Liars and Saints

What is on my radar:   *"Bombshell." 2016: Megyn Kelly informed Trump of Trump's own comments about women. This led to threats on Kelly's life and threats against her family. So it's understandable that the opportunity to take down Roger Ailes does not fill Megyn with joy. (That said, if she doesn't speak up, she is sending a particular message to younger people, including her own kids. Megyn's ambivalence toward cultural poison--a poison that she herself uses and promotes in many settings--is not fully explored in the movie. That's a shame.) I appreciated certain details in this script. The running joke about Roger Ailes's paranoia (a terrible character flaw that creates special problems on September 12, 2001) is effective. I also liked Allison Janney as a lawyer squaring off against the Murdochs: "Roger Ailes made one third of your fortune. There are three of you. Imagine if one of you could no longer eat...." *"The Dentist," ...

  My husband and I have sensed a hole in our lives since “Mare of Easttown” ended, so we recently dug up “The Night Of.” I had resisted this series for a long while. I think the awkwardness of the title bugged me. And the fact that the three leads are all men. But I’m hooked. “The Night Of” concerns a party. A Muslim kid wants to attend, but he can’t get a ride, so he steals his dad’s cab. This theft becomes crucial: A pretty young woman believes our star is a cab driver, and hops in. Our star--Naz--should correct the record here, but he is young, and soon enough he is in an apartment on the Upper West Side, having semi-anonymous sex. The next morning, his friend/consort won’t wake up. Blood drips from the sheets. Naz runs away. At this point, a conventional series would focus on the hunt for the real killer, but that’s not really what HBO does. Naz gets thrown in jail, and we begin to study two communities: prison, and the world surrounding the court. (Order, and law.) In prison, ...