42 Best TV Shows Similar to The Shining

There is objective good in this world, and it is possible to know it. That does not, however, mean that everything done in pursuit of that good is itself objectively reasonable. That’s the underlying message of so much of Say Nothing, a nine-episode look at the Troubles in Ireland predominantly through the eyes of former IRA soldier/terrorist Dolours Price (Lola Petticrew predominantly, Maxine Peake in middle age). For instance, it is objectively true that Ireland deserves to be united and free of British rule. Does it follow, then, that bombings in British downtown centers are objectively good? Regrettable but necessary? Acts of terrorism? Similarly, the series considers (although with admittedly less zeal) the idea that it is objectively true that British citizens deserve lives free of random acts of violence. Does that make all actions to crush the organization behind that violence acceptable? Does that extend to mistreatment of the people who live next to members of that organization, people who never made a bomb or even threw a rock but also don’t report their neighbors, friends, and family for the same? Continue Reading →

Like a good cop, Eli (Billy Crystal) is sure at the start of Before that if he solves this one last case, he can retire happily. The difference is Eli is a psychiatrist, not a cop. And the case isn’t some unsolved murder or wild heist. It’s a little boy, Noah (Jacobi Jupe). Noah is a child in the foster system living with Denise (Rosie Perez). He has selective mutism. When Noah speaks, he occasionally does so in a no longer used Dutch dialect. He experiences visual and auditory hallucinations that often lead to violent outbursts. He also seems to know Eli somehow and, more disconcertingly, Eli’s recently deceased wife, Lynn (Judith Light). The more Eli connects to the case, the worse it seems to get for both doctor and client. Before long, the audience, and indeed the doctor himself, must contemplate the limits of science and medicine. Is Noah mentally ill, or is there some strange and potentially dangerous supernatural force exerting a hold on him? While the concept of “mental illness or supernatural intervention” came into vogue with The Exorcist(if not sooner), the rather risible idea experienced a kind of zenith in the late 90s and early 2000s. The most common form was an aging but still bankable male star (Michael Douglas, Robert DeNiro, to name a couple) as a psychologist, psychiatrist, or social worker—Hollywood frequently doesn’t know the difference—working with a young actress poised for stardom (Brittany Murphy, Dakota Fanning) in films with fairly generic names (Don’t Say a Word, Hide and Seek). There were other variations on theme, mixing gender, age, occupation, and so on. But at their core was the same driving question: is all this wild stuff the audience seeing caused by an evil otherworldly entity or the unfortunate result of an untreated or treated improperly mental illness? Before belongs to this “proud” tradition. Continue Reading →

If you’ve seen or read enough stories about vengeance, chances are good you’ve encountered the saying, “He who seeks revenge digs two graves,” or some variation. Likely misattributed to Confucius, its meaning nonetheless carries weight. The new drama Disclaimer wrestles with the adage far more seriously than most other takes on the act of seeking catharsis through reprisal. Teacher Stephen Brigstocke (Kevin Kline) has just finished self-destructively barreling into his own firing, quite the fall for a former Teacher of the Year. He’s alone, a widower, his wife Nancy (Lesley Manville) dead after a protracted time with cancer. However, in many ways, he’s been alone since their son Jonathan (Louis Partridge) died about two decades earlier. That’s when his wife began to pull away from him and didn’t stop until her death. With his newfound time, he begins to clean out the closets and wardrobes left unused since her passing. Among the debris, he discovers a series of objects that lead to a manuscript. In its pages, Nancy lays out their son’s final days in Italy. More importantly, she places the blame for his death firmly at the feet of Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett). Catherine is now a highly successful documentary filmmaker married to financier Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen) with an adult son, Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Continue Reading →

Watching The Perfect Couple, Jenna Lamia’s slick adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s 2018 novel for Netflix, two thoughts immediately bubble up. The first isn’t the fault of the show’s quality so much as its timing. That thought is, “maybe we should give a break to all these shows and movies about rich folk in great locales doing crime”. In less than a year, I have reviewed shows with that plot taking place in a planned bunker in the tundra, on an ultra-expensive cruise ship, a rich enclave in West Palm Beach, and, now, an estate in a seaside New England town. Other recent entries include The Glass Onion, The Menu, and one could even mount an argument for Only Murderers in the Building. A lot of these are good. Some are great. But perhaps we could spread the ensemble crime-mystery wealth (haHA) a bit? Maybe a murder mystery set at a State Fair? Meghann Fahy's got those beach-y waves everybody wants. (Netflix) Granted, this is a bit unfair. The Perfect Couple comes from a novel. Hilderbrand set the novel in Nantucket, where she lived, so she was writing about the kind of climate outside her window. That all makes sense. However, it’s difficult not to see so much media where affluence is part of the scenery and not get a little tired of it. Especially when the series feel like they’re acting as a catalog as much, if not more, than critique. Continue Reading →

Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), and the rest of the Slough House reprobates are back for Slow Horses Season 4, and things are, unsurprisingly, not good. While a bombing in a bustling London shopping center consumes most of Britain’s intelligence community, River’s grandfather, David (Jonathan Pryce), has wandered into a very different sort of fight. His memory and cognitive skills are unraveling, triggering, among other problems, a rapid increase in his paranoia. One night, someone close to him drops in for a visit, and moments later, David guns down the visitor. But is everything what it seems? Questions of what family members owe one another take center stage as David’s confused and deadly actions expose the previously largely unexplored complexity of the Cartwright family. As one member of Slough House runs to France to investigate a single errant clue, the rest of the team is left behind to protect David from Emma Flyte (Ruth Bradley), the new head of MI5’s “dogs”. While seemingly far less corrupt than her predecessors, she’s just as disinterested in tolerating the Horses’ nonsense or willing to trust their pleas for more time. Aimee-Ffion Edwards, Christopher Chung, Tom Brooke, Kadiff Kirwan, and Rosalind Eleazar are all here. You got a problem with that? (AppleTV+) Coming at the Horses from the other side is a seemingly unstoppable black-ops mercenary (Tom Wozniczka) trying to clean up the loose ends of…something. David might have once been able to fill in the blanks, but with dementia steadily robbing him of his past and his present consumed with guilt and trauma, he can’t conjure any explanations. As he stalks the members of Slough House, Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) tries to push the new First Chair, the hesitant and PR-focused Claude Whelan (James Callis), to bury anything and everything having to do with the bombing and its apparent perpetrator. Continue Reading →

To say creator Kathleen Jordan’s adaptation of The Decameron is loose is to enjoy the gift of significant understatement. The source material, an Italian collection of 100 tales “told” to one another by ten characters, was a kind of Canterbury Tales for the plague set. Or, more accurately, Tales was a Decameron for the Brits. The Italian work, after all, has about 50 years on Chaucer’s book. While the TV series does gather ten characters together, initially to celebrate the arranged wedding of Pampinea (Zosia Mamet) and Leonardo (Davy Eduard King), then to try to ride out the Bubonic, it largely ditches the tale-telling. In its place is a satirical take on today’s class inequalities smuggled onto screen under the veil of a period black comedy. While likely conceived of during or in the wake of COVID’s darkest early days, the tones and themes update nicely to now. It does not reflect our modern situation as literally as it did in, say, April 2020. Nonetheless, it smartly captures how certain global tragedies cannot be dodged and how the rich and powerful will still try at the cost of the larger society. If only it landed its jokes as well. Zosia Mamet and Saoirse-Monica Jackson learn the importance of decanting from Jessica Plummer. (Giulia Parmigiani/Netflix) It isn’t for lack of talent. Tanya Reynolds—so good in Sex Education—proves she deserves a bigger stage, stepping into one of the lead roles as the handmaiden Licisca. She finds herself tethered to the vain and selfish Filomena (Jessica Plummer) as they journey to Leonardo’s estate. How the kind and socially conscious member of the servant class evolves in isolation as she tastes luxury and power for the first time is genuinely interesting and well-acted by Reynolds. A scene where she goes from faking kindness to the hypochondriac aristocrat Tindaro (Douggie McMeekin) to genuinely delight with him feels wonderfully organic and honest. Continue Reading →

For a show set in the mid-1960s, Lady in the Lake explores a basketful of issues relevant to today. From nearly 60 years in our past, it echoes modern “concerns” of all stripes. For example, characters range from dubious to outright hostile to the idea of Maddie (Natalie Portman) working as a journalist or Ferdie Platt (Y’lan Noel) becoming the first black detective in Baltimore. It doesn’t take much to see how that connects with today’s handwringing over DEI—bigotry dressed up to look like worries about the “most deserving person” getting the job. That the most deserving always seems to be a white man, in such concerned citizens’ opinions, is just a coincidence, no doubt. Also spotlighted in Lady in the Lake are questions about women’s autonomy over their own bodies, grooming, legalized gambling, antisemitism, and politicians throwing over the people that got them elected for “respectability”. Homophobia, stranger danger, and the ramifications of untreated childhood trauma also receive small but prominent moments of attention. Moses Ingram's too good to get lost in this series' chaos so often. (AppleTV+) If that sounds like a lot for a television series to tackle in a single seven-episode season, well, it is. As a result, the show frequently —particularly the first two to three episodes—lapses into a sort of controlled but still frantic chaos. In its efforts, led by creator Alma Har’el, to wrap its arms around everything it wants to be about, the viewer can feel battered by incidents. The series’ occasional dalliances with hallucination and visual metaphor don’t help in this regard. They’re fascinating for certain. The sixth installment’s near episode-length exploration of Maddie’s psyche stands out as a season-high. However, they also sometimes make it overly difficult for the audience to find solid footing in the narrative. Lady in the Lake’s ambition is worthy of praise, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into good television. Continue Reading →

There’s probably something meaningful to say about the current state of politics and the seeming revival of the swords and sandals genre; unfortunately, Peacock’s new series Those About to Die engenders very little desire to engage with its material on any deeper level. Created by Robert Rodat and directed by Roland Emmerich and Marco Kruezpaintner, Those About to Die is a historical drama centered around the fading rule of Emperor Vespasian (Anthony Hopkins), his sons Titus (Tom Hughes) and Domitian (Jojo Macari, eating every piece of available scenery), and the bloody and politically treacherous world of chariot racing.  Set in 79 AD (reading up on that year will provide some spoilers if history is a spoiler), Those About to Die wants to have it all. It’s a drama! It’s an epic! It’s historical fiction! It’s sexy! It’s violent! Well, sure, it’s all of these things, but sadly none are enough to raise it above its vaguely ‘90s television miniseries feel. The series sags under the weight of its scale. Feeling at times like nothing so much as “James Michener’s ROME," Those About to Die features no fewer than 15 primary characters, many of whom fade into the background and reappear with such little fanfare that the audience struggles to keep track. Though the storylines blend fairly swiftly after an overpacked premiere, the characters make so many rash and death-defying decisions per episode that nothing seems to carry any sort of weight. Anything dramatic that can happen does but with varying (and unearned) degrees of consequence. There are attacks on characters but then they’re fine; characters lose money and then get more. When it feels like everyone has plot armor until a “surprise,”  nothing is a surprise anymore.  Continue Reading →

About fifteen years ago, an era of “complicated” protagonists ruled the television landscape. These anti-heroes—Walter White, Don Draper—were the sort of people one wouldn’t associate in their day-to-day life. Safely sealed in a flat screen, though, and viewers couldn’t get enough of them. It was a glorious time to be unlikable on TV. Still, as Erik Kain pointed out, it was an honor almost entirely reserved for men. Sunny is a late-arriving corrective, centering a fully complex and often unlikable Rashida Jones. As Suzi, Jones ditches nearly everything that makes her an on-screen appealing presence in the likes of The Office and Parks and Recreation. She also flattens the traits that make her stand out as a character worthy of empathy in projects like Silo and On the Rocks. In place of those, she offers a dead-eyed stare that only sparks to life when castigating her mother-in-law Noriko (Judy Ongg), random bureaucrats, and, of course, the titular android Sunny (voiced by Joanna Sotomura). Rashida Jones does not, and this can't be stressed enough, have time for this nonsense. (AppleTV+) It isn’t like she doesn’t have cause for anger and the thousand-mile gaze. As the opening minutes reveal, Suzi has justy lost her husband Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and son in a plane crash. However, as the series unfolds, it becomes clear Suzi can’t blame her unpleasantness entirely on grief. As revealed in flashbacks, she’s been hard-drinking and foul-mouthed for some time. Additionally, although partially owed to her dyslexia, she wields her failure to learn nearly any Japanese like a cudgel. It is yet another tool for holding the world at bay. That world includes, often, her spouse. Of course, his own drinking and pile of secrets hardly made him an ideal partner either. Continue Reading →

There’s no honest way to say WondLa looks ugly or uninteresting. The environs, in particular, make wonderful use of gentle pastels broken by sharp primary colors to create a world both beautiful and utterly alien (no pun intended) to our protagonist, Eva (Jeanine Mason). But visually attractive isn’t the same as unique or arresting. Sadly, once one begins to scratch the show’s surface, it reveals many all-too-familiar elements. Sometimes, it is just a general sense of the thing. At others, it is nearly one-to-one. For example, Eva’s first otherworldly ally, Otto (Brad Garrett), is a furry talkative sibling to Raya and The Last Dragon’s Tuk Tuk. Similar design elements are typically easy to accept for this critic, provided the story utilizing them offers enough to chew on. It is here that WondLa truly stumbles. A collection of other “coming of age” and “humanity’s end” stories’ greatest hits, the series never offers something fresh enough to get its audience to sit up and take notice. A collection of strong voice work, including Teri Hatcher—who has proven herself a real voice talent asset over the years—is further hamstrung because the voices come from mostly thinly sketched characters. Sarah Hollis and Jeanine Mason love your new look. (AppleTV+) In some unnumbered future year, Eva is the only child living in a vast underground bunker known as a Sanctuary. Her only true companionship is a robot surrogate parent, Muthr, who sees to the child’s physical—and, with time, inevitably—emotional needs. When Eva turns six, she—and the audience—learns she is part of a program to “save” humans from themselves. Under the direction of Cadmus Pryde (Alan Tudyk in a rare straightforward voice performance), the dwindling human populace built an array of Sanctuaries. In each, a robot raised children until the planet healed from the various environmental catastrophes and violent conflicts people visited upon it. When the Earth is ready and the children properly trained, they will be released to the surface to re-establish society and maybe treat each other and their planet right this time. Continue Reading →

Joko Anwar is no stranger to telling stories that serve as a mirror reflecting Indonesia’s sociopolitical situation. In his folk horror Impetigore, he delves into the topics of poverty and the abuse of power, while his superhero flick Gundala tackles the theme of mass hysteria. It is no surprise that in his 7-episode anthology Netflix series Nightmares and Daydreams, he portrays various everyday situations from his homeland, touching on issues like the struggle of being in a sandwich generation and systemic challenges faced by Indonesian society. Through his distinct narrative style, Anwar confronts pressing issues with a blend of supernatural intrigue and science fiction. In each episode, the show immerses us in compelling tales that not only entertain but provoke thought. Set between the years 1985 and 2024, the series chronicles the experiences of everyday individuals in Jakarta who encounter peculiar phenomena while simultaneously navigating their struggles. While each episode focuses on different characters, the events depicted throughout the season are interconnected and gradually reveal something more sinister. In our recent conversation with Anwar, he shed light on the inspirations behind Nightmares and Daydreams. From the show's inception to the intricacies of character development, Anwar's meticulous attention to detail underscores his commitment to crafting narratives that resonate on multiple levels. Moreover, his fascination with the aliens adds an intriguing layer to the series, sparking discussions among the audience. Continue Reading →

For a large segment of Gen X and Millennials, legal thrillers have an undeniable comfort food quality. These generational cohorts grew up as authors like Scott Turow and John Grisham rose to prominence, dominating best-seller lists. With that beachhead established, it wasn’t long before the legal thriller came to screens, large and small, via adaptations. While rarely deeply prestigious works, many, if not most, boasted big stars, well-established directors, and compelling enough storytelling. Presumed Innocent, an 8-part limited series—Apple provided critics with all but the final installment—arrives with that wind at its back for a considerable portion of the audience. It is further helped in the comfort department by being the second adaptation of the titular novel by Turow, following a well-regarded Alan Pakula-directed Harrison Ford-starring cinematic turn in 1990. The book also spawned a sequel and a made-for-TV adaptation of that sequel. Uh-oh. Jake Gyllenhaal and (Renate Reinsve) just spotted you across the bar. (AppleTV+) No one can accuse Turow’s Rusty Sabich (played here by Jake Gyllenhaal after Ford on the silver screen and Bill Pullman for the at-home audiences) of being the central star of a law and order-driven MCU. However, when it comes to legal thrillers, he’s about as close as you can get. Playing with that house money, creator David E. Kelley and star Gyllenhaal don’t exactly reinvent the wheel. Nonetheless, they offer a solid series to slip into just as summer kicks in. Continue Reading →

Eric is a tough sit. Whether that sit is worth the difficulty is a question I struggled with before tentatively arriving at yes. The story begins as a tale of a missing child, Edgar (Ivan Morris Howe), the son of Vincent (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Cassie (Gaby Hoffmann). After the couple’s latest row the night before, Edgar doesn’t wait around for them to sort themselves in the morning. Instead, he walks to school on his own as his father tries to make amends with his mother. But Edgar never arrives at school that day. Vincent is a creator and puppeteer on a formerly top-rated children’s show—think Sesame Street with no on-screen humans and only one set—with his creative partner Lennie (Dan Fogler). Edgar, aware of the show’s downturn and the need for a new puppet, has been doodling and dreaming up just the solution, the titular Eric. When Edgar disappears, Vincent’s desperate and possibly delusional reaction is to finish his son’s work on the giant felt monster. He reasons that if his son could only see the puppet on television, the boy would understand how important he was to his parents and come home. Others, confident Edgar is not gone of his accord and likely no longer alive, cannot get on board with the plan. Continue Reading →

A frequently offered solution to the problem of stale biopics involves ditching the cradle-to-the-grave format. Instead, focus on a specific era or significant event in the life of an important figure. Let that story define viewers’ understanding of the person, giving the audience an insightful perspective without the exercise of box-checking. The Big Cigar takes this advice, narrowing its vision of Huey P. Newton (André Holland) to (mostly) 1974. That year, Newton faced multiple criminal charges and became increasingly convinced the government was targeting him for more than arrest. In response, the Black Panther Party co-founder left the U.S. for exile in Cuba. Joshuah Bearman’s Playboy essay gives co-creators Janine Sherman Barrois and Jim Hecht a fascinating launching pad for The Big Cigar. It’s not difficult to understand why Newton’s Hollywood-fueled escape just ahead of the FBI’s clutches would be a draw. Unfortunately, in adapting it for television, the creative team's tonal and structural choices undermine the series. P.J. Byrne's on the line! (AppleTV+) Hecht, coming off his work on Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers’ Dynasty, seems to have brought over some tonal impulses from his collaborator on that project, Adam McKay. As a result, The Big Cigar frequently tries to balance humor with dead serious topics like possible political assassination, government-orchestrated harassment, and gun violence. While the show manages those tonal juxtapositions better than McKay’s disastrous Don’t Look Up, it never delivers as well as The Big Short. Several jokes land without feeling disrespectful of the series’ more earnest moments or themes. Unfortunately, it is never as funny as it wants to be. That frequently creates a gulf between its humorous and solemn moments. They can’t seem to get both sides to integrate satisfyingly. Continue Reading →

In reviewing Dark Matter, it feels fitting to follow the moral of the show’s story. While it is easy to get lost in forever puzzling over details, the far more useful—and rewarding—path is to take a step back and fully appreciate a thing. There are elements in creator/showrunner Blake Crouch’s adaptation of his own work that do not work, especially concerning pacing. And yet, by the time the credits roll on the final episode, one is largely left satisfied and, perhaps, a bit exhilarated. The temptation to dwell on each choice at the expense of the larger picture is something Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton) knows well. But we’re already getting ahead of ourselves. Dark Matters begins with the Jason I’ll christen “our Jason” for clarity. Our Jason is a Physics professor living in Chicago with his wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly), a former artist who now focuses more on the administrative and business sides of art, and their son Charlie (Oakes Fegley). One night, Jason meets up with his friend Ryan (Jimmi Simpson) to celebrate the latter’s academic success. The vibe is strained, with parties seemingly aware that Jason should’ve received the same award, if not over Ryan, then certainly before him. Continue Reading →

The Tattooist of Auschwitz opens on Lale Sokolov (Harvey Keitel in the 2000s “present-day” sequences) living in Australia. He's decided the time has come to commit his life story to paper. A nurse with writing aspirations Heather Morris (Melanie Lynskey), (the real-life writer behind the inspired by actual events but labeled historical fiction source material) is referred by someone in the community to help. With little prologue, he dives in, describing how he "volunteered" for a program about defending Jewish communities. Unfortunately, it was a trap. The train ride takes him to Auschwitz instead. While imprisoned there, he (Jonah Hauer-King in flashbacks) became one of the tattooists. The position leads him to meet the love of his life, fellow prisoner Gita Furman (Anna Próchniak). Additionally, the position gave him a certain level of consideration not accorded to others, including access to medications. On the other hand, he faces resentment among the prisoners and decades of survivor’s guilt. The book—and its two subsequent spinoffs/sequels—has a certain amount of controversy surrounding it. While I’m not an expert on the Holocaust, I feel it is at least important to acknowledge that fact. Wanda Witek-Malicka from the Auschwitz Memorial Research Center publicly worried that the book engaged in excessive “exaggerations, misinterpretations and understatements” that could render its text “dangerous and disrespectful to history.” Continue Reading →

In Season 1, The Big Door Prize felt like a cracked mirror version of a small-town Stephen King story. When the Morpho Machine—a device that spits out a card revealing the user’s “potential”—arrives in Deerfield, it does indeed disrupt life. However, most Deerfield residents are nice. Or, at least, they're not mean in the “could be tempted by Randall Flagg or Leland Gaunt” way. As a result, the disruptions were more of a “the principal buys a motorcycle” and “that dad grieving the death of his son declares himself sheriff without ever abusing power.” No escalating series of pranks culminating in out-and-out bloodshed or betraying one’s former friends to the dark embodiment of evil found here. For those expecting The Big Door Prize Season 2 to start stacking the bodies like cordwood, I have bad news. It keeps the King’s small-town vibes without wandering into King’s “the secrets we keep will literally tear us apart” territory. Opening moments after Season 1’s end, the Morpho machine has stopped spitting out cards, instead offering the town folk a move to the next level. While the result is, essentially, yet another projective test, the results bring a distinctly different flavor to the mix. While the series retains a certain goofiness, it also gains a sadder complexity. The longer we look at the characters, the more forced their good-time silliness becomes. Instead of the exception, Season 1's Father Reuben (Damon Gupton) centric fourth episode feels more like Season 2’s template. Mary Holland and Josh Segarra nail the couples' costumes category. (AppleTV+) To find that tone, the series does reshuffle its character decks. Many of the students we met last year are nowhere to be seen, for instance. New characters are introduced, including a music teacher played by Justine Lupe. Others, like Cass’s (Gabrielle Dennis) best friend Nat (Mary Holland), get a much bigger spotlight. The overall result gives the series a stronger ensemble feel, even if it is not necessarily without downsides. Continue Reading →

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 →

"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 →

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 →

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 →