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      Cory Michael Smith Burns Through ‘Mountainhead,’ by the Creator of ‘Succession’

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      Cory Michael Smith was disappointed. “I’m a big fan of pepperoni with a little more constitution,” he said, looking down at the slice of pizza on his plate. “These are tired. They’re tired cups.”This was the day after the premiere party for “Mountainhead,” the Jesse Armstrong movie that premieres Saturday on HBO. A Vantablack comedy of wealth, power and moral negligence, it evokes Armstrong’s earlier fable of the megarich, “Succession,” but is more explicitly attuned to current anxieties about Silicon Valley oligarchs.Smith stars as a social media mogul named Venis (rhymes with menace), a pampered edgelord holed up in a cartoonishly swank chalet (the Mountainhead of the title) with other tech machers, played by Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman and Ramy Youssef. Venis’s content creation tools have destabilized much of the global South, but he remains mostly unbothered.“Nothing means anything, and everything is funny and cool,” he tells his fellow founders, as they swipe past scenes of chaos.In person, Smith, 38, was not quite so nihilistic, though he had dressed the part, a man in black on black on black — pants, coat, shirt, tie, shoes. Offscreen, Smith is abidingly polite, with a wide smile that narrows his eyes to slits.He lives in the West Village, though increasingly work keeps him away. He had flown in for the premiere and soon he would fly out again, to Alaska where he is shooting a film that he was forbidden to discuss. Smith (“Gotham,” “Carol,” “May December”) is suddenly so in demand that he had to miss Cannes, at which “Sentimental Value,” a movie in which he co-stars, was awarded the Grand Prix.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      5 Animated Political Satire Series to Stream

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      From Ramy Youssef’s latest to a long-running series from Seth MacFarlane, these shows tackle the hot topics of their time.The state of American politics can feel so exaggerated and far-fetched that one of the best ways to represent it is through a medium made for such absurdity. Animated satirical series can depict our country’s political figures and moments at their most bizarre, sometimes taking aim at a particular party or politician, and sometimes lambasting the general idea of America as a fair, free and democratic nation. What follows is a guide to animated satires of American politics and politicians from the first Bush administration to the Biden administration.#1 Happy Family USA (2025- )This new series, created by the comedian Ramy Youssef and the writer Pam Brady, depicts a Muslim Egyptian American family in New Jersey who must learn to properly code-switch and project the image of a nonthreatening, properly assimilated family in order to carry on in the midst of the prejudice and jingoism of post-9/11 America.Much of the series focuses on the exploits and misadventures of Rumi (voiced by Youssef), who tries to find his place among his middle school peers. But beyond the more standard adolescent story lines, “#1 Happy Family USA” hilariously skewers the likes of Fox News and George W. Bush, and also offers a stringent critique of how American beliefs and values shifted at the expense of many Muslim citizens and people of color after 9/11.Streaming on Amazon Prime.American Dad! (2005- )The series creator Seth MacFarlane (who also created “Family Guy”) has said that “American Dad!” was inspired by his frustration with the 2000 presidential election and the Bush administration. The sitcom stars the Smith family, the patriarch of which, Stan, is a jingoistic far-right Republican who works for the C.I.A. Conservative politics take many of the satire’s hits, but characters like Stan’s hippie daughter and her boyfriend then husband represent leftist targets that get mocked regularly.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Nathan Fielder Calls F.A.A. ‘Dumb’ in CNN Interview

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      In a CNN interview to discuss the recent season’s focus on pilot safety, Fielder responded to a Federal Aviation Administration statement and criticized training standards.Nathan Fielder, the creator of the HBO comedy-documentary series “The Rehearsal,” extended his show’s commingling of performance and reality with a live appearance on CNN on Thursday.Fielder went on “The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown” to promote the second season of “The Rehearsal” (whose finale aired on Sunday), and to raise awareness about airline pilot safety. Fielder had been closely examining safety in the season, including the communication between pilots and co-pilots, which he argued is poor and is a key factor in many plane crashes.In the finale, Fielder himself flew a Boeing 737 passenger jet with more than 100 actors on board in an attempt to simulate inter-pilot communication on real-world commercial flights.On “The Situation Room,” he fired back at criticism from the Federal Aviation Administration, which said in a statement to CNN that it “isn’t seeing the data that supports the show’s central claim that pilot communications is to blame for airline disasters.”“Well that’s dumb, they’re dumb,” Fielder said, sitting next to John Goglia, an aviation expert and former National Transportation Safety Board member who appeared as an adviser on “The Rehearsal” this season. Fielder criticized the F.A.A.’s training standards, which he said do not adequately prepare pilots and co-pilots to speak their mind if they have a concern.“The training is someone shows you a PowerPoint slide saying ‘If you are a co-pilot and the pilot does something wrong, you need to speak up about it,’” he said. “That’s all. That’s the training.”On Friday, the F.A.A. said in a statement that it “requires all airline crew members (pilots and flight attendants) and dispatchers to complete Crew Resource Management training,” which focuses on interactions among crew members.“They must complete this training before they begin working in their official positions and complete it on a recurring basis afterward,” the F.A.A. said.Over the course of six episodes, Fielder recruited several pilots to participate in elaborate role-playing scenarios that tested their ability to navigate sensitive conversations. In one episode, a pilot was encouraged to confront his girlfriend with suspicions of disloyalty while seated next to her in a mock cockpit. In another, several pilots were graded on their ability to deliver harsh feedback to contestants in a fake singing competition show.Although the scenarios are contrived and frequently involve actors, the show also regularly depicts what appear to be genuine interactions with nonactors. The fifth episode featured an awkward interview with a congressman, Steve Cohen of Tennessee, a member of the aviation subcommittee. And Goglia’s appearances are played completely straight.“It’s exploded,” Goglia said on “The Situation Room,” when asked about the public reaction to the show. “My emails exploded, my messages exploded, my grandkids were all over me — it’s unbelievable, the response.” More

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      ‘Mountainhead’ Review: While We Go Down, They Bro Down

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      The creator of “Succession” skewers tech billionaires in a dark comedy that is intelligent but feels a bit artificial.Over four seasons of “Succession,” the creator, Jesse Armstrong, told the story of people who control the world by selling ideas: the Roy family, who ran and fought over a media and entertainment empire. Toward its end, as their business was sold to a tech entrepreneur, “Succession” suggested that power was shifting, and that the future belonged to silicon hyperbillionaires.In his film “Mountainhead,” which premieres Saturday on HBO, that future has arrived, and it is both terrifying and ridiculous — not unlike our present. In the scabrous story of a weekend getaway for four tech-mogul frenemies, Armstrong finds that our new bro overlords are rich targets for satire, though when it comes to depth, nuance and insight, their story has nothing on the Roys’.As “Mountainhead” begins, countries around the globe are erupting in hatred and sectarian violence, fueled by A.I.-generated propaganda. This chaos is the whoopsie of Venis (Cory Michael Smith), a chuckleheaded social-media entrepreneur whose company pushed a half-baked software update that gave bad actors around the world the sudden ability to create unfalsifiable deepfake videos. (The name “Venis,” a seeming portmanteau of “venal” and “penis” that is pronounced “Venice,” is Armstrong’s sensibility in five letters.)The world is burning. But in the snowy, Randian-named retreat that gives its name to “Mountainhead,” Venis has arrived to chill with his boys. Jeff (Ramy Youssef) has developed possibly the only A.I. capable of weeding out the dangerous fake videos from Venis’s company. Randall (Steve Carell), a self-styled philosopher-exec, tosses around terms like “Hegelian” in a way that makes you wonder if he’s ever finished a book. And Hugo Van Yalk (a wonderfully debased Jason Schwartzman), the owner of the property, is a meditation-app developer nicknamed “Soup” — for “soup kitchen” — because his net worth is a mere half billion dollars.The edgy bro-down that ensues is fueled by unspoken rivalries and schemes. Venis wants Jeff to sell him his A.I., which would allow him to call off the apocalypse without having to do an embarrassing recall of the update. Randall, who has received a concerning diagnosis, is keen on Venis’s plan to usher in the “transhuman” era by uploading people’s consciousnesses to the cloud. Soup wants someone to fund his anemic wellness app and finally add a zero to his humiliating nine-digit wealth.The film centers almost entirely on this quartet. (Like the Roys, they mash up aspects of several real-life analogues — Musk, Thiel, Zuckerberg and more.) The narrow focus matches their perspective: The four men see themselves as the only real people in the world, while the other eight billion of us are NPCs. At one point, Venis asks Randall, “Do you believe in other people?” The only reasonable answer is, “Obviously not!”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘And Just Like That …’ Season 3 Premiere Recap: Outlook Good

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      The new season opener found most of the women prioritizing their men’s needs over their own. That didn’t seem likely to last.My jaw is bruised from hitting the floor when Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) tells her gal pals that her boyfriend, Aidan (John Corbett), asked for “no communication” while he deals with family issues — and that she is just fine with giving it to him. No communication. For five full years. And this is supposed to be love?Let’s review how we got here. At the end of Season 2 of “And Just Like That …,” the on-again lovers Carrie and Aidan found themselves at an impasse when Aidan’s son, Wyatt, hit hard times. Wyatt needed paternal supervision — so much so, apparently, that Aidan felt compelled to devote himself to it entirely back home in Virginia. The Gramercy palace Carrie had just purchased for the two of them became a reluctant bachelorette pad, and their love was relegated to a long-distance situationship.At that point, we knew Carrie and Aidan were going to hold onto their love connection but weren’t going to visit each other — as implausible as that seemed alone. What was less apparent until the first few moments of Season 3 was that they weren’t going to speak, period. No texting, no FaceTime, not even the occasional Instagram like. The only hellos they’re exchanging are blank postcards, which they’re each sending back and forth between Virginia and New York, and for Carrie, this is apparently enough. Right.This no-contact-but-stay-together setup was never realistic — even if we suspended every possible disbelief. It is even more absurd that Carrie plays along.It doesn’t take long for Aidan to break his own rule, though. All he needed were three beers and a good, old-fashioned “ache.” He buzz-dials Carrie out of nowhere and lures her into one-sided, rather frantic phone sex. (Carrie may have been more enthusiastic if not for the beady eyes of her kitty-cat, Shoe, who was watching from the edge of the bed. But between that, Aidan’s intoxicated grunts, and a disruptive horn-blare, she just couldn’t quite get there.)Not long after, Carrie calls up Aidan for Round 2, but the time is no good for Aidan. He is back on Wyatt patrol, lying in bed beside his sleeping son. Carrie hangs up in shame.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Malditos’ Is a Brooding, Operatic French Drama

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      Set amid a traveler community in southern France, the Max series is a fresh and surprising story about family, superstition and a legacy of violence.The French drama “Malditos” (in French, with subtitles, or dubbed), on Max, is set within a traveler community whose members are about to be displaced from the dilapidated carnival fairgrounds where they live and work. The show hits brutal, operatic highs, with its deadly scheming playing out against the dramatic landscape of Camargue, in southern France. Give us blinding fraternal strife, and give it to us on a sun-bleached salt flat.Sara (Céline Sallette), who instead of a crown and a scepter has a scowl and a cigarette, is determined to keep the clan together. But everyone around her has different ideas about how to scrounge up enough money — and enough mutual will — to do so.Especially her sons. The brash, excitable son, Tony (Darren Muselet), wants to get into the lucrative drug market — or maybe he wants to run away with his girlfriend, who is from a rival clan. The brooding, bitter son, Jo (Pablo Cobo), who was forced to abandon his career ambitions, has his own vision for leadership, one he honed during years of estrangement from his mother and brother. Sara, Tony and Jo all think they are keeping the same secret, but they aren’t quite.The show wears its Shakespearean power-jockeying as comfortably as its track jackets. “You’re a real prince,” a vulnerable man stutters at Jo, begging for his life. Every bright idea just illuminates the path toward a more severe catastrophe, and pretty soon, the bodies are piling up. Some are even being exhumed.Violence abounds, both in harebrained shoot-em-ups and in the startling volatility of a bull. One person might be leveled by a mob-led beat-down or by the punishing rains of an unrelenting storm. Another might be swallowed up by oppressive gender roles or spit out by expensive real estate regulations.A few of the twists and turns here can feel a little predictable, and all that glowering starts losing its impact after a while. But the show has plenty of fresh ideas and true surprises in its specifics and realism, in its characters’ rites and traditions. “Malditos” teases out how religion, superstition and harshly enforced cultural customs are both the fabric and the rend. There’s a bright beauty to a tough-guy dad tenderly officiating a poetic marriage ritual, and also a cold horror at the bride’s numb concessions and deep despair.Four episodes are available now, and the remaining three arrive on Fridays. More

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      ‘Dept. Q’ Review: Netflix’s Nordic-British-American Noir

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      Matthew Goode plays a traumatized Edinburgh detective in a complicated cold-case series that’s less than the sum of its influences.“Dept. Q,” this week’s new cop show on Netflix, is a study in internationalism. Largely written and directed by an American, Scott Frank, it is based on a novel by the Danish crime writer Jussi Adler-Olsen and set and filmed in Scotland with a British cast led by Matthew Goode.That might stand out given the current trans-Atlantic vibe, but of course the show, which premieres Thursday, has been in the works for years. And if anyone is going to remain committed to peaceful relationships across multiple markets, it will be Netflix.The ambitious, nine-episode season also reflects the history of Frank, a talented writer and director who has had his highs (“Out of Sight,” “The Queen’s Gambit”) and his lows (“Monsieur Spade”). He likes to roam among genres, with a home base in literary American crime (“Out of Sight,” “Hoke,” “A Walk Among the Tombstones”) but forays into the western (“Godless”), science fiction (“Minority Report”), period melodrama (“The Queen’s Gambit”) and others.For “Dept. Q,” in which Goode plays a damaged Edinburgh detective tasked with assembling a new cold-case unit, Frank (who developed the show with the British writer Chandni Lakhani) gets to play mix-and-match in one place. The influence of Nordic noir on the traditional British mystery has been established for several decades now, but Frank adds some American flavor to the cocktail.The buddy-cop pairing of Goode’s Carl Morck and Alexej Manvelov’s Akram Salim, a Syrian immigrant with an unsettling knack for extracting confessions, is probably more richly drawn than it would be otherwise; the interplay of Goode and Manvelov is one of the show’s main pleasures. And as is usually the case in Frank’s productions, “Dept. Q” has an overall flow and fluency — a style that is, if not always seductive, consistently engaging.(A 2013 Danish film based on the same source, “The Keeper of Lost Causes,” is dour by comparison, though some might find its 96-minute running time preferable to the seven and a half hours of the series.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mike White, ‘White Lotus’ Creator, Will Return to Cast of ‘Survivor’

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      Mike White, a noted reality-television aficionado, first competed on the show in 2018.Mike White, the acclaimed screenwriter, creator of the hit HBO series “The White Lotus” and reality competition show veteran, will be returning to “Survivor” for its 50th season.The “Survivor” host Jeff Probst announced White’s return on “CBS Mornings” on Wednesday.“In between writing and directing seasons of ‘White Lotus,’ Mike White is back,” Probst said.White first appeared on “Survivor” in 2018, during the show’s 37th season, and lasted on the island for 39 days, finishing in second place. Although “The White Lotus” wouldn’t premiere until three years later (White has said the show, an acerbic anthology series set at an exotic hotel chain, was partly inspired by his observations while on “Survivor”), he was already a well-regarded filmmaker, having written the film “School of Rock” and created the HBO series “Enlightened.”Conceived of and filmed during the Covid pandemic, “The White Lotus” became a breakout hit for HBO and catapulted White to a new level of fame. He won Emmy Awards for both writing and directing in the limited series or anthology categories for the show’s first season. The finale of the third season — which aired this spring and starred Parker Posey, Carrie Coon and Walton Goggins — was watched by more than six million viewers.Before “Survivor,” White competed on “The Amazing Race” with his father in 2009 and again in 2011. In a 2021 interview with The New Yorker, he attributed his love of reality television to its ability to distill real human behavior and conflict.“For me, as a writer of drama, I aspire to do what reality television already does,” he said. “To create characters that are surprising and dimensional and do weird” stuff and “capture your attention.”The landmark 50th season of “Survivor,” which is scheduled to air in 2026, will feature several returning cast members, including a Season 1 contestant, Jenna Lewis-Dougherty, and the five-time competitors Cirie Fields and Ozzy Lusth. Filming is scheduled to take place this summer. More