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Bad Faith is a vital, provocative and alarming documentary about the history and rise of Christian Nationalism. Co-Directors Stephen Ujlaki and Christopher Jacob Jones start, logically, at the beginning to shed light on the origins of Christian Nationalism and how it evolved through the years. They include interviews with political strategist Steve Schmidt, Trump's former homeland security official, Elizabeth Neumann, and pastor William J. Barber II who's also interviewed in God + Country. Bad Faith will open the audience's eyes to the dangers of Christian Nationalism. There's also some footage from the Capital attack on January 6th, 2021. If you've ever considered Christian Nationalism to be remotely reasonable, this documentary will compel you to look at it from a whole new angle and to think twice before voting for Donald Trump. It charts the same waters as the recent documentary God + Country. Both documentaries make the same point about how Christian Nationalism poses a threat to democracy in America. Important messages are worth repeating, so that's a point that's worth repeating and over to save the future of our country. After all, it's much easier to lose democracy than it is to gain it. At a running time of 1 hour and 29 minutes, Bad Faith opens at Cinema Village. 
Kim's Video is a mildly engaging, but unfocused and meandering documentary about Kim's Video, an iconic store in NYC's East Village that sold rare, hard-to-find movies. Co-directors Ashley Sabin and David Redmon interview former employees of Kim's Video, such as David Wain, who, unsurprisingly, praise the store. There are amusing anecdotes like the fact that the Coen brothers owe $600 in late fees, but for the most part, the film has very few revelatory or profound insights during its first half. It also charts the history of Kim's Video when owner Yongman Kim opened it back in 1987 after he first started selling movies from his dry cleaning store. The second half of the film follows the filmmakers as they try to find the place in Salemi, Italy where Kim donated the films from his store in 2008 after the demise of Kim's Video. They spend too much time on their lengthy quest to enter the private storage place as they encounter red tape. In a very strange scene that makes them seem more like The Yes Men, they stage a heist of the movie collection with the thieves disguised as iconic film directors. Is this supposed to be a satire like The Yes Men? A thriller? Either way, it doesn't deliver on either of those. What is Kim's Video really about? What makes those rare movies sold at Kim's so vital to preserve? The filmmakers neglect to interview film distributors/studios, like Criterion and Kino Lorber Studio Classics, who are in the business of owning the rights to many essential, lesser-known films and remastering them, so they squander their opportunity to be fair and balanced. At a running time of 1 hour and 28 minutes, Kim's Video opens at Quad Cinema via Drafthouse Films. 
The People's Joker is a semi-autobiographical DC Comics parody about Joker the Harlequin (Vera Drew)'s journey to deal with her gender identity and to form an anti-comedy troupe with Oswald Cobblepot (Nathan Faustyn). Writer/director Vera Drew and co-writer Bri LeRose combine parody, satire, campiness, dark comedy, psychological drama and surrealism in a way that feels unconventional, subversive and wildly entertaining, but also exhausting and anarchic. It evolves into a roller coaster ride of emotions and often transcends genre. Joker candidly discusses her traumatic childhood when she admitted to her mother (Lynn Downey) that she felt like she's born in the wrong body. Her mother didn't react well and sent her to an asylum. She also delves into her toxic relationship with a narcissist, Mr. J (Kane Distler), and their fallout. So, The People's Joker cuts deep and is quite unflinching as well as dark at times. Thematically and tonally, though, it's all over the place. It also tries very hard to be over-the-top and bonkers which begins to feel tiresome around the hour mark. Nonetheless, Vera Drew should be commended for being so emotionally generous and vulnerable on camera. She's funny and brave while radiating warmth and charisma. Hopefully she and others who are also in the process of dealing with emotional pain can heal from Pablo Neruda's poem: "They can cut all of the flowers, but they can't stop the spring from coming." With The People's Joker, Vera Drew doesn't cut anyone's flowers nor her own; she offers the audience many different seeds to plant in their own garden, so-to-speak, which can hopefully fully blossom into many different flowers. Some of those flowers are harder to cultivate than others. At a running time of 1 hour and 32 minutes, The People's Joker opens at IFC Center and other select theaters via Altered Innocence. Chicken for Linda  When Paulette (voice of Clotilde Hesme) wrongfully accuses her young daughter, Linda (voice of Mélinée Leclerc), of stealing her precious wedding ring. When she finds the ring and realizes her mistake, she makes up for it by promising to cook Linda her favorite dish: chicken with peppers. The search for ingredients turns into an adventure through the streets of Paris because of a strike that forces all of the stores to remain closed. Co-writers/directors Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach keep the plot simple and easy-to-follow while juggling comedy, drama and thrills. Paulette will stop at nothing to get chicken for Linda even if it means stealing a live chicken. The humor is mostly slapstick, but there are also some witty one-liners and amusing scenes with a sprinkle of zaniness. To be fair, Chicken for Linda! could've upped the zaniness a little more like to the level of A Town Called Panic which is more bold, bonkers and funny. The film has some true-to-life elements that ground it in realism, i.e. the friction between Paulette and her sister, Astrid (Laetitia Dosch), who reluctantly agrees to babysit Linda. Paulette's determination to keep her promise to Linda also rings true. There's a surprisingly surreal sequence that won't be spoiled here. Although Chicken for Linda! will primarily entertain children who don't mind reading subtitles, it also succeeds at entertaining adults simultaneously. The 2D animation provides the film with a warmth that wouldn't be as easily to capture through CGI animation. Each character has a different color, but, beyond that, they also have their own unique personality which helps to anthropomorphize them. Case in point: the young, self-centered and lazy guitar-playing son of the farmers whom Paulette steals a chicken from. Or a police officer that Astrid bonds with. Don't be surprised if you'll feel like eating a chicken dish after watching the film. At a brief running time of 1 hour and 16 minutes, Chicken for Linda! is a charming, witty and whimsical delight for all ages.
 Coup de Chance 
Fanny (Lou de Laâge) lives in Paris with her husband, Jean (Melvil Poupaud). When she bumps into Alain (Niels Schneider), a former high school classmate, on her way to work, they immediately hit it off and begin an affair. Meanwhile, she tries to hide her affair from Jean. The screenplay by writer/director Woody Allen deals with topics of love, marriage, luck, fate and infidelity. From the very beginning, it's clear that Fanny is stuck in a stale marriage with her domineering, controlling husband. She tells Alain candidly that she feels like a trophy wife. He doesn't think twice before starting a sexually charged affair with her while she gives into the temptation. She has no shame in lying to her husband when asked why she comes home late or why she didn't answer her phone during her lunch break. Not surprisingly, he gets suspicious of her. What he does with his suspicions won't be spoiled here, but it's worth noting that the film takes a turn into Hitchcockian thriller territory. The only person who Fanny feels comfortable confiding in is her mother, Aline (Valérie Lemercier), even though she tries to invalidate her feelings when she tells her that she's unhappy with her marriage. Aline believes that Jean is the perfect husband for daughter. Her belief completely changes throughout the course of the film. Coup de Chance's small, but forgivable flaw is that it reveals too much too soon by shifting the perspective to Jean's perspective which means that the audience is a few steps ahead of Fanny, Alain and her mother when it comes to what they know about him. So, exposition isn't among the film's strengths nor is plausibility once the plot twists arrive. The screenplay lacks the wit and humor found in Allen's iconic films, though. If you're looking for any zingers here, you'll be disappointed. However, the dialogue feels organic while Fanny and Alain are both well-written characters, and the relationship between Fanny and her mother feels real, too. Allen wisely avoids melodrama and schmaltz. He also doesn't resort to using flashbacks or spoon-feeding the audience, so there's just the right amount of subtlety and nuance to prevent the film from becoming heavy-handed, tedious or dull. Lou de Laâge, Niels Schneider, Niels Schneider and the always-reliable Valérie Lemercier are very well cast. Each of them brings plenty of charisma while finding the humanity and emotional truth of their roles. Most importantly, though, Lou de Laâge and Niels Schneider have palpable chemistry together which makes it easier to understand why Fanny yields to temptation with Alain. Like with his past films, Woody Allen uses cinematography, particularly the use of lighting, to create different atmospheres and, in turn, visual poetry. Fanny and Jean's home feels cold and isolating while Jean's apartment feels very warm, especially the orange glow from the sunlight when Fanny and Alain lay in bed together. At a running time of 1 hour and 36 minutes, Coup de Chance is an engrossing, beguiling and suspenseful romantic thriller. Woody Allen is in top form. It's one of his best films since Match Point.
 The First Omen  Margaret (Nell Tiger Free), a young American novitiate, arrives in Rome to work at an orphanage where she meets the domineering Sister Silva (Sonia Braga) and befriends Carlita (Nicole Sorace), a 12-year-old girl. She soon begins to suspect that the church is hiding a dark secret.
Writer/director Arkasha Stevenson and her co-writers, Tim Smith amd Keith Thomas, do an decent job of maintaining a sense of dread from the moment that Margaret arrives at the orphanage. A prologue sets up the dark tone with a supernatural event that kills a priest before shifting to Margaret's perspective. The First Omen takes a while until Margaret discovers the evil plans of the church which perceptive audiences have already figured out much earlier, so they're a few steps ahead of her. Case in point: when she bumps into an Italian man she spent the night with, he tells her something that she doesn't realize the importance of until later on. The main purpose of Father Brennan (Ralph Ineson) seems to be to warn her about a conspiracy that won't be spoiled here. There are a a few twists, but, except for one unexpected twist, they're not very surprising. The twists, much like the characters themselves, seem like plot devices. Sister Silva, Cardinal Lawrence (Bill Nighy) and Paolo (Andrea Arcangeli) are among the underdeveloped characters. The audience also learns little to nothing about Margaret before she moves to Italy to join the convent. As the plot gets increasingly intense, it suffers from plot holes and events that make no sense, even in hindsight. Nonetheless, despite those flaws, The First Omen does offer many scenes that are as unflinchingly terrifying and disturbing as the similar scenes in Immaculate. If you're looking for a relentlessly grim horror film that doesn't shy away from shocking the audience, you'll be satisfied. The performances are a mixed bag. Nell Tiger Free and Nicole Sorace give a decent performance while Sonia Braga He chews the scenery in her brief scenes. Ralph Ineson gives a hammy performance while Bill Nighy is miscast as a cardinal. Nighy isn't give much to do here, though, so this role is beneath him. A lot of imagination clearly went into the production design, lighting and cinematography which provide a creepy atmosphere that occasionally becomes surreal with very creepy images. For example, the image of spiders are used very effectively. The filmmakers also don't hold back on the gore some of which will make audiences squirm in their seats. The horror in The First Omen isn't for the faint of heart. Some scenes could've been trimmed down a little to help the pace flow more smoothly, and there are at least two false endings. Moreover, you can feel the weight of the 2 hour running time; Immaculate, which covers the same ground, has the benefit of being only 90 minutes. So, if only the filmmakers here were to grasped the concept of "less is more." The First Omen is an atmospheric, viscerally terrifying and visually stylish horror film.
 The Greatest Hits 
Harriet (Lucy Boynton) still hasn't overcome the death of her boyfriend, Max (David Corinswet), two years after a tragic car accident. Every time she hears a song that played while she was with him, she's magically transported back in time to the moment that she and Max first heard the song. When she meets David (Justin H. Min) and begins to date him, her special power affects their relationship. Writer/director Ned Benson takes an interesting concept and turns it into a cheesy, banal romance. The audience meets Harriet right at the moment when she listens to a song and goes back in time. When the song stops playing, she goes back to the present time. She hopes to hear the right song that could save Max's life. To help her deal with her boyfriend's death, she attends a grief support group which is where she meets David. The Greatest Hits focuses too much on its sci-fi gimmick and stretches it too thinly, so it often feels repetitive. The plot goes around in circles with very little forward momentum. Also, you barely learn what Harriett saw in Max to begin with. They had met at a concert, but the film neglects to explore their relationship so that you can be on the same page as Harriet. Yes, the audience understands that she misses him and that he's the love of her life. That point gets repeated ad nauseam. How long have they been together? That's not very clear either. What were bumps in their relationship? No relationship is flawless. Unfortunately, the screenplay portrays snippets from their relationship as though it were a fairy tale. Her romance with David falls flat, too. All that you learn about him is that he's struggling to cope with the death of his parents. What was his relationship with them like, though? He seems like more of a plot device than a fully-fleshed character. Moreover, the dialogue is often stilted and too on-the-nose with over-explaining. Writer/director Ned Benson doesn't trust the audience's emotions nor their intelligence enough. He knows how to use compelling and refreshingly original ideas, but not where to take those ideas to. Lucy Boynton gives a decent performance, but she doesn't manage to rise above the vapid, lazy screenplay. No one has the chance to shine or to breathe their character to life. Also, Lucy Boynton lacks chemistry with both David Corinswet and Justin H. Min, so the film's emotional beats don't quite land, not even in the third act which can be seen from a mile away. There's nothing exceptional about the cinematography nor the editing nor production design. At least the music is lively, but that's not nearly enough to elevate the film above mediocrity. At a running time 1 hour and 34 minutes, which feels more like 2 hours, The Greatest Hits is corny, contrived, repetitive, shallow and undercooked. In a double feature with Palm Springs, it would be the inferior B-movie.
 Monkey Man  A young orphaned man (Dev Patel) works for Tiger (Sharlto Copley), a promoter, at an underground fight club where he loses boxing fights while donning a gorilla mask. He seeks revenge against Rana (Sikandar Kher), a corrupt police chief who he witnessed killing his mother, (Adithi KalKunte), and burning down his village when he was a child.
Writer/director Dev Patel and his co-writers, Paul Angunawela and John Collee, have created a gritty and ultra-violent revenge thriller. The details surrounding the unnamed young man's traumatic childhood aren't provided all at once. The audience knows, though, that something bad happened to his mother and that he's thirsty for revenge. Monkey Man often clunkily flashes back to his childhood that diminish the narrative momentum. You can feel the wheels of the screenplay turning during those heavy-handed scenes. How did his hands become scarred? You'll have to wait patiently to find out. Don't be surprised if you'll end up rooting for the young man to succeed in his mission by moving up the ladder until he can get access to his nemesis, Rana. He gets a job in a kitchen at a hotel run by Queenie (Ashwini Kalsekar). To be fair, there are too many characters and subplots which convolute the film which could've been much leaner. The plot takes a while to get to the meat of its story, revenge plot, but once it does, the film kicks its action gear full throttle relentlessly. The first hour mark is around the time that Monkey Man turns into a darkly comedic action-packed ride which, at times, feels exhausting as though you were watching a long video game. The cinematography, use of lighting and set design combine to add plenty of visual style. Many of the scenes take place at night which contribute to the grittiness factor. There's excessive use of shaky-cam, though, which leads to nausea, and over-editing which makes the film feel like a music video. Dev Patel hits the audience over the head with the violence that leaves little to the imagination. People get stabbed, kicked, punched, shot at and more. A fight sequence in a kitchen is one of the film's highlights because it's so well-choreographed and viscerally entertaining. There are pacing issues with some scenes overstaying their welcome and moving too slowly, especially at the beginning. Sharlto Copley makes the most out of his supporting role and is among the film's MVPs---he's pretty funny at times, too. At a running time of just under 2 hours, Monkey Man is a stylish, action-packed and exhilarating revenge thriller.
 Strictly Confidential  Mia (Georgia Lock) travels to an island in the Caribbean to celebrate the life of Rebecca (Lauren McQueen) who committed suicide one year earlier. Their friend, Natasha (Pear Chiravara), joins the reunion along with James (Freddie Thorp), Mia's ex-boyfriend, Will (Max Parker), Rebecca's ex-boyfriend, Jemma (Genevieve Gaunt), Rebecca's sister, and Lily (Elizabeth Hurley), who hosts the event at her luxurious mansion. Mia soon begins to investigate the circumstances surrounding Mia's suicide and to suspect foul play. Strictly Confidential is like an erotic version of Knives Out without the comedy, suspense or Benoit Blanc. There are, indeed, laughs, but they're mostly derived from unintentionally funny lines and preposterous twists. To say that the plot becomes increasingly convoluted would be an understatement. Writer/director throws logic and plausibility right out the window. The dialogue is often stitled, the exposition is lazy, and there's too much over-explaining. Damian Hurley throws so many twists and turns at the audience that it's overwhelming. Moreover, the film takes a huge nosedive during a big reveal that doesn't feel remotely believable even when one of the characters explains it. The attempts to add emotional depth fall flat, especially when it comes to the friendship between Mia and Rebecca which remains underdeveloped. Despite how contrived and inane the plot is, Strictly Confidential still manages to be entertaining on a superficial level, as long as you check your brain at the door and don't mind waiting for the next silly plot twist. The picturesque scenery stands out the most out of all of the production values. There's nothing exceptional about the set design or cinematography that would've elevated the film with enough style to compensate for its lack of substance. None of the performances rise above the shallow screenplay, unfortunately. On top of that, the erotic scenes and the scenes with violence are poorly shot and choreographed. There are also too many clunky flashbacks which are unnecessary because the characters are describing what's happening which makes the flashbacks redundant. For a much more gripping and provocative suspense thriller watch Some Other Woman, The Origin of EvilRebecca. At a running time of 88 minutes, Strictly Confidential is a clunky, convoluted and preposterous mess with enough unintentional laughs to make it a guilty pleasure.
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