Tag: Pablo Schreiber

His & Hers

STREAMING REVIEW:

Netflix;
Thriller;
Rated TV-MA.
Stars Tessa Thompson, Jon Bernthal, Pablo Schreiber, Rebecca Rittenhouse, Sunita Mani, Crystal Fox, Marin Ireland, Poppy Liu, Chris Bauer.

Netflix’s “His & Hers” is a sharp and engaging limited series (six 45-minute episodes) that retools the traditional small-town murder mystery into a study of domestic wreckage and professional rivalry. Set in the humid outskirts of Atlanta in Dahlonega, the story tracks a high-profile newscaster who, after a year of exile following the death of her infant, returns to her job and hometown to investigate murders involving her childhood friends. It is a sleek, industry-focused noir — a style that uses dark, cynical themes but polishes them with high-end production to show the cutthroat nature of the news media world. While it doesn’t reach the level of prestige series such as “Breaking Bad” or “Ozark,” it features a powerhouse cast and top-tier production, making it an addictive, “guilty pleasure” thriller.

The series avoids the sterile, “catalog-ready” look of many streaming mysteries. Instead, showrunner and British film and theatre director William Oldroyd uses gritty, tactile realism. You can practically feel the Georgia heat and the mess of the grieving households, which makes the small-town setting feel less like a safe haven and more like a weaponized trap. The show is a major project for Freckle Films, the banner led by Jessica Chastain, who partnered with Fifth Season — the studio behind “Severance” — to ensure the show looks expensive and cinematic, even when the plot gets “theatrical.”

Tessa Thompson holds the mystery together as Anna Andrews, a woman caught between professional ambition and personal ruin. Thompson, who you might recognize from her roles as Valkyrie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Bianca in the “Creed” franchise, brings a grounded, volatile energy to Anna. Opposite her, Jon Bernthal provides a necessary anchor as Jack Harper, Anna’s estranged husband and the lead detective. Bernthal is a veteran of intense, character-driven action, having led Marvel’s “The Punisher” and played the unforgettable Shane in “The Walking Dead.” Bernthal makes it work despite his character being deeply flawed and making several missteps.

The “juice” of the show is the web of infidelity: Jack slept with a murder victim, and Anna retaliated by sleeping with Richard (Pablo Schreiber), the cameraman husband of her professional rival. Their interracial dynamic is handled naturally, focusing on the remains of a broken marriage — defined here as the total emotional and structural collapse of a private life — rather than social tropes. By casting actors of Thompson and Bernthal’s stature, the production ensures that these messy, personal betrayals feel like high-stakes drama rather than simple tabloid fodder.

The supporting cast keeps the pacing lean, tracing a group of characters still stuck in high school pecking orders. Rebecca Rittenhouse shines as Lexy Jones, the rival newscaster who changed her name from Catherine Kelly to bury a past of being severely bullied for being fat. Her transformation from a victimized outsider into a thin, ruthless competitor highlights the theme that you can’t outrun your origins. Joining the investigation is Sunita Mani, known from “Glow” and “Mr. Robot,” as Detective Priya, Jack’s partner. Mani plays a vital role as the team player who throws us off; as a secondary sleuth, she often casts doubt on the primary investigation, keeping us wondering if the detectives themselves have something to hide. While the series occasionally goes over the top — like a grandstanding news report where you’ll want to yell at the mayor to grab the mic — the acting keeps you invested.

“His & Hers” isn’t perfect, but it respects our time by delivering a fast-paced, intentionally misdirected story that is worth watching.

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Paramount Releasing ’13 Hours’ in 4K UHD June 11

Paramount Home Media Distribution will release director Michael Bay’s 2016 docudrama 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray and digital June 11.

Starring John Krasinski, James Badge Dale and Pablo Schreiber, 13 Hours recounts the story of the unite of elite ex-military operators who fought to protect a CIA compound in Libya from a terrorist attack in 2012.

The two-disc UHD Blu-ray includes more than an hour of behind-the-scenes bonus material.

 

Skyscraper

BLU-RAY REVIEW:

Street Date 10/9/18;
Universal;
Action;
Box Office $67.8 million;
$24.98 DVD, $39.98 Blu-ray, $44.98 3D BD, $44.98 UHD BD;
Rated ‘PG-13’ for sequences of gun violence and action, and for brief strong language.
Stars Dwayne Johnson, Neve Campbell, Chin Han, Roland Møller, Noah Taylor, Byron Mann, Pablo Schreiber, McKenna Roberts, Noah Cottrell.

Writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber pivots from comedies to action in this slick hybrid of the Die Hard and Towering Inferno formulas that provides plenty of excuses for Dwayne Johnson to run around and beat people up.

An added twist to the Johnson tough-man routine this time around is that his character is an amputee — a former FBI agent who lost a leg during a hostage negotiation gone wrong in the film’s opening scene.

Cut to 10 years later and Johnson’s Will Sawyer character is now a security consultant for a new, mile-high skyscraper in Hong Kong. The top half of the building is mostly unpopulated since it’s so tall the developers are having trouble securing sufficient insurance to allow people to move into the residential floors, with Sawyer and his family the only residents aside from the owner in the penthouse suite.

An inspection by representatives of the insurance company thus gives some bad guys an opportunity to take control of the building and set it on fire as they carry out an agenda against the guy who built it.

As the plot unfolds around him, Sawyer learns his wife (Neve Campbell) and two children are still in the building, he embarks on a series of breathtaking action scenes to get to them, even as he’s being framed for sabotaging the building’s fire-suppression systems. (You can best believe Sawyer’s fake limb will make for a handy tool when the story requires it.)

The filmmakers have no qualms about any comparisons between this film and the original Die Hard. There’s even a jokey deleted scenes in which Sawyer ponders that his next step should be to call Bruce Willis.

What sets Skyscraper apart, to a degree, is the way the building itself becomes a character in the story — imbued with plenty of design quirks to aid in setting up a variety of action scenes. It even has a multi-leveled park halfway up so that Sawyer’s family can find themselves in the middle of a forest fire 2000 feet in the air.

The top-notch production design really gives the film a visual flair that is only enhanced by the film’s ability to get down and dirty with its characters. Campbell’s character in particular is allowed to evolve beyond the typical wife-in-distress role, given a military background that pays off as she holds her own in several fight scenes of her own.

Otherwise, though, the villains are mostly a cookie-cutter assortment of disposable henchmen inserted when needed into the story to provide more obstacles for the Sawyers to overcome.

The Bu-ray includes about 18-and-a-half minutes of traditional-style behind-the-scenes featurettes that focus on developing some of the key characters and finding the right actors to portray them. There’s also a cute story about how Thurber pitched the film to Johnson, with whom he previously worked on Central Intelligence.

Most of the details of the making of the film are revealed in a feature-length solo commentary from Thurber, who says he has envisioned making a movie like this since he was 8 (he’s 43 now).

The Blu-ray also includes more than 22 minutes of deleted and extended scenes, including a lot of excised exposition that offers more details about how the bad guys’ plan is supposed to work. These are fine to have on the record but ultimately would have worked against the pacing of an action film that ended up a tight hour and 42 minutes (which Thurber points out in optional commentary available with the scenes).

Also included with the deleted material are alternate versions of scenes involving the primary Hong Kong police characters in which they speak English in one version and Cantonese in the other. Thurber shot these scenes in both languages before deciding that having the Chinese characters speaking their native language better served the film.

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