Kevin Smith's animated "Clerks" is pure looniness with a crunchy layer of sweetness at its heart. The stars of the original 1994 indie film are all here, including Smith as Silent Bob. The animation is crisp and the facial expressions alone can be hysterical. [31 May 2000]
This eight-episode installment available Thursday just might be my favorite of the series. It has more heart and far more willingness to address the messiness that comes with adolescence. It also features several genuinely creepy moments that have everything to do with something not of this world.
It all seems so ridiculous until you remember we lived through it. At times, “Loudest Voice” plays like a white collar version of “The Sopranos,” as when Ailes orders his PR guy and fixer Brian Smith (Seth MacFarlane, “The Orville”) to take care of a leaker. Crowe, covered in mostly great prosthetics and looking as if he is wearing a fat suit that ate another fat suit, wheezes with every waddle and authentically underplays a human volcano.
The six-part “Years and Years,” an often funny, often bleak, deeply unsettling look at our near future, follows the fortunes of the Lyons, a Manchester, England, family as they are rocked by the political and technological changes shaping the world. Imagine “This Is Us” crossed with “Black Mirror,” only with a slightly lower body count than the NBC sobfest.
ABC’s “Reef Break” is everything that CBS’ “Hawaii Five-0” should be — breezy, bright, a wee bit sassy, a whole lot silly, the ideal summer show to catch as a nightcap before bed.
As with every good soap, there’s a bit of cathartic pleasure in seeing rich, gorgeous people suffer like the rest of us mere mortals. Whatever word you choose to describe “Big Little Lies,” the new season looks to be just as addictive as the first.
