765 Best Releases From the Genre Drama
Dead Boy Detectives
SimilarFantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes, The Avengers: United They Stand,
Dead Boy Detectives is, by its nature, a strange beast. Both a spinoff of MAX’s now-finished Doom Patrol series and Netflix’s own Sandman, it began as a sort of backdoor pilot two and a half years ago in the third episode of Doom Patrol Season 3. However, this series tossed the actors portraying the Boys and their living friend Crystal for an entirely different trio of performers. Now George Rextrew plays Edwin, the uptight turn-of-the-century boy. Jayden Revri steps into the jacket of Edwin's late 80s punk adjacent partner Charles. Finally, Kassius Nelson portrays their modern and still of this mortal plane third wheel, teen medium Crystal Palace.
Soon after meeting and freeing Crystal from the clutches of a demon named David (David Iacono), the boys take her in, although Edwin is less than thrilled at the idea. Missing large chunks of her memory, she is anxious to throw herself into the boys’ work investigating cases for and about ghosts, usually in the name of sending them off to the Great Beyond. Their first case as a trio takes them away from their English home to Port Townsend, WA. Unfortunately, even after they close the case, forces conspire to keep the three stuck in the town. With only time to waste, they decide to make the best of it by solving the problems of Townsend’s surprisingly bustling phantom population.
Kassius Nelson accesses those spooky-ooky powers. (Netflix)
This kind of “neither here nor there” of the show’s beginning and the characters’ “house arrest” soon reveals itself as a kind of meta reflection of the series itself. Steve Yockey, the writer of that backdoor pilot episode and the creator of this series, clearly has enthusiasm and love for the concept and the characters. The central relationship between the spectral friends has a striking sweetness without being cloying. The two's connection never feels in doubt, even as they bicker or revelations of unrequited sexual attraction come to light. The scripting deftly avoids needless "can their friendship survive" melodrama or after-school special syrupiness. It doesn’t hurt that, despite the roster change, Rexstrew and Revri wear the roles like comfortable clothes. They give Edwin and Charles a casual depth that extends behind their simple archetypes. Continue Reading →
Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver
Similar2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Aliens (1986), Apollo 13 (1995), Armageddon (1998), Catwoman (2004), Con Air (1997), Die Hard (1988), The Matrix Reloaded (2003), The Matrix Revolutions (2003), You Only Live Twice (1967),
Watch afterRebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire (2023),
My favorite moments in Rebel Moon: Part Two - The Scargiver come during quick breaths before a plunge.
In the first, warriors Tarak (Staz Nair) and Milius (Elise Duffy) come to terms with their likely imminent deaths at the hands of a smoke-spewing tank. Having spent years of his life consumed by survivor's guilt, Tarak thought having a cause to die for would be enough. It isn't. He wants to live, but he probably won't. The next best thing is to die fighting alongside a peer like Milius.
In the second, Kora (Sofia Boutella) is in the midst of blasting her way through the fearsome dreadnought King's Gaze. After slaying a warrior wielding a high-tech superheated sword, she takes a moment to catch her breath. With some pilfered cloth, she wraps the blade's hilt so she can use it without burning herself. It's a moment of improvisation, providing Boutella a chance to deliver a quieter piece of physical acting that stands in contrast to brawling with a corridor of goons or swordfighting Ed Skrein's Admiral Noble. Continue Reading →
Manhunt has proved yet another critical hit for AppleTV+. The series’ portrayal of historical figures as rich, complex, and possessing interesting dynamics with each other has received a large amount of credit for its success. Damian O’Hare, as one of the least well-known figures featured in the show, Thomas Eckert, has achieved high praise as well. With the series finale arriving this Friday, O’Hare took some time to speak to us about bringing an important but little-written-about historical figure to life, Ireland and America’s intertwined histories, and what is the true soul of the Manhunt.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
THE SPOOL: We were just talking about you having watched the most recent three episodes. That catches you up in time for the series finale. Looking back over what you've seen, how do you feel about the results? Obviously, you had enough initial interest in the project to sign on. Still, projects often end up different than how they started. Given that, did Manhunt pay off on what you were expecting or hoping? Continue Reading →
Franklin
SimilarA Fortunate Life, A Little Princess, Anna Karenina, Återkomsten, Atomic Train, Cleopatra, Dexter, Game of Thrones, Gossip Girl, Intruders, Jack the Ripper, Jewels, Monarch of the Glen,
Planet of the Apes Pride and Prejudice Scully, Son of the Morning Star, Tales from the Neverending Story, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Phantom of the Opera, The Shining, The Sun Also Rises, Unterleuten: The Torn Village,
StudioApple Studios,
Michael Douglas's career so deeply connects him to as specific kind of late 20th/early 21st Century man. As a result, throwing him back to the 18th Century and into the body of Benjamin Franklin feels deeply counterintuitive. It is not surprising that Franklin—an adaptation of the book A Great Improvisation by Stacy Schiff—is one of the few period projects Douglas has done, joining the likes of The Ghost and the Darkness and those flashback scenes in the Ant-Man films. What is surprising, and to the series’ credit, is how quickly that strangeness recedes. It isn’t that Douglas manages to fade into the role of Franklin until he disappears entirely, but he does manage to recede enough that he doesn’t disrupt the show’s reality.
In some ways, Douglas proves a surprisingly apt selection. No stranger to playing womanizers on screen, Douglas easily finds the correct valence to portray Franklin’s specific flavor of late 18th-century skirt chaser. The metacommentary works in his favor as well, an aging icon who retains much of his skill but perhaps can no longer command the same buzz or box office returns embodying an aging icon whose mind remains sharp but whose body—and possibly will—has been beaten up by life and time. While almost a decade older than the Franklin he’s portraying, Douglas also excels at the moments where the audience witnesses the statesman energized like old times.
Thibault de Montalembert has neither the time nor the interest in your lame attempts at Call My Agent/Dix pour cent joke attempts. (AppleTV+)
Still, the script too frequently hamstrings the actor. Not bad by any means, the writing still suffers for trying to match Franklin’s reputation. It’s the old conundrum of trying to build a series, film, or play around a singular piece of art. How does a creator convince the audience that someone is singing the most fantastic song ever without truly writing the most fantastic song ever? Similarly, how do writers provide dialogue to what is, by historical reputation, one of the greatest wits in American History without simply quoting his greatest hits? Continue Reading →
The Sympathizer
SimilarA Fortunate Life, A Little Princess,
Agatha Christie's Poirot Anna Karenina, Återkomsten, Atomic Train, Blackeyes, Dexter, Game of Thrones, Gossip Girl, Jack the Ripper, Jewels, M*A*S*H, Moeder, waarom leven wij?, Monarch of the Glen, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,
Planet of the Apes Pope John Paul II, Scully,
Sherlock Holmes Son of the Morning Star, The Lost World, The Phantom of the Opera, The Shining, The Sun Also Rises, The Wimbledon Poisoner, Troubles, Unterleuten: The Torn Village, Viso d'angelo, Witchcraft, Wycliffe,
"All wars are fought twice. The first on the battlefield. The second time in memory." This line, emblazed in Vietnamese and English in the opening moments of The Sympathizer, is taken right from Vietnamese-American author Viet Thanh Nguyen's bestselling novel of the same name. Fittingly, it also serves as the thesis statement for Max's adaptation of the sprawling work, a fleet-of-foot miniseries that explores the malleability of identity and perception through the lens of the Vietnam War, and the dynamic lenses through which our lives and conflicts can be viewed.
That duality is encapsulated in the titular character, a French-Vietnamese biracial protagonist known only as The Captain (Hoa Xuande). From his childhood in Vietnam, he was always ostracized for being neither white nor Asian enough; his only solace came from his two friends, Bon (Fred Nguyen Khan) and Man (Duy Nguyen), who instead frame his heritage as being "twice of everything." Cut to Vietnam in the '70s, in the days leading up to the Fall of Saigon: He works for the Vietnamese Secret Police, interrogating Viet Cong prisoners at the behest of his arrogant martinet of a boss, The General (Toan Le). But he's also a communist mole, feeding information back to Man, who's now his North Vietnamese Army handler, and his daily life is a struggle to reconcile all of these varying identities.
That struggle is further compounded after the Fall of Saigon (an escape attempt rendered in the first episode as an exciting, terrifying barrage of booming explosions and a foot race to a fleeing cargo plane). The Captain and Bon make it to America, though not without some heartbreaking losses for the latter; now, the two are alone, the Captain still required to report on the General's activities while laying low for both his CIA handlers and the LA cultural figures who treat him as an object of curiosity. Continue Reading →
Fallout
SimilarBlack Scorpion, Dark Angel, Dark Skies, Knots Landing, Mortal Kombat: Conquest, Noah's Arc,
Planet of the Apes Sonic the Hedgehog, The Tribe, ThunderCats, Thunderstone, World's End Harem,
Few titles in the world of video game RPGs are as stylistically significant and cherished by fans as Interplay Entertainment’s Fallout. First published in 1997, the post-apocalyptic RPG has spawned countless sequels (including the acclaimed Fallout: New Vegas) and garnered millions of devoted fans through meticulous worldbuilding and its (now signature) atomic age-inspired retrofuturist aesthetic.
Thanks to shows like The Last of Us proving naysayers wrong and paving the way for high-budget, critically acclaimed video game adaptations, Prime Video has joined forces with Bethesda to bring the Fallout franchise to the small screen with an eight-episode series of the same name. Bolstered by source material with a baked-in sense of aesthetics and a pair of winning leads in Ella Purnell and Walton Goggins, Fallout is a clever, twisted apocalyptic odyssey that soars as both a video game adaptation and a standalone series.
Starring Purnell, Goggins, and Aaron Clifton Moten, Fallout follows Lucy (Purnell), an idealistic, sheltered “Vault Dweller” who has spent her entire life in an idyllic vault built to keep wealthy Americans happy and healthy in the event of nuclear devastation. When surface raiders disrupt her vault’s peaceful existence and kidnap her father, Lucy is forced to leave the safety of Vault 33, encountering all manner of unlikely enemies and allies along the way. Continue Reading →
RIPLEY
SimilarA Fortunate Life, A Little Princess,
Agatha Christie's Poirot Anna Karenina, Återkomsten, Atomic Train, Blackeyes, Cleopatra, Dark Winds, Dexter, Elizabeth R, Game of Thrones, Gossip Girl, Jack the Ripper, Jewels, M*A*S*H, Moeder, waarom leven wij?, Monarch of the Glen, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,
Planet of the Apes Pope John Paul II, Scully,
Sherlock Holmes Son of the Morning Star, The Buccaneers, The Gold Robbers, The Lost World, The Phantom of the Opera, The Wimbledon Poisoner, Tientsin Mystic, Troubles, Unterleuten: The Torn Village, Viso d'angelo, Witchcraft, World War II: When Lions Roared, Wycliffe,
StudioShowtime Networks,
Tom Ripley doesn't exist. Not just in the sense that he's a fictional creation of thriller novelist extraordinaire Patricia Highsmith, no; as a man, Ripley is a chimera, a shadow, a formless void that hungrily sucks in whatever nourishment it can from whatever or whoever is around him. Damn the consequences. He's one of literature's (and, in the case of several cinematic adaptations, moviedom's) greatest conmen, a remora with nothing behind the eyes except the next game, the next mark, the next place to flee when suspicions run too high. Now, writer/director/showrunner Steven Zaillian has adapted the first of Highsmith's novels into an eight-episode miniseries for Netflix (it was originally slated for Showtime before they sold it), and by virtue of those pedigrees, it's maybe the best original series the streamer has put out all year.
When we first meet Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott), he's a low-level grifter eking out a living with some street-level mail fraud in New York City. But one day, a private dick (Bokeem Woodbine) taps him on the shoulder and hauls him in front of a wealthy shipping magnate (filmmaker Kenneth Lonergan) for a special mission: travel to Italy on his dime to find his layabout painter-wannabe son Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) and bring him back home to fulfill his business responsibilities. Ripley doesn't know the man, but he agrees -- the chance to start all over somewhere else (and be bankrolled for it) is too great. So he swans off to Atrani, a small beachside villa where he ingratiates himself to the pampered Dickie and his writer girlfriend, Marge (Dakota Fanning), two people as insulated by their wealth as they are by their respective artistic mediocrities.
RIPLEY. (L to R) Dakota Fanning as Marge Sherwood and Johnny Flynn as Dickie Greenleaf in RIPLEY. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024
Unlike previous adaptations of the material, Zaillian barely (if ever) clues us into any kind of deeper humanity lurking under the surface for Tom Ripley. Matt Damon's version from The Talented Mr. Ripley was motivated by emotional impulse; here, Scott plays him like a reptile. There's something downright alien about his cold tilt of the head, those shark-like eyes (aided by Robert Elswit's chiaroscuro photography, which we'll get to later), the way his delivery teeters between blase deference and a flat, manipulative affect. He seems less like a desperate hanger-on than a predator, one all too happy to take rich people for everything they've got and discard them when he's sucked all the meat off their bones. He doesn't covet the lifestyles of the rich and famous, and even the script's frequent allusions to Ripley's subtextual lust for Dickie don't seem to fully account for his motivations. Continue Reading →
Sugar
Similar4400,
Agatha Christie's Poirot Angel, Baywatch Nights, Black Scorpion, Dexter, Knots Landing, Noah's Arc, Pope John Paul II,
Sherlock Holmes The 4400, World War II: When Lions Roared,
StudioApple Studios,
Some shows are difficult to write about because they don’t excite one’s passions. They’re not terrible or great, so they offer little to dig into. Sugar is not that sort of show. Instead, its difficulty stems from a plot development that seems too large to go unremarked upon. And yet, it would be unfair to those who haven’t yet watched the show to spoil it.
With all that in mind, I will delicately attempt to navigate a third path. This development is significant. It changes much of what you know about several of the characters. And yet, it largely doesn’t impact the show. I don’t mean it is a waste of time, only that the show’s positives and negatives remain largely unaffected by this development. Take it out, and the story’s heart will remain essentially the same. It’s the rare significant plot point that changes so much without fundamentally altering the series. So, while it would be interesting to write about and explore it, this review is still broadly comprehensive without touching it.
Amy Ryan bellies up to the bar and reminds us all she's excellent in noir stories. (AppleTV+)
John Sugar (Colin Farrell) is a private investigator specializing in finding missing people. Draped in bespoke suits, he insists he hates hurting people but does so with fluidity and ease. After completing a case in Japan, a message from legendary film producer Jonathan Siegel (James Cromwell) draws him back to LA. Jonathan’s granddaughter Olivia (Sydney Chandler) is missing. Despite a history of substance abuse and frequent absences—as well as the lack of concern from her father Bernie (Dennis Boutsikaris), a producer of…less quality movies—Jonathan is convinced this time is different. A film obsessive, Sugar can’t resist taking the meeting despite reassuring his handler Ruby (Kirby) that he’d rest and recuperate. When Olivia reminds the PI of his missing sister, he must take the case, promise or not. Continue Reading →
Star Trek: Discovery
Similar3rd Rock from the Sun,
Battlestar Galactica Ben 10: Omniverse, Blake's 7,
Caprica Crusade, Dark Skies, Doctor Who, Duck Dodgers,
Earth 2 Eureka Seven Farscape,
Firefly First Wave, Flash Gordon, Future Man, Hyperdrive, Intruders, Inuyashiki: Last Hero,
Justice League Lost in Space, Marvel's Rocket & Groot, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Out of This World, Quark, Red Dwarf, Space: 1999,
Star Trek Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,
Star Trek: The Next Generation Star Trek: Voyager Star Wars: Droids, Stargate Atlantis, Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills, The Ark, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Sarah Jane Adventures, The Transformers, Threshold, ThunderCats, Torchwood, UFO, Ultraman,
StarringAnthony Rapp, Blu del Barrio, David Ajala, Doug Jones, Mary Wiseman, Sonequa Martin-Green, Wilson Cruz,
The 1960s Star Trek show did not have the chance to do a true series finale. All of its successors did though, until now. From The Next Generation to Deep Space Nine to Voyager to Enterprise to Picard, every show had the opportunity to make a final statement and sum up the years of adventures in some fashion. Yet, despite being the primogenitor of the franchise, The Original Series just sort of ends, with the sense of the conveyor belt simply stopping, and its last output accidentally becoming an end, if not quite the end.
And yet “Turnabout Intruder”, infamous though it may be, is a surprisingly fitting finale for TOS. It features the good notions and abiding themes of the 1960s show: the idea that this crew knows their captain well enough to sniff out a fake; that become a well-functioning team that can work through even the most unorthodox problems, and that after seventy-nine episodes’ worth of outlandish adventures, they remain open to new and unexpected possibilities. It also features the bad ideas and problematic elements that plagued series time and again: from a mixed-at-best perspective on women to William Shatner’s over-the-top acting. In that, the show’s final outing is an inadvertent but strangely apt swan song for the series.
In its new season, Star Trek: Discovery follows in those hallowed, unexpected footsteps. This is Discovery’s fifth and final year on the air, but as reported by the cast and crew, they didn’t know that when writing or filming it until the last minute. Despite the promise of a hastily-shot coda to give the show an air of finality, that makes this last leg of Discovery’s mission an accidental ending, not unlike the one endured by the original Star Trek series. Continue Reading →
Parish
NetworkAMC+,
StarringGiancarlo Esposito,
Theoretically, Parish is an adaptation of the three-episode British series The Driver. In practice, the similarities boil down to “What if there was a driver who used to do crime and might start again?” Considering how standard the plot is—a reformed criminal pushed back into a life of crime—it seems strange to call it an adaptation.
To get specific, Gray Parish (Giancarlo Esposito) is a former wheelman who left crime a long time ago. In the time since, he met and married Ros (Paula Malcomson) and started a livery service. He and Ros had two children together as well, Maddox (Caleb Baumann) and Makayla (Arica Himmel). A year before the show’s story begins, Maddox was shot to death, and the killer remains at large. Gray has particularly struggled with the fallout. Additionally, his business is falling apart, seemingly from a combination of his grief and the economy.
Into this precarious situation arrives Colin (Skeet Ulrich), a friend of Parish’s from the old days. Colin, barely out of prison, has already gotten in trouble with The Horse (Zackary Momoh), leader of an increasingly powerful New Orleans gang, The Tongais. To keep himself alive, he needs Parish’s help in cleaning out a safe. Out of a mix of loyalty and his own financial desperation, Parish agrees. Unfortunately, one job is never just one job. Continue Reading →
Palm Royale
SimilarAnna Karenina, Återkomsten, Blackeyes, Jewels, KONOSUBA – An Explosion on This Wonderful World!, Monarch of the Glen, Oh, Doctor Beeching!,
Planet of the Apes The Wimbledon Poisoner, Troubles, Unterleuten: The Torn Village, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,
StudioApple Studios,
There’s something undeniably inspired about casting Kristin Wiig as Maxine Simmons in Palm Royale. A social climber attempting to ingratiate herself into late 60s Palm Beach high society, Simmons shares with Wiig a certain constant desire to change herself. The actor's years at Saturday Night Live and subsequent film roles have established her as a chameleonic performer. She has enough versatility to play everyone from the painfully grounded to live-action cartoon characters. In this case, Wiig pours that talent into a woman trying desperately to be a different version of herself.
As a kind of middle-aged conservative version of Tom Ripley, Wiig does indeed excel. The actor invests a mix of brute force cunning and barely hidden desperation in Simmons. That makes the would-be social maven compelling and repulsive in equal measure. Her machinations are too intriguing to ignore, but her very presence can be almost unendurable, especially for viewers with an overactive sense of vicarious embarrassment.
Kristen Wiig and Allison Janney try to hash it out. (AppleTV+)
The show also adds an interesting layer to her performance of wealth and class. Simmons’ claims often sound outlandish, the scrambling lies of someone trying to stay one step ahead of being exposed. However, Palm Royale slowly confirms a great many of them. Unlike Ripley or Saltburn’s Oliver Quick, she’s not a total fabrication. She has the credentials for the inner circle, but can’t stomach the time it takes. Continue Reading →
Manhunt
SimilarAgatha Christie's Poirot Anna Karenina, Dark Winds, Dexter, Fallen, Fate/Apocrypha, Fearless, Game of Thrones, Gossip Girl,
Hilda Furacão Jack the Ripper, Jewels, La Mante,
Little Women M*A*S*H, Moeder, waarom leven wij?, Monarch of the Glen, More Tales of the City, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,
Planet of the Apes Pride and Prejudice Sherlock Holmes Soul Land 2: The Peerless Tang Clan, Super Pumped, Tales from the Neverending Story, The Buccaneers, The Lost World, The Strain, The Sun Also Rises, The Wimbledon Poisoner, Tientsin Mystic, Troubles, Unorthodox, Witchcraft, Wycliffe,
Studio3 Arts Entertainment, Apple Studios,
Making Abraham Lincoln or Hamish Linklater the least interesting thing about your television series is no easy feat. That's especially the case when it features Linklater playing the 16th President of the United States. Yet, somehow, the Monica Beletsky-created MANHUNT, adapted from the James L. Swanson tome of the same name, manages to do just that. And that is 100 percent a compliment.
Often forgotten is that Lincoln was not John Wilkes Booth (Anthony Boyle) and his co-conspirators’ only target. The schemers also marked Vice President Andrew Johnson (Glenn Morshower, an acting veteran turning in his best work.) and Secretary of State William Seward (Larry Pine) as targets. (The series additionally implies that the show’s lead, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (Tobias Menzies), may have been on that list, but that doesn’t appear in historical texts.) By opening on the far larger plot that almost immediately unraveled due to bungling and cold feet, MANHUNT quickly asserts its intentions. While catching Booth is the series’ splashiest element, it is certainly not all it has on its mind.
Tobias Menzies has hat, will travel. (AppleTV+)
If anything, the eponymous search provides the show a means of taking stock of America immediately after the Civil War. Ping-ponging around in time, Manhunt provides a glimpse of how a collection of Americans experienced life after General Lee’s surrender. The derailing of a far more extensive restructuring of America feels every bit as mourned here as the fallen President. Continue Reading →
Love Lies Bleeding
SimilarAliens (1986), Basic Instinct (1992),
Bend It Like Beckham (2002) Caché (2005), Catwoman (2004), Con Air (1997), Desert Hearts (1985), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Die Hard (1988), Fargo (1996), Monster (2003), Oldboy (2003), Paris Can Wait (2016), Strange Days (1995), The Matrix Reloaded (2003), The Matrix Revolutions (2003), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), The Thirteenth Floor (1999), The Usual Suspects (1995), True Romance (1993), Vertigo (1958),
StudioA24, Film4 Productions,
The word for Rose Glass (Saint Maud) and Weronika Tofilska's Love Lies Bleeding is "precise." From the individual and combined performances of leads Kristen Stewart and Katy O'Brian (whose turn as a cunning Imperial agent was a bright spot in the often dreary third season of The Mandalorian) to DP Ben Fordesman's chameleonic camera work and hair department lead Megan Daum's wide-ranging design work, everyone on the project knew exactly what they wanted to do and how to get it done. The result is a bracing, clear-eyed noir thriller, and a fraught, swoon-worthy romance. It's my favorite movie of 2024 so far.
It's the late 1980s. The reserved and insightful Lou (Stewart) manages a grimy bodybuilding gym in a sunbleached western suburb. She does not talk to her father, the cruel, cunning crime lord Lou Sr. (Ed Harris). She loves her sister, fraying housewife Beth (Jena Malone), and hates that she will not leave her loathsome slimeball husband JJ (Dave Franco). The closest person Lou has to a romantic partner is the aggressively cheerful Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), and their on-off something or other boils down to, in Bart Simpson's words, "geographical convenience, really." Enter Jackie (O'Brian), a drifting bodybuilder aiming for a Las Vegas contest where victory can leap passion into profession. The sparks are immediate.
Jackie (Katy O'Brian) strives for bodybuilding stardom. She's doing the work, but the events of Love Lies Bleeding bend the barrier between her reality and her dream. A24.
Jackie's drive lights a fire in Lou, and Lou's methodical care grounds Jackie. Simultaneously, Lou's desire to help Jackie achieve her dream and Jackie's desire to make Lou happy lead them to make bad calls—the sort of bad calls that lead to worse calls that lead to blood. And neither JJ's venality nor Lou Sr.'s mercilessness should be discounted. Continue Reading →
Apples Never Fall
NetworkPeacock,
SimilarA Fortunate Life, A Little Princess,
Agatha Christie's Poirot Anna Karenina, Återkomsten, Atomic Train, Blackeyes, Brides of Christ, Cleopatra, Dancing on the Edge, Dexter, Elizabeth R, Fallen, Game of Thrones, Gossip Girl, Intruders, Jewels, M*A*S*H, More than Blue: The Series, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,
Planet of the Apes Pope John Paul II,
Pride and Prejudice Scully,
Sherlock Holmes Soul Land 2: The Peerless Tang Clan, Tales from the Neverending Story, The 4400, The Buccaneers, The Lost World, The Shining, Unterleuten: The Torn Village, World War II: When Lions Roared, Wycliffe,
The expression, “The book was better,” has become a truism in adaptation, an assumption where the few exceptions only prove the rule. But what’s a creator to do when the source material is deeply flawed?
If you’re Apples Never Fall creator Melanie Marnich, you make several cosmetic changes to Liane Moriarty’s novel. The drama moves from Australia to West Palm Beach. The four Delaney children—Troy (Jake Lacy), Brooke (Essie Randles), Amy (Alison Brie), and Logan (Conor Merrigan Turner)—are no longer uniformly tall and olive-skinned. Quite the opposite, really, on the skin tone front. Relationships are shuffled a bit. Unfortunately, these changes fail to elevate the series.
The broad strokes of the plot itself are intriguing. The Delaney parents Joy (Annette Bening) and Stan (Sam Neill) have finally retired from a lifetime of running a tennis center, including their own stints as players and coaches. Rather than a delightful occasion, it churns up all manner of unprocessed relationship issues. Stan is cantankerous and competitive, oscillating between diminishing everyone around him with words and beating them all over the court. Joy, on the other hand, expected to spend her golden years catching up with her children, who lack the time or interest in doing the same. Continue Reading →
The Regime
SimilarA Fortunate Life, A Little Princess, Anna Karenina, Återkomsten, Atomic Train, Blackeyes, Brides of Christ, Cleopatra, Dancing on the Edge, Elizabeth R, Family Guy, Golden Years, Intruders, Jack the Ripper, Jewels, Moeder, waarom leven wij?, More than Blue: The Series, Pope John Paul II,
Pride and Prejudice Scully, Son of the Morning Star, The Buccaneers, The Gangster Chronicles, The Gold Robbers, The Phantom of the Opera, The Shining, The Sun Also Rises, The Wimbledon Poisoner, Troubles, Viso d'angelo, Witchcraft, World War II: When Lions Roared,
It might help some to think of The Regime less as satire and more as dark farce with political opinions. Yes, there’s nothing especially new here in the series’ send-up of a paranoid autocrat, Chancellor Elena Vernham (Kate Winslet), whose withdrawal from the larger world has brought an ever-decreasing grasp of reality. But sometimes, it is enough for a story to just make you laugh and feel sick with fear for the real world.
Much like creator Will Tracy’s The Menu, The Regime's advertisements suggest a different viewing experience than it delivers. And, as with that film, the audience risks missing a nasty treat if they don’t meet the series where it lives. The film arrived when “Eat the Rich” entertainment seemed to be spiking. However, The Menu’s focus didn’t lie with economics, at least not solely or predominantly. The Regime hits MAX as America is facing an eight-month nightmare Presidential election campaign goosed by the worst human being you’ve ever known, armed with his naked desire to rule entirely for personal gain and without even the slightest hint of criticism. However, the show’s goal isn’t a six-episode allegory on the excesses of executive power.
The dialogue, from an array of writers including Tracy and Bodies, Bodies, Bodies writer Sarah DeLappe, often suggests Veep with a less dexterous tongue. It keeps the palace intrigue fun and quick even when it the notes feel quite familiar. The willingness to spike international incidents with amoral verbal tartness is a delight. Continue Reading →
Far North
NetworkAMC+,
StarringTemuera Morrison,
The New Zealand crime dramedy can’t wrangle its disparate tones into a satisfying whole.
In some ways, Far North offers viewers three shows in one. There’s the harrowing tale of a quartet of Chinese women, Bi (Xana Tang), Jin (Xiao Hu), Hui (Nikita Tu-Bryant), and Ling (Louise Jiang), trapped in a boat off the coast of New Zealand. They’re under the thumb of Cai (Fei Li), a capricious crime middle manager whose corner-cutting and incompetence have left them stranded and facing death by dehydration and starvation. Unfortunately, rescue is almost as unpleasant a prospect as dying. To be saved, Cai demands they either “pay” for the rescue by sinking themselves deeper into debt and servitude or killing one of their own.
On the mainland, a different kind of crime story is unfolding. A group of less-than-competent criminals working for Blaze (Fay Tofilau) believe they’re about to get the score of their lives. Employed by her to take in the meth the Chinese women are transporting, they think it’ll be as easy as loading up a camper and driving it a few towns away. Alas, between the delays and their lack of skills, complications rapidly arise. Continue Reading →
The New Look
SimilarA Fortunate Life, Narco-Saints, Pope John Paul II, Super Pumped, The Phantom of the Opera, World War II: When Lions Roared,
StudioApple Studios,
Apple TV+'s latest miniseries blends fashion with fascism in its dramatization of the couture wars of the 1940s and '50s.
Across the crowded ballroom, Christian Dior (Ben Mendelsohn) spies Coco Chanel (Juliette Binoche) in the arms of a Nazi officer. War and occupation are chaos for everyone, yet these two legends of fashion couldn’t have chosen more different paths through the fog. Todd A. Kessler’s new series for AppleTV, The New Look, fashions history and gossip and tells the diverging stories of these designers with a simplicity that blossoms as the series completes its ten-episode parade.
The first three episodes, which make up the pilot drop, see us through the Nazi occupation of Paris and the end of World War II. The rest of the series will trace the fallout from the choices made during the war and return us to the 1950s, where our series begins with Dior, now the face of fashion, lecturing to students at The Sorbonne. After a dizzying display of fabulous designs, cementing that this series considers fashion a wearable art, Monsieur Dior opens the floor for questions. Immediately, he is confronted with accusations that he kept designing for Nazi girlfriends while others like Coco Chanel closed their shop. But, as Dior says with a sigh, there is a “truth behind the truth.” Continue Reading →
Love
Engage in holiday self-care with some movies that put a stake in the heart of romance.
Even if you're in a content, stable relationship, Valentine's Day can often feel like a bit of a joyless slog. Like a lot of holidays in the internet era, it's become less a day of celebration, and more another excuse to engage in conspicuous consumption and endless games of one-upmanship. Who got the biggest flower arrangement at the office? Who cares?
Whether single or not, you may understandably feel as if all the fun and romantic flair has been squeezed out of the day. In keeping with that, consider this short list of bleakly funny, sad, or just plain horrifying cinematic takes on romance to get you in the anti-spirit. Continue Reading →
Constellation
SimilarCruel Summer, Dexter, Golden Years, Good Job, Intruders, Kamen Rider, Luther, Millennium, Princess Principal, World's End Harem,
AppleTV+’s latest foray into sci-fi is short on resolutions but long on atmosphere.
It is, perhaps, a bit unfair to start a review of Constellation by noting its similarities to The Cloverfield Paradox. Still, they’re undeniably evident in the early going. The show opens with an international collection of astronauts facing an emergency in the wake of an incredible experiment. In the aftermath, evidence mounts that fatalities and damage to the space station were not the only consequences. Those who stayed up late after the Super Bowl to watch the third film in the Cloverfield anthology brand (?) will likely hear how similar that plot sounds. Thankfully, AppleTV+’s new series comes out looking favorable in the comparison.
A significant reason why is Constellation is far more interested in mining horror from what happens when Jo (Noomi Rapace) returns to Earth. As the astronaut left behind longest on the dying space station, her sense of disconnect is initially entirely understandable. However, as her experiences increasingly fail to match the realities of everyone around her, the suggestion that she’s experiencing nothing more than some short-term trauma response breaks down. Something happened to Jo, something she’s brought back to Earth with her. Continue Reading →
One Day at a Time
SimilarA Little Princess,
Black Books Cleopatra, Fallen, Florida Man, Flower Boy Next Door, Hyperdrive, Love, Timeless, More Tales of the City, Nine: Nine Time Travels, Off Centre, Oh, Doctor Beeching!, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,
Planet of the Apes Pride and Prejudice Queen Cleopatra, Silo, Soul Land 2: The Peerless Tang Clan, Tales from the Neverending Story, That '70s Show, The Family Game, The Gangster Chronicles,
The John Larroquette Show The Shining, Tientsin Mystic, Two and a Half Men, Unorthodox, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,
Netflix’s new romance limited series offers a thoughtful, warm adaptation of the 2009 novel.
The hook of author David Nicholls’ 2009 novel is irresistible. Readers catch up with two former classmates who are something more than friends but not quite lovers on the same day, July 19, every year from 1988 to 2008. It’s no wonder it has managed two adaptations in the 15 years since its release—first as a 2011 movie directed by Lone Scherfig from a script by Nicholls himself and now as a limited series created by Nicole Taylor, with only one Nicholls’ script among the fourteen episodes.
Dexter Mayhew (Leo Woodall) is handsome, charismatic, and just rich enough not to worry about making a plan for his future. Emma Morley (Ambika Mod) is also quite attractive—although she can’t (or won’t) see it—and from a working-class background that makes her feel as though she can’t pursue her clear goal for the future: to become a writer. They travel in different circles, but on the night of graduation, they end up falling into her bed. While they kiss plenty, it never goes further, Emma preferring to chat despite her massive and evident crush on Dexter. Continue Reading →