Andrew Garfield makes a point of working with high-profile directors: Scorsese, Lin-Manuel Miranda, David Fincher, Guadagnino. So the Garfield/Paul Greengrass collaboration has a sense of inevitability. It's the 1300s! The bubonic plague is doing its thing. Richard II is running out of money; his nefarious advisors suggest that he should tax the poor. But the masses strike back. There is an assumption that Richard II himself is a decent person; he has just (unfortunately) surrounded himself with snakes. Fighting ensues. People start to reevaluate their understanding of Richard II. That's the entire movie. If you're going to have sinister barons whispering in the 1300s, you're going to need Stephen Dillane and Tom Hollander; this movie gives us both actors, and they do exactly what we want them to do. You also get Katherine Waterston, consistently mysterious as Joan of Kent. The biggest shock of the cinema summer season was Anne Hathaway in "The End of Oak Street...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/arts/television/best-tv-shows-21st-century.html In every imaginable universe, "Somebody Somewhere" is a smarter, subtler show than "The Pitt." I have watched and written about both shows. You will never convince me that the Times is justified in ranking "The Pitt" *above* Bridget Everett's masterpiece. You will never convince me that this is anything other than sexism. Everett would never make something as clunky as the "Tree of Life" chapter from "The Pitt." That said, I want to share my happiest memory of TV watching. It involves "Better Call Saul," a show that did not crack the top twenty in the Times. (Absurd.) There are moments in history when all of New York City and its suburbs seem to be focused on one TV mystery. Will Jesse survive the finale of "Breaking Bad"? Did Ralph, in "The Sopranos," murder his own horse (just to collect insurance money)? Which ...