Adventures in Words

Harrison Ford and Jason Segel in “Shrinking.”  Apple TV+ image via IMDB.com Less a TV comedy series than a global paradigm shift, “Ted Lasso” was a tough act to follow. But after allowing a suitable time to miss it, two of the show's producers – Brett Goldstein and Bill Lawrence – joined Jason Segel to come up with an almost-as-good backup replacement. “Shrinking” recently started its second season on Apple TV+. New episodes come out every Wednesday. The great title isn't so much a metaphor as a job description of what stars Segel, Jessica Williams and –  wait for it! –  Harrison Ford do five days a week. They're therapists in an LA psychology practice, even if they're almost as loony tunes as their clientele. There are reasons for their odd behavior. Jimmy (Segel) lost his wife in a car accident caused by a drunk driver. He spent last season barely able to get up in the morning, much less attend to the needs of his teenage daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell), also grieving

Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan in “The Apprentice.”   IMDB photo by Courtesy of Scythia Films - © Scythia Films Considering the political follies filling my screens at home 24/7, it must have been pure masochism that drove me to an actual movie theater recently to see “The Apprentice.”  It's a horror show of sorts, a contemporary variation of Frankenstein.  Only it's a biopic, too, based on a true story. The villain is diabolical attorney Roy Cohn. The monster he creates is named Donald Trump. Sebastian Stan channels the young Trump during the Reagan '80s, when he was still “Donnie from Queens.” Vice-president of his overbearing father's construction company, he suffers from an edifice complex. Enamored of money and class, he dreams of building skyscrapers, and barging his way into Manhattan penthouse society. Jeremy Strong delivers an equally compelling performance as the hollow-eyed, rodent-faced Cohn, Senator Joe McCarthy's chief litigator during the anti-commu

                                                                 In Hana, late 1990s. Lisa Kristofferson photo When the Rolling Stone story showed up on my phone Sunday afternoon, it felt like the last line of the last song of a magnificent playlist. Kris Kristofferson was dead at 88. The luminous obituary of the “American Renaissance man” was hardly unexpected.  More than a decade earlier, in “Feeling Mortal” Kris wrote of  “ That old man there in the mirror And my shaky self-esteem Here today and gone tomorrow That's the way it's got to be With an empty blue horizon For as far as I can see.” That empty blue horizon could have been the view from the home on a hill in Hana where he lived for decades with his wife Lisa, raising a bunch of kids.  At the end of 50 miles of two-lane road clinging to cliffs above rocky Pacific beaches, passing lush jungles and postcard-perfect waterfalls, Hana is Maui's Brigadoon. An achingly gorgeous hamlet in Paradise, a place that stops time

https://youtu.be/uh0NVk2WoB4?si=O__uCb0caKngY0D3   Rick Chatenever (808) 344-9535  rickchatenever@gmail.com

A quarter century after “Thelma and Louise” added their unforgettable chapter to movie mythology, a new “Thelma” is picking up where they left off. This time the badass heroine is a bit older. Both the character, Thelma Post, and the actress who so wondrously portrays her, Jean Squibb, are women in their nineties. Seriously. Co-starring with Richard Roundtree in what would be his last screen role, the pair are members of a demographic not known for remembering lines – or remembering anything, actually – much less hitting their marks.  Factor in that “Thelma” is an action comedy, and it seems less a movie than a miracle. Deftly written and directed by Josh Margolin, it's a tale of a 93-year-old widow still living independently who's taken in by one of those phone calls claiming that her grandson Daniel (Fred Hechinger) has been arrested after a traffic accident and needs $10,000 to be sent immediately to his defense attorney.  The fact that it needs to be in cash, and sent to a

  Glen Powell and Adria Arjona in “Hit Man.”  Netflix photo via IMDB.com Topping the Netflix movie charts for a while now, “Hit Man” is the rare case of a wry comedy loved by critics as much as audiences. It's being hailed as Glen Powell's breakout role after decades in the supporting trenches. (Yes, that was Glen playing John Glenn in “Hidden Figures” and Jake “Hangman” Seresen in “Top Gun: Maverick.” Seems the guy knows how to fly.) Foxy Adria Arjona co-stars, steaming up the lens whenever the camera sees her. There's beaucoup chemistry between her and Glen, even though it's hard to keep track of who's playing whom in any given scene. But “Hit Man's” secret weapon is actually on the other side of the camera.  Director Richard Linklater, who cowrote the script with Powell, is one of a handful of filmmakers who used to be known as  auteurs . They make meta movies, bigger than the sum of their parts. Their creations are self-aware of themselves as movies, even as