Movie Review

It’ll be good for us.

So Blake Lovell tells his go-getter wife, Charlotte, when he suggests they leave the city and spend a summer in Oregon.

They’ve had a rough time of it lately. Blake, a writer, is between jobs right now—and that means he’s been a full-time dad to their daughter, Ginger. That’s been great; the two of them have never been closer.

But that also makes Charlotte, an ambitious journalist with an eye on deadlines and a hunger for the front page, a familial third wheel.

While Blake makes dinner, Charlotte’s arguing with her editor. While Blake takes Ginger out for ice cream, Charlotte runs after the latest scandal. And while that’s great for Charlotte’s career and all, Charlotte feels less like Ginger’s mom and more like a houseguest—and not an always welcome one at that. She and Blake are arguing more than ever. And if the couple keeps following this trajectory, they won’t be a couple much longer.

A trip to Oregon might be just the ticket, Blake feels, to heal these long-festering issues.

After all, he’ll need to go to Oregon anyway. His long-missing father has finally been officially declared dead by the state. Blake needs to pack up the old family house and tie up loose ends.

So he thinks, why don’t they all go? Spend some time together? After all, Charlotte can work from anywhere. Or, hey, she could even take a vacation for once. No harm getting reacquainted with your husband and daughter, right? Plus, it’s beautiful there. The views never get old.

Sure, Blake might’ve downplayed just how remote this corner of Oregon was. Internet? You’ll be lucky to have power. And he never even thinks to dredge up some less-idyllic childhood memories; ones that left his granite-tough father trembling. Ones about a monster in the woods.

Blake had long waved away such legends. Monster? Pish.

But then, as he drives a moving van carrying his small family, someone—something—appears in the headlights. The van careens off the road and tumbles through trees, precariously coming to a stop in the branches of one of them. Charlotte and Ginger scamper to relative safety. But the thing swipes at Blake before he can do the same. The attack takes less time than an eye blink—so fast that when Blake sees the blood on his arm, he assumes he must’ve suffered a cut from the glass.

Charlotte looks at the jagged wound, and she knows it’s not a simple cut. Nope, that thing took a chunk out of Blake’s arm. And who knows what sort of bacteria that creature was carrying. Rabies? Tetanus? Best get Blake to a doctor, pronto.

She’s right to be worried. Blake is infected—but not by something a doctor can treat with a shot or antibiotics.

The trip to Oregon? It’ll be good for us, Blake promised.

But that might not be a promise that Blake can keep.

In 2015, Zane Lowe left his job as a DJ on the BBC’s venerable Radio 1 in the U.K. to become the principal voice of a new digital radio station at the music-streaming service launched that year by Apple. Among his duties: an hour-long show beamed live from Los Angeles every weekday starting at 9 a.m. Pacific time.

A decade later, Lowe is a fixture of pop music around the globe: a relentlessly upbeat tastemaker-turned-cheerleader whose touchy-feely interviews with the biggest names on the charts draw audiences in the millions on Apple Music and YouTube. Which means he probably could move his show to a more comfortable hour if he wanted to.

“What’s more comfortable than 9 a.m.?” asks Lowe, who still gets up Monday through Friday and schleps to Apple’s Culver City studios to spin records and chat up pop stars on the platform’s flagship Apple Music 1 station. “I can’t sleep past 6 anyway, man. I get up, do some boxing and I’m f— ready. Gimme a coffee, get me on the air, I’m stoked.”

Even — or especially — in an age of on-demand entertainment, Lowe, 51, is bullish on the promise of live radio. “Music sounds different to me in that room than it does anywhere else,” he says of his spot behind the console. “I love the idea of being able to alter the energy of whatever’s going on in people’s lives in different time zones with one song.”

Apple shares his enthusiasm. Last month the tech giant expanded its radio offerings — in addition to Apple Music 1, it already had Apple Music Hits and Apple Music Country — with three new stations: Apple Música Uno, a Latin-music channel; the dance-focused Apple Music Club; and Apple Music Chill, which the company calls “an escape, a refuge, a sanctuary in sound” and which features input from the ambient-music pioneer Brian Eno. Each runs 24 hours a day with programming hosted by a mix of veteran radio personalities and musicians such as Becky G and Stephan Moccio.

“The reason we started radio was because we want to be a place where culture happens, where parties are starting, where artists come and get to have a safe space to talk about why they made certain music,” says Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice president of music and sports. “And that’s more important today than it ever was.”

Cupertino-based Apple — whose music-streaming service counts 93 million subscribers, according to Business of Apps — wouldn’t specify how many people listen to its radio stations. “We’re not a numbers kind of company,” Schusser says — one advantage of being part of a corporation routinely described as the world’s most valuable.

Yet Tatiana Cirisano, a music industry analyst at Midia Research, says Apple Music’s investment in radio “isn’t just some experiment they can throw money at because they’re Apple.” At a moment when the growth of digital streaming has slowed, the stations are a way for Apple Music to distinguish itself from competitors like Spotify — the clear industry leader with 640 million users — and Amazon Music. (Unlike Apple, Spotify offers a free ad-supported plan.)

“If you think about the past decade of streaming, it’s been characterized by a complete lack of differentiation, where all these platforms had the same interface and the same catalog,” Cirisano says of the format that now accounts for 84% of recorded music revenues. “But that’s not enough to compete anymore because we’re running out of potential new subscribers.” To lure customers, Spotify has gone big on podcasts and audiobooks. Live radio, Cirisano says, “adds some scarcity to the marketplace. And live entertainment experiences” — think of the splashy deals Netflix has struck recently with the NFL and WWE — “are sort of the last scarce entertainment experience now that everything is available on demand.”

Natalie Eshaya, who oversees Apple Music Radio, says the new stations reflect the platform’s broader commitment to bringing “a human touch” to the streaming ecosystem. It’s a framing that seems intended to draw a contrast with Spotify, which in 2023 introduced a DJ-like feature controlled by artificial intelligence and which last month drew widespread criticism for incorporating AI into its popular year-end Wrapped promotion. At Apple, Eshaya says, “We choose the music and we curate the programming — that’s been the moral compass since Day 1.”

In addition to Lowe, Apple Music Radio features broadcasting pros like Ebro Darden, who also hosts a morning show on New York’s Hot 97; Nadeska Alexis, who came up through MTV and Complex; and Evelyn Sicairos, formerly of Univision. (Before she joined Apple in 2015, Eshaya worked as a producer on Ryan Seacrest’s morning show on L.A.’s KIIS-FM.) But Lowe, who also holds the title of global creative director — and who recently stepped in for James Corden as host of a special holiday edition of “Carpool Karaoke” — is clearly Apple Music’s guiding personality.

Born and raised in New Zealand, he made music himself before going into radio and reckons it’s his artistic temperament that allows him to connect intimately on the air with stars such as Adele, Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga and Bad Bunny. “I speak the artist language,” Lowe says in his office in Culver City. “I think most artists would probably go, ‘Yeah, he gets it.’ ” Curled on a sofa wedged into the corner of the dimly lighted room, he’s dressed in his customary baggy jeans and sweater and wears a pair of stylish geometric glasses. “And I like working at a company that rewards that,” he adds.

What Lowe views as his empathy with musicians — “The trust that artists have in him is kind of iconic,” Eshaya says — is seen by some as a level of deference in his interviews that can border on obsequiousness. “I’m aware of the fact that some people feel I’m overly positive or I’m not critical enough,” he says. “But I just don’t think that’s my job. There are certain things that artists may feel are sensitive — could be personal, could be a tragedy in their life, could be something they’re not willing to talk about — and I don’t necessarily feel like I have a responsibility to get that information or that they have an obligation to give it to me.”

Does he think of himself as a journalist?

“No, I actually don’t,” Lowe says. “I have an opportunity to spend an hour with an amazing artist, and I really want it to be the most beautiful human experience I can have.” When Katy Perry went on Lowe’s show in September to promote her album “143” — a would-be comeback LP that earned some of last year’s harshest reviews — he told her the new music was “such a gift” and that she’d reclaimed her role as “the Katy Perry that everybody loves”; more to the point, he declined to ask Perry about her controversial decision to reunite with the producer Dr. Luke after she’d earlier parted ways with him in the wake of Kesha’s allegations that he’d sexually assaulted her. (Kesha and Luke reached a settlement in 2023.)

“I did the best I could in the environment that I was in to have that conversation. We both enjoyed each other’s company, and her fans seemed to like it,” Lowe says. “In that moment, given the timing of the music and where we were and how quickly it was all happening, it’s not something that we landed on.”

Schusser pushes back on the idea that Lowe avoids tough questions, citing a 2020 interview with Justin Bieber in which the pop star tearfully discussed his history of self-destructive behavior. “I’m pretty sure that Justin’s publicist would not have wanted the conversation to go the way it went,” Schusser says. Yet it’s common knowledge in the music industry that, after Lowe conducts a prerecorded interview (as opposed to one he does live), an artist and/or their reps are welcome to request cuts — not exactly protocol even within the often-chummy world of celebrity journalism.

Then again, as Lowe himself points out, he doesn’t work for a news operation. “I’m in a streaming service where we’re trying to get more people to listen to music,” says the married father of two teenage sons. “My job is to help a business be healthy.” Darden, who’s known on Hot 97 as an aggressive interviewer, says that “on Apple, I try to create more space for the art and more grace for the artist” than in the more pressurized realm of terrestrial radio.

“People are listening to Hot in their cars, and they’ve got very limited time,” he says of his morning gig. “You stepped into the room, we got to get to it. Start the chainsaw, you know what I mean?”

To musicians planning an album rollout — many of whom already regard interviews with traditional journalists as an unnecessary risk in the era of social media — a friendly chat on Apple Music Radio might represent a safer way to reach an audience disinclined to worry about the finer points of how (and why) pop-star content is created.

“I can’t repair any relationships between A and B — I can only do what’s required when they want C,” Lowe says of the way musicians interact with legacy media and with him. “I can’t do someone else’s role just because they don’t get to do it, and I have access.”

And what’s the incentive to do something else? Schusser isn’t exaggerating by much when he says, “Every artist on the planet that has a new project — whether it’s an album, a song, a tour, a collaboration — they’re all coming to us.” Apple’s coziness with musicians, which it facilitates in part by paying a higher royalty rate per stream than Spotify, has always been crucial to its brand: In Apple Music’s early days, the service brokered deals for exclusive access to albums by Frank Ocean, Drake and Chance the Rapper; among the other stars with radio shows on the platform today are Summer Walker, Rauw Alejandro, Jamie xx, Hardy and Elton John, who’s hosted “Rocket Hour” since 2015.

“Most companies that work in streaming are technology companies — they don’t really care about music,” Schusser says. “If it’s books or podcasts or something else, it’s just bits and bytes. We’re a music company, and we have no intention to add other things into our music experience.” (One thing Apple is planning in the next few years, according to the exec: upgrading its studios in cities including L.A., Nashville, Berlin and Paris so that the company can produce small ticketed events.)

“Music doesn’t get event-ized enough” in the streaming economy, Lowe says. “It gets released mostly at the same time, then it fights for itself, and it’s really hard because there’s a lot to fight against. This is easily the cheesiest thing I can tell you, but music is incredibly special. Putting an hour or two hours of radio together to create a mood — it sends a message that it’s worth showing up for.”

By Adann-Kennn J. Alexxandar

“The Count of Monte-Cristo” (Period Drama: 2 hours, 58 minutes)

Starring: Pierre Niney, Anaïs Demoustier and Bastien Bouillon

Director: Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte

Rated: PG-13 (Violence and thematic elements)

Movie Review:

Despite being nearly three hours long, “The Count of Monte-Cristo” is engaging throughout. However, if you do not speak French, reading subtitles for a lengthy time feels like speed reading through a book.

Adaptations of French author Alexandre Dumas’s “Le Comte de Monte-Cristo” have graced multiple media forms. The first was a silent short film that debuted in 1908 debuted. The 1934 movie directed by Rowland V. Lee was the first full-length feature film. A current miniseries is airing now. This latest, set in a Bourbon Restoration period of France, a post-Napoleonic era of political turmoil, avoids the period’s political upheaval and nicely focuses on one man’s quest for retribution.

French authorities arrest Edmond Dantès (Niney), a young sailor on his wedding day to fiancée Mercédès Herrera (Demoustier). Dantès is falsely accused of aiding the exiled French emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte. He is sentenced without trial to life in prison and sent to the Château d’If, an island penitentiary off Marseille. After being in solitary confinement for four years, Dantès, prisoner Number 34, meets fellow prisoner, Abbé Faria (Pierfrancesco Favino), who tells the young man about a vast treasure on the Isle of Monte-Cristo. Nearly 14 years later, Dantès escapes, and he returns to Paris, France, as the wealthy Count of Monte-Cristo to exact revenge on revenge on the three men responsible for falsely imprisoning him.

Despite some tattoos on the main character that looks overly sophisticated for the 15th century, “The Count of Monte-Cristo” is a well-done movie, even if it still feels rushed for its lengthy run time.

This screenplay has three parts. We get to know Edmond Dantès as a man smitten with love and ready to marry his lover Mercédès. Then, audiences see him in prison. There, Dantès is a scrawny man with ruffled hair and a wild long beard. That is where he meets Abbé Faria who gives admin Dantès Hope and ends his loneliness in the underground sale where he resides.

The bulk of this photoplay deals with Dantès’ revenge, carefully plotting the demise of the men who framed him. The directors and writers of the screenplay do not rush the stage. Instead, they move at a snail’s pace so that one can see the plan being laid for the antagonist of this movie.

Wrongly imprisoned, Edmund Dantes states he is not seeking revenge; it is justice he desires. However, for moviegoers, vengeance is always gratifying in cinema. It is always entertaining to see the antagonists get their comeuppance.

Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte’s direction and writing is superb. They condense Dumas’s lengthy literary work into an elaborate cinematic experience.

Grade: B+ (You can count on it to deliver.)

“Den of Thieves 2: Pantera” (Action/Crime: 2 hours, 24 minutes)

Starring: Gerard Butler, O’Shea Jackson Jr. and Evin Ahmad

Director: Christian Gudegast

Rated: R (Pervasive language, violence, drug use and sexual references)

Movie Review:

“Den of Thieves 2: Pantera” turns into a good heist movie after a slow start. It is the sequel to “Den of Thieves” (2018), also directed by Christian Gudegast. “Pantera” immediately follows where its prequel ended. While missing some of its major talents from the first movie, “Pantera” is better than its prequel.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Detective Nicholas ‘Big Nick’ O’Brien (Butler) goes to Nice, France. He rendezvouses with thief Donnie Wilson (Jackson), a man who escaped from O’Brien and his team a short time earlier. Wilson is planning a major heist, the world’s largest diamond exchange.

Unlike many modern heist films, this one allows audiences time to understand its characters through good development as these onscreen people plan their heist proficiently. Although these are criminals, it is easy to relate to them, even if you disagree with what they are doing.

Gudegast humanizes his characters, so even the stereotypical ones have interesting depictions. Therefore, you want to see them succeed, making “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera” pleasing.

Grade: B- (They steal audiences’ attention.)

“Better Man” (Biography/Docudrama: 2 hours, 15 minutes)

Starring: Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies and Steve Pemberton

Director: Michael Gracey

Rated: R (Drug use, pervasive language, sexual content, nudity and violent content, including attempted suicide)

Movie Review:

“Better Man” is a biographical sketch of British pop superstar Robbie Williams’ life. It details his childhood to the apex of his career as a singer and entertainer with the boy band “Take That” and his hit solo career. It is a good biopic, although the chimpanzee shenanigans are unneeded.

Williams’ life is interesting as a child and an adult. It is a good look at what fame does to a young person and how they must grow up into their celebrity lifestyle. The movie does not shy away from Williams’ sexual escapades and continued drug use. The good and the bad are always good in a biographical photoplay. This biographical drama omits some constant rumors about Williams and how he insinuates tidbits in interviews only to deny them in public.

“Better Man” uses computer-generated chimpanzee images of Williams via a VFX creation to convey a story. His life is interesting enough that bringing in computer-generated imagery versions of himself or people in costumes is unnecessary.

These visual tactics are a means to get people’s attention and work to bring moviegoers into theaters. The primate feature is given to Williams. It matches his primitive behavior — at least in the beginning. As this screenplay moves to a more mature Williams, his character becomes one of impressive humanity. Despite the primate features, this movie involves plenty of emotions. The ending is very touching, and the monkey business becomes less distractive as the movie continues.

Director Michael Gracey and his team pull off what could have been a goofy presentation. They create a very engaging observation of Robbie Williams.

Grade: B (Something to go bananas about.)

“The Last Showgirl” (Drama: 1 hour, 28 minutes)

Starring: Pamela Anderson, Dave Bautista and Jamie Lee Curtis

Director: Gia Coppola

Rated: R (Language and nudity)

Movie Review:

The only good reason to see this movie is Pamela Anderson. She shines, but the rest of this production by Director Gia Coppola (“Palo Alto,” 2013) and Writer Kate Gersten has a dull finish.

Anderson plays Shelley, a showgirl on the Las Vegas strip. She is part of a Cancan-type dancing group, one of the last in the city. All is well until she and the other women are told that the show’s 30-year run will end shortly. Shelley has been dancing for three decades. It is all she knows. Now in her 50s, she contemplates aging and motherhood and deals with sexism and ageism in her profession.

Gia Coppola, the granddaughter daughter of Francis Ford Coppola, is the director of “The Last Showgirl.” Her grandfather may be legendary, but one should not automatically give the family patriarch’s laurels to his descendants.

The narrative of this screenplay is not the problem. It is the execution. For one, little dancing happens. When there is, the camera only captures a small part, usually above the shoulders.

“The Last Showgirl” has second-rate cinematography. Camera operators use their equipment haphazardly; scenes appear jiggled in several scenes. Even more, the images of characters inside of buildings focus on the performances, especially that of Pamela Anderson. However, these tight medium and eye-level shots do not allow a broader concept of the grandeur of the stage and costumes of the performers when they are dancing.

The camera angles give the impression these movie makers were afraid to show shoes and feet. The one time they do, it is a misplaced Jamie Lee Curtis moment. In that scene, she plays a cocktail waitress at a casino who begins dancing at the wrong moment.

The movie also only has one hour and 20 minutes of actors performing, so this story feels, as nice as its story is, too rushed.

Characters argue with each other in one instance. Then, all is well, and these people hug while crying. There is no smooth transformation for character development. Something is lost in translation from one scene to the next. How characters resolve conflict is missing in showgirls.

Again, Pamela Anderson is an attention-getter here. This movie is her second break to stardom. May “The Last Showgirl” catapult her to the center stage once more. She is award-worthy, although the rest of this photoplay does not parallel her performance.

Grade: C (Not showy enough to warrant a curtain call.)