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      How ‘Government Cheese’ Creates a Dream World in the Valley

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      Set in late 1960s California, this magical realist comedy takes place in a fanciful, aesthetically distinctive world that reflects the spirit of its characters.In a scene early in the Apple TV+ period comedy “Government Cheese,” the show’s Chambers family watches an episode of “The Addams Family” in which a neighbor remarks, “Addamses, you are kooks!”The sentiment applies to both clans, as well as to the family upon which the Chambers are based: that of Paul Hunter, a creator and showrunner of “Government Cheese.”“They called us odd,” Hunter said in a video interview from Mexico City. “They said, ‘Oh, you guys are always in the clouds. Do you know what’s going on?’ We knew what was going on. We just really were in our own world.”Set in the late 1960s San Fernando Valley, “Government Cheese” follows the Chambers, a Black family pursuing idiosyncratic interests — inventions, pole vaulting, eagle feather hunting — with little concern for the realities of the outside world. (The title, taken from the processed foodstuff once distributed to low-income families, also refers to the delicious sandwiches Hampton’s mother made from it, and to the sense of invention and aspiration they embodied.)Matthew J. Lloyd, the show’s cinematographer, called the Chambers family — the parents, Hampton (David Oyelowo) and Astoria (Simone Missick), and sons, Einstein (Evan Ellison) and Harrison (Jahi Di’Allo Winston) — and their adventures a “fable-ized version” of Hunter’s upbringing. Magical, fantastical things happen to Hampton, in particular, and the audience is asked to believe them.From left, Jahi Di’Allo Winston, Oyelowo, Simone Missick and Evan Ellison in “Government Cheese,” based on the family of Paul Hunter, one of the creators.Apple TV+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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      Seth Meyers Recaps Trump’s Latest Revisionist History

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      Meyers said the president’s ABC News interview “changed his mind” about Trump’s first 100 days in office.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.Revisionist Recent HistoryPresident Donald Trump sat down for an interview with the ABC News reporter Terry Moran to discuss his first 100 days in office.“And you know what? He changed my mind,” Seth Meyers said on Wednesday.“Before the interview, I thought the first 100 days had been really bad, but after the interview, I thought, ‘Oh, I see the plan, the next 100 days are going to make the first 100 days look amazing.’” — SETH MEYERS“Trump claimed that egg prices are down, gasoline is down, and groceries are down. Then a staffer said, ‘Sir, those charts are your approval rating.’” — JIMMY FALLON“[Imitating Trump] I mean, what kind of an interview is this? I thought you were going to ask me if 100 men could beat a gorilla, not about the tariffs. I don’t know about the tariffs.” — JIMMY FALLON“Trump said that the Declaration of Independence meant unity. Unity is the opposite of independence. How did Trump find the one time that ‘unity and love’ is the wrong answer?” — DESI LYDIC“What makes this even more sad is that the Declaration of Independence is basically the colonies filing for divorce. It’s the one thing Trump should absolutely recognize. And all of that was supposed to be the softball part of the interview.” — DESI LYDICThe Punchiest Punchlines (Shrinkage Edition)“Meanwhile, it just came out today that for the first three months of this year, the U.S. economy shrank. Trump was, like, ‘Well, it was the three coldest months — of course it was shrinkage.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Yes, the U.S. economy is undergoing what economists refer to as a ‘George Costanza.’” — DESI LYDIC“Now, obviously, the economy is a complex interaction of multiple markets, so it’s difficult to point to any one factor, but it’s all Trump.” — DESI LYDIC“A hundred days in, we’re already going to loan sharks for Lunchables with this guy.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“All the experts say the economy is in pretty rough shape. However, Trump’s doctor says it’s the healthiest economy he’s ever seen.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingSpoofing Bill Belichick’s recent CBS interview, Richard Kind introduced his new girlfriend on Wednesday’s “Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightPenn Badgley, the star of the Netflix series “You,” will appear on Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutPhoto Illustration by The New York Times; Background: Brian Rea; Inset: Dana Scruggs for The New York TimesOn this week’s Modern Love, Miranda July discussed her plot to get older women talking about desire with her novel, “All Fours.” More

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      Ted Kotcheff, Director Who Brought Rambo to the Screen, Dies at 94

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      His films, including “First Blood” and “Weekend at Bernie’s,” covered a range of genres. He was later an executive producer of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”Ted Kotcheff, a shape-shifting Canadian director whose films introduced audiences to characters including the troubled Vietnam War hero John Rambo, a dead body named Bernie and the young hustler Duddy Kravitz, died on April 10 in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico, where he had lived for more than a decade. He was 94.His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his son Thomas Kotcheff.“My filmography is a gumbo,” Mr. Kotcheff wrote in his memoir, “Director’s Cut: My Life in Film” (2017, with Josh Young). “Not being pigeonholed as the guy who makes one style of film has allowed me to traverse every genre.”“My filmography is a gumbo,” Mr. Kotcheff wrote in his memoir, published in 2017.ECW PressMr. Kotcheff was directing television dramas in Britain when he met the novelist Mordecai Richler, a fellow Canadian, in the 1950s. They became friends and ended up sharing an apartment in London, where Mr. Richler wrote “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz” (1959), a novel about an amoral Jewish wheeler-dealer in Montreal who will do whatever he can to rise from poverty to wealth. Mr. Kotcheff vowed to Mr. Richler that one day he would direct a movie version of it.And he did. The film, starring Richard Dreyfuss, was made 15 years later.Richard Dreyfuss in the title role of Mr. Kotcheff’s “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz” (1974). One critic praised the film’s “abundance of visual and narrative detail.” Paramount, via Getty ImagesVincent Canby, reviewing “Duddy Kravitz” for The New York Times, praised its “abundance of visual and narrative detail,” which he speculated grew out of the “close collaboration between Mr. Richler and Mr. Kotcheff.”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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      Stream These 13 Movies and TV Shows Before They Leave in May

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      A ton of great titles are leaving fast. Catch them while you can.A vast buffet of noteworthy titles are leaving Netflix in the United States this month, including romantic comedies, pricey blockbusters and stoner favorites. (Dates reflect the first day titles are unavailable and are subject to change.)‘About Time’ (May 1)Stream it here.Richard Curtis has carved out something of a niche as the foremost practitioner of the contemporary British rom-com, a stake he claimed with his “Four Weddings and a Funeral” screenplay and continued to hone by writing and directing the likes of “Notting Hill” (also leaving Netflix this month) and “Love, Actually.” If those titles make you twitch, this one will not change your opinion of Mr. Curtis and his work. But those who adore such Anglophile delights will similarly enjoy this 2013 favorite, which fuses his signature brand of Brit character comedy with a lightly fantastical time-travel premise, in which Domhnall Gleeson uses his familial gift of temporal flexibility to romance Rachel McAdams. Both are attractive and likable, though it takes only a handful of scenes for Bill Nighy and Tom Hollander to steal the picture.‘Definitely, Maybe’ (May 1)Stream it here.Before he was a mainstay of superhero movies, Ryan Reynolds was a romantic comedy leading man, and this 2008 charmer from the writer and director Adam Brooks is the best demonstration of his skill set in the genre. He stars as a single dad whose daughter (a disarming Abigail Breslin) starts asking questions about her mom, prompting him to tell her the not-quite-whole truth about his single days and search for love. His improvisational cleanup of the bachelor life details are a good running gag (albeit one that seems swiped from the contemporaneous “How I Met Your Mother”), but the real juice here comes from the casting, matching Reynolds with three potential life partners in the form of Elizabeth Banks, Rachel Weisz and Isla Fisher — each of them beguiling in their own way.‘Friday’ / ‘Next Friday’ (May 1)Stream ‘Friday’ here and ‘Next Friday’ here.Strange as it may seem, there was once a time when the idea of Ice Cube starring in a screen comedy seemed peculiar. If anything, “Friday” seemed, upon its 1995 release, like a riff on his film debut in “Boyz N The Hood”— set in the same South Central Los Angeles milieu (and even sharing a co-star, Nia Long) but in an altogether different style. Cube stars as Craig, a newly unemployed nice guy; Chris Tucker is Smokey, his motor-mouthed best buddy, who makes it his mission to get straight-arrow Craig high for the first time. The director F. Gary Gray (“Set It Off,” “Straight Outta Compton”) gets the laid-back hangout vibe just right, and Cube and Tucker generate palpable buddy chemistry. The 2000 follow-up, “Next Friday,” doesn’t quite measure up, due mostly to the absence of Tucker. But his substitute, Mike Epps, blends in nicely, and Cube is as charismatic as ever.‘King Kong’ (May 1)Stream it here.Peter Jackson’s love for the original, 1933 “King Kong” became part of his super-director origin story after the worldwide sensation of his original “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. So it came as no surprise that he turned his attention next to this no-expense-spared 2005 remake. Unlike the story’s 1976 iteration, which updated the story to a contemporary setting, Jackson’s film keeps the original time frame intact, along with the surrounding story about a frustrated filmmaker (Jack Black), a would-be starlet (Naomi Watts) and the man who falls for her (Adrien Brody). (The titular great ape is played by Andy Serkis, a sensation as Gollum in the “Lord” movies.) “King Kong” isn’t as fleet-footed as it could be, but Jackson’s affection for the material is clear, and his first-rate cast goes all in — especially Watts and Serkis, who make their interspecies love story entirely probable.‘Queen & Slim’ (May 1)Stream it here.This 2019 romantic drama, written by Lena Waithe and directed by Melina Matsoukas, feels strikingly, urgently of its moment, telling the story of a Black couple (Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith) whose uneventful first date is interrupted by a bloodthirsty cop whom they kill in self-defense. They go on the lam, becoming folk heroes along the way, and this story about racist policing and social protest has grown only more pointed with time. Kaluuya and Turner-Smith are electric, teasing out the wrinkles and nuances of what could have been stock characters, and Matsoukas’s direction is, by turns, both dirt-on-the-floor realistic and surprisingly lyrical.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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      ‘Andor’ Season 2, Episodes 4-6 Recap: The Revolution Will Be Televised

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      This week’s trio of episodes includes visceral kicks while digging into the meat of the new season’s plot and themes.Season 2, Episodes 4-6Last week’s set of “Andor” episodes opened with a thrilling star-fighter chase and ended with a daring rescue, but otherwise the action was noticeably light. Yes, “Andor” is an imaginatively designed and richly detailed drama, filled with political intrigue. But it is also supposed to be a “Star Wars” show, with blasters, stormtroopers and narrow escapes. Season 2’s first arc, while mostly great, leaned more toward soap opera than space opera.This week’s trio of episodes brings back the visceral genre kicks, with more cloak-and-dagger and cat-and-mouse. It also digs deeply into the meat of this season’s plot and themes.Even more than last week, this particular three-part arc has been thoughtfully broken down into TV episodes rather than feeling like a movie roughly snapped into three segments. The first episode is all stage-setting, introducing the main plot, which involves the Empire’s appalling treatment of the planet Ghorman and Luthen’s attempt to lend aid to the Ghor. The second episode is a slick and stylish spy thriller, as Cassian assesses Ghorman’s rebels by going undercover as the fashionista Varian Sky (complete with snazzy clothes and a stylish mullet).The third episode is one of the most exciting of the series so far, cutting between two Luthen operations: one on Ghorman and another on Coruscant. While the Ghor rebels are hijacking an imperial supply vehicle — in order to reveal to the galaxy that the Empire is lying about its intentions for the planet — Kleya is at a fancy party, trying to remove one of her listening devices from an antique artifact in an aristocrat’s personal gallery. This is white-knuckle, edge-of-the seat stuff.I want to start, though, with an odd subplot that runs through just the first two episodes and at times seems out of place, until its electrifying ending. The story involves Wilmon, who is on D’Qar, helping the militant rebel Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) by teaching one of his soldiers, Pulti (Marc Rissmann), how to operate a complicated piece of tech. Ultimately, the strongman Saw kills Pulti (who turns out to be a traitor) and orders Wilmon to join him on a mission, to operate the big machine himself.Saw gives a rousing speech (made more effective by Whitaker’s whispery rasp) about how he grew up as a child laborer, breathing in toxic starship fumes. He encourages Wilmon to toss off his protective gear and huff some fumes himself. He says revolution is not for the sane, given that they will all be dead before a new republic is established. But with this insanity comes a kind of freedom.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 Grades Trump’s First 100 Days in Office

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      “It’s been an historic 100 days — some would say prehistoric,” said Jimmy Kimmel.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.100 Down, Roughly 1,300 to GoPresident Trump’s 100th day in office was the talk of late night on Tuesday.On “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” the host said (perhaps not sincerely) that he’d had “a day of revelry and jubilation.”“We have 100 days behind us and only 13 more hundred days to go. It’s been an historic 100 days — some would say prehistoric.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Today was President Trump’s 100th day in office. Well, 100th day as president, fourth day in office.” — SETH MEYERS“Yes, it has been 100 days of Trump in the Oval Office. I mean that figuratively. Obviously, he spent lots of those days in the steam room at Mar-a-Lago.” — JORDAN KLEPPER“It is difficult to give Trump’s first 100 days a grade, but if I had to, I’d say it falls somewhere between ‘F’ and ‘U.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Let’s be honest: It’s been a bumpy ride. I mean, who knew renaming the Gulf of Mexico might actually be his high point?” — JIMMY FALLON“To mark 100 days in office, Trump kicked off a multiday media blitz that the White House is framing as a victory lap. Yep, and now all he needs is a victory.” — JIMMY FALLON“And the whole 100 days thing started back in 1933, right, when F.D.R.’s extraordinary productivity set a first-100-days standard against which all future presidents would be measured. And I think it’s appropriate to compare him to F.D.R., because Trump is well on his way to bringing back polio.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Mark Carney Edition)“With Carney’s victory, Canadians rejected his younger, much Trumpier opponent, Pierre Poilievre, which must be a relief for Trump, ’cause now he never has to try to say that guy’s name.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Don’t mess with Canada. They may be polite. You tick them off, they’re like John Wick after they killed his dog.” — JIMMY KIMMEL”You take that, Trump. That’s what happens when you mess with a country whose national pastime is ‘bar fight on ice.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“But, yes, thanks to Trump, the Liberal Party just pulled off a historic comeback, winning all the major Canadian demographics: hockey moms, hockey dads, hockey non-binaries, hockey seniors, hockey hockey players, and, of course, hot Ryans.” — JORDAN KLEPPERThe Bits Worth WatchingWill Ferrell and Stephen Colbert “Rickrolled” viewers during Tuesday’s “Late Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightJohn Cale and Maggie Rogers will perform together on “Everybody’s Live With Mulaney.”Also, Check This OutNearly three hours long, the concert was a characteristic Beyoncé epic.The New York TimesBeyoncé’s Cowboy Carter Tour, kicking off on Monday night in Inglewood, Calif., transformed the star’s personal and musical reclamation into a joyful extravaganza. More

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      ‘Câreme’ Serves Up Satisfaction in the Kitchen and the Bedroom

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      “Carême,” a new Apple TV+ series, is based on the life of a 19th-century society chef who delighted diners and lovers. It’s very French.In recent years, you may have followed a hunky onscreen chef, battling chaos to create outstanding food on FX’s “The Bear.” Maybe you also fell for “Bridgerton,” Netflix’s lavish, anachronistic romp through the 19th-century upper classes.Now “Carême,” a new Apple TV+ show arriving Wednesday, combines the pleasures of both those shows to tell the story of Marie-Antoine Carême, who was perhaps the world’s first celebrity chef. Born into poverty in late-18th century Paris, Carême rose to cook for Napoleon Bonaparte, a Russian czar and a member of the Rothschild banking family, delighting European high society with his intricate, architectural dishes. He is often credited as the founder of French gastronomy — and with popularizing the tall chef hat.To convey how innovative Carême was, “our vision was to avoid a usual period drama style,” said Martin Bourboulon, who directed the show’s first three episodes. Although “Carême” is based on a book by Ian Kelly, Bourboulon said he and his colleagues approached the period elements with a “side step,” and added some modern twists to the historical fact.Lyna Khoudri, left, and Voisin in “Carême.”Apple TV+The costumes, for instance, nod to 20th-century and contemporary fashions, and so they had to be made from scratch rather than rented, as is typical on a production of this scale. The characters speak modern French, and Benjamin Voisin plays Carême as a tousle-headed, opium-taking charmer, with the rebellious attitude of Mick Jagger and Lenny Kravitz.It’s unsurprising, therefore, that it can seem as if almost as many of Carême’s scenes are set in the bedroom as in the kitchen — and some of those kitchen scenes are still quite sexy. “I found similarities between the sex scenes and the food scenes,” Bourboulon said, especially when it came to the care Carême takes giving pleasure in both contexts.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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      ‘Carême’ Is a Sexy Historical Kitchen Drama

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      The series, about a celebrity chef in Napoleonic France, has a loose relationship to historical facts. But that frees it to be spry and fun.The French drama “Carême,” beginning Wednesday, on Apple TV+ (in French, with subtitles, or dubbed), is the story of the chef Antonin Carême, who rose to prominence during the reign of Napoleon and whose ideas still shape the modern food world. Can he save France through the sheer thinness of his pastry layers … and also through his blazing horniness and sexual charisma? Oui! Sorry — oui, chef! (According to the show, he’s the guy who invented saying that.)Benjamin Voisin stars as Carême: pouty, endlessly flirtatious, exacting, gifted. Were motorcycles a thing in 1803, he would have a motorcycle. His ambition — and his medical knowledge of herbs and elixirs — catches the eye of the powerful politician Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, and although Carême initially resists, he agrees to work for Talleyrand and finds himself cooking for Napoleon’s inner circle. Bonaparte, as many of the characters call Napoleon, goes largely unseen on the show; “Carême” focuses on all the behind-the-scenes players, all the power, influence and intrigue that exist around and beyond a throne.“Cooking is very similar to seducing,” Talleyrand (Jérémie Renier) tells Carême. Yeah, dude, he knows. Everybody’s in bed with everybody here: romantically, sexually, but especially politically. When we’re not gazing in wonder at perhaps the world’s greatest array of copper pots, we’re listening in on various zigs and zags of espionage and diplomacy. Carême uses his dishes to woo foreign officials and communicate with political prisoners, to curry favor with the Pope, to coerce a king in exile.The show is based on the book “Cooking for Kings: The Life of Antonin Carême, the First Celebrity Chef,” by Ian Kelly. Like many period dramas, “Carême” has a loose relationship to historical facts, and its dialogue is decidedly modern. Freed from the shackles of accuracy, the show is instead able to indulge in being spry and fun, without the lugubriousness of bleak historical dramas or the self-seriousness of kitchen dramas. It has the fizz of “Downton Abbey,” in its pomp and in the frequency with which bad news is delivered by note.It also does often resemble “The Bear,” as Carême and Carmy both use sketching and meticulous cooking as ways to process (or not) their daddy issues. Both chefs rely on the steady genius of a Black female second-in-command, here Agatha (Alice Da Luz), a brilliant and disciplined chef and leader. The stakes on “Carême” are much higher — i.e., the genuine fate of Europe — but the show is much lighter.So light, in fact, that it often drifts into the cartoonish appeal of a musical, especially in its eyebrow-waggling, Javert-tinged villain (Micha Lescot). Carême’s grand, theatrical creations would be right at home in “Be Our Guest,” and proclamations on how one seizes power and lamentations on the sorrows of orphanhood have certainly lent themselves to song before.Two episodes of “Carême” arrive on Wednesday, and the subsequent six premiere weekly. Sadly, only one episode can be titled “A Recipe for a Disaster.” More