Entertainment
A trio of new TV thrillers can provide some action and escapism this Thanksgiving
It seems like only the week before last that I was reviewing two thrillers — “Cross” and “Day of the Jackal” — in a single review. (Because it was.) And now I’m going to review three more, similarly grouped. I guess it’s a thing! And there are more on the way.
Why so popular? Thrillers promise … thrills. Even the less good ones can sustain interest over several episodes, if they throw in enough red herrings, amazing reversals, a modicum of action and suspense and an amazing revelation held back to the end of the series like a carrot on a stick. You may be disappointed when you get there, but you will get there.
Doing everything right is “Get Millie Black” (HBO at 9 p.m. PT Mondays, first episode now streaming on Max) — the echo of “Get Christie Love!,” the mid-’70s Teresa Graves detective show, a rare series with a Black woman in the lead, doesn’t seem a complete coincidence — is set primarily in the humbler precincts of Kingston, Jamaica; Tamara Lawrance plays Millie, who was sent away as a girl to live in England, where she becomes a Scotland Yard detective. After her mother’s death, she learns that her brother, Orville, whom she believed dead, is alive.
Suddenly, it’s one year later; Millie is working for the Kingston Police, and brother Orville has become sister Hibiscus (Chyna McQueen), living with a tribe of gay and transgender outcasts in the system of storm drains called the Gully. “Most people would call this place a sewer,” Millie says. “My sister calls it home.” The Gully is a real place; Jamaica is notoriously homophobic — “The most homophobic place on Earth?” Time magazine asked in 2006 — with anti-gay laws still on the books, which keeps Millie’s partner, Curtis (Gershwyn Eustache Jnr) in the closet.
As in most — all? — detective fiction, one case reveals another; suspense springs from never knowing exactly where we’re headed. Millie’s search for Janet Fenton (Shernet Swearine), a missing teenager, is complicated by Luke Holborn (Joe Dempsie), a (white) British detective who arrives from London looking for (white) rich kid Freddie Summerville (Peter John Thwaites). Freddie, he says, is needed in England to help take down a major gang; but he’s a person of interest to Millie, as well. As these storylines collide and various factions jockey for advantage in the wreckage, there will be murders and attempted murders and more murders.
The characters are vivid, unpredictable in a human way and perfectly played. The five-part series feels original, not quite like anything we’ve seen before. Created by the Booker Prize-winning Jamaican novelist Marlon James, it registers as authentic to its place and people, while being true to the noir tradition — tropical Raymond Chandler.
In Netflix’s “The Madness,” Colman Domingo stars as Muncie Daniels, a media pundit who finds himself at the center of a mystery.
(Amanda Matlovich/Netflix)
Created by Stephen Belber, the old-school conspiracy thriller “The Madness” (Netflix, premiering Thursday), proceeds from the Hitchcockian device of a regular Joe who finds himself at the center of, and a suspect in, a mystery, and goes on the run to clear himself, like Robert Donat in “The 39 Steps” or Cary Grant in “North by Northwest.” Alfred Hitchcock kept these stories down to a couple of hours, and I do believe that given the opportunity to stretch out over several episodes, he’d have stuck to two. “The Madness” does its work over eight, which strictly speaking is more than it needs. But there’s a lot to like about it.
Colman Domingo plays Muncie Daniels, a Black, Philadelphia-based CNN pundit and fill-in anchor, who in the series’ opening moments is attacked by a guest for no longer being involved in “the fight,” limiting himself to Harper’s magazine or an Ivy league lecture, when he once ran a non-profit “that took on racist landlords.” The implication, which subsequent comments will make explicit, is that he has lost himself — as one friend says, “going with your career, your ambition, your whims, then lying to yourself about it the whole while.” People are not shy about telling Muncie where they think he’s failing.
A distracted father to teenage son Demetrius (Thaddeus J. Mixson) and adult daughter Kallie (Gabrielle Graham), he’s dragging his feet on a divorce from Elena (Marsha Stephanie Blake). Looking to get away, Muncie repairs to a borrowed cabin in the Poconos, where, almost immediately he finds the body of a neighbor chopped up in a sauna — so much for relaxing. After escaping a pair of masked assailants, he brings the police around; the sauna, you will have guessed, is clean as a whistle. Meanwhile, evidence is being planted to frame him.
Domingo is required to spend a lot of time looking worried or otherwise pained; his stress wears on you after a bit, and so it’s a relief to find him (briefly) at a backyard barbecue, in relative safety. (And the whole megillah does seem to have a positive on his marriage, which is nice.) Also lifting the mood are John Ortiz as an FBI agent, Deon Cole as Muncie’s friend and lawyer and Stephen McKinley Henderson (appearing currently in “A Man on the Inside,” having a season at 75) as a wise old family friend and cigar store proprietor.
The action sweeps through some colorful locations — a chase in an empty theater, a meeting in a colonial recreation village, reconnaissance at a suburban swingers bar — that would not be out of place in a Hitchcock film, if he’d worked into the age of suburban swingers bars. The plot brings in white supremacists, militant anarchists (“basically Antifa on meth with Uzis”) and a couple of gazillionaires, one played by Bradley Whitford, as the trail leads, as it must, higher and deeper, into the dark heart of capitalist America. (“Maybe this is all a bit bigger than you thought,” someone suggests to Muncie.) Of course, these days, the (real) conspiracies seem to be all out in the open, making “The Madness” feel sort of quaint.
Showtime’s “The Agency” stars Michael Fassbender as a covert CIA agent, and Jodie Turner-Smith as his love interest.
(Luke Varley/Paramount+ with Showtime)
Premiering Friday on Paramount+ with Showtime (Showtime at 9 p.m. PT Sunday) is “The Agency,” as in Central Intelligence. Based on a French series, “Le Bureau,” and set largely in London, it has been “created for American television” by Jez Butterworth, a Tony-winning British playwright, and his brother John-Henry Butterworth, who earlier collaborated on the screenplays for “Ford v Ferrari,” the James Brown biopic “Get on Up” and “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” It is the least thrilling of these thrillers.
Michael Fassbender plays Martian, the code name his colleagues address him by (he’s got a couple of other names as well, used as convenient); as the series begins he’s ordered back, with only two days notice, from Ethiopia, where he has been undercover for some time, to the agency’s London station — which necessitates telling new lies to his already lied-to married lover, Samia (Jodie Turner-Smith). Samia, after some time, will arrive in London, where they will covertly take up again. Coincidence?
Back in London, Martian connects with handler Naomi (Katherine Waterston), whom he has only ever met over Zoom, boss Henry (Jeffrey Wright) and bigger boss Bosko (Richard Gere). It’s not a seamless transition. His agency-provided apartment comes bugged and his movements are tracked. (The scruffy agents assigned to follow him represent the series’ only real attempt at humor.)
Dr. Blake (Harriet Sansom Harris), one of the series more centered characters, arrives from Langley “to evaluate mental health across the department,” and though this seems particularly, if not exclusively, for Martian’s benefit, it’s true that nearly all these folks seem unhappy — with the notable exceptions of Blake, Naomi and Owen (John Magaro), another handler — as a result, they’re the people you’re the happiest to see. Martian is especially a pill, at work, at home with his teenage daughter, Poppy (India Fowler), and even with Samia. We do understand that he’s good at his job and a person of some authority, and torn between love and work, but when has that ever been an excuse?
The series has the strange quality of being under- and overwritten; people don’t talk much, and when they do, they don’t necessarily talk like people: “There are 170,000 words in the English language,” says Bosko. “Each year 2,000 of them become obsolete; they enter the great verbal bathtub of our collective being. Presently circling around that open drain are these words: stoicism, fortitude, duty, honor, sacrifice.”
Of 10 promised episodes, as of this writing only three were made available for review, at the end of which things are only beginning to come together. One assumes — hopes, anyway — that something compelling is going to happen in those remaining seven hours, but the direction is so thick with style and the characters so little developed, that it’s hard to work up more than a cursory interest in anyone’s fate.
That might change, of course. Disparate plotlines will presumably converge. There’s a compromised double agent on the run in Eastern Europe, leading to some skippably torturous scenes of torture, and a new recruit, Danny (Saura Lightfoot-Leon) being sent on her first assignment with what feels like little to no preparation.
“There’s a cost for doing this work,” she’s told. “A price. Are you sure you want to pay it?” (The price is “surviving totally alone forever.”) Run away, I want to say. There are so many other series you could be in.
Movie Reviews
Movie Review: A real-life ’70s hostage drama crackles in Gus Van Sant’s ‘Dead Man’s Wire’
It plays a little loose with facts but the righteous rage of “Dog Day Afternoon” is present enough in Gus Van Sant’s “Dead Man’s Wire,” a based-on-a-true-tale hostage thriller that’s as deeply 1970s as it is contemporary.
In February 1977, Tony Kiritsis walked into the Meridian Mortgage Company in downtown Indianapolis and took one of its executives, Dick Hall, hostage. Kiritsis held a sawed-off shotgun to the back of Hall’s head and draped a wire around his neck that connected to the gun. If he moved too much, he would die.
The subsequent standoff moved to Kiritsis’ apartment and eventually concluded in a live televised news conference. The whole ordeal received some renewed attention in a 2022 podcast dramatization starring Jon Hamm.
But in “Dead Man’s Wire,” starring Bill Skarsgård as Kiritsis, these events are vividly brought to life by Van Sant. It’s been seven years since Van Sant directed, following 2018’s “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot,” and one of the prevailing takeaways of his new film is that that’s too long of a break for a filmmaker of Van Sant’s caliber.
Working from a script by Austin Kolodney, the filmmaker of “My Own Private Idaho” and “Good Will Hunting” turns “Dead Man’s Wire” into not a period-piece time capsule but a bracingly relevant drama of outrage and inequality. Tony feels aggrieved by his mortgage company over a land deal the bank, he claims, blocked. We’re never given many specifics, but at the same time, there’s little doubt in “Dead Man’s Wire” that Tony’s cause is just. His means might be desperate and abhorrent, but the movie is very definitely on his side.
That’s owed significantly to Skarsgård, who gives one of his finest and least adorned performances. While best known for films like “It,” “The Crow” and “Nosferatu,” here Skarsgård has little more than some green polyester and a very ’70s mustache to alter his looks. The straightforward, jittery intensity of his performance propels “Dead Man’s Wire.”
Yet Van Sant’s film aspires to be a larger ensemble drama, which it only partially succeeds at. Tony’s plight is far from a solitary one, as numerous threads suggest in Kolodney’s fast-paced script. First and foremost is Colman Domingo as a local DJ named Fred Temple. (If ever there were an actor suited, with a smooth baritone, to play a ’70s radio DJ, it’s Domingo.) Tony, a fan, calls Fred to air his demands. But it’s not just a media outlet for him. Fred touts himself as “the voice of the people.”
Something similar could be said of Tony, who rapidly emerges as a kind of folk hero. As much as he tortures his hostage (a very good Dacre Montgomery), he’s kind to the police officers surrounding him. And as he and Dick spend more time together, Dick emerges as a kind of victim, himself. It’s his father’s bank, and when Tony gets M.L. Hall (Al Pacino) on the phone, he sounds painfully insensitive, sooner ready to sacrifice his son than acknowledge any wrongdoing.
Pacino’s presence in “Dead Man’s Wire” is a nod to “Dog Day Afternoon,” a movie that may be far better — but, then again, that’s true of most films in comparison to Sidney Lumet’s unsurpassed 1975 classic. Still, Van Sant’s film bears some of the same rage and disillusionment with the meatgrinder of capitalism as “Dog Day.”
There’s also a telling, if not entirely successful subplot of a local TV news reporter (Myha’la) struggling against stereotypes. Even when she gets the goods on the unspooling news story, the way her producer says to “chop it up” and put it on air makes it clear: Whatever Tony is rebelling against, it’s him, not his plight, that will be served up on a prime-time plate.
It doesn’t take recent similar cases of national fascination, such as Luigi Mangione, charged with killing a healthcare executive, to see contemporary echoes of Kiritsis’ tale. The real story is more complicated and less metaphor-ready, of course, than the movie, which detracts some from the film’s gritty sense of verisimilitude. Staying closer to the truth might have produced a more dynamic movie.
But “Dead Man’s Wire” still works. In the film, Tony’s demands are $5 million and an apology. It’s clear the latter means more to him than the money. The tragedy in “Dead Man’s Wire” is just how elusive “I’m sorry” can be.
“Dead Man’s Wire,” a Row K Entertainment release, is rated R for language throughout. Running time: 105 minutes. Three stars out of four.
In a bid for greater user engagement, Walt Disney Co. will introduce vertical videos to its Disney+ app over the next year, a company executive said Wednesday.
The move is part of the Burbank media and entertainment company’s effort to encourage more frequent app usage, particularly on smartphones.
“We know that mobile is an incredible opportunity to turn Disney+ into a true daily destination for fans,” Erin Teague, executive vice president of product management, said during an onstage presentation in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show. “All of the short-form Disney content you want, all in one unified app.”
Teague said the company will evolve that capability over time to determine new formats, categories and content types.
Disney’s presentation also touched on its interest in artificial intelligence. Last month, San Francisco startup OpenAI said it had reached a licensing deal with Disney to use more than 200 of the company’s popular characters in its text-to-video tool, Sora. Under the terms of that deal, users will be able to write prompts that generate short videos featuring Disney characters and use ChatGPT images to create those characters’ visages. Some of those Sora-generated videos will be shown on Disney+, though the companies said the deal did not include talent likenesses or voices.
Disney also said it would invest $1 billion into the AI company.
Part of Disney’s move toward AI is to appeal to young Gen Alpha viewers, who are more comfortable with AI and “expect to interact with entertainment” instead of simply watching stories on the screen, Teague said.
“AI is an accelerator,” she said. “It’s why collaborations with partners like OpenAI are absolutely crucial. We want to empower a new generation of fandom that is more interactive and immersive, while also respecting human creativity and protecting user safety.”
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Is This Thing On?
Cinematic stories of disintegrating marriages are fairly commonplace—and often depressing emotional endurance tests, besides—so it’s interesting to see co-writer/director Bradley Cooper take this variation on the theme in a fresher direction. The unhappy couple in this place is Alex and Tess Novak (Will Arnett and Laura Dern), who decide matter-of-factly to separate. Then Alex impulsively decides to get up on stage at an open-mic comedy night, and starts turning their relationship issues into material. The premise would seem to suggest an uneven balance towards Alex’s perspective, but the script is just as interested in Tess—a former Olympic-level volleyball player who retired to focus on motherhood—searching for her own purpose. And the narrative takes a provocative twist when their individual sparks of renewed happiness lead them towards something resembling an affair with their own spouse. The screenplay faces a challenge common to movies about comedians in that Alex’s material, even once he’s supposed to be actively working on it, isn’t particularly good, and Cooper isn’t particularly restrained in his own supporting performance as the comic-relief buddy character (who is called “Balls,” if that provides any hints). Yet the two lead performances are terrific—particularly Dern, who nails complex facial expressions upon her first encounter with Alex’s act—as Cooper and company turn this narrative into an exploration of how it can seem that you’ve fallen out of love with your partner, when what you’ve really fallen out of love with is the rest of your life. Available Jan. 9 in theaters. (R)
JANUARY SPECIAL SCREENINGS
KRCL’s Music Meets Movies: Dig! XX @ Brewvies: As part of a farewell to Sundance, Brewvies/KRCL’s regular Music Meets Movies series presents the extended 20th anniversary edition of the 2004 Sundance documentary about the rivalry between the Dandy Warhols and Brian Jonestown Massacre as they chart different music-biz paths. The screening takes place at Brewvies (677 S. 200 West) on Jan. 8 @ 7:30 p.m., $10 at the door or 2-for-1 with KRCL shirt. brewvies.com
Trent Harris weekend @ SLFS: Utah’s own Trent Harris has charted a singular course as an independent filmmaker, and you can catch two of his most (in)famous works at Salt Lake Film Society. In 1991’s Rubin & Ed, two mismatched souls—one an eccentric, isolated young man (Crispin Glover), the other a middle-aged financial scammer—wind up on a comedic road trip through the Utah desert; 1995’s Plan 10 from Outer Space turns Mormon theology into a crazy science-fiction parody. Get a double dose of uncut Trent Harris weirdness on Friday, Jan. 9, with Rubin & Ed at 7 p.m. and Plan 10 from Outer Space at 9 p.m. Tickets are $13.75 for each screening. slfs.org
Rob Reiner retrospective @ Brewvies Sunday Brunch: Last month’s tragic passing of actor/director Rob Reiner reminded people of his extraordinary work, particularly his first handful of features. Brewvies’ regular “Sunday Brunch” series showcases three of these films this month with This Is Spinal Tap (Jan. 11), The Princess Bride (Jan. 18) and Stand By Me (Jan. 25). All screenings are free with no reservations, on a first-come first-served basis, at noon each day. brewvies.com
David Lynch retrospective @ SLFS: It’s been a year since the passing of groundbreaking artist David Lynch, and Salt Lake Film Society’s Broadway Centre Cinemas marks the occasion with some of his greatest filmed work. In addition to theatrical features Eraserhead (Jan. 11), Inland Empire (Jan. 11), Mulholland Dr. (Jan. 12), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (Jan. 14), Blue Velvet (Jan. 19) and Lost Highway (Jan. 19), you can experience the entirety of 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return on the big screen in two-episode blocs Jan. 16 – 18. The programming also includes the 2016 documentary David Lynch: The Art Life. slfs.org
Death by Numbers @ Utah Film Center: Directed by Kim A. Snyder (the 2025 Sundance feature documentary The Librarians), this 2024 Oscar-nominated documentary short focuses on Sam Fuentes, survivor of a school shooting who attempts to process her experience through poetry. This special screening features a live Q&A with Terri Gilfillan and Nancy Farrar-Halden of Gun Violence Prevention Center of Utah, with Zoom participation by Sam Fuentes. The screening on Wednesday, Jan. 14 at 7 p.m. at Utah Film Center (375 W. 400 North) is free with registration at the website.
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