Apple TV - page 9

George Clooney and Brad Pitt reunite in darkly madcap comedy-thriller Wolfs, an Apple Original Film that started streaming on Apple TV+ Friday. For those who love to see modern takes on classic Hollywood vehicles where stars pretty much play themselves — and for anyone who just wants a good popcorn flick with lots of gunplay and humor — there’s no shortage of reasons to watch Wolfs. But those same traits may deter others, of course.

Season 4 of Slow Horses stayed at the top of a rating’s company’s popularity chart for the second week. This darkly funny espionage drama starring Gary Oldman follows a team of British intelligence agents who’ve all made career-ending mistakes yet are somehow always in the center of the action. New episodes stream each Wednesday on Apple TV+.

Plus, Apple’s crime comedy Bad Monkey starring Vince Vaughn held onto popularity, too.

Annoyingly handsome superstar actors George Clooney and Brad Pitt pair up in the amusing new trailer for action-comedy movie Wolfs. Sony Pictures Entertainment dropped it Wednesday on YouTube the day after Apple TV+ released a 30-second teaser trailer.

The two stars play underworld “fixers” who accidentally come together over a job that turns out to be more than the simple disposal of a body it first appears. The movie comes out in theaters September 20 and should stream on Apple TV+ after that.

UPDATE: After seeing its larger theatrical run busted down to one week in limited venues, madcap comedy caper film Wolfs streams on Apple TV+ Friday. Reviews so far are mixed, mainly saying superstars Clooney and Pitt carry the somewhat-problematic film, with various opinions on how well they fare. At the very least, it should be a good popcorn flick for this weekend. And Apple Original Film already plans a sequel with writer, director and producer Jon Watts.

As bombs rain down on London during World War II, a mother sends her young son to safety in the countryside — only to learn he’s actually lost in the city’s fiery mayhem. His journey and her frantic search unfold in a new trailer dropped Thursday for new Apple Original Film Blitz, written and directed by Academy Award winner Sir Steve McQueen.

Saoirse Ronan stars as the mother in desperate search for her son in the film, set to premiere in theaters November 1 and stream on Apple TV+ November 22. Watch the trailer below.

Despite positive reviews, bankable star Lisa Kudrow as a main character and much-loved source material, Apple TV+ opted to pull the plug on its fantasy adventure series Time Bandits after just one season, according to a new report.

Based on Terry Gilliam’s cult classic 1981 film (but rendered in more family-friendly fashion), the show’s 10-episode first season — now streaming on Apple TV+ — will have to stand alone.

Crime comedy Bad Monkey starring Vince Vaughn spent another week near the top of the streaming ratings charts. The Apple TV+ show follows a former detective turned restaurant inspector solving an oddball murder in hopes of getting his old job back.

And it’s not Apple’s only current hit. Slow Horses just launched and the spy thriller is doing well.

London is under threat from shopping-mall car bombers and espionage masterminds, and somehow Gary Oldman’s MI5 screwups once again end up in the middle of the action. That’s according to the new Slow Horses season four trailer for the black-comedy spy-thriller series.

The Emmy-nominated and BAFTA-winning series stars Oldman as MI5’s irascible Slough House section chief Jackson Lamb. The six-episode season premieres September 4 on Apple TV+.

UPDATE: Season 4 of Slow Horses gets underway Wednesday with the first episode, entitled “Identity Theft,” on Apple TV+. “A London bombing triggers and explosive hidden past,” notes the streamer’s tagline. A season review in The Guardian calls the show “faultlessly directed,” notes the cast is even better than before and says “Gary Oldman roars like a bear dipped in chip fat.”

An Apple TV+ documentary brings a whole lot of gritty reality to dreams of becoming a Korean pop star. K-Pop Idols features interviews with young singers that reveal the enormous amount of effort needed to make their performances look effortless.

The trailer for the series includes one of its young stars saying, “I thought being a K-pop idol was going to be all great and beautiful, but that’s not the reality.”

UPDATE: The new docuseries premiered on Apple TV+ on Friday. All six episodes are ready to stream now.

Before Napoleon hit theaters in late 2023, director Ridley Scott promised a longer, more complete cut would follow on Apple TV+. The streaming service fulfilled that promise on Thursday.

The original lasts 2 hours and 38 minutes, while Napoleon: The Director’s Cut brings nearly an hour more of Joaquin Phoenix as the infamous French emperor and conqueror of much of Europe.

First Apple TV+ unveiled The New Look, a World War II drama depicting French fashion designers heroically carrying on with their vital work in Nazi-occupied Paris. Now the trailer for La Maison, a melodramatic family saga about a fictional French fashion house in crisis, struts down the catwalk. And it’s entirely in French. Hey, it could be great. Or, as the trailer suggests, it could be preposterously self-important.

And check out that tagline: “The fabric of power.” Seriously?

On the plus side, the show is brought to us by some talented folks behind good stuff — The Returned, Lupin and Le Bureau des Légendes. So I’ll leave out the “La Maison du Merde” jokes for now. La Maison debuts on Apple TV+ September 20.

Two brilliant detectives will clash again as acclaimed London-based thriller Criminal Record returns for a second season, Apple TV+ said Thursday. The engrossing series stars Peter Capaldi of Doctor Who and Cush Jumbo of The Good Wife.

So the streamer confirmed what Jumbo said on a talk show back in February. The renewal is great news for fans of the show. If you haven’t tried it, you should stream the first season.

A talented Mexico City medical student studies hard by day and saves lives by night, hurtling around the sprawling metropolis in her family’s private ambulance. But it looks like something’s got to give under the strain of it all in the trailer Apple TV+ dropped Tuesday for the upcoming Spanish-language drama series Midnight Family.

Sure, you might need subtitles, but it looks like a rewarding ride. The 10-episode series, based on a documentary, debuts on Apple TV+ September 25.

To the delight of their many fans like me, the Garvey women of Ireland will return soon in Bad Sisters season two, Apple TV+ said Monday. The streamer offered a “first look” photograph along with scant plot details. The darkly comedic drama’s creator and star, Sharon Horgan, returns with her close-knit fictional siblings on November 13.

But with one abusive husband down in season one of Bad Sisters, what new nemesis will emerge in the sophomore season? From the sound of it, two years after they took care of that problem in white-knuckle fashion, it could be them against everybody. Because they’re not in the clear yet.

A new buddy action comedy starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck is more popular than any film on streaming, according to a rating analysis firm. And The Instigators is more popular than any streaming series, too.

Meanwhile, three Apple TV+ series pull in plenty of viewers too, including the newly launched Bad Monkey.

Apple TV+ committed on Friday to Dark Matter season two so fans of the popular sci-fi series won’t be left wondering what will happen with Ryan and Amanda.

The show now heads into uncharted territory — season one followed the events of a bestselling novel, but there’s no sequel for the book.

The enigmatic teaser trailer Apple TV+ dropped Wednesday for psychological thriller series Disclaimer, from Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón and starring Oscar winners Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline, disclaims very little beyond a dark and foreboding mood and a warning to “be aware” of the assumptions that color our understanding of a story.

The seven-episode limited series debuts on Apple TV+ October 11.

UPDATE: After publishing the initial post, I realized a clever deep fake appears to be in play in the trailer’s narration, so I thought I’d better mention it (better late than never!) It only took seven days after posting about the trailer for me to realize I knew the narrator’s voice. And it seems she never said what she seemed to say in the trailer. See below.

Curiously, a furry primate only shows up in glimpses in Wednesday’s new trailer for Bill Lawrence’s new Apple TV+ comedy series Bad Monkey. Not counting glib ex-detective Vince Vaughn, that is. Lawrence brought us vaunted comedy smash hit Ted Lasso, by the way.

The show, based on Carl Hiaasen’s New York Times-bestselling novel, debuts on Apple TV+ on August 14.

UPDATE: The new 10-episode comedy series Bad Monkey from Ted Lasso creator Bill Lawrence is now streaming on Apple TV+ as of Wednesday. Vince Vaughn stars as a disgraced Miami detective who might get his job back if he can just transport a severed arm from point A to point B, and maybe prove murder along the way. Reviews so far seem to like Vaughn in the wise-cracking role, with a few caveats. Time‘s review headline: “Bad Monkey Is a Beachy Crime Drama Drowning in Ted Lasso Quirk.” You can watch and decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

New Apple TV+ action comedy The Instigators is getting a bad rap. The action-comedy about a Boston heist gone wrong, which stars Matt Damon and Casey Affleck, currently achieves a lackluster 41% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes. But those critics are missing the point. The Instigators is an unpretentious buddy film that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

The critics who panned the movie apparently don’t know how to sit back and enjoy a fun flick. (The Instigators’ audience score sits at a much higher 71%.) Here are three reasons you should give this underappreciated action-comedy a stream on Apple TV+.

Some people were skeptical when Apple TV+ turned the 1981 cult classic movie Time Bandits into a comedic adventure series for all ages. But it’s hard to argue with success — for the second week, the show starring Lisa Kudrow is one of the most popular on any streaming service.

And Jake Gyllenhaal’s crime drama Presumed Innocent continues to pull in a huge audience.

Shrinking, the hit comedy starring Jason Segel and Harrison Ford as therapists with problems of their own, returns to Apple TV+ on October 16. Friday’s’s announcement came with a tiny teaser video for season 2.

This is another entry in Apple’s collection of shows with a radical premise: People in sitcoms don’t have to be horrible to each other.

Update: Apple TV+ posted on social media about Shrinking season 2 on August 5, then pulled the post and video shortly afterward. The teaser trailer came back on Friday.

Desperate dad Matt Damon and ex-con Casey Affleck join forces for the heist of a lifetime in Boston, and guess what — it goes horribly wrong. With high-speed car chases, multiple explosions and Boston accents flying all over the place from a smart-alecky veteran cast, the new trailer for Apple Original Film The Instigators stormed computer screens Thursday in entertaining fashion.

The Instigators debuts in select theaters on August 2 before streaming on Apple TV+ August 9, but you can watch the first trailer now.

UPDATE: With its week in select theaters now past, star-studded Apple Original Film The Instigators starts streaming Friday on Apple TV+. Reviews of the caper-gone-awry flick find a lot to like, particularly in the chemistry between Boston-bred leads Matt Damon, one of the film’s producers, and Corey Affleck, one of its writers. Doug Liman (Swingers, Go, The Bourne Identity, Mr. & Mrs. Smith) directs.

Apple Original Films gave writer, director and producer Jon Watts the nod to write a sequel to action-comedy film Wolfs, with Academy Award winners George Clooney and Brad Pitt — even before the first installment comes out. Wolfs premieres at the 81st Venice International Film Festival ahead of its limited theatrical release on September 20. Then it debuts on Apple TV+ on Friday, September 27. Hey, when Apple plans a Wolfs sequel even before the original proves popular, you know it expects a hit.

The Apple TV+ crime drama Presumed Innocent has been among the most watched shows on streaming since launching in mid-June, according to analysts. Season one of the series — which stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a man who might, or might not, have murdered the woman he’s having an affair with — recently wrapped up, and the opportunity to bingewatch all the episodes pushed the show to become the most viewed on any streaming platform, according to analysts.

Plus, the reimagining of Time Bandits found a big audience, and Natalie Portman’s Lady in the Lake had another strong week.

A rookie FBI agent uncovers a massive money-laundering operation in American horse racing led by Mexico’s deadly Zetas cartel, according to a trailer Apple TV+ dropped Tuesday for the documentary series Cowboy Cartel. Watch it below.

The fascinating story, featuring first-time interviews with key players, looks like a tough but satisfying ride. The series debuts on Apple TV+ on August 2.

Update: As of Friday, you can watch this documentary and see how Mexican cartel Los Zetas infiltrated American horse racing and what a rookie FBI agent tried to do about it. Reviews so far seem a bit mixed. The story itself is compelling, but the story-telling may be a little forced in its use of re-enactments, for example (according to The New York Times). But other sources, like The Daily Beast, compare it favorably to the Netflix drama Narcos, and not just as a wanna-be version.