Entertainment
In the enjoyable 'Franklin,' Michael Douglas plays a flirtatious founding father
Michael Douglas, star of “Romancing the Stone,” “Fatal Attraction,” “The American President” and so much more, is not the actor one would think of as first in line to play portly, balding man on the money Benjamin Franklin, but he has nevertheless done just that.
In the very enjoyable if not always convincing “Franklin,” which premieres Friday on Apple TV+ and follows the founding father through seven of the nine years he spent in Paris, crafting an alliance with the French and negotiating a peace treaty with the British, he’s neither portly nor balding, but something of a hunk. Franklin’s notoriety in France has been regularly compared to that of a “rock star,” at least since that was a term, and though Douglas, 79, is technically too old for the role — Franklin was 77 when the Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War in 1783 — we live in age of fit septuagenarian pop idols, and Franklin, in his seventies, was reportedly catnip to women. We might say, then, that the actor is playing the essence of the man, rather than the form.
Written top to bottom by Kirk Ellis and Howard Korder and directed by Tim Van Patten, “Franklin” is based on Stacy Schiff’s 2005 lively work of scholarship “A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France and the Birth of America” — which is to say, it borrows its research, changes some things, leaves much out and adds a bunch of stuff, as such projects have done before the movies could talk. It’s a handsome production, a feast for the costumers, the hair and makeup artists, the production designers and set decorators. The crowd scenes are well populated, which I ever regard as a sign of seriousness on the part of the producers, or whoever writes the checks to make that so. And the toy-theater credits are so good I watched them with close attention every time.
The eight-episode series begins in December 1776 as Franklin and his teenage grandson, Temple (Noah Jupe), who has come along to act as his secretary, are rowed ashore in Brittany on a cold and windy night. They make their way to Paris, where Franklin’s coach is mired in admiring crowds.
“They have it in their heads that I invented electricity,” Franklin explains. “Who am I to dissuade them?”
Anne Louise Brillon de Jouy (Ludivine Sagnier) in a scene from “Franklin.”
(Apple TV+)
The Franklins alight into the company of Edward Bancroft (Daniel Mays), who in this telling is conceived as Ben’s bosom buddy, personal physician and nonspecific sometime assistant, and (factually) a man with a secret. Other players are gradually introduced, portrayed with various degrees of historical fidelity. Having been told that he has connections at Versailles, Franklin approaches Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (Assaad Bouab) as he rehearses one of his “Figaro” plays. (There are some nice evocations of late 18th century show business through the series.) Beaumarchais, an exuberant sort who has a habit of referring to himself in the third person, is high on the American project and, when not plopped down in the prompter’s box, will smuggle arms to the rebels.
The wealthy merchant Jacques-Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont (Olivier Claverie) will lodge the Franklin party in a wing of his Passy estate, west of Paris, for the duration, where Franklin will establish a printing press and get chummy with his lovely neighbors: unhappily married Anne Louise Brillon de Jouy (Ludivine Sagnier), who plays the harpsichord and sits with him in the park making up stories about passersby like Woody and Diane in “Annie Hall”; and Anne Louise’s free-spirited, freethinking rival for his profligate affections, Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, Madame Helvétius (Jeanne Balibar), for whom he performs upon his famous glass armonica.
“You are terribly ancient,” she coos to him, “but you still have most of your hair.”
“Perhaps you’d like to fluff it,” Franklin replies.
Among the wining and dining, some work gets done. Thibault de Montalembert (Mathias from “Call My Agent”) plays Louis XVI’s foreign minister Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, the man Franklin has to convince to get the king to come to his side. De Montalembert’s somewhat weary authority makes De Vergennes seem like a fully formed human, more than most of the characters here; it’s an unusually warm performance for a person whose scenes are almost entirely centered on political gamesmanship. (That he has a smart wife, played by Isabelle Candelier, whose advice he takes, on work and clothing, makes us like him even more.) Many of Douglas’ best scenes are played opposite him.
Thibault de Montalembert plays Louis XVI’s foreign minister, Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, in “Franklin.”
(Apple TV+)
If the series does a thorough job of picturing the highlights of Franklin’s time in Paris, with its romance, intrigue and salon diplomacy — a subject colorful enough that it became a Broadway musical, the 1964 “Ben Franklin in Paris,” with “Music Man” Robert Preston in the title role — it’s less successful when following Temple’s largely imagined adventures. I would guess that at some point in the series’ development the grandfather-grandson relationship seemed a profitable peg on which to hang the narrative. And there was real-life drama in the family, involving Franklin’s son and Temple’s father, William Franklin, the royal governor of New Jersey, who supported the crown and plotted against the Americans, causing a rift never to heal, which is cataloged here if not explored. There is “errata in every man’s life,” says Franklin, ever the Philadelphia printer, when his grandson accuses him — fairly, unfairly, who are we to judge — of being a bad husband, parent, etc.
But the Temple storyline, which runs for the most part on a separate track from Franklin’s and occupies a good deal of screen time, seems designed primarily to get some roistering young people into a series dominated by sedentary middle-age and elderly folk. Horses are ridden, swords drawn, revelry reveled.
Invention is unavoidable in such a project, but the plotting around Temple feels increasingly unlikely — even in the fictionalized context it’s too goofy by half — to the point that the character himself becomes annoying. He falls in with not so much bad as boisterous companions, of whom the most serious is Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette (Théodore Pellerin), itching to get to America and kill British soldiers. His friends fill his head with notions and dust his face with powder, and Paris, against whose temptations his grandfather has warned him, does the rest. It’s like a teenage “Rake’s Progress.” Will Temple come to his senses in time to witness the Treaty of Paris, concluded with late-arriving John Adams (Eddie Marsan), Franklin’s temperamental nemesis — his frenemesis — forever incensed over what he sees as the older man’s devil-may-care attitude to just about everything?
Douglas has opted for a strangely dry, deliberate delivery, which, for all anyone knows, might be exactly the way Franklin spoke. (The Ben I hear in my head is the one played by Stan Freberg on his album “Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America Volume One: The Early Years,” and that is surely not accurate.) Paradoxically — or perhaps not, since we are in Paris where Franklin is the foreigner — this “natural” American, who eschews the fripperies of fashionable dress for a trapper’s fur hat and simple cloth clothing, comes off a little stiff. Or perhaps he is being subtle. His most dynamic scenes show him working wordlessly at his printing press; they give us a taste of Franklin’s capability and Douglas’ own.
And as to Franklin’s chronologically asymmetrical flirtations, well, let’s remember who’s married to Catherine Zeta-Jones.
The sixth outing in the director’s chair for filmmaker Kirk Jones, I Swear dramatizes the real-life story of touretter John Davidson (played by Robert Aramayo). Tourette’s Syndrome, for those unfamiliar with the condition, is a nervous system disorder that causes various tics, the most prolific being erratic and explicit language. However, as I Swear expertly showcases, the syndrome is far more than ill-timed outbursts of curse words. Davidson’s story is one of societal frustration, finding your people (both with and without the condition), and using your voice to help others rise. The subject and subject matter are handled with absolute care and understanding under Kirk’s measured vision and Robert Aramayo’s BAFTA-winning performance.
The film kicks off with the greatest exclamation to democracy ever uttered (*%#! the Queen!), as a nervous John Davidson prepares himself before entering an awards ceremony hosted by Britain’s royal family. Right away, the film tells us what it is: a triumph over adversity that blends humor and human drama with education. It’s an important setup, as the film flashes back to Davidson’s 1980s youth, where we see his time as a star soccer recruit flatline as his condition takes hold. Davidson’s life spirals from there. Some aspects, like school bullying and accidental run-ins with authority figures, are expected but important to empathizing with young Davidson’s (young version, played with heart by Scott Ellis Watson) new everyday life. The more tragic, a complete meltdown of his family system, is unsettling if quick. His father (Steven Cree) is never given enough screen time to explore his alcohol coping tendencies. However, his mother Heather’s descent into easy fixes and blaming is crushing and convincing. Harry Potter series actress Shirley Henderson (Moaning Myrtle) gives a layered performance as Heather. Someone who loves her son, but also feels cursed by him as the entire family exits the picture. It’s bitter, she’s tired, and fills each conversation with ‘only medication and your mother can save you’ energy.
From there, the viewer and Davidson find refuge in a host of characters. Maxine Peake plays Dottie, the mother of a childhood friend and a retired mental health nurse. Screen vet Peter Mullan plays maintenance man Tommy Trotter. Together, they help Davidson build a life and an understanding of himself that carries the film forward into its second half. After that, the film is primarily a 3-actor show as director Kirk fills the screen with these tour-de-force performances. Peake and Mullan are great vessels to get the film’s main message across: patience, love, and a shared responsibility between the diagnosed and those who understand their struggle can help change the path for people quickly left behind by a normative world. Together, they are the soul of the movie, with the filmmakers clearly hoping the audience will follow their lead after they exit the theater (in my case, the beautiful Oriental Theater for the Milwaukee Film Festival). Both performances are perfectly warm and reflective and shouldn’t be left out in discussions of I Swear.
I say this because the movie is anchored by The Rings of Power actor Robert Aramayo, who leaves Elrond’s elf ears behind to bring an acute naturalism to his performance of main character John Davidson. Aramayo’s physicality and timing of the fitful Tourettes Syndrome never feel out of place or overplayed. In fact, the movie as a whole does an amazing job of never veering into sentimentality. While many moviegoers left with tissues dabbing their eyes, the filmmaking never felt like it was forcing that reaction out of audiences. It straddles the line between feel-good and reality with every story beat and lands squarely on the side of letting the real inform our feelings. Anyone with an ounce of empathy will grasp the film’s message and hopefully take it with them into life.
I Swear continues at the Milwaukee Film Festival on Tuesday, April 21st, and releases nationwide April 24th, 2026, courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
Several private equity firms and Hollywood power players, including United Talent Agency and longtime agent Patrick Whitesell, have expressed interest in buying parts of Casey Wasserman’s music and sports management firm after it abruptly went up for sale.
Wasserman became ensnared in controversy earlier this year after his salacious decades-old emails to Ghislaine Maxwell, an accomplice of child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, were released as part of the U.S. Justice Department’s trove of Epstein files.
The agency auction is in the early stages, according to three people close to the process but not authorized to comment.
Earlier this week, several interested parties submitted proposals to meet a preliminary deadline in the auction, two of the sources said.
The company, which changed its name to the Team last month, is expected to be valued at around $3 billion.
Providence Equity Partners holds the majority stake. The private equity firm has discussed selling the entire company or carving off Wasserman’s minority interest. Providence also has considered selling the bulk of the firm and staying on as a minority investor, one of the sources said. Another scenario could involve separating, then selling the individual business units that make up the Team.
Wasserman and Providence’s company boasts an enviable roster of music artists, including Kendrick Lamar, Coldplay and Ed Sheeran. Its sports marketing practice is viewed as particularly lucrative and has potential to grow in value as big dollars flow into sports that draw large crowds.
Wasserman, who declined to comment, has a veto right over any sale of the company that he has spent a quarter of a century building.
UTA, which also declined to comment, is among the most aggressive suitors, the sources said. The Team’s sports marketing and music representation divisions would dramatically boost the Beverly Hills agency’s profile and client roster.
Whitesell, former executive chairman of Endeavor, separately has been motivated to make investments in sports, media and entertainment since last year when he left the talent agency that he and Ari Emanuel built. Whitesell launched a new firm with seed money from private equity firm Silver Lake, and last spring he started WIN Sports Group to represent professional football players.
Whitesell wasn’t immediately available for comment.
European investment firm Permira also has expressed interest, according to a knowledgeable source. Permira declined to comment.
The New York Times first reported that Permira, UTA and Whitesell had expressed interest.
The sales process is expected to stretch into summer, the knowledgeable people said. The auction could become complicated particularly if Providence decides to unwind the business.
For example, UTA could not buy the entire company because of the Brillstein television unit. The agency is bound by an agreement with the Writers Guild of America that prevents it from owning television production.
Investment bank Moelis & Company is managing the sale. A representative of the firm declined comment.
Wasserman also is the chairman of LA28, the nonprofit group that will be staging the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles in two years.
Following revelations of Wasserman’s 2003 emails with Maxwell, several musicians and athletes — led by pop artist Chappell Roan and soccer star Abby Wambach — said that, to stay true to their values, they would leave the agency then known as Wasserman.
Wasserman apologized to his staff for “past personal mistakes” and said he would sell the agency.
He had limited dealings with Epstein, flying on the financier’s jet along with former President Clinton for a September 2002 humanitarian trip through Africa.
Wasserman, a prolific Clinton fundraiser whose legendary grandfather, Hollywood titan Lew Wasserman, helped the Democrat win the 1992 presidential election, was joined on Epstein’s jet by his then-wife, Laura, actor Kevin Spacey, Epstein, Maxwell — who was convicted of sexual abuse in 2021 — and others, including security agents.
The LA28 board’s executive committee unanimously voted to keep Wasserman as chairman, citing his “strong leadership” of the Games.
Pizza Movie (2026) Director: Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney, Star: Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone
Somehow, I got through an hour of this movie. I was seconds away from turning off in the first fifteen minutes because of the juvenile humor. Pizza Movie is too silly, repetitive, and the characters are annoying. Stranger Things Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone star as college friends, Jack and Montgomery. College angles are rarely seen in films right now, and that’s the one saving grace of the film. Similar to high school, people are also trying to fit in. The story and visuals were too corny. You can only watch someone’s head exploding for so long without letting yours.
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026) Director: Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, Stars: Chris Pratt, Charlie Day, Anya Taylor-Joy
I never saw the first Super Mario Brothers Movie when it was out, but I heard it got positive reviews. My brother always loved playing Super Mario video games as a kid, and I’d watch him. I tagged along with my friends to see Super Mario Galaxy Movie, and it’s a cute and fun film. I like it when movies explore the video game world. The animation creates unique worlds and characters. The characters are split into their own storylines, and for me, I felt like it worked. It adds more action, especially for kids who are seeing the films.
Emily in Paris Season 5 (2025) Creator: Darren Star, Stars: Lily Collins and Ashley Park
After a bright spot in season 4, I thought season 5 of Emily in Paris would continue its growth in the story and its protagonist, but no, it’s all drained out in the usual Emily (Lily Collins) mishaps. Ashley Park (Mindy) has become too good for this show. Emily and Mindy waste several opportunities because of their love lives. The whole relationship angle is ruining it. I don’t understand why Alfie (Lucien Laviscount) is still in the show. I thought writers learned their lesson, but by the last episode, they’re continuing to bring the past into an apparent season 6.
Sarah’s Oil (2025) Director: Cyrus Nowrasteh, Stars: Naya Desir-Johnson and Zachary Levi
There’s always history lurking right beneath our noses. Sarah’s Oil (2025) tells the true story of Sarah Rector, an Oklahoma-born African American girl who became the first black female millionaire in the U.S. Naya Desir-Johnson is fierce and driven as Sarah. Zachary Levi is also along for the ride as Bert, a man who helps Sarah. Kate (Bridget Regan) was another favorite character as an intelligent woman. Cyrus Nowrasteh was drawn to the subject for its story and its themes. Nowrasteh’s direction is compelling as he unearths a hidden story from history. The film is streaming on Amazon Prime.
Jack Goes Boating (2014) Director and Star: Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Ryan
Jack Goes Boating (2014) didn’t quite work for me, largely because of its slow pace and uneven storytelling. The film stars the late Seymour Hoffman as Jack, who also directed the film. This was Hoffman’s first and only time in the directing chair. Amy Ryan also stars in the film, giving a solid performance. This was also based on a play that Hoffman starred in. Jack wants to participate in a swim championship. That’s hardly what the film is about, tracking other characters’ stories. While the film aims for quiet intimacy, it ultimately drags, making it an underwhelming viewing experience.
You Kill Me (2016), Director: John Dahl, Stars: Ben Kingsley, Tea Leoni, Luke Wilson
Meet You Kill Me (2016), yet another film that I found in the museum of underrated gems. The concept revolves around Frank (Ben Kingsley), a hitman, who is sent to an A.A. meeting to get his mind focused again. A different story happens, where Frank falls in love with Laurel (Tea Leoni). Leoni is one of my favorite actresses. It also stars the funny Luke Wilson. I liked the trio’s dynamics. You Kill Me is a mental health movie. It’s okay to make changes if you’re not happy. I recommended that you keep an eye out for this movie.
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