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      ‘Zero Day’ Is a Throwback Thriller With Modern Echoes

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      The new Netflix series is a contemporary update of a ’70s-style political drama that is even more contemporary than its creators anticipated.The new Netflix limited series “Zero Day” has been in development for several years, but it is arriving at a time when its primary themes — regarding presidential overreach, the hacking of the federal government and the persistence of disinformation — are dominating the actual news cycle. It is a contemporary update of a ’70s-style political drama that is even more contemporary than anticipated.Asked if the time is ripe for a resurgence of the conspiracy thriller, the executive producer Eric Newman was succinct: “We’re living in one.”Created by Newman and two executive producers with journalism backgrounds — Noah Oppenheim, a former president of NBC News, and Michael S. Schmidt, an investigative reporter for the Washington bureau of The New York Times — “Zero Day” depicts a nightmare scenario in which the United States has been attacked and the person in charge of the response might not be of sound mind.After a cyber-strike cripples U.S. transportation systems, leaving 3,400 dead from transit accidents and other disasters, a former president named George Mullen (Robert De Niro) is selected to lead an investigative commission. But Mullen has been having hallucinations and keeps hearing the same Sex Pistols song, “Who Killed Bambi?,” on a loop in his head. Is he cracking up? Has his brain been tampered with, à la “The Manchurian Candidate” (1962)?Whatever the cause, Mullen is soon trampling over civil liberties and resorting to 9/11-era “enhanced interrogation” techniques, including torture, with U.S. citizens.While “Zero Day” makes explicit reference to 9/11 and the Patriot Act, its details are more current. As evidence seems to implicate Russian agents in the attack, Mullen grows obsessed with a leftist hacktivist collective, a provocateur talk show host (Dan Stevens) who fans the conspiratorial flames and an extremist tech billionaire (Gaby Hoffman) who would be happy to tear the whole system down.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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      in Movies

      How to Watch the SAG Awards

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      In a wide-open best picture race, the awards, which are streaming on Netflix, could offer some clarity.This year’s Oscars best picture race is, for the first time in years, wide open.Will the newly ascendant front-runner “Anora,” Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner about a stripper who impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch, take the statuette? Will Brady Corbet’s epic “The Brutalist” find its way to the top? And what about the wild card, the papal thriller “Conclave,” which recently took top honors at the EE British Academy Film Awards, or BAFTAs — Britain’s version of the Oscars?With the days ticking down until the March 2 Academy Awards ceremony, the Screen Actors Guild Awards could offer some clarity. In four of the past five years, the SAGs have given their top honor — best ensemble — to the eventual Oscar winner.The 15 awards, which are voted on by actors and other performers who belong to the SAG-AFTRA union, honor the best film and television performances from the past year. The movie musical “Wicked” and the FX series “Shogun” are the leading nominees.Here’s how to watch, and what to watch for.What time does the show start, and where can I watch?The two-hour ceremony begins at 8 p.m. Eastern time (5 p.m. Pacific time) at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, a historic venue that has also hosted the Oscars. For the second year, the awards show will stream live and exclusively on Netflix; there is no way to watch without a subscription.Is there a red carpet?The red carpet preshow will stream live on Netflix beginning at 7 p.m. Eastern time (4 p.m. Pacific time). The YouTube star Lilly Singh and the actress and former “Saturday Night Live” comedian Sasheer Zamata will host the event, which will include interviews with nominees and the announcement of the winners in the best stunt ensemble categories.Who is hosting?Kristen Bell, who recently starred in the Netflix rom-com “Nobody Wants This,” will steer the ship. This will be her second time hosting; the first was in 2018.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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      After Netflix Success, ‘Suits’ Opens Another Firm

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      The creator of the legal drama didn’t expect to make any more spinoffs. But after “Suits” became a rerun hit on Netflix, “Suits LA” was born.On a January morning, attractive people in tailored attire stood in a sun-skimmed California courtroom, arguing a motion in the murder trial.“Bring the venom!” the director, Anton Cropper, said encouragingly.This was on the set of “Suits LA,” a sibling of “Suits,” the legal procedural that ran on USA for nine seasons, from 2011 to 2019. (It is also a cousin of “Pearson,” a short-lived “Suits” spinoff.) Back in the courtroom, a clash over evidentiary rules turned vicious as one lawyer hissed at another, “You immoral piece of filth!” Time, it seemed, had not mellowed the mildly glamorous, majorly cutthroat world of “Suits.”The original “Suits” had done well on USA during its run — well enough to be renewed and renewed. But its hold on the cultural imagination was never especially strong and its reviews were, like the Season 1 suits themselves, muted. “Though the series begins amusingly enough, it quickly descends into cloying buddy escapade,” The New York Times wrote in 2011.It wasn’t much lamented when it ended, and as late as a year and a half ago, Aaron Korsh, the show’s creator, claimed another “Suits” spinoff was unlikely. Case closed.But when “Suits” moved to Netflix in mid 2023, it set a record for the most total weeks and the most consecutive weeks at the top of the Nielsen streaming ratings. Pacey, witty, cast with good-looking actors (Meghan Markle among them) and smart — but not so smart that you couldn’t follow along while also answering a few emails — “Suits” was the nice lawyer show an exhausted America needed.From left, Gabriel Macht, Patrick J. Adams and Rick Hoffman in “Suits.”Ian Watson/USA NetworkWe 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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      ‘Cobra Kai Never Dies’: The Creators on Saying Goodbye, for Now

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      After six seasons, this “Karate Kid” spinoff, on Netflix, is closing up its dojo. But as one creator put it, “we are not ready to leave this universe.”Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, the creators of the karate-centered Netflix series “Cobra Kai,” can’t agree on which of them would win in a fight.“I would say me,” Hurwitz said.Heald disputed this. “I’m taking Muay Thai right now,” he said. “But I think Hayden would be the most creative. He’d do something dirty.”“I’m doping their water bottles,” Schlossberg said. He also mentioned blackmail.Happily, in their years spent making “Cobra Kai,” which just completed its sixth and final season, they have never come to actual blows. Or crane kicks. Hurwitz and Schlossberg, the writers of the “Harold and Kumar” movies, met (as all cool kids do) in high school debate club in the 1990s. Heald, a writer of the “Hot Tub Time Machine” movies, became friends with Hurwitz a few years later, as college dorm mates. Once all three had been introduced, they bonded over a shared obsession: the “Karate Kid” movies.“Our ‘Star Wars,’” Heald said.The 1984 movie “The Karate Kid,” set in the San Fernando Valley, culminated in a championship fight between Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio), the bullied child of a single mother, and Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), the bully. Two sequels were quickly released. An animated series and a couple of reboots — one starring Hilary Swank and another with Jayden Smith — followed. Had the franchise tapped out?Heald, Hurwitz and Schlossberg didn’t think so. They had hidden “Karate Kid” Easter eggs in nearly all of their films, and for years they had talked about writing a Johnny Lawrence movie. But it was only talk. They had no hope of getting that movie greenlighted.Then in 2016, having witnessed the rise of streaming and the success of 1980s nostalgia plays like “Stranger Things” and “Fuller House,” they retooled their pitch, reimagining the movie as a 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

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sues NBC Over Documentary That He Says Defamed Him

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      The documentary, “Diddy: Making of a Bad Boy,” began streaming on NBCUniversal’s Peacock platform last month.Sean Combs, the music mogul facing federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges, sued NBCUniversal and its streaming service Peacock on Wednesday, accusing them of airing a documentary that “shamelessly advances conspiracy theories” about him.The documentary, “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy,” is one of several about Mr. Combs’s life and career that have been developed amid mounting allegations of sexual abuse and violence that led to the criminal charges and more than three dozen civil lawsuits.Mr. Combs, who is in a Brooklyn jail awaiting his criminal trial, has pleaded not guilty to the charges, has denied sexually assaulting anyone and has depicted the allegations as fabrications or distorted accounts of consensual sex. In recent weeks, he has begun to go on the offensive, filing lawsuits against people and companies he says have defamed him.The newest defamation suit focuses in part on a segment of the Peacock documentary in which one interview subject asserts that Kim Porter, Mr. Combs’s longtime girlfriend with whom the mogul had three children, had been murdered.The documentary includes an image of Ms. Porter’s autopsy report, which says she died of lobar pneumonia, and notes that the local police did not suspect foul play. She died in 2018 at 47 years old.But it also includes an interview with Albert Joseph Brown, a former singer who goes by the name Al B. Sure!, that the suit characterizes as defamatory. In the interview, Mr. Brown, who had a child with Ms. Porter, describes seeing her and says, “It was two, three weeks prior to her murder — am I supposed to say ‘allegedly’?”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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      in Movies

      Ralph Macchio on Getting In His Final Kicks in ‘Cobra Kai’

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      When Ralph Macchio was first approached about doing a “Karate Kid” series about the adult lives of Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence, he was skeptical.“I was like, ‘I’m a car salesman?’” said Macchio, who starred in the original 1984 film as Daniel, a teenage transplant to Southern California, who learns karate and defeats his bully, Johnny (William Zabka), on the mat.“They didn’t have me at hello,” he said.But at a meeting that lasted over three hours in the courtyard of the Greenwich Hotel, in Lower Manhattan, the creators Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg won him over with their vision for that series, “Cobra Kai.” It wasn’t only a nostalgia play. It also looked to introduce a whole new generation of karate kids.“As they started talking about the younger characters — Miguel, Samantha, that next generation — and the parenting part,” Macchio said, “I started leaning forward.”Now, six seasons later, “Cobra Kai,” which is set in the San Fernando Valley approximately 30 years after the events of “The Karate Kid,” will release its final five episodes on Netflix on Thursday. The series, which stars Macchio and Zabka, puts a new lens on Johnny, who begins as a deadbeat dad, haunted by his fall from grace in the 1980s, but finds new purpose in reopening the Cobra Kai dojo and reigniting his rivalry with Daniel.Macchio in the sixth and final season of “Cobra Kai.” “It ends in a way that has all those ’80s movie feels and cheers and tears, and yet sees it through a ‘Cobra Kai’ kind of lens,” Macchio said.Curtis Bonds Baker/NetflixWe 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

    • 113 Shares188 Views

      in Television

      ‘Apple Cider Vinegar’ Is a Scammer Docudrama With Bite

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      The Netflix series, starring Kaitlyn Dever, tells the story of an Australian blogger who found fame and money by lying about having cancer.“Apple Cider Vinegar,” on Netflix, is the latest scammer docudrama, another galling true story zhuzhed up for maximum bingeyness. This one is about two scams, though: an Australian woman perpetrating a cancer fraud, and the wellness industry more broadly.Kaitlyn Dever stars as Belle Gibson, who rose to fame as a cancer and food blogger. The show weaves her story together with that of two other characters who actually do have cancer: Milla (Alycia Debnam-Carey), Belle’s blogger idol, who is convinced she can heal her own cancer, and later her mother’s, with juicing, and Lucy (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), a breast-cancer patient desperate for alternatives to the brutality of chemotherapy. Presumably “Coffee Enema” was not as enticing a title as “Apple Cider Vinegar,” but that pseudoscientific practice occupies a lot screen time here. A lot.The story unfolds in jumbled timelines, mostly between 2009 and 2015. The size and gnarliness of the lesions on Milla’s arms situate where she is in her prognosis, and Lucy grows increasingly wan. Belle’s “journey,” in contrast, is told by the state of her veneers — the brighter and shinier, the more recent. Belle’s grifts began in her teens, but she started honing her cancer story on mommy message boards as a young mother. “One of the worst things that can happen to a person happened to me!” she declares, lapping up each molecule of pity she can wring from others.“Vinegar” has more depth and bite than many other scam stories, with more hypotheses about what might motivate someone to perpetrate social frauds: bad mom, absent dad, rapacious need for attention — the same things that lead a lot of people to a life on the stage. Alienation and desperation are powerful motivators, and Devers’s performance makes Belle just sympathetic enough to reel you in.For those who want more from the world of cancer frauds, the documentary series “Scamanda,” based on a podcast of the same name, airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. on ABC. (Episodes arrive the next day on Hulu; the series debuted on Jan. 30.) Amanda Riley lied for years about having cancer, blogging about it and giving talks at her church, scamming friends and community members out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Where “Vinegar” focuses on the perpetrator, “Scamanda” is more concerned with the victims, with their humiliation and revulsion over being had. It’s a mediocre doc, but the story is wild. More

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      in Movies

      ‘Kinda Pregnant’ Review: The Belly of the Beast

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      Amy Schumer plays a jealous best friend who fakes her own pregnancy in this Netflix comedy filled with dopey men and miserable women.If the aftermath of the pandemic saw a number of horror movies about the miseries of maternity, another subgenre is making a comeback: the pregnancy comedy. Like “Babes” before it, Tyler Spindel’s “Kinda Pregnant” (on Netflix) takes childbearing, rearing and regretting and spins them into a romp.Starring a feral Amy Schumer, this clunker of a movie opens with a first act that appears filched from “Legally Blonde”: a marriage proposal that isn’t. The romantic letdown — which finds our heroine, Lainy (Schumer), shrieking in Spanx in public — coincides with the pregnancy of her bestie, Kate (Jillian Bell). What’s left for a gal to do other than don a silicone belly in envy?The potential of this bizarre prenatal cosplay for blows — and burns, and a stab wound — to Lainy’s fake stomach does not go overlooked, although the traditional cycle of the seasons seems to have been. Despite tracing Kate’s gestation from autumn to spring, the movie’s weather and attire are all over the place.Most egregiously, the world of “Kinda Pregnant” is filled with dopey men and despairing women whose torments, parental or otherwise, make for a land mine of comedy duds. Will Forte, playing a deus ex man-child, does manage to pull off a few funny lines and some real chemistry with Schumer. But this is a movie less interested in relationships than in the sundry items, from a balloon to a rotisserie chicken, that Lainy can stuff under her shirt to fake a baby bump.Kinda PregnantRated R for foul language and rotisserie chicken gags. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More