MovieFest

AMC has announced five new additions to the cast of the hit martial arts series Into the Badlands for their upcoming third season. Dean-Charles Chapman (Game of Thrones) and Lewis Tan (Iron Fist) join as recurring guest stars. Sherman Augustus (Westworld), Babou Ceesay (Guerilla), and Ella-Rae Smith (Clique) join the cast as series regulars. We previously saw Augustus as Nathaniel Moon, a former regent who fought Sunny last season and wound up losing his hand, now joins forces with the Widow in her war against Baron Chau and the other barons. Moon hopes to avenge his honor by hopefully killing Sunny one day. Ceesay will play Pilgrim, “a zealous warlord who is on a quest to recover a mysterious artifact from Azra that could tip the balance of power in the Badlands.” Smith will play Nix, a powerful teenager working for Pilgrim. She has dark magical abilities, similar to the monks. Chapman plays another powerful teenager named Castor, who also works for Pilgrim (I'm...

★★★★★ For all of the cracked skulls, narrative twists, and mysterious flashbacks to training, the second season of  Into The Badlands  has always been about one thing and one thing only: the inevitable clash between ruthless killer with a heart of gold Sunny and his former trainer, master, and current baby-snatcher Quinn. Once an oppressed and controlled killer as part of Baron Quinn’s stable of Clippers, Sunny has been on his own for a while now. At the end of the season premiere, it was revealed that Veil and her new baby Henry were now with Quinn. Since then, he’s amassed a small army of followers dedicated to his cause, and Sunny has spent the season finding his way back to his true love and the son he’s never met. “Wolf’s Breath, Dragon Fire” is the punctuation to this feud, as Sunny is finally on his way to confronting Quinn at his stronghold. “The final battle is upon us,” says Quinn while cradling Henry in the creepiest way possible. You know how to tell th...

I’m fricking upset. It’s not a bad kind of upset, mind you. It’s a very good sort of upset, the kind you get when you’re completely floored by a twist you never saw coming in a piece of fictional media. But still: I’m upset. Shocked, even. Maybe a little bit heartbroken on top of that. Thanks for kicking me in the nads, Into the Badlands . If you haven’t seen this episode yet and you’re just scrolling through this review to see what I thought before you stream it or watch it illegally when you have more time this week, STOP NOW. If you have in fact seen this particular episode of Into the Badlands in its entirety, then please, by all means, crack on. You have my permission. (Except you over there. Yeah, you. With the wimple. I think you meant to click on this week’s EastEnders review instead). But for those of you who are reading this in the future, when Badlands is entering its much anticipated fifth season and Martin Csokas has gotten a Golden Gl...

★★★☆☆ Getting back into the badlands was Sunny’s main mission this year - which makes a hole lot of sense, given the show’s title and all. This episode is where he finally makes it in, but it comes at a costly price: serving as a clipper for Baron Chau, whose cogs kidnap him, Bajie, and M.K. This isn’t too bad story-wise because it continues the series’ latest trend of forcing its menagerie of characters to interact with each other to keep that plot thing moving. It’s a pretty decent plot so far, even if it has some focus issues, since it works fairly hard at keeping us on the edge of our seat with thrills lifted straight off of the assembly line. But now the show has surrendered itself to the power of “convenient coincidence” where situations converge because it saves time, speeds things up, and keeps the momentum going. For an episode about Sunny’s return to the Barons’ territory, it sure does focus a lot on Veil and The Widow and there hole story. The latter continues t...

★★★☆☆ Admit it. You've been dying for vast stretches of alone time with just Bajie and M.K. all season, haven't you? No? Shit. Guess that was just a nightmare I had. Either way nightmare or not, that's what we have here in "Black Heart, White Mountain", an hour of television that echoes far superior hours of television that I still wouldn't want to sit through again because they rely on a contrived stock plot - something I like to call The Coma Quest - to pad things out. The Coma Quest typically serves two functions: to conquer the inner landscape of the lead protagonist so they can face the trials ahead as a stronger figure, and to give the supporting cast a conflict to resolve while they ruminate on the events of the main story arc. That's exactly what happens here, but rather than focusing too much on the former, "Black Heart" spends most of its time on the latter. This is a good thing overall, but M.K. and Bajie are saddled with th...

★★★★★ This is one of the few times I've absolutely loved an episode of Into the Badlands . I've been entertained by each one so far, on a sliding scale from "passively interested" to "curious and intrigued," but "Leopard Stalks In Snow" is most definitely the first time the show has pleasantly surprised me in every scene. That's because a metric ton of shit goes down. And by that I mean a lot . This is the episode where all of the major story arcs converge, for better or worse. Fortunately, right now, it's all for the better. Twists and turns abound; alliances shift and fates are sealed. Heartbreaking betrayals and heartwarming reunions. Matt Lambert's impressively structured script plays with our emotions while it disregards our expectations, which is exactly the level of storytelling the show needs on a consistent, week-to-week basis. It's getting closer to that lately for sure, but this marks the first time it's the sh...

★★★★☆ In life, everything that matters usually has a cost, and the drama revolves around whether or not you're willing to pay it. Cost is front and center on Into the Badlands Season 2 Episode 5, which finds Sunny and Bajie on the latest stop in their buddy road picture adventure: a camp full of reprobates called "mechs," led by a the slithery dude Nos.  Nos is an old mate of Bajie (who doesn't he know?), and it seems he has a sneaky way back into the badlands. But, of course, there is a cost.  The Silver Moon sword is just the ticket, and all is well. That is, until it isn't. I'm really liking the Mad Max vibe this season, and these mechs (they must have gotten their name from video games back in the day) all dress the same (of course!), giving their world a nice palette. That's good production design: every barony, every camp, and every group has their own uniform of sorts, and it really adds to the visual appeal.  Anyhoo, Nos seem...

★★★★☆ Well, this was a pleasant surprise. After last week’s slow-ish interlude in which we sat around waiting for the Baron prom to happen, we get an entire episode that’s all just about speeding up the pace. To put it lightly, major shit goes down in “Palm of the Iron Fox”, shit that has huge ramifications on the rest of the season, if not the series itself. I, for one, say bravo (and it's about time).  I'm not saying this episode is perfect. Characters (especially those who are newly introduced) still take on the laborious and unrealistic task of providing details about their backstories to give us fo lks at home an idea of where they fall on   Into the Badlands ’ large character spectrum. Case in point, Baron Chau, someone who has the potential to become a fan favourite. I'd like to to see her do more than spend most of her screen time detailing her resume and summarizing her life to those who are supposed to know her well. "Palm of the Iron Fox” just m...

Can a clipper really hope to have on ordinary life when his "clipping" days are done? That's one of the main questions Into the Badlands Season 2 Episode 3 poses, when Sunny and Bajie meet Nathaniel "Silver" Moon, a legendary escaped clipper. Sunny just wants to reunite with Veil, the love of his life, and baby Henry, but Moon stands in the way. Nathaniel looked like a major problem at first blush, but he saved them from a deadly fate at the hands of some Nomad bounty hunters, in a spirited fight on a narrow bridge. I love that they make the action set pieces out of the ordinary, this time in an unusual location. Sunny: no weapons? No problem! And Nathaniel sure likes to chop off some heads, doesn't he? I especially liked the soccer kick he used on the decapitated noggin of the last Nomad he offed. Bajie is still hilarious, and the old school way he dispatched his Nomad was humorous in light of all the frenzied kung fu going on around hi...