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Angel Gifts
Angel DVDs
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Dark Angel - The Complete Second Season
The second and last season of Dark Angel, the inventive James Cameron show about mutants during a future Depression, has some real strengths as well as one or two bad ideas that partly explain its much-regretted cancellation. Among the strengths are Alex (Jensen Ackles), the thoroughly unreliable mutant charmer whose flirtations with heroine Max (Jessica Alba) complicate her doomed love for Logan (Michael Weatherly), the crippled newshound whom she cannot now even touch--she has been infected with a deadly virus tailored specifically to kill him. The distrust this sows between the doomed couple does not always avoid soap-opera clichés, but often produces fine performances from all three, especially Alba. On the deficit side, John Savage's memorably ambiguous villain Lydeker from season 1 (who is alternately the mutants' nemesis and their protector) disappears to be replaced by the melodramatically sinister Agent White (Martin Cummins). White appears to be just a shoot-to-kill operative of the state and turns out to be another sort of superhuman, a product of an occultist breeding program going back to the dawn of history. After White's first ruthless killing, Max's reluctance to use deadly force is tested to near-implausible limits. The show ends with a rousing and moving finale, "Freak Nation", in which a theme often neglected in this final year--Max's relationship with her fellow couriers at Jam Pony--reaches a powerful climax. --Roz Kaveney
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Angel - Season Four
As the fourth season of Angel starts, everything is still as we left it: Angel has been sunk to the bottom of the sea in an iron box by his inexplicable and vindictive son Connor and Cordelia has been summoned to higher realms to await orders. Gunn and Fred are left in the Hyperion Hotel, unsure about what has happened to their friends, and Lilah is working hard to seduce Wesley to the dark side. In the first few episodes, some of this is resolved but it's almost immediately replaced by far worse crises: prophesies of doom accumulate more rapidly even than usual in this wonderfully gloomy show and a horned rock-like beast rains fire on Los Angeles. This last year is Angel's most tightly dramatic season yet--with a story arc of surprising intensity punctuated by the show's usual wit and sexiness. Season 4 is presented on DVD in Dolby 2.0 Surround Sound and anamorphic widescreen. It comes with insightful, and often hilarious, commentaries on seven of the 22 episodes as well as featurettes--a series overview, profiles of the characters of Jasmine and the Beast, a farewell to the Hyperion Hotel (the characters' base for three seasons), and a discussion of the apocalypse that Angel has to deal with from episode 7 onwards). --Roz Kaveney
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Angel - Season Five
Lives were upended--and some co-opted--in the fifth and final season of Angel, as the denizens of Angel Investigations found themselves taking on one of their scariest endeavors ever: corporate life. After making a literal deal with the devil (or something distinctly devil-like), Angel (David Boreanaz) moved his team from their crumbling hotel to the high-rise digs of law-firm-from-hell Wolfram & Hart, his reasoning being they could better fight the forces of evil from the inside, and with more resources to boot. Clever maneuvering or easy rationalization? Not a few members of Angel's team accused him of selling out (as did a number of viewers), but as with most of the show's previous four seasons, Angel somehow took a dubious premise and mined it for gold. And with one core cast member gone (Charisma Carpenter, whose Cordelia was immersed in a deep coma), it seemed as if the show, from within and without, would suddenly fall apart--that is, until Angel's longtime nemesis Spike (James Marsters) showed up, fresh from his sacrificial roasting at the series finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Let the vampire games begin! With Buffy off the air, fans flocked to Angel's last season to get their fix of Joss Whedon's "Buffyverse" in any form they could, and the addition of Spike was a shrewd one, albeit not enough to keep the show from getting canceled. And for the first half of the season, the creative forces behind the show seemed to be toying ruthlessly with the audience. Spike was around, but not entirely corporeal; Angel himself became sullen and withdrawn; and most horrifically, sweetheart scientist Fred (Amy Acker) and former watcher Wesley (Alexis Denisof) underwent traumas that would test even the most devoted viewer. However, just when you'd be about to throw in the towel, things started changing for the better--Spike became a permanent fixture (both in the flesh and on the show), Angel's secret motives were revealed, and the introduction of demon warrior Illyria, who proved to be the show's answer to Buffy's sardonic demon-made-human Anya, was a welcome breath of fresh air. Creatively, Angel also came up with some of its best episodes, including "Smile Time" (where Angel is turned into a puppet – really!) and "You're Welcome" (the show's 100th episode, which marked the bittersweet return of Carpenter's Cordelia). The ending of the series was deliberately ambiguous, and not everyone made it through alive, but in going out kicking, it was a proper sendoff for a show that always fought the good fight. --Mark Englehart
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The Blue Angel
For director Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich it all began with The Blue Angel, one of the masterpieces of Germany's Weimar cinema. This landmark film thrust the sultry and unrestrained Dietrich on an unsuspecting international film audience. She plays the prototypical role of Lola, the singer who tempts repressed professor Emil Jannings (the king of expressionist actors) into complete submission night after night at the Blue Angel nightclub. The film perfectly captures the masochism and degradation of the Weimar Republic, just before the rise of Adolf Hitler. And yet the moral confusion exhibited by Jannings is really due to his own torment. Dietrich is merely an instrument of his innermost desires, standing on stage in top hat, stockings, and bare thighs singing "Falling in Love Again." This is the original German version, newly remastered and subtitled. --Bill Desowitz
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Touched by an Angel - The Complete First Season
Touched by an Angel wasn't the first TV show with a heavenly theme, but it set a new standard for a compassionate portrayal of Christian themes on television. Roma Downey, with flowing brunette locks and a soft Irish lilt, plays Monica, a divine case-worker sent from town to town to lend an angelic hand. Sometimes it's as simple as helping a dying man reach out to those he loves before it's too late; sometimes she has to face the Devil himself--in the closing episode of the first season, Monica is sent to make sure an AIDS hospice opens despite the opposition of white supremacists being led by Satan (played by John Schneider, formerly of The Dukes of Hazzard). Earthy Della Reese plays Tess, Monica's supervisor, who takes an active role in quite a few cases. Touched by an Angel is unlikely to persuade dubious viewers to join the faith, but though all episodes resolve themselves through the intervention of God and his divine messengers, the show's view of humanity has hope and dignity. Touched by an Angel also features an impressive array of guest stars, ranging from country music star Randy Travis to Academy Award winner Cloris Leachman (The Last Picture Show) to Marion Ross (Happy Days); one episode, about a radio talk-show host fighting with her teenage daughter, features Melissa Joan Hart (Sabrina the Teenage Witch), James Marsden (X-Men), and Jack Black (School of Rock), all before their careers took off. Touched by an Angel: The Complete First Season has the first 13 episodes from 1994-95 and, as a bonus, the two-part series finale from 2003. --Bret Fetzer
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Angel - Season Three
In the third season of Angel, the titular vampire with a soul was forced to stand alone thanks to the (temporary) death of his beloved Buffy and her show's move to a new network, with no crossover between the two allowed. He returns from seeking peace in a demon-haunted monastery to find the L.A. Angel Investigations team fighting supernatural crime in his absence. Fred is still haunted by the nightmare dimension from which they rescued her; Cordelia's visions get ever more painful and debilitating. The schemes of the evil law firm Wolfram and Hart become every more imaginative and dragon lady Lilah Morgan becomes even more of an enemy when lusting after Angel. Unbelievably, Darla, Angel's vampire sire and lover, turns up, pregnant with his child and is tortured by inexplicable motherly feelings as well as a raging thirst for human blood. For a few episodes things go pretty well--but Angel's enemies, both those he has made in his quest for redemption and those he made when he was unadulterated evil, are still out there. Stephanie Romanov comes into her silky own in this series, making Lilah Morgan all the more seductively evil because she is clear about the choices she has made; the satanic law firm of Wolfram and Hart are this show's most inspired creation. As the season moves to its close, Wesley (Alexis Denisof) has hard choices to make. The devastating climax is compulsive viewing, and this season also contains one of the most impressive single episodes of the entire show: in "Waiting in the Wings," writer, director and creator Joss Whedon comes up with a classic ghost story as Angel and his crew go to the ballet and find a performance that is literally timeless. --Roz Kaveney
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An Angel at My Table - Criterion Collection
Originally produced as a three-part miniseries for New Zealand television, this extraordinary film is based on the life of Janet Frame, an introverted, sensitive girl who was later misdiagnosed as schizophrenic and spent eight years in a psychiatric hospital. She would later become one of New Zealand's most celebrated poets and novelists, publishing her first books while she was still confined to a mental ward. She had endured over 200 electroshock treatments and had almost been lobotomized by careless physicians who took no time to understand that she was merely awkward and shy and suffered from little more than routine depression. From a solid screenplay by Laura Jones, director Jane Campion (The Piano) tells this story without soapy melodrama, but rather as an exploration of a challenged creative spirit--a journey into a writer's mind, exploring the power of imagination as a mechanism of survival and self-defense. Three talented actors play Janet Frame at different ages throughout the film, with Kerry Fox giving a powerful performance as the young-adult Janet, whose own skill and creative tenacity would prove to be her salvation. Frightening, harrowing, and ultimately a source of humanistic enlightenment, An Angel at My Table (titled after Frame's autobiography) is a film you won't soon forget. --Jeff Shannon
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Angel - Season One
He's hunky, he's brooding, he's a do-gooder, and he was Buffy's first boyfriend. Angel, the tortured vampire destined to walk the earth with a soul, got his own series after three seasons on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and did what any new star might do: he moved to L.A. (the City of Angels--get it?) and set up shop. Angel (co-created by Buffy mastermind Joss Whedon) finds the titular vampire (David Boreanaz) as a kind of supernatural private investigator, fighting evil one case at a time and, like his ex-girlfriend, keeping the world from getting destroyed by vengeful demons and such. A darker, more film noir version of Buffy, Angel lacked the peppy humor that permeated Sunnydale but more than made up for it in its soul-wrenching gravitas, and it elevated Boreanaz to leading-man status, a role he filled out ably and then some. Initially, the stoic vampire was paired with Irish demon Doyle (the late Glenn Quinn) and fellow Sunnydale transplant Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter), but Angel finally found its footing when Doyle was dispatched (giving his powers of precognition to Cordelia) and replaced by Buffy alum Wesley (Alexis Denisof), a fallen watcher who, like his friends, was hoping for a new start in L.A. However, pesky law firm Wolfram and Hart (a front for the demon mafia, as it were) reared its ugly head and discovered Angel's presence, thus setting the stage for a battle of good and evil--and if you're a regular Joss Whedon fan, you know that it's a never-ending war. This first season features guest appearances by various Buffy characters, including werewolf boy Oz (Seth Green), rogue slayer Faith (Eliza Dushku), deliciously evil vamp Darla (Julie Benz), and Buffy herself (Sarah Michelle Gellar), all of whom helped get the show off and running in style. --Mark Englehart
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Charlie's Angels
For every TV-into-movie success like The Fugitive, there are dozens of uninspired films like The Mod Squad. Happily--and surprisingly--this breezy update of the seminal '70s jiggle show falls into the first category, with Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore (who also produced), and Lucy Liu starring as the hair-tossing, fashion-setting, kung fu-fighting trio employed by the mysterious Charlie (voiced by the original Charlie, John Forsythe). When a high-tech programmer (Sam Rockwell) is kidnapped, the angels seek out the suspects, with the daffy Bosley (Bill Murray in a casting coup) in tow. A happy, cornball popcorn flick, Charlie's Angels is played for laughs with plenty of ribbing references to the old TV show as well as modern caper films like Mission: Impossible. McG, a music video director making his feature film debut (usually a death warrant for a movie's integrity), infuses the film with plenty of Matrix-style combat pyrotechnics, and the result is the first successful all-American Hong Kong-style action flick. Plenty of movies boast a New Age feminism that has their stars touting their sexuality while being their own women, but unlike something as obnoxious as Coyote Ugly, Angels succeeds with a positive spin on Girl Power for the new millennium (Diaz especially sizzles in her role of crack super agent/airhead blonde). From the send-up of the TV show's credit sequence to the outtakes over the end credits, Charlie's Angels is a delight. --Doug Thomas
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Dark Angel - The Complete First Season
One of TV's more interesting tough-girl action shows, Dark Angel is a distinctive blend of the personal, the adventurous, and the politically aware. Cocreators James Cameron and Charles Eglee present a complex scenario of biological super-science and social collapse in which their gene-manipulated heroine and hacker-journalist hero can genuinely make a difference. In this first season they also provide an adversary who is a lot more than just a conventional villain. Jessica Alba is impressive as Max, bred and trained as a super-soldier but reclaiming her individual humanity; Michael Weatherly is scruffily attractive as Eyes Only, who sits semi-paralyzed in his eyrie above Seattle uncovering crime, corruption, and other skullduggeries and assigning deadly errands to the woman he hopelessly loves. Jon Savage has real authority as Lydeker, a man who has stretched his conscience to the breaking point, but is not personally corrupt. Some of the best episodes--"Prodigy," for example--are ones in which Lydeker and Max are forced into temporary alliance. Early on, the relationship between Max and the other workers at Jam Pony--the courier firm that provides her with a cover identity--is a little forced, but later on the two parts of Max's life are more successfully integrated: "Shorties in Love," for example, is a genuinely touching tale about Diamond, the doomed criminal ex-lover of Max's lesbian roommate. Dark Angel was never a perfect show, but at its occasional best it manages to be simultaneously funny and dramatic. --Roz Kaveney
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Angels
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Angel movies and DVDs.
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Angel Photos
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