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The Newsroom

A newsroom undergoes some changes in its workings and morals as a new team is brought in, bringing unexpected results for its existing news anchor. A newsroom undergoes some changes in its workings and morals as a new team is brought in, bringing unexpected results for its existing news anchor. A newsroom undergoes some changes in its workings and morals as a new team is brought in, bringing unexpected results for its existing news anchor.

• Aaron Sorkin
• Jeff Daniels
• Emily Mortimer
• John Gallagher Jr.
• 387 User reviews
• 59 Critic reviews
• 10 wins & 34 nominations total

Episodes 25

Top cast 99+

• Will McAvoy

• MacKenzie McHale

• Maggie Jordan

• Neal Sampat

• Sloan Sabbith

• Charlie Skinner

• Gary Cooper

• Tess Westin

• Kendra James

• Herb Wilson

• Martin Stallworth

• Jake Watson

• Tamara Hart

• Jenna Johnson …

• Reese Lansing
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia The last episode of the first season of all three of Aaron Sorkin 's TV shows ( The West Wing (1999) , Sports Night (1998) , and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006) , as well as the series finale of "The Newsroom" (2012) are entitled "What Kind of Day Has It Been?"
• Goofs The very beginning of the title sequence shows the Soviet Sputnik flying with its antennas oriented away from the Earth. The Sputnik rotated, which is why that design of antenna array was chosen as it allows equal transmission of radio signals in all directions.
• Connections Featured in Chelsea Lately: Episode #6.114 (2012)
• Soundtracks The Newsroom Main Theme Written by Thomas Newman

User reviews 387

• Apr 3, 2020
• How many seasons does The Newsroom have? Powered by Alexa
• How did Aaron Sorkin research for this series?
• Does The Newsroom cover important news and political events?
• June 24, 2012 (United States)
• United States
• Official Facebook
• Official site
• More As This Story Develops
• Columbia/Sunset Gower Studios - 1438 N. Gower Street, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA (Studio)
• HBO Entertainment
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour
• Dolby Digital

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In Defense of Aaron Sorkin’s “The Newsroom”

I loved Emily Nussbaum’s negative review of Aaron Sorkin’s new HBO series, “The Newsroom,” which had its première last Sunday night, but I also enjoyed the show—certainly more than she did—and, afterwards, I felt a kind of moviegoer’s chagrin. Movie audiences get very little dialogue this snappy; they get very little dialogue at all. In movies we are starved for wit, for articulate anger, for extravagant hyperbole—all of which pours in lava flows during the turbulent course of “The Newsroom.” The ruling gods of movie screenwriting, at least in American movies, are terseness, elision, functional macho, and heartfelt, fumbled semi-articulateness. Some of the very young micro-budget filmmakers, trying for that old Cassavetes magic (which was never magical for me, but never mind) achieve a sludgy moodiness with minimal dialogue, or with improvisation—scenes that can be evocative and touching. But the young filmmakers wouldn’t dream of wit or rhetoric. It would seem fake to them. Thank heavens the swelling, angry, sarcastic, one-upping talk in “The Newsroom” is unafraid of embarrassing anyone.

Visiting a university, Sorkin’s hero, Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels), a cable-news anchor who has gone soft, lets loose with a disgusted tirade that some people have compared to the anchor Howard Beale’s explosion in “Network.” I’m sorry, nostalgia can only go so far: Aaron Sorkin has a much better ear and a wittier tongue than Paddy Chayefsky, who wrote “Network.” McAvoy’s tirade is not some inchoate outburst of generalized rage like Beale’s, rather it’s a complaint about American mediocrity with very specific numbers and figures and a bitter, ironic edge. When McAvoy then shifts gears and talks about the good old days in news—as if the decline in network news were responsible for American troubles—Sorkin loses focus, but up until then the writing is terrific, and Daniels delivers the rant with a rancorous Olbermannish hyper-precision that we decide (correctly) is produced by self-disgust. This rant is not merely a noisy lecture; it’s part of a dramatic characterization.

So, yes, there is speechifying in “The Newsroom,” which has vexed critics, but that’s hardly all that there is—and even some of the speeches, in context, make perfect sense. This first episode is devoted to the re-awakening of the sour-stomached, egotistical McAvoy. After his meltdown, he gets unwillingly saddled with a new executive producer, MacKenzie McHale (Emily Mortimer), an old girlfriend, and the two have a long argument in which she says such things as “there’s nothing that’s more important in democracy than a well-informed electorate. When there is no information or, much worse, wrong information, it can lead to calamitous decisions that clobber any attempts at vigorous debate. That’s why I produce the news.” Pompous? Not in context. The two have reached a crisis point: he has lost it, and she, after exhausting years of reporting from war zones, has nowhere else to go. She’s trying to save her career and argue the reluctant McAvoy back into the game with the kind of standard argument that they once believed in. She’s saying (in effect) that those clichés became clichés because they once defined shared ideals, and that they can get back to those ideals. Both of them know she’s making a speech, and his answer is curtly ironic and (at that point) dismissive. But, it turns out, Mac’s speech has an effect.

The rest of the show can hardly be called a rant. Much of the episode is a very shrewdly written series of minor power plays and exchanges among McAvoy’s staff as they jockey for position, try to decide whether to leave him for another anchor, and so on. Sorkin is a master of this kind of rapid-patter elbowing and turf-defending (“The West Wing” was filled with it). “The Newsroom” is devoted to many kinds of conversation, large-scale and small, and then, abruptly, it gets down to serious work. The episode is set on April 20, 2010, the day of the Deepwater Horizon explosion off the coast of Louisiana. The squabbling gets pushed aside. The curmudgeonly McAvoy rouses himself; his cranky bullying turns purposeful, and the episode becomes a hard-driving (and very entertaining) procedural about putting a breaking story on the air.

Dismissing the show, the media critic Howard Kurtz has complained that people don’t talk this way in newsrooms. No, they don’t. And they didn’t talk in actual newsrooms they way they did in the Hecht-MacArthur newspaper farce, “The Front Page,” or in all its many iterations (including the wisecracking classic “His Girl Friday”). And people in small towns didn’t talk the way they did in satirical Preston Sturges farces like “Hail the Conquering Hero.” Kurtz is being densely literal-minded. Sorkin fits into the glorious tradition of those classic Hollywood screenwriters. His kind of aggressively heightened talk, when it’s good, is commonly called entertainment, even art. Realism isn’t the issue.

Aaron Sorkin writes a highly stylized dialogue which depends on certain conventions that he has made his own. First, there is the convention of perfect articulacy: everyone says exactly what he means, and without hesitation. Second, Sorkin unabashedly reveres high intelligence. Whether it’s the President and his men and women in “The West Wing” or Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network” or Billy Beane in “Moneyball,” Sorkin celebrates the guy (ambivalently in “The Social Network”) who cuts through the crap, gets to the point, sees the patterns and implications buried within some matter. A lot of his writing consists of people questioning each other—sifting, correcting, overturning—as part of a furious drive toward a conclusion. He writes interrogation scenes without pedantry, in a spirit of high gaiety—getting to the truth of something is an adventure.

He has also developed a dramatically entertaining idea of how dynamic groups work together. In “The West Wing” the product was policy; in “The Social Network” it was an entrepreneurial idea. Here, it’s a good news show. Life may not work this way in the real world, but Sorkin’s complaint about America is that intelligence is in a semi-apologetic retreat, while emotionalism and stupidity are on the rise—in public policy and in the media. He’s setting up an ideal. He is an ethical writer—a moralist, if you like. He’s neither ironic nor self-deprecating; he dislikes that part of our derisive culture which undercuts, as a ritual form of defense, any kind of seriousness. He’s a very witty entertainer who believes that there’s a social value in truth. I don’t think this belief should be confused, as it has been recently, with self-righteousness.

Photograph by Melissa Moseley/HBO/AP Photo.

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The Newsroom: A Depressing Tale of Utopian Media

In the opening scene of The Social Network , writer Aaron Sorkin is quite blunt about his intentions to alienate you through his script. You don't listen to the dialogues, you have to glean from them. And it's not the velocity of every character's delivery that's intimidating, it's the mass of information packed with that velocity. Now transform this into 25 hours of a newsroom — where every character wants to win the Grand Prix of dialogues, everybody one-upping each other, the whistle top repartees and the famous Sorkin monologues. You have to absorb Sorkin's momentum and once you do, you become witness to his genius.  

The Newsroom , created by Sorkin, is the story of a fictional news agency having a mid-life crisis. Inspired by Cervantes' Don Quixote, the agency revamps itself as a harbinger of change — in a mission to civilise media and journalism by just actually reporting the news. The news isn't curated by capitalism anymore, it is integrity that does so. Even the show acknowledges how quixotic this idea is, to report the news by content and not ratings. The characters are overtaken by a fit of madness (consciousness actually but let's be real), just like the demented Don Quixote with his knight-errantry. And perhaps, that is exactly why this show is so depressing — their elusive idealism is too Herculean a goal to achieve. Either that or we're in the age of a decadent, corrupt media.

The episodes hinge on actual events — the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Boston Marathon bombings, and the 2012 US Presidential Elections. And amongst all this, it grapples with current forms of journalism — gossip columns and its takedown pieces, incentive-based reporting. A reporter haughtily says to the news producer, " I wasn't aware of what was going on with the McRib sandwich. " The characters in the show, and the show itself crusade against that, rather smugly (They called themselves the "media elite") but not without reason. The show's emphasis on the degradation of journalism cannot be overstated.

If The Newsroom is the portrayal of a screwed up media, The Social Network is the perfect prelude for the descent of media into nonsense (that's being euphemistic of course). This, here, is Sorkin's poetry.  

But this show never turns into a didactic woke brigade, it reflects on this descent, coming to terms with the truth the characters already knew, what we already know. In the first scene of the series, Will McAvoy, played by Jeff Daniels, the leading anchor of the agency, is at Northwestern University for a panel where he is asked a presumptive question, " Why is America the greatest country in the world? " He, a Republican news anchor, for obvious reasons, unleashes a tirade against America and everything that's wrong with it — using facts, not sentiment. For a moment there, McAvoy's debilitating need to please everyone did not fuel his actions.  

The Newsroom asks a simple question — why can't good news reporting be popular? — and answers it as well, " People choose the facts they want now ." It's not so much the grim worldview they take that can get depressing as a viewer, it's the realisation that the fourth estate utopia they build around their news agency is probably never going to happen. When asked whether he believes humans are preternaturally stupid, McAvoy says that they are. And in that fleeting second, that question is actually directed towards you, to which many will have a middling answer.  

Even when the show is varnished with its fictional media gloss, its ideology is steadfast. It's never meant to be revolutionary either. And within this tenacity and simplicity lies a dejected creator. Sorkin's version of news media is so otherworldly that the only form in which that journalistic system can exist is fiction. I share a similar cynicism as McAvoy. So when I finished the series, my crisis was not existential, it was contemplative — that my current favourite piece of television is a Disney fairytale. As I rewatch the show, my conviction in The Newsroom's ideology grows and with it, that depressed state of mind.

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‘The Newsroom’ Review: Aaron Sorkin Drama Rises to the Occasion

HBO series ramps up the stakes for its final season in what should be an exhilarating conclusion

“The Newsroom” is exactly what we expect from Aaron Sorkin .

It’s a workplace drama that plays fast and loose with the “workplace” part and leans heavily on the “drama.” If you’re hung up on the nuts and bolts of running a cable news channel or you don’t quite give the art form its due, then you’re not going to see the elements of the show that make it a thrilling Sorkin offering.

I’m aware of the amount of annoyance that critics and television journalists have with “The Newsroom” and its portrayal of the “workplace.” This need for realism in drama, in my opinion, is the destruction of the art. At its essence, scripted television is an overly dramatized portrayal of life. Once you start holding it to the criteria of a documentary or TV news report, which are completely different forms of media, then you’ve already missed the point.

A Sorkin drama is one filled with dramatic turns, characters trying to overcome their flaws and storylines that are meant to get us to ask big questions about our ethics and values.

Critics have wanted strong women who hadn’t yet earned the strength and confident men to fall to their knees without experiencing the events that would show the chinks in their armor. And, yes, a Sorkin drama can be emotionally manipulative with his characters’ monologues, the sweeping soundtrack, yet we always know how we’re supposed to feel. Now, that’s engaging drama.

Most of the damning critiques of “The Newsroom” over its first two seasons have these two things in common: A lack of suspension of disbelief and the impatience for character development. Viewing a drama, especially as young as “The Newsroom” is, without those two allowances basically undercuts the very nature of the art form itself.

It was Sorkin’s decision to wrap up the show, according to a Los Angeles Times interview , and possibly not return to TV. I’m not sure how much this cultural inability to let drama unfold had to do with his decision, but it would seem that his success in film, such as “Money Ball” and “The Social Network,” and the impatience of viewers today might make film a better medium for his style of storytelling for now.

If it’s any consolation to the show’s critics, Sorkin apparently hears you. Over the first three episodes of Season 3 that HBO provided to press, the show’s creator is able to poke some fun at himself. In one scene, news producer Maggie Jordan (Alison Pill) is faced with the ethical question of whether to run a story she received through hilariously sneaky ways. She explains how her newsroom colleagues are prone to delivering ethical platitudes via monologues when a bystander points out that Maggie is delivering a monologue herself.

Season 3 finds ACN having to rebuild its reputation after the foibles of handling the Genoa scandal last season. Sorkin doesn’t step back from a challenge. The season begins with the Boston Marathon bombing and forces ACN to carefully tread while other news networks, and crack internet and social media investigators, go forward on several wrong conclusions.

Will ( Jeff Daniels ), Mac ( Emily Mortimer ) and Charlie (Sam Waterston) lead the team through a successful run of confident sourcing and avoid the pitfalls that we saw CNN and others experienced while reporting prematurely. But, they’re still part of a competitive field of news channels judged by ratings, which don’t necessarily reward for solid journalism.

Season 3 is full of complications from the bonds formed among the journalists, both platonically and romantically, and holds up to Sorkin’s grand dialogue mixed with pithy, yet telling, exchanges. Both will be tested as Neal Sampat (pitch-perfectly played by Dev Patel) finds himself in a situation that is over his head and threatens the organization. Think Edward Snowden.

Meanwhile, ACN’s parent company must make some difficult decisions of its own that also threaten to change the landscape of the news channel. This gives us some amazing scenes with Jane Fonda ‘s Leona Lansing, who isn’t letting the company she helped build from scratch be taken from her without some old-fashioned fundraising and humor. “Two Broke Girls” star Kat Dennings and “The Office’s” B.J. Novak play fantastic game-changing characters in this storyline.

Season 3 begins strongly and is a joy to behold – with heightened stakes. Sorkin may believe that his only TV success was “The West Wing,” but this TV critic isn’t prone to believe that the lifespan of a show defines whether it was successful.

Viewers who actually watch dramas for the drama should savor this season. It pays off for the patience in the growth of its characters and the bonds they formed over the first two seasons. For those predisposed to dislike “The Newsroom,” Sorkin has made some tweaks that may satisfy you. But, it was on his pace not yours. All of that becomes necessary to handle the challenges Sorkin throws their way as the show careens to its conclusion.

“The Newsroom” returns Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.

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'the newsroom' series premiere review.

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After a noticeable three-year absence, Aaron Sorkin makes his long-awaited return to television with The Newsroom , a behind-the-scenes look at the fictional news network ACN, its onetime staple series "News Night," and its host, the seemingly uncontroversial Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels).

Following an unexpected, emotionally-driven speech while appearing on a panel of political experts at Northwestern University, the career of McAvoy changes dramatically, as the subsequent weeks find his show in decline and much of his newsroom staff jumping the sinking ship.

Hopes were high that The Newsroom would become a "perfect storm" of sorts, taking the best elements of Sorkin's past work to help create a new, original series on HBO. That being said, the series premiere of The Newsroom never felt as succinct as Sports Night , as earnest as The West Wing , or as honest as Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip .

Leading The Newsrooms' eclectic cast of exceptional actors is Jeff Daniels, whose portrayal of the typically-sardonic Will McAvoy is, as expected, wonderful. Unsurprisingly, the same thing can be said about Emily Mortimer, John Gallagher, Jr., Allison Pill, Dev Patel, Thomas Sadoski and Sam Waterston. In the case of The Newsroom , it feels as if it's the man, not "the machine," wherein the problem lies.

Kicking of the premiere with a wonderfully-crafted monologue for Daniels, much of the premiere follows in suit. Coming in at just over 72 minutes, the almost feature-length premiere felt, at times, like more of a collection of wonderfully written monologues than the character-driven series we've come to expect from the man that helped revolutionize single-camera series.

The Newsroom's placement on HBO allows Sorkin to do many things he couldn't on TV, but perhaps it's through those very same network limitations and time constraints where his stories became perfectly tuned. Slated as a 60-min series, there were many times where scenes felt like they could have either been shortened, reworked, or completely left out.

Sorkin perhaps felt like he needed to include a lot in the premiere episode, but a tighter pace would have made for a more fluid viewing experience, allowing audiences time to become attached to the characters on their own terms. Though one of the smallest television casts that Sorkin has worked with, very few characters, along with their motivations, are clearly defined by the end of the premiere.

With an orchestral theme song that doesn't feel quite right for the series, and a unique, sometimes chaotic, visual styling that separates (not elevates) The Newsrooms from Sorkin's usual pedigree, watching the premiere can easily become a challenge; it's hard not to come to the conclusion that some things are amiss with this series.

Even so, for fans of Aaron Sorkin, there's much to be excited about. While many will certainly focus on the political aspect of the series, HBO's The Newsroom is as much about politics as FX's The League is about football. Instead, this series much more about one man's attempt at being true to himself.

McAvoy's comments about America no longer being the greatest country in the world certainly caught the attention of everyone watching, but it was his further explorations (some forced), where the real story lies. Dropping references to New York Times media reporter Bill Carter and NBC's famed late night staple Jay Leno, Sorkin is highlighting viewer's trends toward more honest media - perhaps not always the highest-rated, but certainly more honest. For McAvoy, the struggle about coming to terms with his unconscious need (and want) to be more than just " the guy that doesn't bother anyone " is one of The Newsroom's  few narrative anchors, though one that was only briefly touched upon. Fortunately, it's an extremely hefty anchor. Certainly mirroring conversations that many longtime personalities must have had internally, McAvoy's transition brings up some interesting questions.

As the familiar Sorkin storylines from the past begin to bleed their way into The Newsroom , audiences will be able to continue along an enjoyable journey that was started on Sports Night . However, for those looking for a truly more evolved series, one must look within those familiarities to find growth. At this point, it's difficult to say how challenging that may be for audiences, but hopefully it becomes easier in subsequent episodes.

For all intents and purposes, HBO's  The Newsroom  is anything and everything that one would expect to see from Sorkin's return to television - though perhaps not what many had hoped. While there's more than enough beautifully-written dialogue for fans to sit back and enjoy, it's hard not to acknowledge a certain disconnect from the series and its characters that can be felt throughout the premiere.

Even though, at times, much heart can be felt onscreen, there's not much more than Sorkin's name currently driving curiosity and intrigue for subsequent episodes. Fortunately, for now, Sorkin's name alone is enough.

Giving The Newsroom a few weeks to find itself, as well as to introduce the rest of the cast (Jane Fonda & Olivia Munn), isn't much to ask from a series, writer, or network of this caliber. However, unlike in previous series, where Sorkin was able to tweak storylines to reflect the current status of the actual show, the first season of The Newsroom is already completed.

Like a train following an already set course, there's no chance of correcting its path, even if it's on the wrong one. At this point, the only thing you can do is to hope that you still end up at your destination. Thankfully, Aaron Sorkin is one of the few people to trust when it comes to navigating the world of television.

As if taking a note from The Newsrooms' original title, we hope for more as this series develops.

The Newsroom airs Sundays @10pm on HBO

Follow Anthony on Twitter @ anthonyocasio

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Review: ‘The Newsroom’ Season 3 is On a Mission to Civilize Aaron Sorkin

Ben travers.

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Writers are almost always examined via subjective analysis of not only their content, but also what exists because of it and outside of it. Some have their personal lives put under the microscope when critics tackle their films (Woody Allen, perhaps more than any other writer), but most establish a backlog of work that either bolsters their new projects or hamstrings them. An early success could lend credence to later movies, or it could eventually sink them as times change and opinions alter.

When Aaron Sorkin ‘s Facebook origin story “The Social Network” was released in 2010, claims of sexism followed him from a four-years-gone TV show (“The West Wing”) and a one-and-done season of “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.” It didn’t matter his long-running NBC drama was an Emmys juggernaut or even that David Fincher’s version of the Mark Zuckerberg story took on the singular perspective of its subject, who happens to be a self-serving, spiteful college boy. Accusations were still tossed around that the film wasn’t fair to its female characters, claiming the few who were represented were either ballbusters (the young Rooney Mara character, who breaks up with Zuckerberg to open the film) or psychos (Eduardo Saverin’s pyromaniac girlfriend). 

READ MORE: John Gallagher Jr. on ‘The Newsroom’ Season 3 & How Not to be Type-Cast as a ‘Young Actor’

Aaron Sorkin won an Oscar for this screenplay, just like he won six Emmys for “The West Wing” and countless other trophies throughout his career. By traditional standards of artistic merit, he’s regarded as the kind of professional he so often depicts in his works: wildly successful and impossibly brilliant. Whether or not he thinks of himself as Josiah Bartlett or Will McAvoy is both impossible to prove and irrelevant to the discussion. Presumptions are only fallible outside context, and even honest, objective material doesn’t belong in an artistic analysis if it’s excluded from the program under review. All of this leads to one central question: “If you didn’t know Aaron Sorkin had been accused of being a blowhard and a sexist, would you consider ‘The Newsroom’ to have those same faults?”

More importantly than perceptional influences, these choice issues are compelling and make the first three episodes a slow build to thrilling entertainment. The season premiere focuses on the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and also establishes what appears to be the season’s main arc: a Glenn Greenwald/Edward Snowden parallel where Neal Sampat (“Slumdog Millionaire’s” Dev Patel) is contacted by an anonymous source looking to release thousands of classified government documents. If a man on the run from the government, the pending sale of a corporate news division, global warming scares and the ever-dwindling time remaining in an abbreviated six-episode final season aren’t enough to keep you on the edge of your seat, frankly, you’re simply incapable of engaging with meaningful drama.

But that is said from an idealist’s perspective. When “The Newsroom” began, Aaron Sorkin asked his viewers to do one thing: buy in. Leave cynicism at the door and join the crusade his characters were hellbent on pursuing. Accusations of naiveté and self-indulgence would be rendered moot to anyone who went along with these requests, while anyone demanding something else from a show so clearly on a mission to civilize would be left on the outside looking in, throwing stones at a very fragile house.

Yet what makes the third season fascinating in a way we shouldn’t even be noticing is that the house is cracking. While the storytelling remains top tier, Sorkin simply can’t resist appeasing his critics in one scene while rebuffing them in the next, thus inviting the cynics to keep tossing rocks. In the first episode, “Boston,” there’s a glorious moment where Mac ( Emily Mortimer ) explains to Will (Jeff Daniels) a parable from Euripides. “In the first act of a story, you chase the heroes up a tree. In the second act, you throw rocks at them, and in the third act, they get themselves down.” After a phone call interrupts them, Mac attempts to explain it again before Will cuts her off, saying, “I completely understood the story the first time.” 

The most noticeable traces of Sorkin’s conciliation show up in the characters themselves. Mac, for instance, has always been a lightning rod for controversy, as has Alison Pill’s Maggie, an up-and-coming producer and squandered love interest for Jim (John Gallagher Jr.). Mac’s role has been reigned in for Season 3, and her eccentricities — so often faulted by those looking for faults — passed on to a character with enough of his own. Suddenly Will is the one screaming in the newsroom, incapable of coherent speech but more than ready to make himself humorously mockable. Maggie, meanwhile, is a hardened go-getter without an ounce of the innocence that made her so relatable in the first few seasons. For anyone listening for it, you could almost hear Sorkin daring critics to find faults with  these  women, even if they had taken them to task in seasons past.

Of course, there is an alternative way to approach the show. The character of Maggie might just be adjusting to life post-Africa. Will’s twisted tongue may be the result of being rattled from the Genoa scandal. Mac may finally be toughening up as a hard-nosed EP because she’s settled into her role at ACN (and Will is no longer fucking with her head). Yes, Sorkin has still made Season 3 about more than what’s in the script, even though, without the meta moments, his words are more than enough. Because they are more than enough, and more importantly, they’re really all that matters in the end — his beautiful dialogue is read with apt verve and passion from a wholly committed team of actors. For as hypocritical as the following statement reads in a review attempting to break down both viewer experiences, watching “The Newsroom” without bias is not only the ideal way to see it, but the only way to watch while adhering to the lofty ideals set forth by the show.

“The Newsroom” has always tried to change people’s minds, as Sorkin has repeatedly challenged conventional wisdom while asking viewers to hold themselves and others to a higher standard. It’s not an order, but a request, and one many have bought into over the years. It’s a shame cynical viewers will only see its last act as trying to civilize itself. 

READ MORE: Watch: ‘The Newsroom’ Season 3 Trailer Admits ‘We Don’t Do Good TV’

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10 Best Episodes of ‘The Newsroom,’ Now 10 Years Old

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After taking us behind the scenes of the White House with The West Wing and behind the scenes of a TV show with Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip , Aaron Sorkin explored both politics and showbiz with The Newsroom , the HBO drama that premiered 10 years ago, on June 24, 2012.

Jeff Daniels earned an Emmy Award for his performance as Will McAvoy, the anchor of the News Night  program on Atlantis Cable News network, and a man perennially on the verge of a preachy breakdown.

Meanwhile, Emily Mortimer played MacKenzie McHale, Will’s ex-turned-executive producer, and Sam Waterston played Charlie Skinner, president of ACN. Dev Patel , Olivia Munn , Alison Pill , Thomas Sadoski , and John Gallagher Jr. rounded out the cast, playing ACN staffers.

To celebrate the show’s 10th anniversary, we’re highlighting the top 10 episodes of the series, as chosen by IMDb users, with representative reviews from that site singing these episodes’ praises.

10. Season 3, Episode 1: “Boston”

The future of News Night is at stake as the team deals with a loss of viewer trust, Will’s announced resignation, and a hostile takeover of AWM, all while reporting on the Boston Marathon bombing. “I love to see how they all come together as a family to fight each other’s battles,” an IMDb user writes in a review.

9. Season 1, Episode 10: “The Greater Fool”

A hospitalized Will chances upon a headlining story about voters rights for News Night , Charlie learns tragic news about his NSA whistleblower, and Will, Mac, and Charlie have a showdown with mother-and-son Atlantis World Media executives Leona ( Jane Fonda ) and Reese ( Chris Messina ). “TV doesn’t get better than this,” a user writes on IMDb.

8. Season 1, Episode 4: “I’ll Try to Fix You”

A disastrous encounter with gossip columnist Nina Howard ( Hope Davis ) at a New Year’s Eve party makes Will the news story du jour for the tabloid press. On IMDb, a user writes that this episode’s final 10 minutes, which deals with the real-life assassination attempt against former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, “was probably the best sequence that I have ever watched in any TV series.”

7. Season 1, Episode 1: “We Just Decided To”

The Newsroom ’s series premiere introduces Will as a disillusioned TV anchor reimagining his show News Night with the help of his new producer — who happens to be his ex Mackenzie — as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill unfolds in the background. “Perhaps the best opening episode/pilot to a series I’ve ever seen,” one IMDb user says. “It grabs you from the start, and 71 minutes later, you’re left to revisit the room you’re sitting in.”

6. Season 2, Episode 9: “Election Night: Part II”

On the night of the 2012 presidential election, Will defends his Republican politics (while distancing himself from hateful members of the party) and then pops the question to Mac. “I was never one for politics, love stories, or drama, but Aaron Sorkin has found a way to entertain me while educating me on many political things I never knew I cared about,” a reviewer writes.

5. Season 3, Episode 2: “Run”

As Charlie and Leona continue dealing with a hostile takeover from within their own family, Will helps Neal (Dev Patel) handle his case of unwitting espionage. On IMDb, votes from more than 1,400 users give this episode a weighed average rating of 9.0/10.

4. Season 3, Episode 4: “Contempt”

As Will continues to handle the fallout from the espionage case, Charlie butts head with Lucas Pruit ( B.J. Novak ), ACN’s new buyer. “While fully sympathetic with Will and the rest of the ACN crew, any intelligent viewer has got to feel ambivalent as well,” an IMDb reviewer writes. “This is about the clash of conflicting principles and moral imperatives, the conflict between the First Amendment and national security.”

3. Season 2, Episode 7: “Red Team III”

Rebecca Halliday ( Marcia Gay Harden ), AWM’s lawyer, gets to the bottom of how the News Night team erroneously reported that the U.S. military used sarin gas on civilians. “Anyone who can watch this episode without admiring Sorkin is beyond my comprehension,” one fan raves on IMDb. “And the acting and direction live up to his vision. Truly superb.”

2. Season 3, Episode 6: “What Kind of Day Has It Been”

In The Newsroom ’s series finale, the ACN crew convene to mourn Charlie — more on his demise below — while Leona has Mac take over his job as network president. “This episode hit all the right notes but lacked the emotional punch of Episode 5, because to match that, Sorkin would actually have to come to your home and wallop you in person,” an IMDb user writes.

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1. season 3, episode 5: “oh shenandoah”.

One episode earlier, Will is jailed as he keeps the identity of Neal’s source a secret, Sloan (Olivia Munn) takes down Neal’s replacement on air, and Charlie dies of a heart attack in the office. “Aaron Sorkin is on fire with his writing and the cast all step up to make it happen,” says one fan.

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‘The Newsroom’ Recap: Season Two Premiere

By Katie Van Syckle

Katie Van Syckle

From the first note of the punchier, less reverential theme song of The Newsroom in Season Two, it feels like Aaron Sorkin has heard his critics. Just as the laugh track was dropped between the first and second seasons of Sports Night, some of the theatrical overacting, pedantic speeches and absurdity of Season One – like all that Don Quixote stuff – has been cut. In its place is a more nuanced, compelling and believable window into the world of a cable news show. But will we ultimately care about these characters? That remains to be seen.

Episode One, “The First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All the Lawyers,” written by Sorkin and directed by Alan Poul, takes its title from Henry VI. The reference sets us up for Will McAvoy’s (Jeff Daniels) latest pickle by suggesting that his revolutionary vision is being muddled by pesky things like consequences. At the episode’s opening, it’s 2012. Will is petulantly avoiding questions at a $1,500 an hour deposition led by his lawyer Rebecca Halliday (Marcia Gay Harden). Looking over her school-marmish glasses, she’s trying to get Will, who deals with problems by ignoring them entirely, to answer a straight question. His show News Night has alleged that the U.S. committed a war crime by using nerve gas on foreign targets. At stake is not that the News Night staff will lose their jobs and be forced to sing gospel for money on the subway, but that their grand mission to do the news will be obstructed.

The Best Moments From ‘The Newsroom’ Season One

We also learn that Maggie Jordan (Allison Pill) now “looks like the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. “ She went to Uganda and came back a little screwy, as indicated by her bad dye job and combat boots. Which on the upside means that over the course of the season, her character should now have more on her plate than boy problems. It also suggests that her development will continue to shadow that of MacKenzie McHale (Emily Mortimer).

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To understand how we ended up in this mess, Sorkin flashes back to 2011, two weeks after season one ended. Jim (John Gallagher Jr.) is understandably bummed and grossed out by Maggie and Don’s (Thomas Sadowski) recent cohabitation decision and lame high-fives, and sends himself to New Hampshire to trail the Romney campaign. This sets off a chain of events that brings young gun producer Jerry Dantana (Hamish Linklater) up from Washington. He and Sloan (Oliva Munn) have a terrific nerd-meet-cute centering on a shared indignation for the Obama administration’s use of drone strikes.

Will has taken major heat for calling the Tea Party the “American Taliban,” and that’s still rippling through the ranks of ACN, a cable news network in the model of CNN or MSNBC. Network president Reese Lansing (Chris Messina) is shut out of a SOPA hearing on the Hill, and Jim is kept off the Romney campaign bus. Will is told he can’t do the 9/11 anniversary coverage and is slowly losing it. He’s smoking pot and listening to Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic” – and again trying to pretend nothing is wrong.
Don, meanwhile, is becoming less of a bad guy. On day 13 of “being a good boyfriend,” he gets a link to a deus ex machina YouTube video of Maggie’s season finale speech to a busload of Sex in the City tourists in which she confesses she’s fallen for Jim.

But I remain most curious about what MSNBC’s Chris Matthews (whose son Thomas has a recurring part) and the team of consultants including CNN anchor Ashleigh Banfield and former Time editor Jim Kelly told Sorkin that already makes the story feel more realistic than it did in season one. My guess is this team of paid consultants told Sorkin how the news actually works, and gave him the details that make things start to feel like you’re sneaking into a room you’ve never been in before. For example, unlike Season One, there is more than one big story a night. A really good night in the control room isn’t getting a call from a college pal who happens to be sitting in a Halliburton meeting – because that’s ridiculous – but rather, masterfully re-cutting a segment live, as Mac does in the first episode of Season Two. We learn some military panelists are actually sad, desperate guys with their own agendas, and the power to go rogue and screw it all up. And perhaps my favorite tidbit since Peggy Noonan was feeding us insider juice on the West Wing: To New York, the Washington bureau is an irrelevant farm team filled with annoyingly ambitious guys gunning for Peabodys. But I am still dying to see a scene that recognizes the newspapers and wires for doing the actual heavy lifting of reporting the news, rather than just commenting and aggregating.  

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The “Woman Problem” It is true that a major problem with Season One was that the female characters were reduced to stumbling Annie Halls minus the complicated internal angst, original catch phrases and game-changing personal style. Season Two’s sexist jokes have been limited to what is probably meant in jest, but may still offend.
An example from Will’s deposition. Rebecca Halliday: “Fuck me!” Will: “Well, would one of you fuck Ms. Halliday please?” Rebecca: “That was a little funny.” Or totally inappropriate. We have yet to see Will imply that his male colleagues are being annoying because no one has had sex with them in a while. Which is why I think Will might just be written as an old-school, misogynist-light who says offensive things without even knowing they’re offensive, and the women that work with him would all benefit from reading Sheryl Sandberg. Whether Sorkin has written these dynamics intentionally, I’m not sure. But it does feel like women face enough subtle sexism in the real-life workplace that jokes like the one Charlie Skinner (Sam Waterston) makes to Sloan Sabbith about “reciting financial numbers in a skirt,” aren’t helpful to anyone. Especially for a show that spends the better part of an hour re-imagining the media as reflection of it’s own progressive values.

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That said, Leona Lansing (Jane Fonda) is smart, sassy, pragmatic and strong, and she’s leaned in so hard she’s actually sitting on top of Charlie Skinner and Will McAvoy. (Which is a good thing.) Rebecca Halliday, running a team of young male lawyers, and making an astonishing $1,500 an hour, is no slouch either. Points to Sorkin for using the Who’s, “You Better You Bet” as an extended analogy for MacKenzie’s sometimes-unrequited love for Will, and Will’s sometimes-unrequited love from the audience. Their “Know British Rock” moment is an endearing this-how-nerds-flirt session, in which MacKenzie points out that Townshend wrote it, and Will counters, yes, but Daltrey sang it. These are sapiosexuals in love.

And while it does feel like there are 70% more story lines in one episode than there were in the whole last season, it would still take a master stroke to build dramatic tension around threads where we already know the punch line. But maybe Sorkin’s insight into Occupy Wall Street, the fall of Tripoli and the Romney campaign will prove compelling enough we will want more.

Ever since L.A. Law drove young television watchers to take the Bar in droves, the true litmus for a professional drama has been: do you want to work in this office? You tell me. I drank the fourth-estate koolaid years ago.

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THE NEWSROOM Season 3 Review: Final Season Gets Off to Strong Start with Humor and High Stakes

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The final few minutes of The Newsroom ’s second season finale appeared to quickly close the book on the show, but Aaron Sorkin ’s divisive HBO series is now back with six more episodes to wrap things up in proper fashion.  Indeed, the tidying up of storylines at the end of season two almost felt like Sorkin had had enough with the constant criticism (some justified, some not) of the show, which was intended to be his triumphant return to television after winning an Oscar for The Social Network .  Instead, Sorkin’s look at the world of cable news was a bit of a mixed bag as it tried to find the blend of humor and importance that worked so well in The West Wing .  The show seemed to find a slightly more solid footing in the second season as Sorkin shifted the focus to the characters, backed away from the “news story of the week” structure, and introduced a story arc that played out over the course of the season.  There were still some glaring flaws to be sure, but the show overall felt more comfortable in what it wanted to be.

And now season three looks to be even more of an improvement, with great comedy, heightened stakes, and fantastic character interplay permeating throughout the first three episodes.

With a shortened final season, The Newsroom is able to hit the ground running in terms of story.  The first episode takes place against the backdrop of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, as Will ( Jeff Daniels ), Mac ( Emily Mortimer ), and the team struggle to find the balance between reporting what is known and using unsourced facts (ie. Twitter) in the wake of last season’s Genoa scandal.  This provides Sorkin the opportunity to opine on crowd-sourced reporting, though in the case of Reddit’s disastrous “investigation” into the bombing suspects, one can hardly blame his thoughts on the matter here as they relate to the actual ACN team.

The events of the second season’s Genoa story arc loom large in these first three episodes, as ACN’s brush with being very, very wrong has left them vulnerable to a number of outside forces.  But it also provides a swell jumping off point to dig into some high stakes drama, as the show foregoes its big time shifts between episodes in lieu of playing out the tension across a shortened calendar.

The third season actually has a couple of main story arcs, but the one that really sets the wheels in motion involves Neal ( Dev Patel ) receiving stolen high-level government documents from an anonymous source.  Yes, Sorkin’s doing Edward Snowden, but he does a fine job of carving out his own story here, and it makes for some really compelling television that provides excellent connective tissue from one episode to the next.  The season has that “I need to know what happens next now ” feeling at the end of every episode; it’s similar in intensity to the President Bartlet/MS storyline from The West Wing .

In terms of character, there are further tweaks made to the ensemble, some for better and some for worse.  Will and Mac are now in a stable relationship as opposed to the back-and-forth nature of the first two seasons, and it’s a welcome change of pace.  Their arguments now consist of deciding how many bridesmaids Mac will have at their wedding, and their relationship has really evolved into a sweet partnership instead of an aggressive competition tinged with sexual tension.  Moreover, Sorkin appears to have toned down Mac’s character rather significantly, as she’s much more level-headed and measured in relation to some of her more frantic states from episodes past.

Another improvement is the burgeoning relationship between Sloan ( Olivia Munn ) and Don ( Thomas Sadoski ).  As far as humor goes, they’re the highlight of these first few episodes, and their comedic chemistry is electric as they try to navigate how serious their relationship really is while ducking the Human Resources rep.  Munn has almost become the standout in the cast, as she plays Sloan with a dry yet earnest humor that’s incredibly entertaining to watch, especially in relation to the similarly tempered Don.  It’s a swell pairing, and it also provides a reprieve from the Don/Maggie/Jim love triangle that essentially imploded in season two.

Maggie ( Allison Pill ) once again feels like a wholly different character, which is an improvement from her odd Africa storyline of the second season, but the ever-shifting nature further serves to paint the character as unfamiliar.  It feels like Sorkin never really got a handle on who this character was, and some of Maggie’s actions in this final season feel like Sorkin directly addressing his critics re: his portrayal of women.  Pill’s performance continues to be impressive, however, and while Maggie may not feel like a character we know very well, she at least becomes more grounded and realistic in these last few episodes.  It’s hard not to root for her.

If Sloan and Don’s relationship is the highlight of the show at the moment, the relationship between Jim ( John Gallagher, Jr. ) and Hallie ( Grace Gummer ) is the low point.  Sorkin uses Hallie’s storyline to explore the role of social media in news organizations, as well as internet-centric outlets (ie. Buzzfeed), but her relationship with Jim still feels forced.  Their arguments broach interesting topics, but there’s really nothing invested here on behalf of the audience, and Sorkin hints at returning to the Jim/Maggie relationship a little too strongly, thus negating any incentive to become interested in Jim and Hallie as a couple.

Season three offers a slew of fantastic guest stars, though, as Kat Dennings boards the show as Reese’s ( Chris Messina ) half-sister who begins a hostile takeover gambit for ACN.  Dennings absolutely nails the Sorkin dialogue, and while she only appears in one of the three episodes provided (the second, which is far and away the best of the three), her presence looms large.  Another guest star highlight is West Wing alum Mary McCormack as an FBI agent friend of Mac’s, as well as The Office actor/former showrunner Paul Lieberstein , who also acts as an executive producer on the show’s third season.  And Marcia Gay Harden makes a triumphant return as ACN attorney Rebecca Halliday, who takes part in a glorious series of scenes in the Greg Mottola -directed second episode that feel almost play-like.

For whatever reason, The Newsroom failed to find that consistency of quality that The West Wing had from Episode One and that Sports Night found fairly quickly.  Sorkin significantly retooled the show in its second season in response to critics, and there is no doubt further tweaking in this third and final season.  It’s a shame the show is ending, though, because based on these first three episodes, the series really found its groove this year.  It’s possible that’s due to the shortened season, which heightens the tension as the story is able to take big turns more quickly, but I have to say I enjoyed these first three episodes immensely.  If you’ve stuck with the show this long, you’ll likely be happy with the direction that season three takes.  As someone who enjoyed but was oftentimes frustrated with the series in its first two seasons, I’m a little surprised to be saying that I now wish it was sticking around a little longer.

The third and final season of  The Newsroom  premieres on HBO Sunday, November 9th at 9pm ET/PT.

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Critics React to The Newsroom 's Controversial Penultimate Episode

See reviews for aaron sorkin's 'oh shenandoah.'.

The penultimate episode of HBO’s The Newsroom , “Oh Shenandoah,” stirred up a lot of internet chatter this week — especially with critics.

See what the reviews have to say about Will’s cellmate, Sloan’s stalker interview, Charlie’s final stand, Jim-Mag’s kiss, and Don’s problematic interview. Caution: BIG spoilers ahead.

ON DON’S DORM ROOM INTERVIEW:

James Poniewozik, TIME Magazine : The most baldly offensive thing in “Oh Shenandoah” was watching Don mansplain rape to a woman. But to focus only on that would be to diminish the sheer, monumental, top-to-bottom -splaininess of this episode.

Sarene Leeds, Entertainment Weekly : In one of the most poignant scenes on The Newsroom to date, Mary and Don have a powerful back-and-forth about the subject that frustratingly remains so taboo in 2014 society: speaking out against sexual assault.

David Sims, The Atlantic : After Don softly informs Mary of all the flaws in her arguments and nods sadly at each one of her rebuttals, he goes home having learned nothing but presuming himself all the wiser. That’s the episode in a nutshell. We haven’t learned a single thing, but Aaron Sorkin sure thinks we have.

Robert Ham, Paste Magazine : Sorkin practically encourages women to keep their mouths shut about sexual assaults and rapes, until the gatekeepers determine that it’s okay to speak up, or there’s irrefutable evidence of such a crime.

Todd VanDerWerff, Vox : The crux of the scene — and the thing that has people so angry — is a moment when Don tells the student that he thinks her site is, essentially, equivalent to revenge porn.

Christine Orlando, TV Fanatic : Don was given an assignment from hell. Either put a young woman who claimed she was raped up against the man she’s accusing on live TV or lose his job. His pre-interview with the woman was devastatingly raw and honest. She was looking for justice she was probably never going to find and most certainly won’t be found on TV.

Emily Nussbaum, New Yorker : When it comes to disconcerting timeliness, no scene from this episode stands out like the one in which the executive producer Don Keefer pre-interviews a rape victim.

Neil Genzlinger, New York Times : The scene might infuriate some viewers, but I thought it did a pretty good job of capturing both the frustration of students who have been assaulted and the hazards of trying to seek justice outside the legal system.

Eric Thurm, Grantland : Others will write more in-depth about the reasons this story — in which Don attempts to convince a rape victim at Princeton not to go on the air and confront her rapist — is grotesque and anti-feminist. Suffice it to say that a middle-aged white man telling a collegiate rape victim how best to go about responding to her rape, without even actually having the young woman in the room, is atrocious.

Drew Grant, New York Observer : Rapesplain: It boggles the mind.

ON MAGGIE AND JIM’S MOSCOW MOMENT:

Ben Travers, IndieWire : After three seasons of build-up, the two characters forced into compatibility hooked up on the long plane ride to Russia. Do we care? Not really.

Libby Hill, AV Club : Jim is still awful. Maggie is still easily swayed by Jim, who is awful. They kiss, and the waves of revulsion, they are suffocating.

Neil Genzlinger, New York Times : Jim and Maggie deserve each other.

ON WILL’S CELLMATE SURPRISE:

Libby Hill, AV Club : Oh, good , Will has a ghost dad hanging out with him in jail. How fun and not at all laughable. It is definitely not a ridiculous premise made worse by being jammed in an already overstuffed episode.

Neil Genzlinger, New York Times : The scenes are a series of uninspired, stereotypical prison conversations that somehow don’t make more sense on a second, more informed viewing (I checked).

David Sims, The Atlantic : Sorry to spoil the twist ending in a twist-laden episode, but the reveal that Will’s prison-mate (played by Kevin Rankin) was actually a blast-from-the-past vision of his own abusive father must have sent heads into desks all around the country.

ON SLOAN’S STALKER APP TAKEDOWN:

Christine Orlando, TV Fanatic : Sloan was the star of the show when she went after the creator of the stalker app. It’s horrendous that just because someone makes a living entertaining the public, they and their family have to be hunted down in their daily lives.

David Sims, The Atlantic : Forget the implausibility of the idea that Pruitt has somehow, in seven weeks , hired a whole team of sniveling tech hobgoblins to hollow out the network. This whole nightmare scenario was just one Sorkin rant too far.

Sarene Leeds, Entertainment Weekly : So, Sloan, in the epitome of the character’s awesomeness, using little more than facts and Bree’s overly inflated ego, turns the tables on Pruit’s new pet by transforming his on-camera interview into a superb takedown of both him and ACNgage. The best part is when she grills Bree on his “vetting process” for ACNgage’s “citizen journalism.”

ON CHARLIE’S UNTIMELY END:

Sarene Leeds, Entertainment Weekly : RIP, Charlie. You were ACN.

Neil Genzlinger, New York Times : It was a scene that probably made you either shed a tear at the pathos or groan at Mr. Sorkin?s shameless overstatement. (Full disclosure: I groaned.)

Todd VanDerWerff, Vox : He was so frantic and over the top that his first line of dialogue might as well have been, “Hi, I’m going to die in this episode,” because he had a heart attack and did just that to close the hour out.

Eric Thurm, Grantland : Good-bye, Charlie. I will miss your bow ties, grand moral statements, and your drunken pratfalls, and it is a shame you had to die because Sorkin couldn’t think of another way to make the end of the series emotionally resonant without cannibalizing his own filmography (R.I.P., Mrs. Landingham and Leo McGarry — you were the best of us).

Libby Hill, AV Club : Charlie, poor Charlie. Charlie is the first person in the history of the universe that when people say, “He’s in a better place,” it’s actually true, only because he’s free of the garbage fire that is this show.

ON THE EPISODE:

Robert Ham, Paste Magazine : I’m beginning to wonder if Aaron Sorkin is trying to destroy every ounce of goodwill that he might have accrued thanks to his sterling work on The West Wing , and his fine movie scripts. Apparently if Studio 60 wasn’t going to be the program that ruined his career in TV, he was going to use The Newsroom to do it.

Todd VanDerWerff, Vox : “Oh Shenandoah,” last night’s episode of The Newsroom , was a disasterpiece, an episode of television so bad I was gobsmacked by what I was watching. Literally everything about it was miscalculated, with every storyline hitting some point where it became too ridiculous to take seriously at all.

Drew Grant, New York Observer : I wish there was a German word for how tonight’s episode of The Newsroom made me feel; some combination of horror and repulsion bolstered by an angry smear of righteous satisfaction.

Eric Thurm, Grantland : With only one episode left before the end of the series, Sorkin managed to produce an episode of The Newsroom that exemplified all of the show’s worst tendencies, to such an extreme that it may make it impossible for me to take anything he writes or has written seriously ever again.

David Sims, The Atlantic : There’s bad episodes of The Newsroom , and then there’s last night’s “Oh Shenandoah,” the kind of down-in-flames wreck that sets the Internet to red alert.

James Poniewozik, TIME Magazine : It added up — in a final season that began with the promise of the series becoming better and subtler in the end — as a terrible episode even by the standards of the series’ earlier, most terrible ones.

Emily Nussbaum, New Yorker : Look, The Newsroom was never going to be my favorite series, but I didn’t expect it to make my head blow off, all over again, after all these years of peaceful hate-watching.

What did YOU think of “Oh Shenandoah?” Sound off in the comments section below!

for season three reviews of The Newsroom .

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Review: Star-making performance propels Netflix revenge thriller ‘Rebel Ridge’

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In Jeremy Saulnier’s “Rebel Ridge,” a “Rambo”-inspired riff on racial profiling and the insidious banality of evil baked into American policing, the filmmaker demonstrates his mastery of the taut action thriller. His skill with this subgenre has been on display since “Blue Ruin” (2013), through “Green Room” (2016) and “Hold the Dark” (2018). But in “Rebel Ridge,” Saulnier’s examination of space and pace transcends anything that has come before, as he coolly alternates extreme control with bursts of explosive fury over the course of two-plus hours.

It’s in this cadence that Saulier’s M.O. snaps into focus: his formal cinematic expression as a reflection of his protagonist’s state of mind. The story and style of “Rebel Ridge,” which Saulnier wrote, directed and edited, centers on Terry (Aaron Pierre), a man caught in a crushingly quotidian nightmare that spins out of control. Pushed to his limit, Terry maintains his cool, until he doesn’t, and it’s a thrill to watch how Saulnier lets this character off his leash.

In a star-making performance, Pierre is terrific as a man with a particular skill set thrumming below his composed, placid surface. With golden eyes, velvet voice and smooth gait, Pierre is like a puma prowling across the screen, but ultimately his character’s temperament is much more like a rattlesnake — coiled and ready to strike when threatened.

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The plot engine of “Rebel Ridge” is the law enforcement practice of civil asset forfeiture. In the opening sequence, Terry is cycling through the Southern town of Shelby Springs when a police officer (David Denham) attempts to pull him over, sloppily hits Terry with his squad car, detains him and seizes the stack of cash in his backpack “under suspicion” that it’s drug money.

Terry had been carrying the cash to bail out his cousin Mike (C.J. LeBlanc) from jail, hoping to spring him before a transfer to the state penitentiary, where he’d be in dire danger as a former witness in a murder trial. But Terry’s money disappears into a property locker, where it will remain until he can contest the seizure in court, months later. A spunky young legal aide, Summer (AnnaSophia Robb), also informs him that the police department makes a habit of these seizures to fund its budget (and some margarita machines), after a civil suit resulted in a perfunctory “cleanup” of their corrupt practices.

By refusing to accept that the police department has stolen his money (and, in doing so, endangered his family) Terry has kicked a hornet’s nest, riling up a swarm of good-ol’-boy cops (including an excellent Emory Cohen), who answer to Chief Sandy Burnne (Don Johnson). But what these cops don’t realize is that Terry is not someone to mess with, as they discover too late that he’s not just an ex-Marine. He’s a Marine martial arts instructor.

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A lot of talk of police procedure leads to the action of “Rebel Ridge,” though Saulnier seeds bursts of violence throughout as Terry seizes control. Long, gliding tracking shots with sophisticated camera and character blocking give way to hectic handheld movements as Terry scraps and tussles with his foes. Saulnier uses the edit to evoke Terry’s increasing vigilance, constantly keeping tabs on everyone in his vicinity as he realizes just how deep the corruption goes in this town.

It is this detailed discussion of mundane legal details — and how the police manipulate policy to their own benefit — that is the point of Saulnier’s film. Terry has found himself descending into a hellish odyssey of bureaucracy, paperwork and a “justice” system that relies far too heavily on the discretion of small-town cops and judges who have their own motivations and biases, and who all too easily make decisions that value budgets over human lives: Black lives, female lives, addict lives.

Within this complex system of shifting allegiances, one highly skilled man can root out the weaknesses and disrupt the food chain. But hanging over the narrative is a sense of futility, that this can and will happen again and again. Another lawsuit, another life lost, another workaround. But for a moment, one man on a bike with a few expertly wielded weapons can wreak holy havoc on corrupt cops, and damn does it feel good to watch.

'Rebel Ridge'

Rating: Not rated; violence, drug references and language Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes Playing: Streaming on Netflix starting Sept. 6

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‘The Front Room’ Review: A Force Too Malevolent for This Movie

Kathryn Hunter is enjoyably creepy in this new horror film starring Brandy Norwood. Too bad the rest of the freakouts are predictable.

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By Manohla Dargis

The first time that Kathryn Hunter appears in the ho-hum horror movie “The Front Room,” her head is forebodingly obscured by a veil. She’s at the funeral of her husband, who, you suspect, probably left this mortal coil unwillingly. It’s too bad that he couldn’t stick around longer because if he had, the poor guy would have been able to watch Hunter — as a flamboyantly malicious force named Solange — rapidly get her weird on, inching into the shadows like a malevolent spider while weaving a progressively stickier, ickier web.

Hunter greatly enlivens “The Front Room,” so it’s too bad she is mostly relegated to supporting duties in this tale. Its featured attraction is Belinda (Brandy Norwood), an anthropology professor who quits in a fit of pique shortly after the story opens. She has her reasons, more or less; she feels understandably aggrieved and undervalued at work, but given that she’s pregnant, and that she and her husband, Norman (Andrew Burnap), need the money, it’s clear common sense isn’t her strong suit. This first impression deepens into an irksome trait when she and Norman learn that Solange — his stepmother — will help them out if she can move in with them. Since they’re cash-hungry, they agree; woo-woo trouble ensues.

The writer-director twin brothers Sam and Max Eggers, making their feature directorial debut, have a grasp of the genre’s fundamentals: They know how to stage an unwelcoming house, and how to play with light and shadow. But either they don’t know or don’t care how easy is it for viewers to lose interest in characters who, like Belinda and Norman, consistently make wrong choices. It brings out the sadist in you (or maybe it’s just me), especially when those wrong choices are so obviously a matter of narrative contrivance and weak character development. (“The Front Room” is loosely based on a short story of the same title by Susan Hill about a couple who, inspired by a sermon, charitably take in a widowed relative.)

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Nicole Kidman’s Netflix Mystery ‘The Perfect Couple’ Is Profoundly Unserious in All the Best Ways: TV Review

By Aramide Tinubu

Aramide Tinubu

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Amela’s fiancé, Benji, is thoughtful and kind, but his affluent family is different. Benji’s older brother, Tom (Jack Reynor), is an blowhard bro barely kept in line by his conniving wife, Abby (Dakota Fanning). Meanwhile, Will (Sam Nivola), the youngest Winbury, is emotionally disturbed and haunted by the past. Windbury patriarch Tag’s ( Liev Schreiber ) sole passions appear to be rowing, golfing and smoking weed. And matriarch Greer ( Nicole Kidman ), an acclaimed novelist, rules her husband and sons with a seething calculation, and stands at the top of this house of cards. 

Kidman, Schreiber and Fanning, in particular, effectively portray profoundly broken people who are concerned only with appearances and maintaining their lifestyles. The show’s pacing and timeline also keep viewers engaged. As wedding guests are called into the police station for questioning, the audience learns about their inner thoughts and preoccupations. However, the series’ tone is almost comical, because the bigger picture becomes glaringly apparent as each puzzle piece clicks together. From the soap-opera-esque dialogue to a cheesy dance sequence involving the entire cast that opens each episode, there is never a point where viewers can take “The Perfect Couple” seriously. But this is why it’s so enjoyable. 

Though Amelia adores Benji, it’s clear she’s deeply uncomfortable under the Winbury roof. Moreover, while everyone else seems terrified of Greer, Amelia is not interested in putting on airs. She pushes back against certain etiquette and desperately searches for answers to all the questions that have arisen for her. In Episode 3, “The Perfect Family,” a dinner descends into a reality TV-like affair when the bride-to-be boldly asks Greer about her use of NDAs and the cryptic disappearance of a family friend. What’s uncovered are answers no one at the table is ready to confront. A similar scene in the finale, “That Feels Better,” leads to more jaw-dropping and fantastical revelations.  

While it’s billed as a gripping investigation, “The Perfect Couple” examines appearances and what people are willing to do to uphold them. Despite the nonsensical narrative and its lack of actual depth, the series has enough magnetic star power and conspicuous intrigue to make it a delightful and highly watchable experience.

“The Perfect Couple” premieres on Netflix Sept. 5.

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‘The Room Next Door’: Venice Review

By Jonathan Romney 2024-09-02T17:20:00+01:00

Pedro Almodóvar’s English-language debut is a meticulous, moving end-of-life drama starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore

Source: Venice Film Festival

‘The Room Next Door’

Dir. Pedro Almodóvar. Spain 2024. 107mins

If you wanted to give an example of the auteur film as Late Period Contemplation, there would be few better examples than Pedro Almodóvar’s Venice Competition entry  The Room Next Door . The Man from La Mancha has, in recent work, mused amply on mortality, memory and regret, notably in  Julieta  and  Pain And Glory  – and his new feature has striking parallels with those, thematically and formally. But, for a story which ponders on late-life exhaustion and loss of curiosity and pleasure,  The Room Next Door  strikes a defiant blow against ennui, staking out new territory for the director.

Almodovar has managed to leave his linguistic comfort zone while remaining entirely, inimitably himself

After years of tantalising near-misses, the director’s first English-language feature is both a massive advance on his dud cod-Western short  Strange Way Of Life  and a 100% Almodovarian film, language notwithstanding. A study of friendship and complicity in the face of illness, it features a superbly matched duo of Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, both on authoritative and moving form, while the director’s formal and visual meticulousness is as finely honed as always – even if perilously verging on lifestyle chic.

Solemnity of theme and execution, as well as an erudite literary sensibility, will attract an older niche audience, but it certainly deserves attention as one of the director’s more searching ventures. Sony Pictures Classics is planning an awards season run in the US from December 20, while Warner Bros will release in Spain and key international territories including the UK.

Set in the US, and based on a novel by American writer Sigrid Nunez, it starts at a bookshop where author Ingrid (Moore) is signing copies of her new work, a cogitation on death. Hearing that her old friend, war reporter Martha (Swinton), is terminally ill, Ingrid visits her in hospital and the two women renew old bonds. Martha tells Ingrid about her past in a series of interpolated flashbacks, involving her teen years, her estranged daughter and a visit to Iraq – the latter awkwardly integrating with the rest. It is when Martha asks Ingrid to help her face her impending death that the meaning of the title emerges: when Martha goes, she wants Ingrid to be there, literally and figuratively, in the room next door.

The drama involves a particular challenge for its leads: while Swinton’s character is the one that crisis affects directly, Moore’s role would appear to be one that involves complicity, an ability to listen quietly and to show compassionate empathy. The two stars develop a ying-yang rapport – cool restraint, with flurries of frustration and anger in Swinton’s performance, and a tender, philosophical warmth from Moore. The two play off each other with a closeness that echoes (at some moments explicitly) the dynamics of Ingmar Bergman’s female duos.

Alessandro Nivola makes a brief appearance as a cop with a more judgmental take on life than the other characters. And John Turturro, in an engaging role as the ex-lover of both women, communicates troubled stress as a man profoundly, even hopelessly worried about the state of the planet. His role, however, is one of the film’s less convincing elements, an awkward reminder of the new social responsibility that has become part of Almodóvar’s late mode (as in  Parallel Mothers ’ earnest address of the Spanish Civil War).

Mortality has rarely looked so very elegant on screen, and the stylistic polish here may strike some as improper or diminishing of the film’s theme. That would be a somewhat puritanical view, although one might baulk at the profligacy with which the director scatters literary, filmic and artistic references throughout – notably to  The Dead  (both James Joyce’s story and the John Huston screen adaptation) and an outrageous, casual wink at Andrew Wyeth’s painting ‘Christina’s World’. But, given that this is a story about the way that, in late life, people may lose their appetites for art, pleasure and the world, the density of allusiveness here represents a boisterous resistance to the dying of the light.

Finding fresh variants on a familiar Almodóvar house style, new production designer Inbal Weinberg channels, among other elements, the colour palette of painter Edward Hopper. With Eduard Grau’s camerawork highlighting a very manifest geometric precision (one leitmotif is a certain abstract composition of shapes and colours in a doorway), this is one of the director’s most eloquently meticulous works, the perfectionist artifice only serving to amplify the film’s emotional charge by framing it so rigorously. A gently austere score by Almodóvar regular Alberto Iglesias adds meditative echoes of Mahleresque or Strauss.

Where the film will eventually stand in Almodóvar’s canon remains to be seen, but it is a substantial achievement from a director who has managed to leave his linguistic comfort zone while remaining entirely, inimitably himself. 

Production company: El Deseo 

International sales: El Deseo,  [email protected]

Producers: Agustin Almodóvar, Esther Garcia

Screenplay: Pedro Almodóvar, based on the novel  What Are You Going Through  by Sigrid Nunez

Cinematography: Eduard Grau

Production design: Inbal Weinberg

Editor: Teresa Font

Music: Alberto Iglesias

Main cast: Tilda Swinton, Julianne Moore, John Turturro, Alessandro Nivola

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‘september 5’ review: peter sarsgaard stars in a gripping newsroom thriller about the 1972 munich terrorist attacks.

Tim Fehlbaum’s third feature also stars John Magaro and Ben Chaplin as members of an ABC news crew meant to cover the Olympics but plunged into a major international crisis.

By Jordan Mintzer

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At a time when world events are instantaneously reported on social media and news sites, it’s an enlightening, altogether gripping experience to watch a film like September 5 , which depicts how a dedicated crew at ABC Sports managed to broadcast the 1972 Munich Olympics terrorist attacks live to an entire nation.

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Those enduring questions, as well as intense, lived-in performances from a terrific cast, help to make September 5 more than just a time capsule about how the news was handled in the pre-digital age; it’s an account that speaks to our time as well.

Flawlessly blending tons of archival footage from September 5, 1972 — a day that now lives in infamy for those who were alive at the time — with uncanny recreations of the ABC crew working overtime, and then some, to get it all on the air, the film focuses on the key players who fought to make it happen.

They include Roone Arledge ( Peter Sarsgaard ), the relentless ABC executive in charge of broadcasting the ’72 Munich games; Marvin ( Ben Chaplin ), the team’s smart and testy head of operations; Marianne (Leonie Benesch), a local German translator; and Geoff ( John Magaro ), a young producer meant to cover an uneventful day of boxing and volleyball, who winds up landing on something much more significant.

With the help of Marianne, who goes from being a neglected backroom interpreter to a major field reporter, Geoff and his team quickly realize that a pivotal and possibly world-changing event is under way: Palestinian terrorists, belonging to a group known as Black September, have killed two Israeli athletes and taken nearly a dozen others hostage, asking for the release of hundreds of prisoners in return.

This is all happening, of course, in Germany, at a time when the country was starting to publicly come to terms with the horrors inflicted on Jews during WWII. That history is not easily forgotten by Geoff and the others — especially Marvin, who’s the son of Holocaust victims and holds a major grudge against the Germans he comes into contact with.

Felhbaum, who wrote the script with Moritz Binder, delivers some early exposition about Marvin and the other characters during the film’s opening scenes, which kick off with an exposé depicting the ABC Sports crew behind-the-scenes. After that, September 5 quickly becomes a play-by-play account of how the Munich coverage came together, and it’s a riveting one to watch.

But that raises another quesiton: How do you get the 16mm footage back out of a zone under police lockdown? Geoff again comes up with a crazy idea, dressing up a crew member (Daniel Adeosun) as a Team U.S.A. athlete and having him sneak back and forth with a few film cans taped to his body. The exposed reels are then developed in an on-site lab, with one of them revealing the infamous black-and-white shots of a masked Black September gunman lingering outside on the balcony.

September 5 doesn’t skimp on any of the technological details — we also learn that Jennings reported events over a telephone, with the receiving end rigged to a studio mic — but Felhbaum steps back often enough to help viewers see the bigger picture at play.

What happens if Black September winds up executing one of the athletes? Should the team also capture that live on television, possibly broadcasting it back home to the parents of David Berger, an American-born weightlifter competing under the Israeli flag? (The larger Israeli-Palestinian question, however, is never raised in the film, which keeps its eyes glued to events as they unfolded back then.)

Even if you know how the Munich attacks tragically concluded, the film remains suspenseful to the end, focusing on characters trapped between their desire to accomplish their jobs and their awareness of what’s exactly at stake. Magaro ( Past Lives , First Cow ) encapsulates that dilemma perfectly — as does the rest of the cast, with talented actress Benesch ( The Teachers’ Lounge , Babylon Berlin ) playing someone in a particularly tough spot, serving as a middleman between the Germans and Americans.

While the equipment back in 1972 was limited to shaky 16mm or gargantuan studio rigs, Fehlbaum and cinematographer Markus Förderer have more gear available to them now, though they keep the camerawork over-the-shoulder and intimate to better focus on the performances. Editor Hansjörg Weissbrich expertly cuts in all the archive news footage from the time, so we only see what was really shot by the ABC Sports crew instead of recreations of those images.

The gritty and naturalistic aesthetic seems worlds away from Fehlbaum’s previous feature, an ambitious sci-fi drama called The Colony . And although the director surely took some liberties with what actually happened inside the ABC newsroom, he never loses his focus on the lasting importance of reporting real, and not fake, news in the most relevant way possible.

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