ENTERTAINMENT At the Movies

The Outfit (9/10): 105 minutes. R. Leonard Burling (Mark Rylance) is a mild-mannered British tailor whose shop is in 1950s Chicago. A gentle man, Leonard finds himself making suits for the Boyle crime gang and they use his office as a drop shop. One night as they prepare for a war, the gang suspects there is a rat in their midst. When the boss’s son, Richie Boyle (Dylan O’Brien), disappears, Leonard and his assistant, Mable (Zooey Deutch, whose comedic performance made 2019’s “Zombietown: Double Tap” a film to see), find themselves in the middle, with their lives in the balance. Rylance, who was so memorable in “Wolf Hall,” shines again. Shot entirely in Leonard’s tailor shop, it keeps you thinking up until the climax with clever twists and turns.

The Newsreader (9/10): Six-part series. TV-MA. An Australian miniseries set in 1986 captures the newsroom of a TV station with its egotistical anchor, Geoff Walters (Robert Taylor); his co-anchor, high-strung anxiety-ridden Helen Norvil (Anna Torv); her ambitious lover, Dale Jennings (Sam Reid); their mercurial boss, Lindsay Cunningham (William McInnes) and others thrown into the mix. This is a realistic look into the tensions, romances, politics and personalities of the high-pressure newsroom, and I enjoyed every second. ROKU.

Panama (5/10): 91 minutes. R. Cole Hauser is known for his role as the ranch foreman on the TV series “Yellowstone.” Here, he plays a similar character, tough but soft-spoken. Unfortunately, though, this isn’t the quality of his TV series. Hauser is assigned to get a helicopter in return for cash, and a drug deal is involved. The bad guys are all charming but dangerous. There is a lot of violence and, being Hollywood, it is unexceptional and predictable.

Measure of Revenge (5/10): 86 minutes. Melissa Leo plays Lillian, a Shakespearean actress whose son, Curtis (Jake Weary), dies suddenly and mysteriously. She gets together with Taz (Bella Thorne), his drug dealer, to find and exert revenge on his killers after the policeman, Detective Eaton (Michael Potts), rules that the death was accidental. Directed by Payfa (Peter Wong), it is so convoluted, with Lillian’s hallucinations about characters she has played coming and going, that it is less than satisfying. Particularly obtuse is how she and Taz figure out who killed her son and why. Lacking requisite tension, the ending is particularly ambiguous, leaving one to wonder why the movie was made.

The Invisible Pilot (5/10): Three-part series. NR. Gary Betzner was a crop duster who feigned his own death to become a drug smuggler. This is a fawning story of a moral pariah, with its main purpose apparently to castigate President Reagan for Iran-Contra more than three decades ago. Betzner says, “I love smuggling more than anything I’ve ever done. I felt like it was a holy thing, a service to mankind. I enjoyed lots of illegal

At the Movies

with Tony Medley

drugs. They had to be illegal because they were liberating to the minds and hearts of man. I just didn’t feel that anybody had the right to interfere with anybody’s right to self-determination. The only way to change a law, a bad law, is to break it.” He adds, “According to them, I was a law-breaking, low-life smuggler supplying drugs to the youth of America [laughs], a criminal in their eyes, and I should be locked away, exterminated.” Guess what, Gary? Most would agree. HBO Max.

Agent Game (3/10) 92 minutes. R. This is a convoluted, hard-to-follow film that is, appropriately, filmed in such utter darkness that they must have been worried about the cost of electricity to light up the set. Fittingly, the music often obscures the audio, but when you can discern the audio, you realize that that is a blessing. It’s about Harris (Dermot Mulroney), an interrogator for the CIA at a black site, who is targeted for rendition after a grilling that has gone awry. It’s one of those movies that shows you something and then jumps back to “three weeks before.” The problem is that it jumps back and forth without warning, so you might get dizzy trying to figure out what time zone you are actually in. It closes with yet another idiotic Hollywood Shootout.

Infinite Storm (3/10): 92 minutes. R. “Based on a true story,” Pam Bales (Naomi Watts) is a mountaineering rescue person. She goes out without help in a New Hampshire wilderness and finds a man (Billy Howle) sitting alone on the top of a snow-capped mountain in bad shape. The first hour is her coaxing him down the mountain; the rest is who he is. Bring your parka because the film recreates the extreme cold effectively. But is it worth 90 minutes?

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Spago to present Passover seder dinner April 17

After a pandemic-era absence, Spago Restaurant is excited to announce the return of its popular Passover Seder Dinner, a tradition started by restaurant coowner Barbara Lazaroff 38 years ago.

As always, a subsidiary purpose of the annual dinner is to raise money for charity, name-

SINCE 1938

ly MAZON, a national nonprofit working to end hunger among all faiths and backgrounds in the United States and Israel. This year, a portion of the proceeds also will go to HIAS for humanitarian aid to Ukrainian refugees.

With the coincidence of holidays, this year’s dinner takes place on Easter Sunday, April 17. Lazaroff says that the menu is traditional and the service meaningful, but the attendees always have been ecumenical.

She once said of the dinner: “Guests are more than 40 percent non-Jewish. Many people experienced their first seder at Spago, where they get a sophisticated introduction to Jewish cuisine. I feel if you open your traditions and celebrations to all, no matter your religion, background or customs, it fosters tolerance, greater harmony and closer understanding among all people.”

The dinner starts at 5:30 p.m. Attendance is limited, and those interested in attending the $255 (plus 20 percent service charge) benefit dinner should inquire as soon as possible. Call Spago at 310-3850880 or purchase or donate at sevenrooms.com/experience/ spagobh.