’s lineup is its own miniature world tour, including a social-issue drama from Indonesia, a Polish gangster epic that plays like pickled Scorsese, and a finely wrought Spanish nightmare. All this, plus a special surprise for fans of Alyssa Milano and/or psychosexual intrigue! Beat back the post-holiday late-winter doldrums with one of the newest Netflix original films, appraised in full below:

Essential Streaming

Dear Mother

Vive la France, the only country where the following premise could stand a chance of getting off the ground: The listless Jean-Louis (Laurent Lafitte, who also directed this adaptation of a play) is surprised to find that his heart has stopped and left him in a suspended state of half-death, the only cure for which turns out to be laying eyes on his mother’s pudenda. An Oedipal yukfest ensues as he tries to loophole himself out of this predicament by snapping a Polaroid of the privates in question, its cringe comedy pushed into the realm of genuinely discomforting taboo. Lafitte’s sense of humor has one foot in the sophomoric and one foot in the sophisticated (the film’s French title is L’Origine du Monde, as in Gustave Courbet’s 19th-century portrait of a faceless woman’s vulva, and opens with an interlude among the cosmos), a bracing combination utterly alien to the American cinematic comedy tradition. If for nothing else than the shock of novelty, it’s a worthy diversion.

Also Showing

Four to Dinner

After a few cocktails, a dinner party’s worth of 30-somethings engage in a little thought experiment. To finally settle the dispute over whether soul mates actually exist, a married couple (Flavio Furno and Marta Gastini) pairs up their single friends in hypothetical scenarios, some of which see their love taking wing and some of which don’t. The idea is that the perfect match depends just as much on where we’re at in life as some inherent person-to-person compatibility — less Mister Right, more Mister Right Now — which seems broadly correct, even if it’s not all that revelatory. The point might be better made if director Alessio Maria Federici and writer Martino Coli didn’t drop it right on our heads, with an intro announcing “here’s the thesis of our film!” and an outro that echoes it with “and that’s the thesis of our film!” That unimaginative straightforward quality extends to the set-ups as well, to the extent that even the segments where everything lines up feel somewhat strained.

The Wasteland

We’re somewhere in the 1800s, and one family — tough-loving father Salvador (Roberto Alamo), tenderer mother Lucia (Inma Cuesta), and their puffball of a son, Diego (Asier Flores) — has put down stakes in the most sublimely eerie corner of rural Spain available. From the unsettling dolls made by Mommy to the minimalist scarecrows studding their farmland like executions at Golgotha, bad vibes abound, and threaten to swallow up fragile Diego when Dad goes off to find the family of the guy who just committed suicide on their front step. It’s another one of those deals where a family’s dysfunction transmutes itself into monster form, which in this portentous instance isn’t quite as thrilling as a monster without one foot in metaphorical abstraction. “Actually, it’s about trauma” has become something of a punch line in the world of horror as of late, and the privileging of subtext over the actual text here does a good job of explaining why.

Brazen

Deadly Illusions, the not-technically-a-Netflick licensed by the service last year in which Kristin Davis played a paperback mystery writer solving a real-life murder plot, reportedly did monster numbers; of course it was only a matter of time until the studio made their own in-house. Another actress known for her TV work around the turn of the millennium (this time it’s Alyssa Milano of Charmed fame) lands in a similar predicament, drawing on her instincts as a scribe of page-turners to suss out who stabbed her sister to death. This all belongs in the realm of the trashtastic, but director Monika Mitchell lacks the sense of irony required to find the funny in this overheated tangle of illicit secrets, leaving tedium in the vacant space. In this rather milquetoast take on a genre that thrives on the outré, we miss out on the kinky thrills that both embrace and rise above the disreputable. Though Mitchell’s plot revolves around the clandestine doings of a cam girl, there’s nothing here that feels forbidden.

Photocopier

A college girl (Shenina Syawalita Cinnamon) goes out, gets too wasted, and discovers the unremembered events of the evening in horror on her phone the morning after. It’s a commonplace occurrence, but in the censorious culture of Indonesia, an indelicate, inebriated selfie is all it takes to get booted from your school and family. Our gal Sur puts her feelings of violation to one side so she can play sleuth and figure out how she lost control, discovering some unsavory scheming from her classmates in the process. (Pretty much the same deal as Pippa Bianco’s Share, though the production timeline suggests that that’s coincidence rather than algorithmic jiggery-pokery behind the scenes.) The judgmental local context gives this film an added sense of stakes, and its frank addressing of sexual assault doubles as a critique of the nation’s status quo depicted here. If only the dialogue wasn’t so starkly functional, and more well-versed in the fumbling inarticulateness of young people, this could’ve been a plausible, valuable dissection of a social epidemic.

This Is Not a Comedy

The American indie circuit has given us plenty of sensitive, deadpan dramedies about stand-up comedians hiding their neuroses and arrested development behind a crying-clown façade, and this Mexican equivalent doesn’t bring much distinction to the act. Sad-sack funnyman Gabriel Nuncio (playing a fictionalized version of himself, in addition to co-directing and co-writing) faces a litany of mini-crises common to his type: He’s trying to sell a movie script that nobody considers marketable enough to produce, he’s striking up a thing with a surprisingly played-straight iteration of the manic pixie dream girl (Cassandra Ciangherotti), a friend wants him to donate his sperm. Those familiar with the Mexican comedy scene may get more out of its fly-on-the-wall infiltration of the clique — several noted comics pop up as themselves — but the touchy-feelier side of its midlife coming-of-age schtick is stale.

How I Fell in Love With a Gangster

It’s the grand conundrum of the gangster movie: Hungry young directors who grew up in thrall of their coolness want to make their own, but nothing’s un-cooler than rehashing the greatest hits of previous generations. That Maciej Kawulski’s addition to this crowded underworld comes to us from Poland seems promisingly unique, until it’s clear that he’s just manufacturing a knockoff of the brand-name stuff from the States. The true-life tale of Nikodem “Nikos” Skotarczak (Tomasz Wolosok), from penny-ante boyhood scams to the top of the criminal heap, could have been inscribed from that of Henry Hill or Frank Lucas or any number of the headstrong, ruthless crooks who came before them. The one-night stands with faceless women, the sharp injections of stylized violence, the rise-and-fall structure — it’s all a tune we know too well, even if it’s been re-scored by banging Eastern European club music.

Love, mystery, and monsters heat up movie screens this frosty weekend

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A love story is hitting movie theaters today, and there are some new films streaming that you might want to watch this weekend. Movie reviewer Greg Russell spoke to Jason Carr about three movies now out including, “Redeeming Love”, “Brazen”, and “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania”.

The first movie Greg talked about was “Redeeming Love”, starring Nina Dobrev, Eric Dane, and Abigail Cowen. The movie is based off of a 1991 Francine Rivers book that tells the story of a young girl in the 1850s who was taken away from her family and forced into traumatic situations. Wondering if she will ever find true love, she ends up connecting to her soulmate in an unexpected way. Greg said the movie came in under the radar and has captured his interest. He said it has religious undertones and has sparked some industry chatter.

The next movie Greg spoke about was “Brazen”, starring Alyssa Milano/ This is a Netflix film about a mystery novelist who teams up with the police to help figure out who murdered her sister. Greg said it reminds him of a Lifetime movie that isn’t one you would rush to watch, but is great to just relax and unwind to over the weekend. He also said there are some great twists involved, and the plot will keep you guessing who really did it. Greg gave it three-and-a-half reels out of five.

Finally, there was “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania”, starring the voices of Selena Gomez, Andy Samberg, and Kathryn Hahn. The “Hotel Transylvania” sequel continues as characters Mavis and Johnny take over the family hotel business, but things go awry when a new invention turns monsters in to humans, and humans into monsters. Greg said the movie is the #1 streaming movie right now, and the parents of younger kids he has spoken to say the kids love the movie so much that they repeatedly watch it. He gave it a kid’s four reels out of five.

To see clips from the movies, watch the video above.

The Most Popular Movies On Netflix Right Now Besides ‘After We Fell’

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“After We Fell” is the most popular movie on Netflix, according to the streaming service’s public ranking system.

This drama is the third installment in the “After” series, adapted from Anna Todd’s bestselling young adult novels. “After We Fell” ― which continues the story of protagonists Tessa and Hardin’s teen romance ― was filmed back to back with the next movie in the series, “After Ever After.”

Second in the ranking is “Brazen,” which premiered on Netflix on Jan. 13 to mostly negative reviews. Based on Nora Roberts’ novel “Brazen Virtue,” the thriller stars Alyssa Milano as a mystery writer who teams up with a detective to solve her sister’s murder.

Netflix “Brazen” on Netflix.

Other notable films that are trending at the moment include “The Colony,” a 2021 sci-fi film about a female astronaut stranded on a post-apocalyptic Earth in the not-so distant future, and “The God Committee,” a medical drama centered around the moral challenges in organ transplant systems.

For lighter fare, there’s the family-friendly movie “Riverdance: The Animated Adventure,” which features the voices of some notable Irish actors like Pierce Brosnan and Brendan Gleeson.

Read on for the full list of the top 10 movies. And if you want to stay informed about everything joining Netflix each week, subscribe to the Streamline newsletter.

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Now streaming: ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife,’ ‘Eternals,’ ‘Brazen’ on Netflix

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Here’s a look at what’s new or notable in home video. Movies and TV series are available on streaming sites such as iTunes, Amazon and Vudu unless otherwise noted.

“Ghostbusters: Afterlife”: In the middle of nowhere Oklahoma, where they have moved into their late grandfather’s rickety farmhouse, a couple of kids (Mckenna Grace and Finn Wolfhard) discover their Ghostbuster roots just in time to ward off a supernatural apocalypse.

That’s the long-awaited “Ghostbusters” sequel in an ectoplasm-covered nutshell. How you crack it is up to you.

You can obsessively hunt for Easter eggs while restlessly waiting for Bill Murray to show up (there are obvious and obscure references to the earlier movies, from snippets of dialogue to an old Twinkie). Or you can pop some popcorn, watch with the family and enjoy a sentimental kids adventure that is more in thrall to Steven Spielberg than Gozer the Gozerian.

Now available to buy on digital services following a theatrical release.

On ExpressNews.com: Here’s what Texas’ movie and TV stars are up to in 2022

New — Blu-ray

Focus Features

“Last Night in Soho”: Director Edgar Wright has mixed comedy and horror before in movies such as “Shaun of the Dead” and “The World’s End.” In “Last Night in Soho,” he serves the horror straight with a chaser of ’60s style. It’s a winning combination.

Thomasin McKenzie plays a country girl named Eloise who moves to London to study art. Poor Eloise is an outsider at school. She’s obsessed with the music and style of the Swinging Sixties, not the latest fashions And she sees ghosts.

Those peculiar traits come together at night when she dreams herself into the life of a wannabe singer named Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy) who chased fame in London 50 years before. Her bad breaks soon become Eloise’s nightmares, too.

Now available on Blu-ray and DVD.

On ExpressNews.com: Bloody ‘70s thriller ‘Rolling Thunder’ was filmed in S.A.

Notable — binge watches

Netflix

Two acclaimed miniseries just wrapped up their runs, which means it’s time for binge-watchers to take the plunge.

“Station Eleven”: A pandemic series is a hard sell right now, but this miniseries based on the novel by Emily St. John Mandel is worth the time if you can bear it. After a devastating flu wipes out most of humanity, the relatively few remaining survivors make a life worth living in their newly primitive home.

New York magazine calls it “a profound television experience.” Mackenzie Davis and Himesh Patel star.

More to stream New movies “Eternals”: Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao brought a relatively obscure Marvel Comics title to the screen with this fantasy adventure about a group of immortal aliens whose mission is to defend Earth. The cast includes Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek and Kumail Nanjiani. Now available to buy on digital services. “Brazen”: Alyssa Milano stars is this thriller based on the Nora Roberts novel “Brazen Virtue.” It’s been available for about a month but only recently popped up in the Netflix Top 10 and started generating buzz online. Now streaming on Netflix. New series “The Envoys”: Argentine filmmaker Juan José Campanella, who directed the Oscar-winning movie “The Secret in Their Eyes,” is behind this supernatural drama about two priests who are sent to Mexico to verify a miracle. Premiered Thursday on Paramount+. “The Gilded Age”: Christine Baranski, Cynthia Nixon and Audra McDonald are among the stars of this period drama set in New York in the 1880s. It’s from “Downton Abbey” creator Julian Fellowes. Debuts Monday on HBO Max. See More Collapse

All episodes now streaming on HBO Max.

“The Yellowjackets”: Anyone familiar with “Lord of the Flies” or the ’70s best-seller “Alive,” about the Uruguayan rugby team who crashed in the Andes, will approach “The Yellowjackets” with trepidation. It’s about the members of a girls soccer team who survive a plane crash in the woods, and the damaged women they grew up to be. The grown-up cast includes Melanie Lynskey, Juliette Lewis and Christina Ricci.

All episodes now streaming on Showtime Anytime.

jkiest@express-news.net | Twitter: @en_salife