- Hulu’s Limp Sitcom “Not Suitable for Work” Is Hardly Suitable for Primetime (June 2, 2026)
The hangout sitcom has a few, set-in-stone principles: an attractive, charming cast, struggling to balance the demands of work and love, wrangling an array of neuroses and errors of judgment. When their professional and personal worlds begin to overlap, the narrative ought to become funnier and deeper. Unfortunately, “Not Suitable for Work,” like creator Mindy Kaling’s previous sitcom offerings, offers too many cliches to result in anything other than mediocrity.
Set in the Murray Hill neighborhood of New York City, the series stars an ensemble cast, including Ella Hunt, who has charm to spare in her portrayal of Boston native and obsessive investment bank analyst AJ. Avantika, who stole the show as Karen in the musical reboot of “Mean Girls,” is practically gasping for more to do in her role as Abby, assistant to celebrity stylist Vanessa Hsu (Constance Wu, enjoying riffing on the Miranda Priestly model of fashion boss) and AJ’s encouraging roommate.
I cannot say the same of the young men who live across the hall from AJ and Abby. Davis (Will Angus) works with Abby, worships their no-nonsense boss Bill (Jay Ellis), and tries to speed-run interactions with every woman he meets in the hopes of landing a wife. Nepo baby Josh (Jack Martin) feels constant guilt about his wealth, but not enough to avoid dropping his surname during a job interview with a respected journalist he knows reports to his CEO father. And Kel Washington (Nicholas DuVernay) is simply a rehash of unhappy finance bro Nikesh Patel from Kaling’s 2019 sitcom “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” except that Kel is in medical school. All three struggle to bring verve to their roles; the two-dimensional nature of their portrayals is, at times, both boring and irritating.
NOT SUITABLE FOR WORK – “Welcome to Murray Hill” – Whoa. Two girls live across the hall from three guys? Yeah, I’ll watch this. (Disney/Gwen Capistran)
WILL ANGUS, JACK MARTIN, NICHOLAS DUVERNAY
The usual ensues when all five (and their bosses and clients) meet, and their lives get going: attraction, both forbidden and overt; confusion; righteous indignation; ups and downs at work and at home. But the stakes do not invite investment, nor is any of it particularly funny, probably because there is more anxiety in the setups than inherent humor. The dialogue structure becomes repetitive; at least thrice, characters say to one another, “I knew other people [add harmful act here]. I didn’t think you would.” Many of the production’s creative choices defy logic; if the series is aimed at people in their 20s, why are the needle drops heavy on music most familiar to Boomers and Millennials?
The stilted nature of the series’ visual language began to grate on me; there ought to be a ban on using interstitial shots of the New York skyline at night or of throngs of cabs as transitions between scenes. Are there no other ways to tell stories? But I should not be surprised, as “The Sex Lives of College Girls” suffered from the exact same problem, as did “The Mindy Project.”
By far the brightest spots of “Not Suitable for Work” are tantalizingly brief appearances by three of the best “30 Rock” alumni: Michael Benjamin Washington steals the show every time he appears as the lead character’s landlord, Antoine; this is no surprise to anyone who saw him do much the same as Tracy Jordan’s faux illegitimate son, Donald. John Lutz has a recurring but limited role as a member of Josh’s workplace, and Jack McBrayer has exactly one delightful scene as his wholesome self. One wonders what this show could have been if their talents had been better utilized.
NOT SUITABLE FOR WORK – “Welcome to Murray Hill” – Whoa. Two girls live across the hall from three guys? Yeah, I’ll watch this. (Disney/Gwen Capistran)
AVANTIKA
Given the title of the series, you’d think this is a series that’s trying to push boundaries, literally and figuratively. The cursing, however, is minimal, the sex is limited, and at its most daring, “Not Suitable for Work” resembles a comically Temu “Industry.” There is far too much expository dialogue, and things work out far too neatly for all involved. Worst of all, the status quo remains unchanged and unchallenged. In this writer’s opinion, the revival of a format for a new generation ought to alter the formula in at least one meaningful way. Yet again, the Mid TV gods have scored: production design 1, writing 0.
“Not Suitable for Work” ought to have been a chance to reflect on the absurdities, funny and grave, of being a young person battling late-stage capitalism. But the series does not diverge from “Friends,” one of the whitest and most creatively conservative comedies in history, in any meaningful way. Sure, the cast is slightly more diverse, but everyone is heterosexual, no one is worried about making rent, and life is just one make-out session away from being tolerable.
Entire series screened for review. Streams on Hulu.
- Short Films in Focus: Patient (with Director Lori Felker) (June 2, 2026)
Lori Felker’s “Patient” cleverly takes the viewer on a couple of unexpected turns. Cleverness isn’t the point, but its humanity is, or at least it might be. We start by eavesdropping in on a few discussions between patients and their doctors as they answer a series of questions designed to get at the heart of what ails them. We’ve all been here. Our doctors ask us questions about our health that eventually reveal something about ourselves we’d rather not admit out loud.
We listen to these people in white gowns anyway, identifying with their secrecy and perhaps even the sadness that exists in their lives. The doctors, all of them young and probably starting out, listen with great understanding as they take notes and repeat their patients’ answers back to them, free of judgment. In the end, they figure out a solution, and we hope, for the patient’s sake, that the medication or aid will be sufficient and affordable. End of discussion.
End of description as well, because this is a short film best watched without prior knowledge of some of what happens.
Director Felker is interested in both subjects on screen, even as we see multiple interviews. The doctors and their patients are given equal screen time and weight. We identify with the patients, but we also understand the doctors’ need to tread lightly and to form conclusions without appearing too vulnerable or judgmental. It’s a true balancing act.
Felker’s film will remind documentary students of the great Frederick Wiseman. The camera remains stationary the entire time, and we wonder: Is this a film about bedside manner? Or about the experience of seeing a doctor? The health system in America? Or all these things? The feeling of eavesdropping and of being grateful not to be in a doctor’s office or hospital at the moment will be palpable, but we also walk away from “Patient” wondering what we just watched. See for yourself.
Q&A with Lori Felker – SPOILERS AHEAD.
How did this come about?
“Patient” was born of research for a feature film also called “Patient,” in which the protagonist is a Standardized Patient. While I was writing that script, I visited a few simulation centers in the Midwest to incorporate the research into my writing. Shortly after I met the team at the University of Wisconsin Health Sciences Learning Center, I knew we had to make a short film together. Working with them gave me the opportunity to get to know this special process intimately, as well as to practice working with the architecture of this unique facility, improvise directly, and design the medical cases.
All of the SPs in this short film work there as SPs in real life. All the medical students are also played by SPs. For the most part, they are doing their job as they always do, except I wrote the cases and patient character descriptions, and there were film cameras in the room.
This may be too much, but if the question goes back further to how I became obsessed with Standardized Patients in the first place, it was from reading Leslie Jamison’s “The Empathy Exams,” in which she writes beautifully about her experience of being an SP in college.
What was the casting process like? And did that dovetail with the writing process in any way?
All the actors in this short film worked at the Madison simulation center, and they were so talented, generous, and caring. They really inspired me. I met most of them the day I went to conduct research and slotted them directly into the film as either SPs or Med Students. Kathleen Tissot, who plays the administrator in the film, is pretty much playing herself and is doing what she normally does at work. There isn’t really a script; I wrote an outline of the day, character backgrounds for three of the main characters, and I worked with Kathleen to write the medical cases the SPs could work with.
For the in-between and ending scenes, I had a narrative thread and knew how I wanted them to feel and how the day was going for them, but I would also ask, “Where do you normally sit when you do this?” Or what do you normally do at this point? And they would show me, and I would fold that in. There are shades of observation, reenactment, documentary, and fiction throughout the film. I was a little short on actors, so we sent out a casting call to their full SP pool to see if I could get a few more people I hadn’t met during my research trip—three roles were cast this way.
Director Lori Felker.
How did you and the cast approach this when shooting? Did you all treat it as an improv exercise? Were there multiple versions of scenarios?
They basically did their jobs, but also coached me through how they do theirs along the way. I wrote the medical cases (with guidance and examples, of course!), and then I met with the SPs and Kathleen over Zoom (as they normally do) to review the cases, answer their questions, and make sure they connect with them and can perform the learning objective. The cases are just a couple of pages and aren’t formatted like a script, but they do provide basic medical information, the learning objective, character trajectory, and a roadmap for answering the med student’s questions.
The SPs memorize/absorb those cases, then improvise on top of them in the room for about 15 minutes. Then, when it goes into feedback, they sort of turn back into themselves as educators and have an earnest conversation with the med student. We followed that format. I wrote two medical cases, and each med student/SP combo performed both with feedback, for 20 minutes straight. We shot the exams with two cameras, and I pretty much never said cut or asked them to redo anything. I was trying to capture the actual flow of a conversation, searching for questions and answers, and the progression of the actual interaction between these real people.
At first, I had wanted to work with actual Med Students to make it even more real, but that wasn’t possible for obvious reasons. The SPs were the first to speak up and say, “No one knows the Med Students better than we do!” and it’s true! They knew the procedures, the questions, and even the emotions of these students well enough to improvise in those characters.
In the end, I had 160 minutes of exam footage for a 20-minute film.
How many cuts or versions did you go through in the editing process before you decided on the best time to reveal what was happening here?
I knew from the start that I was interested in making viewers think that the first encounter in the film was “real”, even if just for a moment. I knew I had to establish Gayle (played by Ronna Trapanese) and Melanie (Rainy Armstrong) as people we felt we knew and could care about before we cut away from them, but I also had to find the right cut point.
Fairly early on, I tried the cut on the hands, demonstrating where the pain was as I jumped from one actor to the other. When I showed friends an early cut, it was such a clear winner and served as the building block for the pacing and structure of the rest of the film. It showed the repetition and standardization of what they do, but there was also no question that these two actors were not at all the same people.
After that, it’s gradual. Some people pick up on things right away because they’re familiar with this idea (from a relative in medicine or from Kramer on Seinfeld). Some viewers don’t exclaim “oh!” until the SPs are in the lounge, walking through with their gowns on in the middle of the film. I think the reveal starts early and slowly unwinds, allowing viewers to find the time that works for them.
Did you sit in on bedside manner sessions like this?
I did! At a few centers in IL and WI, I sat down at the observation computer with headphones and could switch between rooms or watch multiple exams at once. It was such a visually exciting way to see the similarities and variations between the performances and personalities in the room. I was also able to concentrate on the med students’ “performances” and how nervous or confident they were.
I know the feature version of “Patient” is in the works. Is there anything you want to tell us about it?
The feature version of “Patient” is a mix between the fascinating work of standardized patients and one of my own frustrating medical experiences. There’s a main character, Reggie, with family and a roommate, and there’s a whole script, but there are also scenes at Reggie’s job that look like I lifted them straight out of the short (because we planned and shot them in a similar way). The feature is in post, and I hope for a premiere later this year or at the beginning of 2027.
- The Unloved, Part 150: Laggies (June 1, 2026)
Having just come off the set of a movie and renewed my appreciation for accidents, deadlines, compromises, and heartbreak, I thought I’d look back at the work of the much-missed Lynn Shelton, one of the finest unsung American romantic directors. Shelton decided, sadly, what turned out to be more than halfway through her life, that she was going to become a film director, and then she went out and did it.
I took my time getting around to Shelton, taking for granted that we had a dozen directors like her, making the kinds of gentle films that Sundance was then making its stock-in-trade. The festival was softening, and Shelton’s movies seemed endemic of a shift towards easy victories. It was an easy position to take. I felt inundated with that kind of work.
But then I actually sat down and watched “Your Sister’s Sister” and found something shocking in its subtlety. Shelton’s mise en scène was open, clear, and bright. Actors in rooms, digital photography, honest, unadorned. This showed you what you were looking at. And then, without warning, I felt a shift inside me. I’d seen everything plainly, but felt something greater than for which the facts seemed to allow.
It was her relationship to Marc Maron, her work directing episodes of “Glow,” his stand-up specials, and the magnificently madcap “Sword of Trust,” that turned me from a casual fan into a full-blown acolyte. Her back catalog then opened up—the Claire Denis cursive of “We Go Way Back,” the searing critique of foppish male posturing in “My Effortless Brilliance,” the whisper-quiet treatise on intimacy in “Touchy Feely,” and finally the openhearted luster of “Laggies,” this month’s Unloved.
As a huge Keira Knightley fan, the mediocre reviews hurt my heart. Seeing it, I was even more flummoxed, but maybe it’s just that this movie was made just for me: A film about retreating in plain sight, a house becoming a sight of secrets and turmoil while the rest of the world waits for resolution. It hit me right where it was meant to, and very much influenced my own movie.
We keep Shelton alive now through our connection to her movies and the tension that comes with bad intentions that crawl toward self-actualization. I’ll miss the way her little movies would grow so large. I’ll miss knowing the next Lynn Shelton movie was just a few years away.
- Cannes 2026 Video #11: The Samurai and the Prisoner, Her Private Hell, Hope (June 1, 2026)
The 2026 Cannes Film Festival starts Tuesday, May 12th, running through May 24th. The Ebert team returns this year with coverage of all of the major films in review and video form. In this video dispatch, Scott Dummler interviews correspondent Isaac Feldberg about three of his favorites from the latter stretch of the film festival. Plus, a Cannes Flashback to a Billy Baxter segment on a previous Cannes featuring Roger.
- “For All Mankind” Spinoff “Star City” is One Small Soviet Step Backward (May 29, 2026)
In the wake of five seasons of “For All Mankind“‘s alt-history time-jumping—currently, we’re in an alternate 2012 where we’ve colonized Mars, and a still-alive John Lennon teamed up with Jay-Z to produced “The Grey Album”—it’s easy to forget the show started as a simple 1960s period piece, with a twist: What if the Russians got to the moon first? Now, showrunners Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert have decided to jump back to that (comparatively) simpler era in spinoff “Star City,” detailing how those early legs in the alternate space race looked from behind the Iron Curtain.
But where “Mankind” is airy and optimistic despite mankind’s many struggles (how American of it), “Star City” keeps its focus bleak, dour, and oppressive, and subsequently has some trouble achieving liftoff.
The title refers to the nickname given to the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, and much of “Star City”‘s drama centers around the cosmonauts and their loved ones working to beat the Americans to the stars. Like its parent show, the first episodes overlap a lot of the first season’s events, including witnessing, once again, the first woman to set foot on the moon, Anastasia Belikova (Alice Englert).
We see a harsher, more militant version of the kind of gender-equity handwringing we saw among the Americans in that first season of “For All Mankind”; both nations considered the optics of putting a woman in space, but in 1960s Russia, fealty to the Party takes precedence over qualifications. (Suffice to say, Ana’s predecessor falls victim to some faulty intel about her being an American spy.)
This emphasis on surveillance and authoritarian control seeps into a lot of “Star City”‘s drama, playing more like a “Chernobyl“-esque chamber play about how Soviet focus on image and obedience can sometimes override good judgment. This is most seen in the push and pull between Rhys Ifans‘ unnamed Chief Designer (though, as “Mankind” posits, he is likely famed Soviet engineer Sergei Korolev, who in our history died in 1966) and KGB head Lyudmilla Raskova (Anna Maxwell Martin), an imperious Rosa Klebb type who keeps a tight leash on all around her. Both performers play to their strengths—Ifans with his paternal warmth, Martin with stone-faced intensity—but feel more like abstractions of the show’s broader ideas than genuine people.
That kind of layering, such as it is, belongs to more of the street-level characters of the show, some of whom are younger versions of “For All Mankind” characters we see in subsequent seasons. While Josef Davies’ Sergei Nikulov is a handy precursor to the engineer we see on the main show, a great deal of focus belongs to Agnes O’Casey‘s Irina Morozova, an important KGB fixer on “Mankind” who we see was a simple junior agent in the 1960s.
She spends her time listening to the tapes of bugged conversations of various people of interest—like cosmonaut Valya Markelov (Adam Nagaitis), his housebound wife Tanya (Ruby Ashbourne Serkis), and Valya’s slightly rogueish mission-mate Sasha (Solly McLeod)—and, in a manner reminiscent of “The Lives of Others,” becoming invested in their seedy interpersonal dramas. Affairs, arranged marriages (the State forces Sasha to marry Ana because, well, “you cannot be an exemplar of the Soviet Union as a single woman”), and smuggled contraband all become potential fodder for ruination.
It’s an intriguing dark mirror of “Mankind”‘s optimism, even as “Star City” can’t quite wring enough complexity or characterization from its stifled atmosphere. The notion of a nation reaching for the stars even as it keeps its people under its jackboots is an intriguing one—space exploration as pure saber-rattling, rather than a grander humanist goal. Missions are jeopardized on the mere suspicion of American surveillance, which, as we see in one early mission, costs lives. Seeing the calculus of the Russian’s
But it also has the effect of flattening its characters so we don’t get a lot of dynamism from them: Our cast, largely comprised of British actors leaning into their native accents (despite “Mankind” letting them speak Russian and have Russian accents), mostly squirm under the thumb of the politburo in one way or another, leaving little room for many individuals to stand out. The muted, grainy cinematography doesn’t help, devastatingly gorgeous though it may be; the visual effects, as with its sister series, remain excellent, and the few space disasters we witness are even more riveting when we know how much the whole program is held together by duct tape and party loyalty.
Even so, the muddy mood of “Star City” makes for a rougher watch than the gee-whiz humanism of “For All Mankind,” compounded by the fact that we’ve literally lived through these events before in the shadow of another show. Granted, the five episodes provided to critics build to a satisfying escalation as the Party descends on Star City just as disillusioned characters begin planning their escape (right down to a clandestine launch to Venus under the Party’s very nose, the kind of ramshackle problem-solving under pressure that these shows excel in).
But the road there can be a bit of a slog, not helped by the hour-long runtimes and the restrictions of the Star City setting. To say nothing of the innate humourlessness of our Soviet characters; folks like Sasha and Tanya do their best to liven up their grim lives of socialist service, but most everyone else spends their time grimacing in brutalist buildings.
More than its individual characters, “Star City” is a story of a nation-state at war with itself, committed to throwing its people in the physical and emotional grinder for the sake of cynical political gamesmanship. Those happy few trying to cobble something inspirational out of the concrete are the show’s bright spots, and one hopes they’ll help it build toward something as dynamic as its predecessor by season’s close.
First five episodes screened for review. New episodes air Fridays on Apple TV.
- New 'On Set' Featurette for Nolan's 'The Odyssey' - A Filmmaking Epic (June 2, 2026)
"This is definitely the biggest movie I've ever done in my career in terms of its scale. Definitely the biggest movie I've ever done in terms of its ambition." Here we go! We're into the final countdown - 1 & 1/2 months left until this epic movie is upon us. Universal released a quick behind-the-scenes featurette for Christopher Nolan's adventure The Odyssey, landing in theaters July. Nolan's take on Homer's iconic ancient Greek poem, The Odyssey is a mythic action thriller shot across the world – the entire film is shot on IMAX film cameras (the first ever) bringing this foundational saga to life grander than ever. The story follows Odysseus in his perilous, long journey home after the Trojan War, encountering Polyphemus, the Sirens, Circe, and eventually with his reunion with his wife, Penelope, on the island Ithaca. The movie stars Matt Damon as our hero Odysseus. With a huge ensemble cast including Tom Holland as Telemachus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Charlize Theron as Circe, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong'o, Robert Pattinson, Jon Bernthal, Benny Safdie, John Leguizamo, Elliot Page, Himesh Patel, Bill Irwin, Samantha Morton, Jesse Garcia, Will Yun Lee, Rafi Gavron, Shiloh Fernandez, Mia Goth, Cosmo Jarvis, and even Corey Hawkins. This promo features the cast & crew talking about how huge these sets were and how grand this story will be told on screen this way. I cannot wait to watch it soon! Especially in full-on IMAX this summer. // Continue Reading ›
- Full Trailer for Mystery Sci-Fi Series 'Solo' - Season 3 with Ferguson (June 2, 2026)
"She doesn't remember anything except what they tell her!" Are you ready to find out? Apple TV debuted the main official trailer for Season 3 (first teaser here) of the post-apocalyptic series Silo, following the underground civilization of people living within a massive silo. The series first launched back in 2023 and continued with Season 2 in late 2024 (into 2025). This next season arrives in July, with new episodes weekly until September, revealing more of the truth. Rebecca Ferguson returns again as Juliette Nichols, after the events of Season 2 – she returns with memory loss as the silo recovers from its rebellion. But Season 3 will also flashback to the "Before Times" and tell the origin story of the Silo – involving a journalist and a major government conspiracy. What really happened? Aside from Ferguson, Season 3 also stars newcomers including Colin Hanks, Ashley Zukerman, Jessica Henwick, Laura Innes, Morven Christie, Reed Birney, Jessica Brown Findlay, Matt Craven. Plus returning cast members Common, Harriet Walter, Chinaza Uche, Avi Nash, Alexandria Riley, Shane McRae, Remmie Milner, Rick Gomez, Billy Postlethwaite, Clare Perkins, & Steve Zahn. "The end of the world cannot be stopped, it can only be survived." This seems even more strange and unsettling than the first two series! Something weird is going on in here. Take a look. // Continue Reading ›
- Full Trailer for Action Thriller 'How to Rob a Bank' with Nicholas Hoult (June 2, 2026)
"They're making a point. The system's corrupt." Amazon MGM Studios has revealed the first official trailer for a movie called How to Rob a Bank, a kick ass new crime thriller from filmmaker David Leitch, his next big action movie after Bullet Train and The Fall Guy previously. This one is set to land in theaters in September right at the end of the summer, and it might just be worth the wait. So tune in! A crew of bank robbers have been using social media to document their heists they have pulled off, doing it to point out how corrupt everything is. They end up hunted by a fed working with a tech geek. As they close in on them, the crew pushes past their limits, putting everything on the line for their beliefs — and their most ambitious bank heist yet. The exciting ensemble cast features Nicholas Hoult, Zoë Kravitz, Anna Sawai, Rhenzy Feliz, Christian Slater, with Pete Davidson and John C. Reilly (as one of the feds after them). This looks very good! All about fighting corrupt corporate banks, pushing back in a clever way, and challenging society's expectations. I just hope it doesn't end up with them in prison, that's way too cliche for these times. // Continue Reading ›
- Adria Arjona Blasts Killing Machines in 'Onslaught' Sci-Fi Action Trailer (June 2, 2026)
"Don't be afraid, we're your government." Ha ha – holy crap! A24 has unveiled the official trailer for the killer sci-fi action movie called Onslaught, arriving in theaters starting in September later this year. This is a throwback to the gnarly movie The Guest - created by director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett in 2014. Now 12 years later the duo has reteamed for a very similar story. It's described as pretty much like "Sarah Connor versus Jason Voorhees" which sounds like a good time. A mom in a trailer park struggles to protect her family from a threat that has escaped from a secret military facility. "Go to your room, get under your bed. Momma needs to get her guns!" Hit Man's breakout Adria Arjona stars as a badass Army sniper who must unleash hell to protect her young daughter when genetically engineered super soldiers break loose in the desert. Gnarly! Along with Arjona, it also stars Dan Stevens (also in The Guest), Eric Wareheim, Reginald VelJohnson, Michael Biehn, Alex Pereira, Drew Starkey, plus Rebecca Hall. Well, this looks totally awesome! Some fresh, new inventive original action to enjoy later this year. Check it out below. // Continue Reading ›
- Djimon Hounsou & Kodi Smit-McPhee in Tense 'The Passenger' Trailer (June 1, 2026)
"I'm just a guy driving a van, I'm not the enemy." Vertical / Paramount have debuted the official trailer for an indie thriller titled The Passenger, arriving to watch on VOD directly at the end of this week. It seems like they're trying to dump this and forget about it. Not to be confused with the 2023 thriller film with Kyle Gallner also titled The Passenger as well, or any other similar title like the recent horror Passenger. Djimon Hounsou plays a struggling airport shuttle driver in Minneapolis who decides to illegally take a stranded 20-something passenger to Chicago. But he soon finds himself trapped in a terrifying ride he can't escape. His passenger is not who he seems, apparently very angry and now on the run from a bad attack at the airport. Directed by Vadim Perelmen, this is based on the 2016 play "Damascus" by Bennett Fisher, who also wrote the script. Starring Djimon Hounsou and Kodi Smit-McPhee. Even with these two very talented actors, this certainly does look like a very forgettable (and entirely obvious) thriller we all can safely skip right over. // Continue Reading ›
