Entertainment
Review: Bedroom and boardroom intrigue abounds in Netflix’s wickedly entertaining ‘Fair Play’
Chloe Domont’s “Fair Play,” a smart, crackling thriller about sex, money, gender and power in the modern age, begins with a wickedly funny omen. Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich), hot and horny and deliriously happy, have slipped away from a wedding reception (not theirs) for a bathroom quickie — an ill-timed tryst in every sense, leaving Emily’s dress and Luke’s lips stained with menstrual blood. They gasp in shock but laugh it off; they’re too drunk, on booze and each other, to worry about what everyone will think. And then Emily spies the ring that’s slipped out of Luke’s pocket, spurring him to drop clumsily to one knee, red of lip but gallant of spirit, and offer up a sweet if singularly indecent proposal.
By next sunrise, the newly engaged lovers have sobered up, and the question of what everyone will think reasserts itself. A clever sequence chronicles their morning ritual at their Chinatown apartment, as they scrub away any hint of romantic afterglow, don trim, dark suits and head off on their own separate ways — and arrive, almost simultaneously, in the same elevator of the same Lower Manhattan glass-and-steel fortress. Emily and Luke are both junior analysts at a hedge fund, One Crest Capital, and their relationship is a violation of corporate policy. So far they’ve managed to keep it off the books, hoping that someday soon they’ll be successful enough to go public without fear of repercussions.
But what if one of them succeeds and the other doesn’t? Specifically, what if Luke, though rumored to be in line for a promotion, turns out to be just another Wall Street mediocrity, soon to be kicked to the curb if he doesn’t quit in frustration or jump out a window first?
And what if Emily, who’s been quietly knocking ’em dead for months, is summoned to have a drink in the middle of the night with the big boss, Campbell (Eddie Marsan, icily mesmerizing), and told that she’s the company’s newest portfolio manager? In some ways, we already know the answer as soon as Emily anxiously returns home to deliver the good news. Luke’s first reaction is to wonder if Campbell made a pass at her, an expression of concern that is also, of course, the ultimate insult. And as the truth sinks in, not even his stiffly congratulatory smile (“I’m so f— proud of you,” he says, a little too forcefully) can conceal the shock and resentment in his eyes.
Things clearly aren’t going to end well. But if “Fair Play” spends the better part of two hours tracing this newly lopsided romance to its logical, unhappy conclusion, the blow-by-blow machinations are still a chilly wonder to behold. What gives the movie its driving tension isn’t just the glaring imbalance between Emily and Luke as employees, but a deeper incompatibility between the personal and professional imperatives they’ve chosen. Modern romance insists on projecting at least the illusion of equality, but the cutthroat capitalist world in which Emily thrives (and where Luke struggles to maintain a foothold) has no real use for appearances. You‘ve either got it or you don’t.
The tension builds slowly but deliciously, as the leads lock us into an ostensible battle of the sexes that neither character can win. Ehrenreich, whose dark-princeling good looks can curdle at will, makes Luke a fascinating swirl of ego, entitlement and fragility. He fumes in silence at his desk, listening as his co-workers speculate about who Emily must have screwed or screwed over to get ahead. (Does he want to defend her honor or join the pile-on?) Compounding his humiliation, he now reports to Emily, answering her questions, taking her orders and offering buy-or-sell recommendations that she has the power to accept or reject.
Domont, making a sharply assured feature debut, knows her way around these gleaming corridors of power. (Her TV credits include episodes of “Suits,” “Ballers” and “Billions.”) What she’s mounted here is less a throwback than an up-to-the-minute rejoinder to corporate thrillers like “Wall Street” and “Disclosure,” among other touchstones of the ’80s and ’90s Michael Douglassance. A lot may have changed since then (the technology, for starters), and also since the rapacious ’60s sexism of “Mad Men,” an allusion prompted by Rich Sommer’s sly performance as Campbell’s silky No. 2.
But “Fair Play” knows that less has changed than we‘d like to tell ourselves, and not even the ostensible reforms of #MeToo can chase away the inherent misogyny of the elite corporate class. On the contrary, the genuine progress that Emily’s elevation represents can all too easily be weaponized against her, dismissed as a sop to political correctness over merit. And if Domont has a sharp ear for the breathlessly impenetrable jargon of high finance, she’s also keenly attuned to the piggish wisecracks that pass for small talk. For Emily, a bad day means Campbell calling her a “dumb f— bitch” to her face; a good night means proving she can roll with the boys and celebrate a six-digit commission at the local strip club.
Shooting through glass partitions and around multi-screen computer terminals, Domont extracts drama and meaning not just from her characters’ desperate glances and conspiratorial whispers, but also from the very layout of the office itself, where the hierarchies are etched into the floor plan and the ugly fluorescent lighting exposes every lie and magnifies every tension. She and her cinematographer, Menno Mans, draw a stark visual contrast with Emily and Luke’s dimly lit, sparsely furnished apartment, where their once-loving dynamic struggles to reassert itself. The movie keeps following them back and forth, between boardroom and bedroom, turning these public and private worlds into complementary, near-contiguous war zones.
“Fair Play” doesn’t entirely avoid a trap common to its subgenre, namely that what happens at the office is inevitably more scintillating — and persuasive — than damn near everything else. At home, Luke spirals, sputters and loses himself in self-help banalities, while Emily tries in vain to re-energize their sex life, a subplot that puts maybe too fine a point on her fiancé’s professional impotence. Some late family drama creeps in from the sidelines, but it feels like an unnecessary distraction, an attempt to add yet more stories to an already precarious house of cards. It all falls apart spectacularly, of course, with two tough, punitive scenes of violence — one utterly horrifying, the other undeniably satisfying. Rarely has “cutting your losses” taken on such cathartic new meaning.
‘Fair Play’
Rating: R, for pervasive language, sexual content, some nudity and sexual violence
Running time: 1 hour, 53 minutes
Playing: Starts Sept. 29 at Landmark Pasadena Playhouse; Landmark Theatres Sunset, West Hollywood; the Landmark Westwood; starts streaming Oct. 6 on Netflix
Entertainment
The secrets behind 'Skeleton Crew's' suburban planet, the first in 'Star Wars' history
This story contains spoilers for “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” Episode 3.
There’s more to At Attin than meets the eye.
The peaceful and orderly planet introduced in “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” is not just the suburban homeworld of Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers), Neel (Robert Timothy Smith), Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) and KB (Kyriana Kratter). The third episode of the Disney+ series reveals that At Attin is a mythical planet that has been hidden from the galaxy since long before the events of the original “Star Wars” trilogy and the war between the Empire and Rebellion.
Described as one of the “Jewels of the Old Republic,” At Attin is among the “planets of wonder” that were “hidden for their own protection.” According to Kh’ymm (voiced by Alia Shawkat), who was tapped to help the lost kids trying to find a way home, it’s the only one of these planets that wasn’t destroyed long ago.
This means that even though the series, like “The Mandalorian,” is set during the time of the New Republic — i.e. after the events of the original “Star Wars” trilogy — At Attin’s origins are rooted in an era that spanned for thousands of years before it.
The latest revelation is “just the tip of the iceberg,” says Jon Watts, the head writer and executive producer of “Skeleton Crew” along with Christopher Ford. “There’s so many little reveals and twists and turns along the way.”
“Skeleton Crew,” which premiered earlier this month, follows a quartet of kids who are trying to find their way home after being unexpectedly flung into the galaxy on an old starship they stumbled upon in the woods in their neighborhood. Accompanying them are a grumpy droid (Nick Frost) that they found aboard the starship and a mysterious, Force-sensitive scoundrel (Jude Law) who they met at a spaceport of scum and villainy.
“We liked the idea of a group of kids that don’t know that much about the ‘Star Wars’ galaxy getting lost in the ‘Star Wars’ galaxy,” says Watts. They’re “experiencing it for the first time [in] the story of their journey home.”
For these specific kids, home is At Attin, where they live in neighborhoods with tract housing and lawns, take the bus or their bikes to school and interact with various service droids. In At Attin, Wim is a latchkey kid who dreams of Jedi adventures with his reliable best friend Neel. Fern is a bit more rebellious, often zipping through the streets on her speeder with her best friend KB.
But it‘s not long after the kids find themselves out in space that there are hints that At Attin is no ordinary place, including how others react to the planet’s name as well as to Wim’s retro lunch money.
Watts and Ford had envisioned the kids’ hometown as a place that they would want to leave “not because it was dystopian or … so desolate” — like Luke Skywalker’s Tatooine or Rey’s Jakku — but because of its “benign conformity.”
“The houses are all kind of the same, it’s safe and everyone has what feels like a boring job,” says Watts. “School is boring and you don’t want to do homework. You know that there’s a bigger adventure out there somewhere. You just don’t know how to get it.”
It was while they were working through the designs and layout of the homes and neighborhoods that At Attin developed into a suburb.
“I wanted the houses to be really cool and ‘Star Wars’-y,” says Ford. “We had a bunch of different designs, but we couldn’t really judge them until we put them in a row. And when you have them in a row, it totally changed how they felt … As soon as you put them in a row, it creates just this immediate quick read of suburbs.”
For At Attin, says production designer Doug Chiang, the “Skeleton Crew” team started with a place “that was somewhat familiar in terms of what ‘Star Wars’ design is, but twisting it a little bit.”
“Suburban Star Wars is something that we’ve never seen before,” Chiang explains. “But the aesthetic was also locked away in time because the planet was hidden.” This meant they were able to lean into the 1970s and ’80s aesthetic of the original “Star Wars.”
The pop cultural touchstones that both Chiang and his fellow production designer Oliver Scholl mention are “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” (1982) and “The Goonies” (1985). But beyond these universally recognized neighborhoods, they also looked at real-life places including the retrofuturistic Brasilia, the brutalist architecture at an Armenian airport and the works of architects like Kenzo Tange and Tadao Ando for inspiration.
Because the kids being bored on At Attin is key to the story, the production designers had to resist the urge to be overly playful.
“It can’t be too exciting, because we need to transport that idea across to the audience that this is mundane,” says Scholl. “But it’s mundane in a ‘Star Wars’ context. So it has to be exciting, but still carry across [that] they want to see what’s out there beyond the screen in the sky.”
Plus, the design of At Attin had to fit naturally into the ever-expanding world of “Star Wars.”
“The designs have to speak to a broader universe and it has to make sense,” says Chiang. “A lot of the homework that we do is really to make sure that we figure out all the logic in terms of the evolution of each of these places so that there is an inherent internal logic to ‘Star Wars’ that makes sense within the world we’re developing.”
Practically, At Attin‘s design took cues from urban planning, with consideration given to where housing would be in relation to people‘s workplaces, residents’ commuting needs and even water sources.
What’s “really great about ‘Star Wars’ in general is that it’s a lived-in future,” says Scholl. “It’s not this abstract, everything is chic and clean and it doesn’t feel real. You can imagine that [At Attin has] been there for a long time. That many generations of kids have been born there and went to that school there.”
Scholl explains that At Attin features a rectilinear grid plan city center, wrapped by suburbia in a more circular pattern that “is recognizable from space.” Without mentioning specifics, he hints that at least some of the design is related to At Attin’s larger mysteries.
When asked about what other secrets At Attin may harbor, Watts teases that “we made choices for a reason.”
“Us choosing to create At Attin the way it is, and it having similarities to suburbs, there’s a kind of a nostalgia to that,” says Ford. “But in a lot of media, a lot of stories, suburbs are also hiding something. There’s a darker side to it, and that’s all intentional.”
Movie Reviews
Movie Review: ‘September 5’ goes inside a newsroom during the Munich Olympics hostage crisis
News junkies will find much to love in “September 5,” a fictionalized account of ABC’s live coverage of the hostage crisis during the 1972 Munich Olympics. There are spirited debates about reporting with only one source, use of words like “terrorism” and what to do if violence breaks out during a live shot. There are negotiations with rival networks over satellite usage, disguises and fake badges made to get reels of 16mm film in and out of the locked down Olympic village and plenty of confused men (and a few women) trying to keep up with an ever-escalating situation.
The film is a moment by moment retelling of how a group of sports broadcasters brought this story to the world in real time, despite the technical limitations and their own inexperience across a confusing 22 hours. Everyone came to the studio that night ready for breaking sports news, scores and pre-packaged interviews. Even that was going to be a test for the man running the control room for the first time. Geoffrey Mason, portrayed by John Magaro, was a 28-year-old coordinating producer. Someone wonders about his experience and is assured that he’s covered minor league baseball games.
But in the early hours of Sept. 5, 1972, eight members of a Palestinian group called Black September broke into the Olympic village and attacked the Israeli delegation killing wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg and weightlifter Yossi Romano. Some escaped, but nine others were taken hostage.
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While the tragedy of the Munich Olympics has certainly been told many times, writer and director Tim Fehlbaum saw an opportunity in the team behind the live broadcast. And he commits fully to staying in the newsroom, with all of its glorious old technologies, from the walkie-talkies they used to stay in touch and to taking time to show how they had to manually add text to the screens. He and his screenwriter were able to reconstruct the events almost minute-by-minute, which helped shape the screenplay.
The players are many in this large ensemble. Peter Sarsgaard, who’s looked right in a newsroom since “Shattered Glass,” gives gravitas to Roone Arledge, then-president of ABC Sports, and Ben Chaplin is operations engineer Marvin Bader. Leonie Benesch is Marianne Gebhardt, a German-speaking interpreter who is the only person there able to understand the language of the country. She might be a bit of a composite who checks off a lot of boxes as both an entrepreneurial woman and a younger German offering perspective and insight into what this moment might mean for the country trying to put on a good front in the aftermath of World War II. An actor (Benjamin Walker) plays broadcaster Peter Jennings, and real archival footage of anchor Jim McKay from that day is used in the film.
And while they all rise to the occasion, mistakes are made – including a rather big one at the end, following imperfect secondhand information from the Fuerstenfeldbruck airfield. They don’t call it the first draft of history for nothing, after all, and it may be illuminating for audiences to see how it’s handled.
The film looks of its time, but it also feels fairly modern in its sensibilities which makes it always seem more like a re-telling than an in-the-moment experience. This may be to its detriment, yet it’s still an undeniably riveting and compelling watch. The word thrilling doesn’t seem appropriate, however. This is not “Apollo 13” after all. The end is not a happy one.
But at time when trust in the media is in crisis, this film is a great humanizer, reminding audiences that the media is far from a monolith, but a group of individuals under immense pressure to get the story right, get the story out and go back and do it again the next day.
“September 5,” a Paramount Pictures release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for language. Running time: 94. Three stars out of four.
Entertainment
'Golden Bachelor' Gerry Turner reveals cancer led to abrupt divorce. His ex disagrees
There was more to the shocking “Golden Bachelor” divorce than met the eye. Gerry Turner, who charmed all ages as the ABC franchise’s elder star, has cancer and he says that’s what cut short his marriage to final rose recipient Theresa Nist.
The 72-year-old revealed to People on Tuesday that early in their marriage he was diagnosed with a rare bone marrow cancer, which influenced their decision to split. Nist, in a separate interview with the magazine, appeared to disagree. (More on that later.)
Upon announcing their divorce in April, Turner and Nist said that distance was mainly the culprit. The two couldn’t decide whether they should live in Turner’s Indiana or Nist’s New Jersey — because they didn’t want to be separated from their respective families.
The reality star said the cancer revelation “probably will clear up a lot of mystery” around what happened at the beginning of the year.
“As Theresa and I were trying very hard to find our lifestyle and where we were going to live and how we were going to make our life work, I was unfortunately diagnosed with cancer,” he told People.
The former couple, who got engaged during the “Golden Bachelor” finale that aired in November 2023, tied the knot during an ABC special that aired in January. But three months later, the two announced on “Good Morning America” that they were calling it quits. Turner filed his divorce petition the same day, ending the short-lived marriage to the financial services professional.
Turner said his diagnosis followed a three-year-old shoulder injury that he sustained while teaching a pickleball class. But he got busy and didn’t have it properly looked at until after his run on the reality show. Then his orthopedic surgeon referred him to another doctor after his lab work contained “unusual blood markers” that they initially believed could be caused by a blood disorder.
The reality star said he was then diagnosed with Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia, a slow-growing bone marrow cancer. The Mayo Clinic says it’s a non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma that occurs when white blood cells turn into cancer cells and build up in the spongy material of the marrow.
“Unfortunately, there’s no cure for it. So that weighs heavily in every decision I make,” Turner told People. “It was like 10 tons of concrete were just dropped on me. And I was a bit in denial for a while; I didn’t want to admit to it.”
The widower shared the perceived blood disorder news with Nist in February and underwent additional testing for a more definitive diagnosis. He told Nist in mid-March that it was cancer,. Their conversation was brief and she was understandably “a little bit awestruck” by the news, he said.
“I wanted my life to continue on as normal as possible, and that led me to believing that as normal as possible more meant spending time with my family, my two daughters, my two son-in-laws, my granddaughters,” he said, adding that “the importance of finding the way with Theresa was still there, but it became less of a priority.”
He also pushed back against judgments about their split that he believes are “unfair” and characterized their abbreviated union as a “cherished memory” that he wished had a different ending.
“I hope that people understand in retrospect now that [the diagnosis] had a huge bearing on my decisions and I think probably Theresa’s as well,” he said. “Hopefully they’ll look at things a little bit differently, that maybe it wasn’t quite a rash, fast decision that people thought. That there was something else going on.”
However, Nist, 71, told People that her ex-husband’s diagnosis “wasn’t a factor in the ending of the relationship.” At least not for her.
“If that was something on his part, maybe, I don’t know. But no, that didn’t factor into ending the relationship,” she said. “Part of it was the distance, but that wasn’t the only part. That’s really all I will say.”
Meanwhile, Turner said that he’s working with a hematology-oncology group in Fort Wayne, Ind., and is going to “pack as much fun” he possibly can into his life.
“[W]hen I’m gone, I’m gone, but I’m not going to have regrets,” he told the magazine.
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