Hello, Smarty. Time for Your Weekly Recs!Killer Aliens (Again), Summer Box Office, Pachinko, Sun Valley Delights, and More....
Dear Wags, What is it about contemporary Hollywood that saddens us? Let’s start with its circle-the-drain predictability, a tendency to go back to the well, again and again, until it’s bone dry. When a theatrical release scores big, we ought to cheer for a great American industry. But when that hit is just another iteration of the familiar, it might as well be a cremini mushroom plucked from the manure pile. If popular culture were as vivid as it was 30 years ago, this season would be flush with original narratives and new creative blood, spawning action figures and imitators. This summer’s movies earned Hollywood much needed millions, yet we’re being sour! But Inside Out 2, Deadpool & Wolverine, Despicable Me 4, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Twisters, The Fall Guy, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, and now, Alien Romulus—are all derived from what one sharp studio marketer calls “rickety I.P.” When It Ends With Us, based on a Colleen Hoover novel that’s been around for nearly a decade, is sold as a fresh idea, we’re in trouble. Rehashes have always been part of show business, but delusion is catching, and it prevents the industry from confronting existential problems. Since the pandemic, there’s been a burst of irrational exuberance whenever there’s a box office success. A defiant we’re back, baby! erupts from the usual quarters. We’re not back—not even close. Covid, massive strikes, and media fragmentation all did their bit; it will take until the end of the year for the industry to cobble together something like a normal release calendar. The overall trend remains one of contraction. That shrinkage long predates recent disruptions, even if it was masked by rising ticket prices. When the pie shrinks, those with the largest share of it do well: Disney is having a banner summer, but smaller players are pushed further to the margins. There is an inexorable hollowing out of film offerings from the majors, with almost no profitable dramas and comedies to bridge the gap between gargantuan tent poles. And there are not nearly enough blockbusters to sustain a massive enterprise. A robust Hollywood would be floated by a more diverse array of content. The trouble goes far beyond the theatrical side of the business. Streaming disrupted television without providing a path to profitability. Studios poured millions into original content that’s not being watched; we appear to have reached the limit of the subscriber/on demand model. Netflix was a big winner in terms of share, but something like traditional television seems to be reasserting with the rise of Tubi and other free, ad-supported television (FAST) operations. In a handful of years, TV has come full circle: A sizeable chunk of the audience appears to like what disparaged linear networks provided—programming curated for them. As we’ve written before, the edifice of Hollywood rests on the shaky presumption of a mass audience, which is able to underwrite its extravagance. Not so long ago, the industry was big enough to crank out plenty of high-minded and broadly popular entertainments alongside rubbish. Now there’s a sense of drift. We’re well past peak TV, and Peak Cinema is only dimly remembered. The only thing that can restore the business to glory is investment in original ideas that might put it at the center of cultural discourse again. Strip-mining the past isn’t going to turn things around. Could a new golden age even happen? As always, we root for the Hollywood ending. Yours Ever, Marcello Rubini
 DynastyPachinko (August 23, Apple TV +) Apple’s globe-trotting, multilingual adaptation of Min Jin Lee’s bestseller returns for a second season, which is a good thing, because the first outing left us hanging with Sunja (Minha Kim) while her poor husband (Noh Sang-hyun) was hauled off by the Japanese. She’s now her family’s sole protector, but don’t count her out; she’s going to grow up to be the steely matriarch played by Jung Youn. Jin Ha, Lee Minho, and Anna Sawai round out the cast. — Henry Park  Watch This, Already!Industry (Max). Why more people don’t watch Industry is a mystery. Mickey Down and Konrad Kay’s potboiler about London finance tools is amoral fun, and the third season serves up more sex, drugs, and deal-making. American upstart Harper (Myha’la) has been sacked by the firm for taking one risk too many. Meanwhile, Yasmin (Marisa Abela) and Robert (Harry Lawtey) tangle with a billionaire client (Kit Harrington) who looks to be more trouble than he’s worth. Plus, Ken Leung returns as a scrappy senior banker who’s seen it all. Invest in this! — Darien Taylor  De TropEmily in Paris (Netflix). Camus wrote that life is meaningless but worth living, provided you recognize it’s meaningless. Emily in Paris, somehow in its fourth season, is totally meaningless, but is it also worth watching? It’s a show for a distracted age, meant to be half-glimpsed while scrolling through Instagram. Nothing happens aside from Emily (Plucky Lily Collins), hatching “social media campaigns” to save her French marketing firm, run by an understandably cranky traditionalist (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu). Like social media itself, the exercise has a low-stakes, ephemeral quality. Emily has a few trifling romances and wears preposterous clothes. Her entire Parisian sojourn is nothing but a gaudy macaron. But if you’re feeling peckish, why not? — Honoré Lachaille
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