Butler's Cinema Scene

Colin Farrell

“SUGAR”(Apple+):

The year’s biggest gotcha!!! moment arrives at the end of Episode 6 of “Sugar,” and it’ll leave you reeling.

And that’s all I’ll say about that.

But there’s plenty of other stuff to relish in creator Mark Protosevich’s smart, stylish and thought-provoking re-examination of classic private eye tropes.

Colin Farrell is at his absolute best as John Sugar, a private investigator specializing in missing person cases.  

Noir usually requires a protagonist who is essentially honest but bummed out and bitter, a guy sickened by the corruption of the big city but driven to discover the truth.

Sugar, though, loves L.A.  For him it’s like a trip to Disneyland.  For one thing, he tools around town in a vintage Corvette convertible while sporting immaculately tailored suits. Even when facing down despicables he’s gentlemanly, more curious than judgmental.

Moreover, he loves working in the motion picture capital of the world. One  of the show’s cleverest conceits is that he’s always encountering characters and situations that remind him of classic films…and brief clips from those films are scattered reverentially throughout the series.

It’s been said that everything we need to know we learned in kindergarten.  John Sugar learned  it watching movies.

Sugar’s current case involves the disappearance of a young woman bred of Hollywood royalty.  Her grandfather (James Cromwell) is a financial titan; her father (Dennis Boutsikaris) is a ruthless producer, and her half-brother (Matt Corddry) is a former child star now wallowing in a drug-infused career burnout.

Sugar appears to have no close friends (an abandoned dog becomes his main bud), though he has a sort of Girl Friday (Kirby) who assigns cases to him and is always warning against getting too involved with the clients.

And in the course of the investigation Sugar finds himself spending time with the missing girl’s one-time stepmother (Amy Ryan), an actress and recovering alcoholic who finds herself attracted to this cooly empathetic white knight.  (Aside from the missing persons case, the series’ biggest mystery is whether these two will ever make a romantic connection.)

Now all this sounds intriguing enough, but it’s only a prelude to the mind-blowing reveal that comes halfway through.

“Sugar” is so good it’s worth subscribing to Apple+ just for this one series.

Ewan McGregor, Alexa Goodall

“A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW” (Paramount +):

Ewan McGregor gives what may be a career-high performance in “A Gentleman in Moscow.” 

He’s so good that one is willing to overlook some of the production’s flaws just to luxuriate in his presence.

Based on Amor Towles’ best-selling novel, “Gentleman…” over eight episodes follows the life of Alexander Rostov, a Russian count caught up in the Revolution.  

Being rich, cultured, erudite and well-educated, Alexander seems destined for a firing squad.  He’s saved when he is credited (erroneously) with composing a popular pro-Communist poem; instead of death he is sentenced to spend the rest of his life in Moscow’s Metropol Hotel.

Which is ironic, since the Metropol, an art nouveau masterpiece, is a last bastion of Western decadence in the economically devastated USSR. The Communist Party uses it as a showplace so foreign visitors can experience posh accommodations while the rest of the country starves.

 Alexander may be an impoverished prisoner sleeping in a frigid attic room, but he’s free to move about the building, to hobnob with guests and staff.  He becomes a waiter…and the in-house wine expert. And he even creates his own secret salon, a sort of throwback to his former life of luxury, this time furnished with pilfered items.

The heart of McGregor’s interpretation lies in Alexander’s mix of fatalism (the old world order is gone and isn’t coming back) and his innate humanism, which allows him to see the good in all people (though in the case of certain Party die-hards, it’s a rough go). And despite his view of himself as a loner, he becomes a father — twice.

There are four basic plot threads interwoven here.

Initially there is  Alexander’s relationship with Nina (Alexa Goodall), the daughter of a hotel guest who becomes his best friend and guide to the wonders of the hotel (the child  has somehow gotten her hands on a master key.) Years later, after the grown Nina and her husband become victims of a Stalinist purge, Alexander will care for their daughter Sofia (Billie Garson), who becomes a brilliant pianist.

Throughout his 30-year stay in the Metropol Alexander will carry on an affair with Anna Urbanova (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a star of Soviet cinema who enjoys her decadent pastimes and especially the Count’s old-world charm. This is one of the series’ big flaws: I didn’t buy Winstead (in real life she is Mrs. Ewan McGregor) as a jaded European; there’s too much all-American girl about her. Sometimes it feels she’s playing dress-up in Mom’s closet.

Finally there’s Osip (Johnny Harris), Alexander’s bald, brutal KGB overseer. Osip is Red down to his toenails; he hates the nobility and is looking for any excuse to condemn Alexander.  But over the decades theirs becomes the series’ most intriguing relationship.  Initially Osip demands that Alexander spy on the hotel’s guests; eventually the thug finds himself relying on Alexander’s cultured past and obvious “people” skills to navigate the dark twists and turns of a Stalinist society. Weirdly enough, they almost become friends.

The physical production is sumptuous, with the Metropol Hotel presented as a sort of funhouse  wonderland.  We explore this castle from the cellar furnace room to the rooftop (as close as Alexander can get to the great outdoors), luxuriating now and then in the posh dining room and bar, and the luxurious suites…not to mention the back stairways, kitchens and offices.

Finally, there’s one aspect of the series that bugged me. Usually I’m all for non-traditional casting, but the makers of “Gentleman…” have taken it to extremes. Black actors here take roles that for historic accuracy should be portrayed by…well, people who look Russian. The Russian minister of arts is black, an American diplomat (in the 1940s and ‘50s) is black; even Alexander’s boyhood best friend (Fehinti Balogun) is black (and with braided dreadlocks, even). 

These instances took me out of the show and temporarily derailed my attention and enjoyment. 

But then I come back to McGregor’s display of unassuming decency.

Left to right: Alison Brie, Sam Neill, Annette Bening, Conor Kerrigan Turner, Essie Randles, Jake Lacey

“APPLES NEVER FALL” (Peacock):

First-rate players never get the payoff they deserve in “Apples Never Fall,” a murder mystery (sort of) about a hugely dysfunctional family that hints at becoming something dark and revealing before turning all soft and squishy.

The Delaney family of Palm Beach are local legends by virtue of running a tennis academy that has turned out the current world champion.

Mom Joy and dad Stan (Annette Bening, Sam Neill) are currently enjoying an uneasy retirement…he’s a bit of a boor who radiates possible violence, she’s a bored matron.

They’ve got four grown kids — played by Jake Lacy, Alison Brie, Conor Kerrigan Turner and Essie Randles — all of whom seem lost, professionally and/or personally.

Creator Melanie March mixes two genres here.  First there’s the arrival of Savannah (Georgia Flood), an abused woman (or so she claims) who washes up on Joy and Stan’s doorstep, is taken in my them, and slowly makes herself indispensable in ways their actual children won’t. Is Savannah a con artist? Dangerous?

Then there’s Joy’s disappearance, Stan’s stubborn refusal to cooperate with the cops, and lots of bloody evidence suggests she has been the victim of foul play.

“Apples Never Fall” dishes a ton of armchair psychology, a mess of subplots that do little more than pad the proceedings, and a jumbled time frame that makes it hard to figure out exactly where we are in the 7-episode story.

Finally, there’s a payoff that is more “meh” than “damn!”

| Robert W. Butler