HBO Max

The Pitt doesn’t make HBO Max worth a subscription

HBO Max is the latest streaming channel trying to lure you into yet another of those subscription contracts you only remember having signed up for about three years later when you’re trying to work out why you are so skint. Its showpiece series is The Pitt which attracts ten million viewers per episode and has been called “the best medical drama on television in years.” This is a category of excellence I find about as enticing as “most amusing form of cancer” or “most ineradicable variety of testicular lice.” But, just for you, I watched to see what the fuss is about.

the pitt

A return to the White Lotus

The White Lotus, now back for a third series, could perhaps be best described as Death in Paradise for elegant people. Most obviously, this is because its plots revolve around murders in an idyllic location — only with a far bigger budget, a much starrier cast and several episodes per story. But there’s also the fact that it follows the same pattern every time. So it was that season three began this week, rather like its predecessors, with some lovely scenery, a dead body and a caption reading "One week earlier." After that, we duly watched a bunch of rich, good-looking folks arriving at a luxury White Lotus resort where they were welcomed by the resolutely smiling staff and a nervous manager, before gazing round and marveling at the beauty of it all.

Lotus

This month in culture: November 2024

Here In theaters November 1 What happens when the director, writer and stars of Forrest Gump get together in 2024? A goosebump-inducing story of family, time, space, home and the enduring nature of love. The “Here” in question is taken from the graphic novel by Richard McGuire, which tells the story of a location through generations and eras, transcending time. Director Robert Zemeckis plays on the panel-frames of graphic literature by employing a fixed camera angle throughout the film. AI de-aging technology is used to depict the actors from teenagerhood through their eighties. Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Paul Bettany, Kelly Reilly and Michelle Dockery star.

Culture

This month in culture: September 2024

Slow Horses, season 4 Apple TV+, September 4 Apple TV+’s adaptations of Mick Herron’s excellent espionage novels, led by Gary Oldman on magnificent form as the belching, flatulent, brilliant Jackson Lamb, have quietly become the streaming service’s MVP, and their strong showing in this year’s Emmy nominations has reinforced the company’s continued faith in the unmissable series. This fourth installment, based on Herron’s novel Spook Street, guest stars the ever-excellent Hugo Weaving as a mysterious interloper with a close personal connection to Jack Lowden’s bratty Bond-in-training River Cartwright. Expect the usual mixture of big laughs, shocking twists and high-octane action scenes.

Culture

The year of Jennifer Coolidge

Pursed lips, eye-squints and a nasally groan. Jennifer Coolidge, best known for playing Stifler’s mom in American Pie, is a recognizable face on the silver screen, but until recently she'd found herself relegated to the background. Over the last few years, however, we have seen a Jenaissance. If you haven’t heard of it, that’s what people are calling Jennifer Coolidge’s epic return after not one but two recent breakout roles that have even seen her win an Emmy.

jennifer coolidge

The time trap of Irma Vep

In April, director Robert Eggers told GQ that “every time period interests me except for the one we’re living in.” The director of The Witch, The Lighthouse and The Northman will never make a movie set in modern times: “I get enough of the kitchen sink in my kitchen sink... For whatever reason, it just does not inspire me. And you can’t shoot something that doesn’t inspire you.” That’s a good attitude for a director to have, but it’s alarming how many American filmmakers are either uninterested, unwilling or unable to make work that speaks directly, not only to our present moment, but to our future and its possibilities, however limited and grim. Who can blame anyone for being hopeless now?

irma vep

The ongoing farce of Ezra Miller

If Warner Brothers’ expensive superhero film The Flash is released next summer — and does not follow the fate of this year’s Batgirl, which has been summarily canceled — it will be fascinating to watch what the publicity circus does with its leading man. Or, to be more exact, leading human, as its star Ezra Miller has dismissed conventional ideas of being pigeonholed as anything conventional. They declared in 2018 that, “Queer just means no, I don't do that. I don't identify as a man. I don't identify as a woman. I barely identify as a human.” It is perhaps not a long path from these statements to Miller’s recent announcement that they are finally attempting to put their wildly chaotic life in some sort of order.

ezra miller