Hollywood, and the audiences they sell to, love reboots and revivals, but not every one of them can be, say, Blumhouse’s The Invisible Man. Sometimes they’re like Doctor Sleep: pricey projects that wind up dramatically underperforming. Indeed, the failure of the belated sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, based on Stephen King’s own follow-up, scuttled what sounded like yet another bit of world building: In a new interview with Collider, director Mark Romanek said a Shining prequel he’d been working on has probably ceased to be.
IndieWire caught the exchange, which came in the middle of a conversation about Amazon’s new anthology sci-fi show Tales from the Loop, whose maiden episode was helmed by Romanek. (You know him from music videos like “Closer,” “Hurt,” and “Criminal” as well as the movies One Hour Photo and Never Let Me Go). The prequel, Romanek said, would have been based on a prologue King wrote for his classic 1977 novel, then scrapped, which was set at the turn of the previous century and focused on the robber baron who built the haunted Overlook Hotel. A script was written by The Walking Dead showrunner Glen Mazzara, and Romanek had punched it up after signing on to direct. But, barring a miracle, you’ll never see it.
“It’s a great script I think,” Romanek told Collider. “It’s based on Stephen King. It’s not just something somebody made up, and it’s more of an origin story on the, almost like a Western or a wilderness story, going back to the construction and the desecration of the Indian burial grounds, and the construction of the Overlook Hotel and its opening night.”
But there’s one hitch. “The problem is it’s really expensive,” Romanek explained.
“It kind of reads like The Revenant or Heaven’s Gate or something and I think they wanted to try Doctor Sleep to see if — my impression is they wanted to see if there was this sort of Shining universe that would have financial life through them or artistic life with the audience. And I think Doctor Sleep did just sort of okay, and given that our script is so costly, it’s a little dead in the water right now. But you never know, it’s a weird business. It’s a very good script. I’m proud of the script.”
So there you go. You didn’t go see Doctor Sleep, and now you can’t see a prequel to The Shining. But at least you’ll always have the Kubrick version that King famously hates.
Remember going to the movies? It’s been about a month since movie theaters have closed as a result of the novel coronavirus. And while people are still watching new movies — Troll World Tour just dropped PVOD for 20 bucks! — there’s a lot of anxiety in the industry about what moviegoing will look like in a post-pandemic world.
One person who’s been very vocal about how it will change has been super-producer Jason Blum, whose company Blumhouse currently leads the market on inexpensive but profitable horror movies. Previously he’s speculated about how movie exhibition will change post-COVID-19, while acknowledging it’s still early to go into specifics. But one thing’s for sure: You won’t be seeing a glut of pandemic movies from his company.
Blum was on Friday’s The Bill Simmons Podcast to talk some more about how the industry is trying to deal with this unprecedented shift, and at one point his host asked a big question of the man whose company is responsible for Paranormal Activity, The Purge, Get Out, and the latest iteration of The Invisible Man: How many virus movies is he being pitched over Zoom these days?
“We’re not doing a virus movie,” Blum said bluntly. “We made two: We made The Bay, with Barry Levinson, and we made Viral. That’s two virus movies, and that’s enough.”
It’s a bold move, if perhaps not from an economic standpoint, to not capitalize on something that’s already destroyed untold lives. Both those films, too, are relatively old, and were not big hits: The Bay, a found footage frightfest from the director of Diner and Rain Man, came out in 2012, while Viral, from Catfish and Paranormal Activity sequel helmers Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, received a limited release in 2016. And of course, there’s always the chance that, down the line, when things have lifted, he may change his mind.
Blum spent the majority of his time on Simmons’ podcast on industry talk. Blumhouse had two movies affected by the COVID-19 outbreak: The Invisible Man, which was released in late February and made a pretty penny before the outbreak stepped up, and The Hunt, which came out a week before quarantining became a thing and did not make bank. Both were subsequently made available on PVOD, and Blum says they did well. But he worries that the industry’s pandemic pause might amplify something that was already a problem in modern movies: Non-tentpole movies may be squeezed out of theaters and wind up only on PVOD.
“What moviegoing is going to be like post-COVID is going to be different that it was pre-COVID,” Blum told Simmons. That said, it’s too early to tell how different it will be or in what ways. “I think tentpole movies might still be in the theater for three or four months, but maybe The Hunt might be in the theater for two or three weeks. Or they’re just not in the theater at all.”
Simmons wondered if a new trend might emerge in which movies play theaters then go PVOD immediately after their run, maybe costing around $15. “I think that’s very possible,” Blum said, saying that could be a “compromise” between studios/exhibitors and audiences. He generally thinks that this seismic shift in the industry may result in studios and exhibitors learning how to better serve (or at least get more money from) viewers. “It may not be better for exhibition, it may not be better for producers, it may not be better for the studios. But the audience, which is the most important, will be better served after this crisis.”
Of course, there’s another major problem to contend with: Right now no one’s making movies (or scripted television). Yes, a number of major titles — from Black Widow to A Quiet Place II — have been rescheduled for later dates, while others are simply going to PVOD (or even to streamers like Disney+ or Amazon Prime). But there will still be a lack of content.
“The problem is the movies and the hole in production don’t line up,” Blum said. He says the movies put on hold will be “sprinkled” over the next 18 months, but there will also be all those movies that simply never happened. “For six months we won’t have made anything. The consumer’s not going to feel that for six months.”
But he reiterated something he said before: Going to the movies will definitely come back. “We have the memory of fleas,” Blum said. “Our habits will go back really fast. I may be totally naive about that, or maybe that’s wishful thinking. … But I think people are going to go back to going out to eat, going to Disneyland, going to the movies.”
You can listen to the entire podcast on The Ringer. Blum’s segment begins at the 47-minute mark.
Cops and robbers have been some of the most durable subjects for TV since the inception of broadcast television: Jack Webb’s Dragnet was the original docudrama. And Netflix is no exception, with great shows like Orange Is The New Black, Breaking Bad, and Peaky Blinders tackling everything from the emotional connections between gang members to the struggles of surviving prison. But, when you’re done with those, there are thousands of hours of mysteries, questionable crimes, and dangerous criminals, but we’ve narrowed it down to the fifteen best crime shows on Netflix to binge on.
Ryan Murphy has made a name for himself on TV thanks to his nightmare-inducing anthology series, but this mini-series, which chronicles the events leading up to and following the murder trial of O.J. Simpson, proved the showrunner can do drama like no one else. Employing an award-winning cast (including Sarah Paulson, Sterling K. Brown, Courtney B. Vance, Cuba Gooding Jr., and John Travolta), Murphy charts the fall of one of the most beloved sports stars in a case that gripped the nation. The events are well-known, but it’s the meat added to the behind-the-scenes details, particularly Paulson’s portrayal of Marcia Clark, that make this a worthwhile watch. In its second season, the show moves focus on the assassination of design legend Gianni Versace by Andrew Cunanan. While not as strong as the amazing ensemble in Season 1, Season 2 boasts memorable portrayals of conflicted, complex figures by Darren Criss, Penelope Cruz, Édgar Ramírez, and (surprisingly) Ricky Martin.
The UK’s most popular new drama has made its way across the pond. The procedural thriller stars Game of Thrones’ Richard Madden as David Budd, a military vet turned police officer tasked with protecting a high-profile politician during a particularly dicey time. There’s plenty of suspense and action to string you along, coupled with a vulnerable performance by Madden, who ditches his King of the North swagger to play a man conflicted by his past and his present duty to his country.
This is one of Netflix’s most popular documentary series, and you’ll understand why after one episode. The show follows the case of Steven Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey, who were arrested for the murder of photographer Teresa Halbach. But what initially appears to be a clear-cut case becomes much more questionable once filmmakers Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi take you inside a system that seems designed to generate guilty verdicts rather than discover the truth. The show’s second season, perhaps its strongest, follows Avery’s appeal process led by a tough-as-nails attorney who digs past the red tape to expose corruption at the highest levels of our judicial system. If the first season is a whodunnit, the second explores how such a crime was pinned on what very well could be an innocent man.
Director Ava DuVernay’s limited series about the wrongfully accused men in the Central Park Five case is an emotionally heavy reimagining of a truly tragic event in our history. The series sheds light on racial profiling and corruption in the NYPD as a group of young Black men are targeted for a heinous crime and put on trial with little evidence. It’s a gripping, heartbreaking retelling, but one that feels sadly relevant.
Based on the book by John Douglas, the real-life FBI agent who made “criminal profiler” a job Hollywood thought every FBI agent had, David Fincher’s moody procedural series is less focused on the whodunit, as usually that’s solved by the time they show up, and more about the psychological wear and tear that comes from trying to explore the minds of people compelled to murder, or do it because they’re bored, or any of a host of other reasons. It’s a fascinating character drama about crime and how some crimes eat at us.
Ozark, from part of the team behind Ben Affleck’s The Accountant, is an example of what I call stress-watching television. A combination of Breaking Bad and Bloodline, Ozark sees a money launderer (Jason Bateman) and his wife (Laura Linney) move from Chicago to backwoods Missouri in an effort to clean $8 million in three months, lest their entire family be killed by a Mexican drug cartel. It’s not a fun show, and it’s barely entertaining, but like Bloodline, it’s the kind of series where the viewer is anxious to binge through it just to see if the antagonists will survive and how. It’s a seedy, well-written, well-acted series, and Bateman is terrific, but the entire point of Ozark is to put the viewer through the wringer: It’s tense and stressful, and we don’t watch for resolution; we watch for relief.
This ironically titled show follows beat cop Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire) as she juggles her job, her complicated feelings about a local man, and the brutal crime that drove her daughter to suicide. As she methodically assembles the case against who she thinks the perpetrator is, a tragedy begins to come into focus. Happy Valley can be a tough watch, but the focus on day-to-day policing, and Lancashire’s rich performance makes it a show we’re glad Netflix tracked down.
With Narcos, Netflix takes on the rise and fall of Colombian kingpin Pablo Escobar and the Medellín drug cartel. Splicing together dramatized scenes and actual news footage, Brazilian filmmaker José Padilha (Elite Squad) combines Scarface and Goodfellas to track the life of Escobar. However, the real story here is not the characters as much as it is the Colombian drug trade and the spread of cocaine from South America into the U.S. in the 1980s. Escobar is used as a vehicle to illustrate the futility of the American drug war and the toll it took on both the criminals in Colombia and the authorities in the U.S. The show’s fourth season, billed as an entire separate entry, gives us a stylish re-imagining of the early days of Mexico’s drug war with Diego Luna playing the new big bad, a drug lord looking to expand his reach, while Michael Pena plays the fed tasked with busting his operation.
Originally airing on A&E, and adapted from a popular mystery series, Longmire follows the sheriff of the title as he solves murder mysteries in and around the Wyoming county he’s elected sheriff of, while battling with local tribal authorities, the county government, and powerful families. What makes Longmire such a fascinating series is that what could just be Law & Order: Wyoming quickly becomes a series about aging men struggling with their feelings, their choices, and the truth hollowing out the comfortable world they’ve built for themselves, often looking squarely at the tropes of the Western and how they do and don’t hold up in the modern world. Anchored by Robert Taylor in the title role (you might remember him as one of Agent Smith’s sidekicks in The Matrix) and Lou Diamond Phillips as Henry Standing Bear, Longmire’s good friend and a man often stuck between his native heritage and the “white” world he’s expected to blend into, it’s a thoughtful, unexpectedly engaging series.
Ted Bundy is one of the most infamous serial killers in American history so you’d think we’d know the whole of this sociopath’s exploits by now, but this docuseries manages to find a new angle on the story of Bundy’s descent into madness. Through confessional recordings, victims’ testimonies, and investigative reporting, the short series charts how Bundy, a handsome, educated white man, was able to deceive so many for so long, murdering young women along the way. What’s even more interesting about this series is that, while the show explores how Bundy’s crimes made him an idol for some, it also does justice by his victims, detailing their backstories and interviewing their surviving family members.
Jessica Biel stars as a woman with a dark past in this mystery series with Bill Pullman and Christopher Abbot. Biel plays Cora, a wife and mother who commits a horrific act of violence during a family beach trip for no apparent reason. It’s only once a detective (Pullman) begins looking into her life before the murder does he discover a conspiracy plot as tangled as it is gruesome.
It’s the question every TV fan hears sooner or later: “Have you seen The Wire?” Sadly, The Wire is over at Amazon, but on Netflix, there’s a sometimes overlooked spiritual sibling worth looking into. Irish novelist and screenwriter Ronan Bennett’s series follows Ra’Nell, a boy struggling to survive in public housing when his mother is committed to an institution, and two young drug dealers find themselves working their way up the food chain to the top of a questionable heap. Bennett’s warmth and humanity helps bring into focus the very real struggles preteens at the bottom of Irish society and makes for a series you won’t soon forget.
There are stories to bizarre, too mind-boggling to be true… and then there’s this seven-part docuseries. Cults, queer romance, exotic cats — this true crime binge has it all. Is Joe Exotic, a gay, gun-loving conman running an exotic zoo out of his home in Oklahoma, a criminal or an American hero? Did animal rights activist Carole Baskin murder her husband and feed him to her tigers? Why are so many zoo employees missing limbs? These are just a few of the questions you’ll ask while watching this train wreck. Have fun, kids.
Ostensibly a story about the city of Batman while Batman is still just young Bruce Wayne, Gotham quickly became the kind of sprawling, bizarre campy drama that shows like Law & Order: SVU and NCIS can only wish they were. While the show has recognizable Batman villains and even makes characters like Jim Gordon and the Penguin central to the plot, in the end it’s a grandiose melodrama about an utterly corrupt city and the one man at its center hoping to change it one case at a time. Also a character is kidnapped by pirates. No, really. That happens.
Sometimes the justice system fails, and the wrong person is punished for a crime they didn’t commit. Rectify follows Daniel Holden (Aden Young) as, after spending half his life with a death sentence hanging over his head, is cleared by DNA evidence and has to adjust to life as not just a free man, even as many around him seek to undo his release.
Unorthodox landed on Netflix a few weeks ago and has been steadily gaining conversational momentum while existing in the considerable shadow of Tiger King. The four-part limited series is based on the 2012 memoir, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots, by Deborah Feldman. It’s a heavily subtitled production with much of its dialogue in Yiddish, but that’s no obstacle to understanding the series. The show’s not only a coming-of-age story but also a thriller and a bit of a mystery — we slowly see the circumstances that led 19-year-old Esther “Esty” Shapiro to flee her constricted life and fly a world away to Berlin in an effort to escape and start a new life for herself.
The series has been praised for its authentic depiction of Hasidic Jewish customs, but it’s also been criticized for not being representative of all ex-members’ experiences. Of course, Feldman never claimed that her experience was universal to everyone in the community, but if one steps outside to a bigger worldview, Unorthodox does speak universally to its audience in several ways (some of which feel particularly relatable right now). Here are some we have thoughts about the show.
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– Lead actress Shira Haas is a revelation: This should be, as far as the U.S. audience goes, a breakout performance for the 24-year-old Israeli access. She strikes the perfect balance between strength and vulnerability throughout the series, from the moment when we see Esty flee the U.S. (while holding nothing but an envelope) to all of the painful flashbacks to her fight to succeed in a new life despite all odds against her. Haas pushes through quiet, eye-flashing defiance for much of her ordeal, which culminates in a chilling vocal performance that could open doors to Esty’s future. It’s no wonder that Haas previously captured an Ophir Award (at Israel’s Academy Awards) for Best Supporting Actress in 2018’s Broken Mirrors. You can watch more of her on Netflix in Israeli drama series Shtisel, and she appeared in A Tale Of Love And Darkness, which was Natalie Portman’s directing debut, along with Niki Caro’s The Zookeeper’s Wife, which can be viewed on Amazon Prime with an HBO subscription or on HBO Now and HBO Go. Haas is a commanding talent, and she should go far.
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— The ending allows the audience to choose Esty’s path: At the end of the series, we know little to nothing about the future of Esty in Berlin. We know that she stood firm and left her marriage despite a last-ditch save attempt by Yanky. Does she stay pregnant and have her soon-to-be-ex-husband’s child? Does she move back in with her mom and forge the relationship that she always wanted? Did she get that musical scholarship, which could magically solve all her money (and social) problems? Does she grow her hair back? All of this remains a mystery, we hope, because a second season could possibly spoil the dramatic effect of the miniseries’ closing moments. I honestly don’t want to see Esty stumble. She’s had a difficult life. Let her remain a hero. No additional episodes, please.
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– The diner scene is arguably the most revealing of the series: I’m kind of a sucker for diner scenes (blame Quentin Tarantino and Michael Mann for that) This scene in episode two takes place after Esty’s flight and gravitation toward a music school, where she attempts to sleep. An instructor senses something inside this young woman, and they end up at a diner, where a couple of interesting things happen. First, Esty realizes that she’s not going to get sick from merely eating ham, something that she’s clearly been indoctrinated to believe. She also, while discussing the prospect of competing for a scholarship in Berlin, openly compares her situation of living in Williamsburg to living in a war zone. Now, war is war, of course, and nothing is the same as war, but trauma can be highly individualized and leave no visible scars. And it becomes sort of understandable why she feels this way when we later learn what she’s experienced coming of age in such an oppressive community.
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— Esty’s escape sort of mirrors our own present desire to escape: Even if you’re making the best of your quarantine days, knowing that you can’t gather in groups and be physically connected to others can suck a bit. While Esty’s not physically shackled by her community, she’s closely monitored in some of the most intrusive ways imaginable. Yanky’s mother and sisters are entirely aware of what does (and doesn’t) go on in her bedroom, and they hassle her relentlessly about it. She was alone in her battles, so the joy in watching her flee to Berlin is palpable. We’d all love to go somewhere to escape the pandemic, but there’s almost no place on the globe that’s left untouched. Esty can engineer her own escape, and seeing her explore Berlin is something of an exhilarating experience.
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— Unorthodox very clearly drops the ball in when it comes to ladies shopping for jeans: Those jeans! In the history of all womankind, no one has ever pulled on a single pair of jeans and found a flawless fit. In fact, the search for a properly fitted pair of jeans haunts many of us forever, and Esty found the right fit immediately, and not too long after, nimbly hopped into a window while wearing those jeans. I’m not saying that this ruins the viewing experience, but c’mon, a little denim authenticity — and maybe a 15-second montage of frustrated changing room maneuvers — would have only strengthened the case for Unorthodox working as a universal tale. Instead, I’m now wondering where this mysterious Berlin department store might be, so that I, too, can pursue the myth of finding the perfect jeans. That’s a little distracting. Seriously though, Unorthodox deserves your binge-watching time, so pencil it in for a four-hour session.
This past September, Kid Cudi revealed details about his upcoming album, among them that it would be called Entergalatic. The album will be far from the ordinary, being the soundtrack to a Netflix animated show he’s developing with Black-ish creator Kenya Barris. In a rare appearance on Instagram Live Friday, Cudi previewed a new song from the project.
Cudi, who’d appeared on a Facebook livestream earlier this month, where he also previewed new music, took to Twitter, giving fans an hour’s notice prior to going to live. When he went live, he previewed “Leader Of The Delinquents,” which features Jaden.
“Somebody better save them God, cuz young Scott Mescudi stayed on his job. The Leader Of The Delinquents” http://t.co/depnoWqt
Upon hearing the song, fans quickly realized that this was not the first time Cudi played the track. Back in 2012, he previewed “Leader Of The Delinquents” for fans at a concert that year, while tweets from Cudi and producer DotDaGenius, who produced the song, seem to confirm that the song is almost a decade old.
“A lot of exciting things coming up soon… in the next couple weeks, actually. So… stay tuned. A lot of awesome shit.” –@KidCudipic.twitter.com/S2PlGoF0lE
Looking to build more excitement towards the album, Cudi told fans during the livestream, “A lot of exciting things coming up soon… in the next couple weeks, actually. So… stay tuned. A lot of awesome shit.”
You can hear a preview of “Leader Of The Delinquents” in the video above.
“Wait till you hear what happened to me!” David Letterman said to begin his monologue on February 21st, 2000. “You are not going to believe it. I’ve been away for a while. While I was gone, I had quintuple bypass surgery on my heart. Plus, I got a haircut. Ladies and gentleman, after what I have been through, I am just happy to be wearing clothing that opens on the front.”
It was Letterman’s triumphant return after five weeks away, but an emotional Dave devoted much of the episode to the doctors and nurses who saved his life, though he didn’t miss an opportunity to make a joke. “Bypass,” he said, “is what happened to me at The Tonight Show.” A minute later, Jerry Seinfeld came out, ostensibly to host the night’s show. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “I thought you were dead.”
At the time, there were only two late-night hosts on network television at 11:30 p.m., and it’s hard to describe what it felt like to have Letterman on our screens again after five weeks away following so much uncertainty about his health. It’s obviously not anything like the situation we now face in 2020, but Letterman’s return felt like what I imagine it will feel like for us when Major League Baseball returns, or when we all return to a bar for the first time. When Letterman came back, it felt like things were alright in the world again. He gave us the sense of normalcy that so many of us are so desperately craving right now.
Letterman would provide that comfort, perspective, and sense of normalcy several more times in the years to come, but so would many of the other late-night hosts, from Jimmy Fallon to Samantha Bee to Trevor Noah. They have broken format, shared personal stories, imparted wisdom, or just decided to be there for us during moments of great upheaval. They have illustrated through several Presidential administrations that no matter who is in the White House, late-night television will always be there for us.
Here are nine other examples:
David Letterman, The Late Show with David Letterman, September 2001 — One week after the single biggest terrorist attack on U.S. soil, David Letterman returned to television, but he did not come as an entertainer or as a comedian. David Letterman returned to provide comfort to a nation in sore need of it, and no one was better suited to do so than New York City’s long-running late-night host. That night, David Letterman’s hands shook, he cried during the monologue, and he stopped an interview with Dan Rather twice because Rather was so emotional. It was a painful and somber monologue, which Dave gave from his desk. “I just need to hear myself talk for a few minutes,” Dave said through tears, “so that’s what I’m going to do.”
It’s an unusual monologue in retrospect because Letterman spends much of it praising Rudy Giuliani, but he also praises the firefighters and police officers of New York City. He blamed the attacks on religious fervor, and asked, “If you live to be a 1,000 years old, will that make any goddamn sense?” And then he told a story about a tiny town in Montana that had been going through some hard times of its own, but it held a rally to raise money for New York City. “If that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about the spirit of the United States, I don’t know what to tell you.”
The monologue that Dave gave that night not only provided comfort (and a smattering of laughs), it has since served as a model to other late-night hosts, who have been called upon occasionally in the 19 years since to address their own audiences about difficult days in our nation’s history. In fact, Jimmy Fallon cited this very monologue as the reason why he returned as host of The Tonight Show during our current crisis, specifically one specific line that might serve us all well to take to heart: “There is only one requirement of any of us, and that is to be courageous, because courage — as you might know — defines all other human behavior. I believe, because I’ve done a little of this myself, pretending to be courageous is just as good as the real thing.”
Jimmy Fallon, Late Night, October 2012 — Eleven years after the 9/11 attacks, NYC faced a weather disaster, this time in the form of Hurricane Sandy, the second-costliest hurricane on record in the United States and the largest Atlantic hurricane ever. That night, both David Letterman and Jimmy Fallon recorded their shows as planned, though neither had audiences, as those audiences were hunkered down in their homes. Fallon began the taping out in the streets of the city, which were mostly abandoned as the hurricane approached. That night, he also had his eventual successor, Seth Meyers, on as a guest.
It was an eerie taping, but Fallon illustrated again that night that, even when the world outside is literally being destroyed by mother nature, late-night hosts could bring viewers some normalcy and a few laughs for those who were otherwise afraid of what was banging outside their doors.
David Letterman, The Late Show, December 2012 — I watched Letterman for years and years, and I never thought of him as a particularly political person, and when I did, I assumed that he was probably a moderate Republican, given his conservative Indiana upbringing. During his last few years as host of The Late Show, however, his political leanings began to seep out, mostly in confrontations with people like Bill O’Reilly. Even still, Letterman was never what anyone would call an extreme political person, and when he talked about politics — as he did after the Sandy Hook shooting — he did so not through a political lens, but through the lens of common sense. The Sandy Hook shooting left 28 dead and two injured, mostly kids, and Letterman took seven minutes during his monologue to address the massacre.
Letterman has always been smart about positioning himself as a stooge, or a dimwit who doesn’t know what he’s talking about; he uses self-deprecation to gain our empathy, and on that night, he called for action. Not a particular action, mind you, and certainly not a conservative or a liberal one. But he called upon us to do something to ensure that mass shootings like that don’t happen again. It was for mainstream late-night television an unusual call-to-action, but given the loss of children’s lives that week, it was a necessary and, in some ways, a comforting and inspiring one, because in it’s own small way, it gave us a sense of purpose.
Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, June 2015 — Sadly, Letterman’s plea for action didn’t work. Three years later, Jon Stewart spoke off-the-cuff to open The Daily Show after the Charleston, S.C. shooting. Sometimes, we respond the most to heartfelt anger, frustration, and sadness. Heartfelt, anger, frustration, and sadness were Jon Stewart’s strengths. Stewart cut through the politics, and he framed the issue as one of racism and domestic terrorism. The remarks were hugely instrumental in a conversation this country very much needed to have about Confederate flags, and it helped pave the way for removal of the Confederate flag over the South Carolina statehouse. As importantly, Stewart voiced our own anger that night, and framed that racist iconography in ways that some had never considered.
“In South Carolina,” he said, “the roads that black people drive on are named for Confederate generals who fought to be able to keep black people from freely driving on that road. That’s insanity. That’s racial wallpaper. We can’t allow that.”
John Oliver, Last Week Tonight, February 2016 — John Oliver was adamant about not discussing the 2016 American political election at length until late February of of 2016, reasoning that he wouldn’t talk about a political election until we were at least in the same year as the election. When he finally did, however, he unloaded 21 minutes of pent-up, hilarious rage on Donald Trump at a time when it still felt like Donald Trump’s candidacy wasn’t a serious one. The assault didn’t slow Trump down, but it did validate the feelings of millions of voters opposed to the GOP nominee. It also became the most popular viral video of all time not only for Last Week Tonight, but for HBO. For millions of people watching the political campaign unfold, it was the rant that they so desperately needed to hear, if only to make themselves feel like they weren’t taking crazy pills.
Seth Meyers, Late Night, November 2016 — Nine months later, the night after Donald Trump won the 2016 election, there were a lot of people in America who turned to late-night television to provide not only comfort but perspective. That night, Seth Meyers managed to voice the pain that so many on the left felt not just because Donald Trump had won the election, but because the first female nominee of a major political party had lost. It was a ten-minute monologue that was at times funny, and at other times, emotional. It was mostly jokes until the 3:30 mark, when Meyers got teary thinking about how excited and then disappointed his mother was about not being able to witness the first female president. Credit to Meyers, too, because at the time, he made an effort to sound hopeful and to try and understand the anger, sadness, and fear that drove others to vote for Donald Trump. “I would like to say to those Trump voters, ‘Congratulations. I sincerely hope that he addresses those concerns you had, and I sincerely hope that if you felt forgotten, he won’t forget you now.”
Samantha Bee, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, January 2017 — Soon after the inauguration of Donald Trump, millions of women around America channeled their energy and anger into holding what was essentially the biggest nationwide protest this country has known since Vietnam. Samantha Bee, better than anyone, captured that energy not only in the show after the Women’s March, but in basically in every episode since. In fact, Samantha Bee at the moment remains the only major late-night hosts who can speak to so many issues that affect specifically women, and she has done so with razor-sharp with and a healthy sense of anger, tackling everything from the Access Hollywood tape, to Weinstein and Me Too, to abortion rights. There is comfort in Bee’s comedy, but there is also inspiration in her passion.
Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Kimmel Live, May 2017 — Jimmy Kimmel was once the host of a program called The Man Show that featured a Juggy Dance Squad, which is exactly what it sounds like. But the long-running late night host of ABC’s late-night show has evolved considerably over the years. Marriage and then kids will do that. But in May 2017, several days after Jimmy’s wife Molly McNearney gave birth to a baby boy with a heart defect, Jimmy spoke through tears to the nation about the most harrowing event of his life. As David Letterman did after his heart surgery, however, Jimmy used his emotional journey as an opportunity to the highlight the true heroes — the nurses and doctors who perform miracles every day as a matter of course. In the end, Kimmel also used his story to lobby for healthcare for all, regardless of pre-existing conditions or ability to pay. It was one of the most emotional late-night episodes ever, and it has helped to redefine who Jimmy Kimmel is as a person and as as a late-night host.
Stephen Colbert, The Late Show, and Trevor Noah, The Daily Show, March 2020 — During our current nationwide lockdown, in which most of us — including late-night hosts — are stuck in our homes, it was the current King of Late Night, Stephen Colbert, who was the first to return to the air. On March 17th, Colbert filmed what was basically a The Late Show monologue while wearing a suit inside of his bathtub. By March 30th, he’d brought the entire show back.
Colbert’s monologue that first night back in and of itself did not provide any fatherly comfort, nor did it give any of us a sense of normalcy. The fact that he conducted the monologue from inside a bubble bath in his own home announced to the audience at home loud and clear: This is not normal. What Stephen Colbert did do on that first night back, however, was to say that yes, this is scary, and yes, this could last a long while, but he assured us that he would be on this harrowing journey with us. There is comfort in familiarity, and that is what Stephen Colbert has provided us in these last few weeks, not to mention the fact that all the other late-night hosts have since followed Colbert’s lead.
Trevor Noah, on the other hand, has rebranded his program as The Daily Social Distancing Show, and he has actually done a remarkable job in these last few weeks of turning his show into not just a place for jokes, but an honest source of information that his audience can trust. While the other late-night hosts have had each other on, or their other friends on, or even cast members from Friends, Trevor Noah has had experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci come onto his show and speak about the pandemic and social distancing. He’s also had Bill Gates on to talk about potential solutions, and he’s had Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmir and California Governor Gavin Newsome onto the show to talk about the situations they are confronting in their own states. Oh, and he’s also had the sexiest real doctor in American on his show.
In some ways, Trevor Noah has used this opportunity to separate himself from the other late-night hosts. He still has on celebrities — Jennifer Garner recently came on to their #SaveWithStories initiative — but he’s also been able to provide something that not even cable news has reliably given us, which is an honest source of trustworthy information. There have been surveys that have long suggested that the younger generation gets most of its news from late-night programs. In the case of Trevor Noah, that’s a great thing right now. Noah may not be the comforting parental figure that some look for in a late-night host, but he has definitely become the sage Professor of late-night television.
“Thriller” is kind of a catch-all term for movies that bleed into multiple genres. It can describe films rich with drama, action, crime, and quite possibly horror. That’s why its Netflix category is such a hodgepodge of entries, varying in tone, subject matter, and quality. A good thriller, though, is going to be suspenseful for any number of reasons. An unstoppable killer. An unsolvable mystery. A gripping world that draws viewers into it. A sympathetic character fighting for survival. Something that can keep an audience on the edge of its seats. And based on that, here are the 15 best thrillers on Netflix right now.
Despite a cast that includes Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine, and Glenn Close, this unusual, post-apocalyptic film got a bit overlooked during its brief theatrical release. It’s best enjoyed without knowing too much of the plot. Suffice it to say that Melanie (Sennia Nanua), the girl of the title, isn’t quite what she seems, and there’s a reason that she, and others her age, are kept in a secure military facility. But the best trick of the film, thanks in large part to Nanua’s winning performance, is the way its innovations go beyond just putting twists on a familiar genre and, instead, making us question where our sympathies ought to lie.
This Spanish-language sci-fi flick is all kinds of f*cked up, but in the best way. The film is set in a large, tower-style “Vertical Self-Management Center” where the residents, who are periodically switched at random between floors, are fed by a platform, initially filled with food, that gradually descends through the levels. Conflicts arise when inmates at the top begin eating all the food, leaving the people lower down to fight for survival.
Scarlett Johansson stars in this sci-fi thriller about an other-worldly woman with a dark agenda. The film sees Johansson using her sex appeal to lure unsuspecting men to their watery doom while beginning to contemplate her own existence with every new partner she seduces. It’s a subtle reverse of rape culture, with themes of race and immigration mixed in, but if all of that goes over your head, you’ll at least enjoy seeing Johansson off a bunch of frat bros and rapists.
Jake Gyllenhaal stars in this complete mindf*ck from director Denis Villeneuve about a man who goes in search in his doppelganger after spotting him in a movie and uncovering sinister secrets about himself in the process. Gyllenhaal plays both Adam, a quiet professor, and Anthony, an outspoken actor, who eventually meet and disrupt each other’s lives, but whether both men exist or whether they’re just figments of the same man’s consciousness is up to you to figure out.
Writer/director Trey Edward Shults followed up his unnerving family portrait in 2015’s Krisha with a look at another family under the most desperate of circumstances. After an unknown illness has wiped out most of civilization, a number of threats — both seen and unseen — come for a family held up in their home out in the wilderness. It’s a subtle, dream-like tale that stars Joel Edgerton and Christopher Abbot as two patriarchs intent on keeping their families safe, no matter the cost.
What starts out like a Kafka story turns into a tense match between a seemingly innocent man (Hugo Weaving) and a menacing detective with his own demons (Tony Martin). The former is snatched up and interrogated by the authorities for reasons that are slowly revealed to him, and as the hours drag by, both men become more and more desperate. Weaving knocks it out of the park, keeping the detectives and audience guessing as his true demeanor is constantly put in question. Martin is no slouch either as he does his best to expose Weaving’s character for the monster that he sees, even if it costs him his job and sanity. The writing is taut and the environment is claustrophobic, which propels the mysteries behind the two lead characters.
Macon Blair stars in this crime thriller about a man who returns to his hometown to carry out an act of vengeance and discovers he’s in over his head. Blair plays Dwight Evans, a vagabond who learns his parents’ murderer is being released from prison and returns home to kill him. He succeeds but ends up starting a blood feud with the guy’s family that doesn’t end how you expect.
Sandra Bullock’s apocalyptic sci-fi saga has spawned more than just a ridiculous internet challenge, it’s also renewed our love for monster-driven thrillers. Sure, we never actually see the otherworldly beings that cause people to commit suicide if they open their eyes, but the danger they pose and the fear they instill is still viscerally real. Bullock plays a mother trying to protect her two young children and survive amidst a group of strangers with their own agendas and issues. The supporting cast in this one — Trevante Rhodes, John Malkovich, Sarah Paulson, and Tom Hollander — are fantastic which distracts from some of the more questionable story choices.
A stone-faced Ryan Gosling steers us through the criminal underworld created by director Nicolas Winding Refn in this high-speed thriller. Gosling plays a near-silent stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway man. When he gets involved with his next-door neighbor and her young son, his carefully cultivated life is thrown into chaos, forcing him to align with criminals and take on risky jobs to protect the pair and keep a firm grip on the wheel.
When a punk rock group accidentally witnesses the aftermath of a murder, they are forced to fight for their lives by the owner of a Nazi bar (Patrick Stewart) and his team. It’s an extremely brutal and violent story, much like the first two features from director Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin and Murder Party), but this one is made even tenser by its claustrophobic cat-and-cornered-mouse nature. Once the impending danger kicks in, it doesn’t let up until the very end, driven heavily by Stewart playing against type as a harsh, unforgiving, violent character.
After back-to-back big studio bombs, Karyn Kusama returned to her scrappy indie roots with this contained, brilliantly suspenseful study of the darkness that can arise when people don’t allow themselves to feel. The Invitation isn’t a perfect film, but Kusama does a lot with the scant resources she had to play with here, and you have to appreciate her willingness to tackle grief so directly in a genre that tends to have little time for genuine human emotion.
This Spanish crime thriller follows a successful businessman framed for the murder of his married lover. A seemingly straightforward plot, until a car accident, a dead body, fake witnesses, and a family out for revenge is thrown into the mix. Mario Casas stars as the man in question, a young husband and father with a bright future who takes part in a terrible crime and is forced to pay for it in the most twisted of ways. You won’t figure this thing out until the end, we guarantee it.
Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Jude Law star in this mind-bending thriller about a con-man who weasels his way into an inheritance through deception, manipulation, and, of course, murder. Damon plays the young criminal, Tom Ripley, a forger and impersonator struggling to make it in ’50s era New York. He nabs a job from a wealthy shipping magnate, retrieving the man’s son from Italy in exchange for a cash reward. While there, he befriends the heir (Law) and his fiance (Paltrow), imitating his mannerisms, wearing his clothes, and running in his elite circles before his con is discovered, and he’s forced to take drastic measures to secure the future he wants for himself.
Walking Dead alum Steven Yeun stars this psychological thriller from South Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong. Yeun plays Ben, a rich millennial with a mysterious job who connects with a woman named Shin Hae-mi on a trip to Africa. The two journey back home together where Ben meets Shin’s friend/lover Lee Jong-su. The three hang-out regularly, with Lee growing more jealous of Ben’s wealth and privilege while he’s forced to manage his father’s farm when his dad goes to prison. But it’s when Shin disappears, and Lee suspects Ben’s involvement, that things really go off the rails.
This gritty crime drama hailing from the Safdie brothers transforms star Robert Pattinson into a bleach-blonde sh*t-stirrer from Queens desperate to break his developmentally disabled brother out of prison. Pattinson plays Connie, a street hustler and bank robber with grand plans to break out of his urban hood while Benny Safdie plays his brother Nick, who gets roped into his schemes. When Nick is sent to Ryker’s Island for a job gone wrong, Connie goes on a downward spiral to get him back. Pattinson’s manic energy carries this thing and there’s plenty of police run-ins, shootouts, and heists (however botched) to keep the adrenaline pumping.
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