It is now running on Cellcom TV, as well as on Hot HBO and Hot VOD and Next TV, and on Yes VOD and Sting TV.
The story opens in an airport in a Hawaiian island, where we learn that a body is about to be loaded on a plane to Honolulu and that one passenger waiting to board, Shane (Jake Lacy of Girls and the High Fidelity remake), just spent his honeymoon at a resort called the White Lotus where someone died. The story flashes back to a week earlier and we meet a number of characters, both the guests and staff of the White Lotus.
Shane is there with his new bride, Rachel (Alexandra Daddario of the Percy Jackson movies), and is more interested in whether or not they have the best suite than he is in his wife. Nicole (Connie Britton of Friday Night Lights and Dirty John) is a hi-tech mogul obsessed with rearranging the furniture in her suite, while her husband, Mark (Steve Zahn, a great character actor who was in Out of Sight, Treme and so many other series and films), decides brutal honesty is the best policy after he gets two disconcerting pieces of news. Their children, naturally, would rather be anywhere than with their parents on this vacation.
Jennifer Coolidge (Legally Blonde) is a lonely heiress there to scatter her mother’s ashes. Armond (Murray Bartlett who was in the Tales of the City remake), the manager, is a recovering alcoholic who gradually becomes unhinged. Any of the characters could be the victim – or a murderer – and the series has slow-burn suspense. While it may not always be easy to watch – and there is quite a bit of nudity, often at the most unexpected moments – The White Lotus has many virtues, including the gorgeous tropical setting and the fact that it acknowledges that many people get bored and stressed while on vacation, even when they are in beautiful places. Unlike so much of what is on television, you never know where it’s going, and if you are on a staycation this year, The White Lotus will make you feel better about being at home.
Another HBO title, the documentary series Catch and Kill: The Podcast Tapes, is available on Cellcom TV and on Yes VOD and Sting TV, and will be broadcast on Yes Docu on July 19 at 10 p.m. This is a look behind the scenes with Ronan Farrow, who broke the news of the Harvey Weinstein scandal in The New Yorker magazine after starting to report the story of NBC News. It’s a look at the obstacles he faced when trying to tell the inconvenient truth about the then-respected and powerful media magnate. There is no new information on the scandal itself, but those interested in how media operate will want to see this.
It’s challenging to find a movie that the entire family can enjoy together, but the Netflix movie The Mitchells vs. the Machines is the rare film that could work for everyone. The trailer and the description of this movie – which is about how an ordinary family driving their older daughter to college in California ends up saving the world from a robot apocalypse – don’t really give a sense of how smart and funny it is. In spite of the sci-fi premise, the appealing characters behave much like a real family would. It’s a gentle satire on how screen-centered many people’s lives have become, and it features several great running jokes about a tech mogul who has been outsmarted by the operating system he created and robots that can be duped by some very low-tech tricks.
If the lackluster Wonder Woman 1984 made you nostalgic for the original, you can see Wonder Woman on Hot Cinema 2 on July 20 at 10 p.m. And if you are yearning for a real-life Wonder Woman, Erin Brockovich, now streaming on Netflix and based on a true story about a working-class single mother (memorably played by Julia Roberts, who won an Oscar for her performance) who helps a lawyer (Albert Finney) bring a powerful utility company to justice for dumping chemicals into a residential area, should fit the bill. The movie is more than 20 years old, but the only thing dated about it are the cellphones.