October Positivity: God’s Club (dir by Jared Cohn)

Posted on October 30, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the 2015 film, God’s Club, Stephen Baldwin stars as Michael Evens.

Michael is a teacher at the local high school. His wife is also a teacher and it is quickly established that she is quite a bit more religious than her husband. In fact, she’s the sponsor of the after-school Christian club. This club is very controversial because God’s Club is one of those films that takes place in a community where everyone is not only an atheist but also a total jerk about it. It’s like everyone learned how to be an atheist by watching Richard Dawkins YouTube videos. At a school board meeting, parents shout about separation of church and state and warn that they are not going to sit by while their children are brainwashed. Principal Max Graves (Corbin Bernsen, giving the film’s best performance as the sole voice of reason at the high school) explains that no one is being forced to attend the club. Michael, for his part, remains quiet. Later, as they’re driving home, Michael and his wife are in a serious accident. Michael survives. His wife asks him to pray with her and then promptly dies.

Weeks later, a guilt-stricken Michael returns to school. It turns out that most of the students are just as jerky as their parents. When Michael opens his class with a moment of silence for his dead wife, one of his students reports him for praying in class. This leads to the parents demanding that Michael be fired. Spencer Rivers (played by Lorenzo Lamas) is especially adamant that Michael should not be allowed to teach and he even goes so far as to insult the memory of Michael’s dead wife. Making things even more tense is Michael’s decision to restart God’s Club himself. Needless to say, this leads to even more controversy but it also gives Michael a chance to make peace with both himself and his guilt over his wife’s death.

Christian teachers being persecuted by atheist parents and mindless government enforcers is a recurring theme when it comes to faith-based films. Perhaps the best-known example of this is God’s Not Dead 2, in which Ray Wise literally cackles with delight as he thinks about ruining Melissa Joan Hart’s life. (“We are going to prove that God is dead,” Wise explains to his legal team, none of whom point out that it would be smarter to just settle the case and move on.) The debate over whether or not religion should be allowed in schools is a legitimate one but films like God’s Club (and God’s Not Dead 2) tend to approach the subject in such a melodramatic that it’s difficult to really pay much attention to their arguments. It’s not enough that the parents in God’s Club are perhaps being a little bit paranoid in their belief that their children are going to be preached to. Instead, the parents are portrayed as being so evil that they can’t even show the least bit of kindness to a man who has just lost his wife in a sudden tragedy. One thing that all of these films have in common is that they take place in world in which there are no polite atheists.

Stephen Baldwin, who is usually the only lively thing about the films in which appears, gives a rather stilted performance as Michael. According to the film’s IMDb page, Baldwin was dealing with some health issues while filming God’s Club and perhaps that’s why he seems to be so disinterested in the film. Baldwin seems to be just as depressed when his wife is alive as he is after the car accident. At the end of the film, everyone seems to be excited about God’s Club except for him. It’s hard not to think that maybe Michael would be better off just retiring and maybe moving to Florida. By the end of the film, he’s earned some time on the beach.

Threesome (1994, directed by Andrew Fleming)

Posted on June 8, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Due to the type of administrative mix-up that always happens in the movie but rarely in real life, a college has assigned female student Alex (Lara Flynn Boyle) to share a dorm room with two males, Eddy (Josh Charles) and Stuart (Stephen Baldwin). Stuart is an outwardly obnoxious jock while Eddy is a sensitive and gay film student who is obsessed with Jules and Jim. It does’t take long for Alex to fall in love with Eddy but Eddy is in love with Stuart while Stuart is in love with Alex. See where this is leading? The three of them become close friends, to the extent that they actively drive away anyone else who shows any romantic or sexual interest in either one of them.

The title is not a lie. There is an eventual threesome, though it’s a very tastefully shot threesome and it only happens once. After all, this was a studio film, not a late night, direct-to-video Cinemax offering. Unfortunately, things fall apart for the roommates after their threesome, as they are forced to reconsider all of their previous feelings towards each other and one of them is driven to a melodramatic breakdown. The film’s story would work better if we cared about the characters but they’re all so shallowly written (and Eddy’s overwrought narration doesn’t work) that it’s hard to care about them. They just come across as being three snobs. Eddy may be obsessed with Jules and Jim but he doesn’t seem to have learned much from watching the movie. As for the cast, Josh Charles and Lara Flynn Boyle are both likable but too bland to really hold your attention. (There’s a reason why both of these actors found more success on television than on the big screen.) Stephen Baldwin actually brings some depth to his character though I doubt he spends much time bragging about starring in a film called Threesome nowadays.

Threesome is a film that seems to think that it has much to say but it’s impossible for me to think about it without being reminded of the Menage a Trois episode of Seinfeld and Jerry’s plaintive declaration of, “I’m not an orgy guy!” With those five words, Seinfeld said more about the reality of threesomes than Threesome does in its entire 93 minute running time.

Film Review: Peter: The Redemption (dir by Leif Bristow)

Posted on April 27, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I have two main thoughts on the 2016 religious film, Peter: The Redemption.

First off, John Rhys-Davies is a treasure. The veteran actor plays the role of Peter, the rock of the Church. The film focuses on Peter’s final days, locked away in a Roman prison and suffering torture at the hand of the Romans. He’s told repeatedly that all he has to do to win his freedom (and his life) is to publicly renounce his beliefs and confess that the Christians were behind the plot to set Rome on fire. While Peter waits for death, he is haunted by memories of the night that he denied knowing Jesus. He feels that he is not worthy to be crucified. He worries if he’s done enough to atone for his mistakes. Rhys-Davies gives a powerful performance, capturing both Peter’s anguish and his inner strength. This is probably one of the best performances that you’ll ever find in a low-budget religious film.

My other thought is that you really haven’t lived until you’ve seen Stephen Baldwin plays the Emperor Nero. Baldwin plays Nero as being something of a wannabe hipster, desperately trying to convince everyone that he’s more interesting than he actually is and dreaming of rebuilding Rome in his own image. Baldwin’s Nero is a crazy conspiracy theorist, the type who often seem to be struggling to follow his own line of thought. There’s not a subtle moment to be found in Baldwin’s performance as Nero but, interestingly, his interpretation of the role is probably fairly close to being historically correct. By the account of most of the Roman historians who lived through and actually managed to survive his reign, Nero considered himself to be an artist and an intellectual and his dream was to be as acclaimed as a performer as he was an emperor. It’s been said that Nero was killed as much for his artistic pretensions as his administrative mistakes and that his final words were, “What an artist dies within me!,” and one can certainly believe that while watching Baldwin’s performance.

Unfortunately, Peter: The Redemption gets distracted by a subplot involving the blossoming relationship between a servant in Nero’s court and one of Peter’s guards. It’s the same basic story as Quo Vadis?, just told in a lot less time and on a much smaller budget. To be honest, I kind of liked the film’s low-rent version of Rome. Rome is usually presented as being this glamorous and impressive city but most historians of the era tend to emphasize the fact that the streets of Rome were often dirty and the walls were covered with frequently obscene graffiti. (In fact, graffiti was the main form of political protest in the Roman Empire.) No wonder Nero wanted to burn the place down.

Anyway, Peter: The Redemption is okay. It tells its story effectively enough and the performance of John Rhys Davies elevates every scene in which he appears. The film gets bogged down whenever it concentrates on the romance in Nero’s court but Baldwin and Rhys Davies keep things watchable.

Scarred City (1998, directed by Kim Sanzel)

Posted on February 11, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

John Trace (Stephen Baldwin) is a patrolman who has managed to shoot four unarmed suspects in one month. Most people would say that it might be time to put Trace on desk duty but Lt. Devon (Chazz Palminteri) thinks that Trace will be a perfect addition to the SCAR unit. SCAR is an elite group of police officers who deal with the city’s worst thugs by gunning them down. A typical SCAR operation involves setting up a fake adult bookstore just so they can ambush a group of men who come in to rob the place.

Even for someone as trigger happy as John Trace, being a member of SCAR proves to be too much. When the SCAR team murders a group of gangsters who were having a party in a mansion, Trace is disgusted when two prostitutes are blown away as well. When he discovers a third prostitute, Candy (Tia Carrere), hiding in an upstairs bedroom, Trace helps her escape. With both the police and the mob now after them, Trace and Candy try to escape the city.

For some reason, Stephen Baldwin appeared in a lot of direct-to-video action films in the 90s. I guess it was because he had appeared in The Usual Suspects and, at the time, he was also the cheapest Baldwin brother available. (The Baldwins were hot commodity in the 90s. Today, you could probably put William, Daniel, and Stephen all in the same film and still have enough money left over to hire a halfway decent cinematographer.) Stephen has such a goofy screen presence that it was always strange to see him playing either tough cops or hardened criminals. In Scarred City, he does that thing where he closes his eyes while delivering his lines and he looks even more awkward handling a gun than usual.

However, for a direct-to-video Stephen Baldwin action film, Scarred City isn’t that bad. The script is surprisingly witty and even the bad guys get their share of good one-liners. “Pretty fucking dead, sir,” one of the cops yells to their lieutenant when he asks how one of their partners is handling having been shot. (Later, the same cop looks at her partner’s dead body and says, “Thanks to his dead ass, we’re going to have a parade.”) Tia Carrere and Chazz Palmentiri both bring a lot of life to their otherwise underdeveloped roles and the action scenes are violent, exciting, and well-shot, which is good since the last half of the movie is a nonstop chase. Scarred City may just be a B-movie but it’s a good one.

Insomnia File #38: Six: The Mark Unleashed (dir by Kevin Downes)

Posted on October 31, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1pd9Jr_bgA

If on Sunday night, if you were having trouble getting to sleep around midnight and if you lived in North Texas, you could have turned over to channel 58 and watched a 2004 film called Six: The Mark Unleashed.

Six: The Mark Unleashed is an evangelical film about the end of the world. By that, I mean there’s a lot of talk about tribulation, the mark of the Beast, and all the rest of that. The whole world is one big secular dystopia, in which people who refuse to accept the mark of the beast are sent to prison and given the choice of either getting the mark or getting their head chopped off.

I think one reason why so many faith-based films deal with the end of the world is because it allows characters to rebel, break the law, blow stuff up, and steal cars while still getting to remain a believer. I mean, usually, you run into the problems of turning the other cheek and giving unto Caesar what is Caesar’s but, once you’ve been left behind, you can pretty much do anything you want because you’re fighting against Satan.

Now, admittedly, the car thieves in Six aren’t into religion. They’re just rebels who didn’t want to get the mark and who are talked into stealing a car by Eric Roberts. (That’s right, Eric Roberts is in this movie. Eventually, Eric Roberts will be in every movie.) Anyway, the two thieves get caught in that stolen car and they get sent to prison.

Also getting sent to prison is Tow Newman, who is a smuggler who was arrested by his own ex-wife! Tom is given the option of either losing his head or infiltrating a group of Christians and killing their leader. What’s interesting about this is that Tom is played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan. That’s right. Negan is in this movie! Morgan goes all in and does a pretty good job as Tom. In fact, I’d say his performance here is more interesting than his work on The Walking Dead. It helps, of course, that Tom is the only person in the film who actually has a character arc.

Stephen Baldwin’s in the movie, too. That’s not really a shock because it’s a proven statistic that 9 out of 10 evangelical movies will feature Stephen Baldwin. Anyway, Baldwin plays Luke, who is a prison preacher and who teaches everyone about peace and forgiveness. He gets beat up for his troubles.

In the end, it all leads to three characters being tortured until they agree to accept the mark of the beast. Two of them refuse and lose their heads. One says yes and regrets it forever. Try to guess who does what! It’s fun.

Anyway, I have to admit that I always find these low-budget, independent films to be a little bit fascinating. It’s always interesting to me to see movies that were obviously made with one very specific audience in mind, whether that audiences is religious, political, or whatever. Six is the type of film that, quite literally, preaches to the choir. Those who share its vision of the end of the world will nod in agreement. Those who do not will roll their eyes. Both sides will probably end up getting too worked up, since that’s what people tend to do. Myself, I just find myself wondering if there’s any role that Eric Roberts would turn down.

Previous Insomnia Files:

A Movie A Day #73: Bitter Harvest (1993, directed by Duane Clark)

Posted on March 21, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Travis Graham (Stephen Baldwin, before he found God) is a doofus who owns a farm. His late father sent all of the family’s money to a crooked televangelist but he did leave Travis a valuable coin collection. But then two blondes enter his life. Kelly Ann (Jennifer Rubin) is a penniless hitchhiker who needs a place to stay and a bed to sleep in. Jolene (Patsy Kensit) is a British realtor who says she wants to help Travis sell his farm. Faster than you can say “I don’t know the exact pronunciation but I believe it’s ménage à trois,” that’s exactly what happens. Travis can’t believe his luck but it turns out that Kelly Ann and Jolene have plans of their own. Then, in a strangely unrelated subplot, a banker robber who shot the local sheriff (M. Emmett Walsh) shows up at the farm. Travis kills the bank robber but then Kelly Ann and Jolene start pressuring him to use the robber’s plan to rob a bank himself.

This is one of the many strange movies from the increasingly strange career of Stephen Baldwin. Now that he’s best known for evangelizing and appearing in celebrity-themed reality shows (including, most infamously, two seasons of The Celebrity Apprentice), it is easy to forget that Stephen Baldwin was once a good character actor who, with the exception of The Usual Suspects, apparently could not pick a good script if his life depended upon it. His performance as the socially backward Travis is often strange (at times, he seems to be channeling Lenny from Of Mice and Men) but always interesting. Fans of 90s neo-noir will also be happy to see Delusion’s Jennifer Rubin, playing yet another mysterious and dangerous temptress. Unfortunately, Bitter Harvest falls apart because of an implausible script and too many loose ends but, until it does, the sultry combination of Jennifer Rubin and Patsky Kensit keeps things watchable.

One final note: The sheriff’s son is played by Adam Baldwin. Even though the two are not actually related, everyone in the 90s assumed that they were and this makes Bitter Harvest a double Baldwin film.