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      ‘Common Side Effects’ Is a Stylish and Trippy Animated Thriller

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      Filled with smart dialogue, specificity and visual wonder, this Max series is a good choice to help fill the “Severance”-shaped hole in your heart.The animated pharma thriller/stoner dramedy “Common Side Effects,” available on Max, is as rare and precious as the miraculous mushroom its hero, Marshall (Dave King), discovers in the jungle. Smarts, humor, style and perspective rarely align so harmoniously. Not a lot of shows have as much to say, and fewer still say it with such panache.“Common” follows the open-shirted, tiny-mouthed environmentalist Marshall, who wants to protect the fragile habitat of the blue angel mushroom, a fungus that can heal seemingly everything. Everyone should be able to access its powers, Marshall says, and no one should be denied a lifesaving cure because of poverty.But he’s up against a lot, including the D.E.A., the F.B.I., big pharma, fellow mycologists, backwoods hooligans, jailhouse power players and sometimes just his own naiveté. He reunites with his high school lab partner, Frances (Emily Pendergast), after he is booted from one of her boss’s speeches. Frances doesn’t admit to him that she works for Reutical, a pharmaceutical company that does every single bad thing Marshall abhors. They trust each other, even though they haven’t seen each other in years, and when Marshall is in peril, he calls her.“Just two things to mention,” he says, panic rising in his voice. “Some people are following me, and I brought my tortoise.”Frances is just as desperate as Marshall. Her mother has Alzheimer’s and is in a memory care facility that they can barely afford; her boyfriend is sort of a yutz; and she is always waist-deep in a crisis of conscience about working for Reutical. Should she try to help Marshall do things Marshall’s slapdash way, or might Reutical be in a better position to cultivate, test and distribute such a powerful drug?Her boss, Rick (Mike Judge), takes her up to the company’s rooftop helipad to encourage her to stick with the corporate vision. “You’re with us now, the helicopter people,” he says. “We don’t worry about the down-there problems.” He doesn’t say it in an evil, cackling villain voice, though. He says it like an encouraging dad, like a mentor.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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      With ‘The Studio,’ Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg Grow Up. Sort of.

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      Amoeba Records, on Hollywood Boulevard, isn’t the best place for someone of Seth Rogen’s visibility to shop hassle-free. Located just blocks from the Chinese Theater, right by Dr. Phil’s and Dr. Oz’s stars on the Walk of Fame, there may be few places worse.But when Rogen wasn’t being interrupted by his admiring bro-fans, who were legion — one wore toe shoes and a Lil Dicky shirt; another cried — Amoeba was, however, a perfect place to dig through hundreds of vinyl soundtracks. It was the Tuesday before the Oscars, and we were there with Rogen’s longtime creative partner, Evan Goldberg, to browse records and talk about their latest creation: “The Studio,” an ambitious, celebrity-stuffed industry satire for Apple TV+ that premiered on Wednesday.“The Studio” features many celebrity cameos and guest roles, including one by Martin Scorsese, right (with Ike Barinholtz, left, and Seth Rogen).Apple TV+Rogen had been tasked by his wife to stock more jazz — appropriate given the new show’s jazzy score and improvisational feel, shot mostly in long single takes. But as Goldberg and Rogen, who have been friends since they were teenagers, noted, their taste in music had really been formed by their love for movies.So we found ourselves first among the soundtracks, where highlights included a reissue of “The Three Amigos” — “One of my favorite movies of all time,” Rogen said — and two copies of the soundtrack for “Soul Man,” the 1986 comedy about a young white guy who pretends to be Black in order to get a Harvard scholarship. (Different times, as they say.)“Dude, I was just telling some people at work about this yesterday!” Goldberg said.“It has a good soundtrack,” Rogen ventured.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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      Late Night Is Still Reeling Over the Government’s ‘War by Emoji’

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      “Signal might be a good app for you and me and our local drug dealer, but it’s not for the Pentagon to plan wars on,” Ronny Chieng said on Tuesday’s “Daily Show.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Snapchat’s NextThe late-night buzz on Tuesday was still about the Signal chat group in which Trump administration officials discussed an imminent strike on Houthi militants in Yemen, unaware that one of them had mistakenly added the editor of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to the group.The “Daily Show” host Ronny Chieng said it was proof that not everything that goes wrong is President Trump’s fault — “he has a whole administration that can [expletive] up for him.”“Is anyone else kind of upset that we’re conducting war by emoji now?” — RONNY CHIENG“I know we shouldn’t enjoy the fact that we have a confederacy of dunces running this country, but I’ll be honest, I can’t help it — I’m enjoying it right now. This week, in the race between dumb and evil, dumb’s in the lead.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“At first, Goldberg was concerned that it might be a hoax. But he got a hint it might be real when he was added to a text chain called ‘Houthi PC small group.’ Turns out it was real and that ‘Houthi’ is short for ‘Houthis idiots running our government?’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And they should’ve known someone from The Atlantic was there, because after 10 messages, Goldberg chimed in to say: ‘You’ve reached your free article limit. Please log in to continue.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And by the way, it wasn’t even Pete Hegseth who added him, it was some other incompetent guy at the highest levels of government, OK? Like, what, you think Hegseth has the editor of The Atlantic magazine saved in his phone? No way, all right? If Hegseth auto-filled a contact into a group chat, it would be like, ‘Tampa Bay Blonde With Bugs Bunny Tattoo.’” — RONNY CHIENG“Apparently, the reporter was mistakenly added to the group chat by Trump’s national security adviser. This adviser can’t catch a break. Today, he sat down and butt-dialed the nuclear codes to North Korea.” — JIMMY FALLON“And even if they didn’t accidentally add a journalist into this group chat, they weren’t supposed to be talking about this stuff on Signal in the first place, OK? Signal might be a good app for you and me and our local drug dealer, but it’s not for the Pentagon to plan wars on.” — RONNY CHIENG“Today Trump said it’ll never happen again, and from now on they’ll only talk about war plans over Snapchat.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Meat Loaf Edition)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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      ‘The Studio’ Review: Seth Rogen Is Way Too Late for His Close-Up

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      Seth Rogen plays a stressed-out movie bigwig in a satire of an industry in decline.Midway through the first season of “The Studio,” Matt Remick (Seth Rogen), a big wheel in the movie industry, finds himself at a dinner table of civilians. Though he’s used to impressing people with his job, his companions are unmoved. “If you want art, you watch TV,” one says. “Have you seen ‘The Bear’?”To borrow a line from “The Sopranos,” one of the first big series to muscle in on the movies’ territory, Matt is feeling like a guy who came in at the end of something. When the 10-episode satire begins on Apple TV+, he gets his dream job, as he is tapped to head the fictional Continental Studios when its storied leader (Catherine O’Hara) is defenestrated after a string of flops.Matt, a movie guy’s movie guy whose vintage-car collection embodies his love for an earlier showbiz era, is ready to live his Hollywood fantasy. He will lavish money on auteurs and let them shoot on actual film. He will be known as a “talent-friendly” executive. He will make art.Or maybe he won’t. Seconds into his welcome-aboard talk with the company’s C.E.O., Griffin Mill (a deliciously batty Bryan Cranston), he gets his first mandate: Continental has landed the rights to the Kool-Aid Man, a crass ploy to copy the success of “Barbie,” and Matt is expected to turn the I.P. into a billion-dollar hit. He dreamed of a life in the pictures; now he’s breathing life into a pitcher.“The Studio,” which premieres on Wednesday, is its own kind of formula project, another in that long-lived monster-movie franchise “Art vs. Commerce.” But the series is timely enough to be a little distinctive, and it knows its business well enough to be blisteringly entertaining.Past Hollywood stories have cast the industry as a culturally powerful meat grinder (Cranston’s character name is an allusion to “The Player,” one of many classic-film references in the series), or as affluent but brainless, as in “Entourage.” But in “The Studio,” Hollywood is in deep decline.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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      ‘Severance’ Fans Celebrate Season 2 Finale With Lumon Industries Cosplay and Waffles

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      The sci-fi thriller “Severance” is about an enigmatic, cultlike company and its “severed” employees, whose brains have been surgically divided into an “innie” work consciousness and an “outie” home one. The show itself has a kind of bifurcated existence, becoming Apple TV+’s most popular series ever while inspiring fans in the non-TV world to spin fanciful theories — some of which have been borne out — and otherwise wallow in its imagery and mysteries.One of the most colorful examples of this happened at a venue in Kingston, N.Y., on Friday, as the series closed out its second season. The owners of two area restaurants that served as filming locations in the series, Phoenicia Diner and Eng’s, a Chinese restaurant in downtown Kingston, co-hosted a watch party for the season finale that included costumes, dance-offs, themed snacks and other “Severance”-related festivities.An unsevered photographer was inside to document all the choreography and merriment for The New York Times. Please try to enjoy each photo equally, and not show preference for any over the others.Held at Assembly, a venue in Kingston, the event included costume and dance contests and “Severance” souvenirs, like finger traps and Lumon Industries badges.Phoenicia Diner, seen in the show as a restaurant called Pip’s, offered attendees their own waffle parties.Goats, one of the most beloved bits of “Severance” iconography, were well-represented.Attendees paid tribute to characters including Lorne, the goat minder, and Miss Huang, the young deputy manager.Unlike in “Severance,” attendees were allowed to remember their innies’ experiences.Audience Report is a series that looks at people looking. Produced by Jolie Ruben and Amanda Webster. More

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      Jon Stewart Thinks He May Be in the ‘Bomb Yemen’ Chat Group

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      The “Daily Show” host suspects that he, too, might have been invited to a discussion of secret war plans by a bumbling official in the Trump administration.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Invite OnlyTop officials in the Trump administration discussed secret plans to bomb Yemen on Signal, unaware that one of them had mistakenly added a journalist to the chat group.On Monday’s “Daily Show,” Jon Stewart applauded the administration for “once again carrying out its plans with competence and professionalism.”“You know, back in my day, if you were a journalist who wanted leaked war documents, you had to work the sources: meet them in a dark garage, earn their trust, pound the pavement. Now? You just wait for the national security adviser to be distracted by ‘White Lotus’ while he’s setting up his ‘Bomb Yemen’ group chat.” — JON STEWART“By the way, I might be in this group chat, I don’t know. I don’t check my group chats.” — JON STEWART“This is not helping Pete Hegseth’s reputation as a guy who is always drunk. I mean, this is a drunk guy mistake. This is the national security equivalent of airdropping a [expletive] pic to everyone in the office.” — TAYLOR TOMLINSON“I thought top-secret war meetings were held in a vault on top of a mountain. I didn’t know we were just droppin’ ’em in the chat. Turns out Hegseth was planning wars like a mom in a busy grocery store talking on speakerphone.” — TAYLOR TOMLINSON“Worst of all, now that journalist knows they’re all hanging out at Buffalo Wild Wings tonight, and they can’t uninvite him or it would be so awkward.” — TAYLOR TOMLINSON“He thought it was disinformation. Turned out it was just a bunch of fools, because the strikes started happening exactly as described in the texts. In other words, our national security is being guarded by a bunch of doofs you wouldn’t trust to throw your cousin a surprise party.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“No one on the chain thought to ask, ‘Who is JG? What are these initials?’ For all — they could have been leaking secrets to Jeff Goldblum, for all they know.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Skin-Colored Skin Edition)“Donald Trump truly is focused on the issues that matter most — to him, specifically.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Yesterday, he posted — this is real — ‘Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the State Capitol, put up by the governor, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before.’ He doesn’t like this painting of him that they hung in the State Capitol building in Colorado. This is the portrait. I have to be honest: I agree with him on this one. It’s not a very good likeness. I mean, look how inaccurate the skin color is. His skin is the color of skin.” — JIMMY KIMMELWe 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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      Why Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’ Has Parents Talking About Phones

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      The Netflix hit has touched off debates about smartphone use by children and, in Britain, fed into calls for a social media ban.The British screenwriter and playwright Jack Thorne has written several TV dramas that he hoped would stir political debate. Until last week, they never quite took off.Then, his new show, “Adolescence,” appeared on Netflix.In the days since its March 13 release, the four-part drama about a 13-year-old boy who murders a girl from his school after potentially being exposed to misogynist ideas online has become Netflix’s latest hit. According to the streamer, it was the most watched show on the platform in dozens of countries after it debuted, including the United States.In Britain, the show has been more than a topic of workplace chatter. It has reignited discussion about whether the government should restrict children’s access to smartphones to stop them from accessing harmful content.Newspapers here have published dozens of articles about “Adolescence,” which Thorne wrote with the actor Stephen Graham. A Times of London headline called it “The TV Drama That Every Parent Should Watch,” and campaigners for a phone ban in schools have reported a surge in support.In Britain’s parliament, too, lawmakers have used the show to make political points. Last week Prime Minister Keir Starmer told the House of Commons that he was watching “Adolescence” with his two children, and said that action was needed to address the “fatal consequences” of young men and boys viewing harmful content online.In the show, Ashley Walters, center left, plays a police officer whose son has to instruct him on the meaning of emojis online.Netflix, via Associated PressWe 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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      Lionizing Mark Twain, Conan O’Brien Subtly Skewers Trump

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      In accepting the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, the comedian mounted a bristling political attack artfully disguised as a tribute.Conan O’Brien faced a thorny question when accepting the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor on Sunday night.In the headlining speech for the most-high-profile event at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts since President Trump purged Democrats from its board, cashiered its leaders and made himself chairman, how political should he be? Considering artists like Lin-Manuel Miranda and Issa Rae have said they are boycotting the Kennedy Center in protest, should he even show up?Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, the puppet voiced by Robert Smigel, who was on the original writing staff of “Late Night With Conan O’Brien,” captured the dilemma of his position when he welcomed the audience in a gravelly voice: “Thank you for coming and shame on you for being here.”The assignment was especially tricky for O’Brien, because unlike past recipients like Jon Stewart or Dave Chappelle, his comedy has always steered clear of ideological fervor. But moving out of his comfort zone, O’Brien delivered what amounted to a bristling attack on the current administration artfully disguised as a tribute to Mark Twain.“Twain was suspicious of populism, jingoism, imperialism, the money-obsessed mania of the Gilded Age and any expression of mindless American might or self-importance,” O’Brien said, steadily, soberly. “Above all, Twain was a patriot in the best sense of the word. He loved America, but knew it was deeply flawed. Twain wrote: ‘Patriotism is supporting your country all of the time and your government when it deserves it.’”O’Brien’s speech, which along with the rest of the show, will air on Netflix on May 4, followed a murderers’ row of comedians — who put on the best Twain Awards in recent memory. Among those gushing about O’Brien were father figures (David Letterman), peers (Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Stephen Colbert) and his comedic children (Nikki Glaser, Kumail Nanjiani, John Mulaney).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