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Spies, tweens and Stetsons: 8 TV shows to watch for this winter

Justified
Community
Downton Abbey
Bunheads
The Americans
The Carrie Diaries

January is a tricky time for TV. We’re suffering through the mid-season hiatuses of our primetime favorites, yet many cable offerings return in the new year, and 2013 already boasts a slew of programming to get you through the winter doldrums.

So before you spend January blowing through your entire Netflix queue, brush up on these mid-season TV arrivals.

Downton Abbey
January 6, PBS: 8 pm

After all the war and tragedy that befell season two of this UK import, it seems that happiness may be on the horizon for season three. But if we’ve learned anything from this period drama, the whole happiness thing doesn’t always work out. At season two’s end, Sybil settled with Chauffer Branson, Lavinnia became a non-issue, Anna had some brief wedded bliss with her Mistah Bates, and poor William is no longer. The cast has hinted that a wedding will take place, but will cousins Matthew and Mary be the ones walking down the aisle? Also, Free Bates.

Bunheads
January 7, ABC Family: 8 pm

This quirky comedy reeled us in with its offbeat first season. Penned by Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, this tale of a small-town dance studio is back for more, picking up just months after Sutton Foster’s Michelle left her Vegas showgirl gig to marry the ill-fated Hubble. With her status at the dance studio uncertain, will the witty banter go by the wayside? We think not.

Justified
January 8, FX: 9 pm

Timothy Olyphant is back for another season of perfectly tailored jeans and derailing vigilantes. When we left the cowboy hat-wearing U.S. Marshal, he and ex-wife Winona called it quits once again, Boyd Crowder is more or less behind all nefarious goings-on in Harlan, and Dickie Bennett is mad as hell. This season, Olyphant’s Raylan Givens tackles a 30-year-old cold case and a riddle that echoes all the way back to his boyhood and his father.

Girls
January 13, HBO: 8 pm

Lena Dunham’s polarizing comedy returns for a second season, with a whole new batch of first-world problems presenting themselves in the lives of Hannah, Marnie, Jessa and Shoshanna. When we left the twentysomethings, Adam was giving Hannah a dose of some serious real talk, Jessa hastily married guest star Chris O’Dowd, Marnie continued to be whiny and Shoshanna finally got some. Season two finds Hannah on her own, ready to meet a man who isn’t a total creep. Will she find him? Probably not. But it’s funnier that way.

The Carrie Diaries
January 14, The CW: 7 pm

This highly anticipated Sex and the City prequel series follows the life and times of Carrie Bradshaw at the tender age of 16 — bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and eager to start her life in the Big Apple. Now that Gossip Girl is no longer, look for Carrie to fill the sharply dressed void left by Blair, Serena and the gang.

The Americans
January 30, FX: 9 pm

Felicity is back! Keri Russell returns to TV in this drama set in the 1980s portraying one-half of a married couple of KGB spies posing as Americans. The parents of two get their world rocked when an FBI agent moves in next door, as they covertly collaborate with a network of spies and informants under their control. Complicating their relationship even further is Phillip's (Brothers and Sisters star Matthew Rhys) growing sense of affinity for America's values and way of life.

Community
February 7, NBC: 7 pm

The band of Greendale misfits returns for another semester, minus Chevy Chase, and under new creative direction. Will the new season promise as much cult fare as the previous? With a show that’s gone 8-bit, explored the darkest timelines and introduced us to Inspector Spacetime, it’s hard to say. Regardless of its seemingly doomed Friday night time slot, there are sure to be plenty of quirks in store for this NBC fave.

The Walking Dead
February 10, AMC: 8 pm

The Walking Dead finally kicked things up a notch in season three. And by the end of the show’s winter finale, the governor’s daughter and prisoner Oscar died at the siege on Woodbury, and brothers Daryl and Meryl Dixon were reunited but had to face off in a death match. With a ton of new characters, and fresh new alliances starting to form, the conclusion to last season’s cliffhanger is sure to bring more apocalyptic zombie doom. And, sans Lori, which is upsetting to no one.

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Movie Review

Faces of Death returns with modern twist on cult horror film

Photo courtesy of of IFC Films

Dacre Montgomery in Faces of Death.

True horror fans will likely be familiar with the 1978 cult film Faces of Death, which purported to be a documentary showing real-life killings in gory detail. It didn’t, of course, but that didn’t stop rumors from continuing to spread for decades. Now, almost 50 years and multiple sequels later, comes a new version of Faces of Death, an actual movie that pays homage to the original in interesting ways.

Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works at a YouTube-like company called Kino as a content moderator, flagging videos that violate the company’s policies. This means her job often involves seeing some truly despicable things from all manner of depraved people. One day, though, she comes across a video that seems a little too real, and after seeing more similar videos, she starts to believe they’re genuine murders.

Going against her company NDA, she starts to investigate the videos on her own, which puts her on the radar of Arthur (Dacre Montgomery), who is actually kidnapping people and killing them on camera through methods seen in the original Faces of Death film. It’s not long before Arthur tracks her down, with a plan to make her one of his next victims.

Written and directed by Daniel Goldhaber (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) and co-written by Isa Mazzei, the film is not so much scary as it is creepy, with the occasional gross-out sequence. The idea of having someone emulate the killings in the cult film is a good idea, and pairing it with the modern-day attention economy - in which content creators go to increasing lengths for clicks - is a clever twist on a concept that other films have done.

The film as a whole is a commentary on how social media and video sharing sites have often decided to prioritize profits over the well-being of their users. Margot is shown allowing videos involving violence and sexual assault to stay on the site while nixing ones depicting how to use Narcan or demonstrating putting on a condom on a banana. Josh (Jermaine Fowler), Margot’s boss, is even explicit in the company mandate that outrageous videos drive views.

While Arthur has the makings of a good villain, there are few attempts to make him seem truly diabolical. His kidnappings often seem more spur-of-the-moment than calculated, and even though he has a well thought-out dungeon at home, the house’s location in the suburbs seems to make him vulnerable to easy discovery. Goldhaber and Mazzei leave more than a few unanswered questions along the way that take away from the intensity of the story.

Ferreira is yet another actor from Euphoria who’s capitalizing on her exposure from that show. She plays Margot’s increasing anxiety well, and when the action ratchets up in the final act, she meets the moment in a satisfying way. Montgomery returns to the vibe he had while playing the evil Billy on Stranger Things, and even though his character doesn’t fully live up to his potential, Montgomery sells his evil for all it’s worth.

The new Faces of Death may not be what some are expecting given the reputation of the previous films, but it’s a solid horror/thriller that uses the brand as a launching pad into something different. It doesn’t make much of a dent in the scare department, but it does give its violence and gore a degree of relevance in today’s often desensitized world.

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Faces of Death is now playing in theaters.

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