What to watch: ‘Mountainhead’ gives tech bros the drubbing they deserve
A scathing satire about backstabbing tech bros and a Netflix series centering on an unstable Scottish detective top our recommendations on what to watch this week — along with “Bring Her Back,” which just might be the best horror movie to hit theaters in 2025.
Here’s the roundup.
“Mountainhead”: An AI upgrade launches global havoc since it gives users the ability to make what’s untruthful look absolutely authentic, a radical development that triggers large-scale violence and misinformation. Sound familiar? It should, and that’s what makes “Mountainhead” so chillingly plausible, given our viral-media-obsessed times. While the world burns, the billionaire bozo responsible — handsome but morally vapid Venis (Cory Michael Smith) — hangs out with three other tech titans in a secluded, swanky winter home in the mountains. It’s no surprise that this HBO Max cringey satire comes from Jesse Armstrong, the wicked creator of the acidic Emmy-winning treasure “Succession.”
Armstrong is a shrewd writer who can depict people behaving badly better than most while giving us dialogue that’s often insightful, funny and bruising. Here he skewers tech bros, all of whom have too much power, too much money and too much male confidence. Even though each of these always-looking-over-their-shoulders guys — the hyper-alert Randall (Steve Carell), the less wealthy Souper (Jason Schwartzman), the vain Venis and the morally less adrift Jeff (Ramy Youssef) — claim they’re buddies, truth is they’d backstab each other for a significant profit share or to improve their ranking on the Forbes most wealthy lists. As they spar, roughhouse and sometimes unwind, it becomes obvious that Jeff’s the sole one with the pulse of a conscience since he developed a counter AI program that detects fact from the fiction. That’s when the scheming kicks into high gear. “Mountainhead” is a piercing satire that provides a perfect storytelling terrain for the team behind “Succession” and it also gives Smith the opportunity to show why he’s shaping into a major star. He’s creepily perfect as a disruptor who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else. Details: 3½ stars; drops May 31 on HBO Max.
“Dept. Q”: A streaming series that focuses on a gallery of downtrodden, sneered-at crime solvers in the vein of Apple TV+’s super spy series “Slow Horses” with Gary Oldman and Jack Lowden might seem rather commonplace. And while creator Scott (“The Queen’s Gambit” and co-creator of “Monsieur Spade”) Frank’s nine-episode Netflix series does follow that a familiar schematic, his adaptation of author Jussi Adler-Olsen’s novel is undeniably a great detective series and is just as sharp and engrossing as “Slow Horses.” It also showcases a lead performance that leaps right off the screen. Underrated actor Matthew Goode (his performance in 2011’s “Burning Man” was a master class in acting) inhabits the self-loathing skin of Edinburgh detective Carl Morck, a volatile guy struggling to keep his sanity in place in the aftermath of an ill-fated call that resulted in a dead cop and his partner getting paralyzed. Assigned to working through demons with a psychologist (Kelly Macdonald), Carl’s mental health lies in tatters but he’s still one of the brightest investigative minds and gets put in charge of a new cold-case unit, a program that higher-uppers see as a compromise. His team (Leah Byrne and Alexej Manvelov lend strong support) exhume files on the disappearance of a shark of a prosecutor (Chloe Pirrie). She has many enemies and keeps her personal life mostly private, making the case even harder to crack.
Frank plays around with time and relocates the setting from Copenhagen to Edinburgh, both of which work. “Dept. Q,” of course, gets twistier as it goes, and is a brainy series that’s written, acted and directed by pros. It also gives us a main detective, a tough nut to crack, who is just as complicated as the mystery at its tangled center. Details: 3½ stars; drops May 29 on Netflix.
“Fountain of Youth”: There is something to be said about a very dumb comedic thriller that has the audacity to raise the Lusitania from the depths of the ocean floor. The spectacle of seeing that happen is the major reason to watch Guy Ritchie’s so-so timewaster in which bickering siblings Luke (John Krasinski) and Charlotte (Natalie Portman) split their differences so they can find the fountain of youth for a billionaire ( Domhnall Gleeson) with a terminal illness. Ritchie’s film starts off with a peppy tuk-tuk chase in Bangkok but then slumbers till that Lusitania moment comes around. The whole enterprise is preposterous and that’s OK, if it all works. And “Fountain of Youth” does some of the time, just not enough. Krasinski is an amiable presence, but the film might have benefitted from his switching roles with Portman. He would make a good fit portraying the less adventurous museum curator with a son and she would have had a grand time playing a daring, rogue adventurer who finds clues in key artworks that reveal the whereabouts for the fountain of youth. This Apple TV+ time-waster lacks the snap and vitality of recent Ritchie productions such as Netflix’s “The Gentleman” and “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” James Vanderbilt’s screenplay flashes some cheeky references (including one about a Vanderbilt) but there are no big surprises to be had here. And after that impressive Lusitania scene, the finale feels like an afterthought, a letdown that sinks this one down to nearly the bottom of the streaming sea. Details: 2 stars; available on Apple TV+.
“Bad Shabbos”: Director/screenwriter Daniel Robbins’ amusing, featherweight dark comedy revolves around an unfortunate Shabbat family dinner in New York in which one of the guests winds up dead in the bathroom. Familial dysfunction can be a pot of gold for comedy, and there are some very funny moments amid the chaos that ensues, with family members scrambling to offload a stinky dead body before potential Catholic in-laws come knocking at the apartment door for supper. Robbins’ terrific cast — Jon Bass, Meghan Leathers, Milana Vayntrub, Theo Taplitz, David Paymer, Kyra Sedgwick and more — meet the comedic challenge time after time even if the premise gets stretched thin. But it is Cliff “Method Man” Smith, as a witty doorman who’s brighter than anyone else, that brings “Bad Shabbos” across the finish line. Details: 2½ stars; opens in select theaters May 30.
“The New Boy”: You’ve got to admire filmmaker Warwick Thornton’s moxie for not wanting to state the obvious with a straightforward premise about an Australian Aboriginal boy getting indoctrinated in the ways of Christ. He redirects that linear storyline to exciting directions, many that question faith and the church while sprinkling in symbolism and magical elements. Cate Blanchett is well-cast as 1940s nun Sister Eileen, a rattled person who ministers at a Christian school/monastery. She’s plagued by Christian guilt since she’s living in a lie that she created — that a male priest is overseeing the school, although she’s been impersonating him since he’s been dead. Sister Eileen goes to dramatic lengths to keep that ruse going. When a “new boy” (Aswan Reid) gets folded into her flock after a violent confrontation, she tries to get him to accept Christ and to put aside his heritage. What happens instead propels both on a spiritual, existential journey that challenges their beliefs. “The New Boy” explores those big questions but leaves it to us to find out the answers. Details: 3 stars; available to rent May 30.
“Restless”: Anyone who’s lost sleep to a party-animal neighbor can relate to sleep-deprived care worker Nicky’s plight. Single and still dealing with the grief of her two parents’ deaths as well as the absence of her at-college son, the lonely and too internalized Nicky (Lyndsey Marshal, handling a tricky character ever so well) has a shirtless hard-rockin’ brute of a neighbor (Aston McAuley) who refuses to turn down his thumping-loud music or stop his rounds of extra-loud sex at 4 a.m. The two engage in an escalating showdown that leads to Nicky taking desperate measures. At the same time, she goes on a date with a traffic officer (Barry Ward) that ends with the exhausted Nicky just collapsing in his bed. In his directorial debut, Jed Hart takes bold creative swings and refuses to lead his story to a predictable outcome. Does that tonal shift work? I thought so. But even better than that is how he opens the film — minus dialogue — as Nicky, a classical music lover, stuffs something into the back of her trunk, to the accompaniment of Rachmaninoff, and drives off in the dark of night. Details: 3 stars; available to rent now.
Contact Randy Myers at soitsrandy@gmail.com.