(L-R) Jason Sudeikis in Ted Lasso (Apple TV+), Idris Elba in Hijack (Apple TV+), Rebecca Ferguson in Silo (Apple TV+), Tom Holland in The Crowded Room (Apple TV+), Ronald Gladden in Jury Duty (Amazon Studios), and Aaron Paul in Black Mirror (Netflix).
In this edition of Additional Bite-Sized Reviews, I take a look at six series or seasons that I recently finished, four of which are Apple TV+ releases. The outliers are Netflix’s latest season of Black Mirror and the Amazon surprise hit of the year titled Jury Duty, but the remaining four series do a good job of showcasing how Apple’s series library is growing rapidly. Are any of these worth your time? Well, let’s have a look.
Cillian Murphy is outstanding as the titular theoretical physicist in Christopher Nolan’s OPPENHEIMER — PHOTO: Universal Pictures.
Directed by Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk; Tenet) — Screenplay by Christopher Nolan.
In 1965, famed physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer appeared on a television broadcast, and, on said broadcast, he gave an account of how people reacted and what went through his head during the so-called ‘Trinity Test’ in 1945, when Oppenheimer and a group of physicists had successfully created and detonated the first nuclear weapon. Oppenheimer claimed that a specific line from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita popped into his head: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” It is a chilling quote that has echoed through generations and had a life of its own. For the twelfth feature film in his oeuvre, the immensely popular auteur filmmaker Christopher Nolan opted to tell J. Robert Oppenheimer’s story. It’s a film about a man full of paradoxes, such as how he became a political figure with strong left-wing disarmament views but was also the man who is known for having willfully created a weapon that once dwarfed all others and forever changed warfare and foreign policy. But it is also a film that gets to the heart of the rot of the American soul in the 20th Century. It is an intimate account of the complicated headspace of a historically significant genius, but it is also a haunting and damning cautionary tale about learning the wrong lessons, naivete, guilt, covetousness, and ripple effects. It is an astoundingly brilliant achievement and much more than your average biopic.
In May 2012 Marvel Studios released Marvel’s The Avengers in theaters. It would go on to become one of the best ever comic book movies. Along the way it made $1.5 billion worldwide at the box office, and would spawn numerous other cinematic universes for other comic book characters at other studios.
You could argue, however, that a comic book movie is only as good as its leading men and women. But what if Marvel Studios never cast Downey Jr., Hemsworth, Ruffalo, Johansson, Evans, and Renner? Today, on Marvelous Monday, I try to recast the heroes in The Avengers from a pre-Marvel Cinematic Universe perspective. Continue reading “Marvelous Monday #25 – Recast The Avengers”→
I'm Jeffrey Rex 