Applelicious

With the HBO premium brand sinking into the muck of Max (and eventually into Netflix or Paramount), AppleTV (sans +) seems poised to take on the label – “It’s not just tv, it’s Apple.”  They don’t try to cater to every taste, though they do offer portals to other channels, plus pay per view.  Never having entered the Apple universe through computer or phone, I don’t rate the channel in my top tier (my last round-up was a year ago), but as the home of Dickinson and Pachinko (my personal favorites among other popular Apple hits) it will always have merit in my eyes.  In justifying recent subscription price increases (though with frequent special offers), their own programs cover a reasonable range, and even those that don’t click for everyone have plausibility and polish, and not just the expediency of “content.” 
 
The Emmy haul of The Studio (MC-80) is testimony to that.  I’ve followed Seth Rogen since his teenage debut in Freaks & Greeks, but I never imagined he had this in him, to win Emmys for writing, producing, directing (with his longtime partner Evan Goldman) and starring in a comedy series.  And maybe even deserve them!  Goes to prove that being stoned all the time is no impediment to creativity, or should I say creative insanity?  This is a cringe-comedy Hollywood satire that starts with pedal to the metal and never lets up.  Rogen plays a professed cinephile who lucks into the job of studio head, where he continually must let commerce trump art in the making of movies, as he oscillates between macher and nebbish.  Catherine O’Hara plays his mentor and deposed predecessor, Bryan Cranston is his corporate boss, and there is a never-ending string of supporting players and celebrity cameos.  Mixing strains of Altman’s The Player and the HBO series Entourage into a blend all its own, this hybrid series delivers on both hilarity and authenticity.  And it takes advantage of shrinking cameras to make extended shots that roam all over the studio lot or other settings (such as Las Vegas in the two-episode finale of the first season – with another in the works), to a percussive score that ratchets up the pandemonium.  My enjoyment was certainly enhanced by the witty takes on the business of filmmaking, but there’s enough wild slapstick to entertain the uninitiated.
 
And now Apple has Vince Gilligan, creator of my favorite series of all time, the combo of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.  His new Pluribus (MC-86) returns to Albuquerque and brings back the delightful Rhea Seehorn, one of the stars of Saul.  I wasn’t stoked by Gilligan’s turn toward sci-fi, but by the third episode I realized that the series was really a parable about A.I. and became fully engaged.  Still, the series is underpopulated and slow moving, as an encryption from space makes humans join into a hive mind, with only a dozen exceptions around the globe.  Seehorn is one, a popular romantasy writer who loses her partner in the transition, and then all the people of the city depart when she rejects the no-longer-human “peace, love, and understanding” shared by all the others.  Now I’d sign up to watch “Kim Wexler” read the phone book, but this was a bit languorous for me and I was quite disappointed that it didn’t end with the 9^th episode, but expects to go on for three more seasons.  As with Severance, I don’t think I’ll have the patience or interest to persist.  Still, this has many of virtues of Gilligan’s two hits, but leans more into his origins on The X-Files (which I never watched).
 
Another established favorite is Slow Horses (MC-79).  In the 5^th season, some people missed the shoot-em-up climax but I appreciated the greater emphasis on wit and humor.  This series is one of the most reliable pleasures on the tube these days.  I wrote about previous seasons here, here, and here, and it’s all still true.  Top-notch writing derived from Mick Herron’s “Slough House” series of MI5 spy novels, and stellar acting from Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas, on down through the rest of the sterling cast list, plus propulsive storytelling (with the inevitable chase scenes on foot), make for a sure-fire hit series, which shows no sign of slowing down.
 
All three of these shows are very inventive, verbally and visually, with superb acting and high-quality production.
 
Apple doubled down on Mick Herron with Down Cemetery Road (MC-71), from an earlier series of his books, which shares the combination of humorous characters, relentless action, and similar plot reliance on government cover-ups.  Not to mention top-flight acting, here with Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson in the lead.  They were enough to make me give a look-see, and I was immediately hooked when the whole show began at the Ashmolean Museum and included all sorts of Oxford sights that I could recognize.  Later episodes go to London and an island north of Scotland, but the settings are always of interest.  The “mystery” is rather vague and the twists and turns not particularly worth following.  But performances, wit, and action make the series quite palatable for anyone who can’t get enough of the writer or stars.
 
Mr. Scorsese (MC-84) is another top-notch series.  Marty is still active, thank goodness, though with emeritus status among great American directors, but this loving retrospective, a five-part documentary portrait, transcends the limitations of the genre, because it’s directed by Rebecca Miller (Arthur’s daughter), another filmmaker for whom I feel a strong affinity.  She goes well beyond the standard clip-reel-cum-talking-head-commentary, not just with archival documentation but by inducing the hyper-analyzed maestro to “take the couch” throughout, achieving something like a five-act (morality) play.  It helps to have seen all his films at least once, but I sense this bio-doc could reward some who have seen few or none.  The greatest director of my generation and background deserves the attention of all viewers.  His fifty-year career also spans a lot of cultural and political history.  But what do I know? – I’m totally infatuated with this program, and eager to revisit some of Scorsese’s films with this autobiographical background to the thematic inspirations and proximate circumstances of their making.
 
I was so eager to see Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest (MC-73) that beforehand I went back and rewatched High and Low, one of my favorite Kurosawa films.  Probably not a good idea, because then my appreciation for Spike’s joint followed the trajectory of his title, from the soaring heights of his aerial credit sequence to such depths that I couldn’t bear to watch all the way to the end, as he left behind the inspiration of Kurosawa’s masterpiece to ride his own hobby horses and in-jokes.  He grabbed me with bird’s eye views of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn over the bridge, so different from when I lived in the neighborhood a half-century ago, but tagged on so many undisciplined postscripts that I had to FF to the end.  Spike’s self-referential approach is mirrored in Denzel Washington’s self-importance, but we’re a long way from Malcolm X here, with this musical entrepreneur known as the “best ears in the business.”  The rest of the acting is indifferent at best, even Jeffrey Wright struggling with an underwritten role.  Though Lee begins with some of Kurosawa’s fluid camerawork, his chase scenes are self-indulgent rather than expressive (e.g. a subway car full of Yankees fans chanting “Red Sox suck!” or a Puerto Rican street fair).  Not without its pleasures, but still ultimately a disappointment to high expectations.
 
Though Paul Greengrass has descended from the heights of Bloody Sunday and United 93 into franchise thrillers, he’s a director who is always worth a look, and The Lost Bus (MC-64) fits the bill, in a docudrama about the Camp Fire that wiped out Paradise CA.  To quote some of my previous reviews, “his style is composed of visual shards in dynamic mosaic,” with “on-the-fly, you-are-there-in-the-middle-of-a-shitstorm filmmaking.”  The Hollywood angle pairs Matthew McConaughey and America Ferrara (shades of Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock in the opposite of Speed) as bus driver and teacher trying lead a bus full of schoolchildren through a maze of encircling fire to the evacuation center where their parents wait anxiously.  We also watch Cali Fire officials making impossible decisions about fighting the fire versus applying all resources to saving lives.  As a sidelight, McConaughey’ mother and son play those roles in this film.  Enveloping describes the film as well as the wildfire, the experience is edifying even if the dialogue is uninspired. 
 
As for F1 (MC-68), I managed to make it almost a quarter of the way through this 155-minute barrage of commercials, based on the charm of Brad Pitt and a few other players, but the tired storytelling and the utter boredom and waste of Formula One racing compelled me to quit.
 
I probably would have missed the documentary Come See Me in the Good Light (MC-81) if my daughter hadn’t been familiar with the poetry and persona of Andrea Gibson.  Filmmaker Ryan White followed them and their partner and fellow poet Megan Falley from an ovarian cancer diagnosis to the brink of death and one final sold-out spoken word performance, where it’s no surprise to see look-alike Tig Notaro introducing them, and also getting a producing credit.  This portrait of a loving creative genderqueer couple facing a difficult medical journey has many layers, the poetry and the humor offering relief from the grim progression of the disease.  Besides Tig, I’m reminded of a book I just finished and enjoyed immensely, Alison Bechdel’s Spent: A Comic Novel, another celebration of gender fluidity, and the emotional bonds between all kinds of matings.  This film about dying is anything but grim.
 
It would be a bigger mistake to skip AppleTV altogether than to subscribe on a year-round basis.  Though I’ve squeezed out all the juice, I look forward to the next show that will drag me back onto the channel.