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    ‘Sugar’ Review: In a Lonely Place With Colin Farrell

    This Apple TV+ mystery celebrates and subverts film noir.This much I can tell you: Colin Farrell plays a private detective in “Sugar.” He has a license. We see it being handed to him and everything.I can also tell you that his character, John Sugar, is not an ordinary private detective, in ways that go beyond his fetishization of the film noir heroes he emulates. But I can’t really get into it because “Sugar” — which premieres Friday on Apple TV+ with two of its eight episodes — is a show with a congenital vulnerability to spoilers.The show is the first television project of Mark Protosevich, whose short list of screenplays across more than two decades includes “I Am Legend” and Spike Lee’s remake of the South Korean revenge drama “Oldboy.” Based on “Sugar,” it is fair to guess that he shares his protagonist’s obsession with noir.The show opens with a short black-and-white preamble, set in Tokyo, that echoes the premise of Akira Kurosawa’s great 1963 crime thriller “High and Low.” Then Sugar returns to his home base in Los Angeles and steps into the plot of Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown,” agreeing to look for the missing granddaughter of a legendary Hollywood producer, Jonathan Siegel. The intimidating mogul is played by James Cromwell, who serves as a living link to another obvious influence, Curtis Hanson’s “L.A. Confidential.”The genre worship goes beyond that kind of easy homage, however. Sugar is an acolyte of classic noir, watching the old films at every opportunity and discussing them in Farrell’s genre-obligatory voice-over narration. Bolder yet, scenes of Sugar in action are intercut with clips from iconic films. A threat of violence is carried out, in tandem, by Farrell and Robert Mitchum (“The Night of the Hunter”); a nighttime drive across Los Angeles by Farrell and Amy Ryan, who plays a woman caught up in Sugar’s case, is shared with Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame (“In a Lonely Place”).These frequent past-in-present moments are probably not as exciting or sensual as they were in Protosevich’s imagination, but they do the job thematically: We see that the codes of noir and the lonely heroism of the private eye have shaped what it means to be a man for Sugar, a do-gooder with an aversion to gunplay.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 Best Movies and TV Shows Streaming in April

    “Fallout,” “Girls State” and a “Bluey” special are streaming.Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of April’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime Video‘Fallout’ Season 1Starts streaming: April 11This sardonic postapocalyptic action-adventure series combines elements from different games within the larger “Fallout” video game franchise, which since its debut in 1997 has delighted gamers with a mix of rich storytelling and wry wit. The series has Ella Purnell playing Lucy, an exemplary citizen in an underground bunker colony on an Earth ravaged by nuclear warfare. When circumstances force Lucy to the surface, the sunny optimism she learned from her father (Kyle MacLachlan) is tested by her encounters with scavengers, mutants and heavily armed soldiers in robotic armor. Developed by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy (the team behind “Westworld”) with the showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet (the co-writer of “Captain Marvel”) and Graham Wagner (a “Portlandia” writer), “Fallout” aims to be the rollicking, irreverent counter to all the dour end-of-the-world TV shows.Also arriving:April 1“House” Season 1April 4“Música”April 5“How to Date Billy Walsh”“Alex Rider” Season 3April 12“Apartment 404”April 18“Dinner With the Parents” Season 1“Going Home With Tyler Cameron” Season 1April 25“Them: The Scare” Season 2Cecilia Bartin in “Girls State,” a documentary directed by Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss on Apple TV+.Whitney Curtis/Apple TV+New to Apple TV+‘Girls State’Starts streaming: April 5The 2020 documentary “Boys State” followed a group of Texas high schoolers at a politics-themed summer camp. For this sequel, the directors Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine cover a similar camp from a different perspective, embedding with Missouri high school girls as they run for office, draft resolutions and hear court cases, emulating the functions of a state government. This particular edition of Missouri’s Girls State was held on the same campus as Boys State, inviting direct comparison between the programs (which differ in their levels of rigor). It also happened not long after the draft of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision was leaked. As with the earlier film, Moss and McBaine avoid turning their subjects into simplistic heroes or villains. Instead, “Girls State” honors these bright, concerned young ladies’ earnest interest in making friends and becoming better leaders.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