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In a world where amnesia has become commonplace, a solitary Greek man named Aris ( Aris Servetalis ) tries to rebuild his life after the spontaneous loss of his memory. Aris is a quiet, secretive soul with soft eyes and a palpable sense of melancholy.

After a stay in the amnesiac ward, he enrolls in a program that provides him with instructions for rejoining society. They are given to Aris via tape recorder, as a doctor’s voice guides him through a “program” that consists of normal activities like going to the movies, dressing up for Halloween, and even making friends. After each experience, he must take a polaroid and put it in a photo album for the doctors to observe. 

Throughout it all Aris remains mysteriously detached from all these activities, living life as a spectator. This starts to change when he meets another amnesiac–an outgoing woman named Anna ( Sofia Georgovassili ) who is also going through this “program.” She approaches her assignments with a childlike annoyance, uninterested in the emotional nuances of each interaction.

For a little while, Christos Nikou ’s feature directorial debut "Apples" feels like one of those films about a lonely man who falls in love with a fascinating woman and regains his zest for life. Aris’ time with Anna is reminiscent of the relationships in American independent dramas like " Garden State " and Cameron Crowe ’s " Elizabethtown ." He’s a quiet man, she’s an opinionated woman—it’s a dynamic in media audiences know well. But Nikou has loftier ambitions for "Apples, " commenting on the shallow nature of their interactions. Despite his condition, Aris seems to be actively avoiding an intimate relationship with other people and his own mind. Anna is someone he can disappear into, with the image of a relationship and no actual depth behind it. Is Anna even attracted to Aris or is he just agreeable enough to be her companion for a short time? Does Aris like Anna, or is he simply afraid of being fully alone?

The only thing Aris—and by extension the audience—knows for sure is his love for apples, which he is seen frequently eating throughout the film. In a way, this is his most intimate relationship. We don’t know the full story behind his attachment but that is where our curiosity settles. With its connections to health, wellness and memory, apples are Aria’s main tether to the man he used to be. 

The influence of Spike Jonze , Charlie Kaufman , and fellow Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos is clear throughout "Apples" with its meta-commentary on the absurdity of human nature and the awkwardness of love. The film takes its time, allowing us to live in every quiet moment with Aris. Slowly it becomes clear that there is a performed detachment, squashing any strong emotions before they fully reveal themselves. It’s a deeply human coping mechanism that highlights the masculine fear of vulnerability and opening oneself up to a pandora’s box of deep pain that begs to be dealt with.

Despite the existential depth of its themes, "Apples" has a somewhat whimsical tone with its playful use of music, light, and everyday pop culture references. With our protagonist being an amnesiac, it allows us to enjoy small details like learning the plot of James Cameron ’s " Titanic " or doing the twist at a retro style club night and having a bathroom hookup for what feels like the first time.

Aris exists in a sort of analog future devoid of social media but still somewhat detached and superficial in its engagement with social life and communal experiences. Life is a collection of rituals, each rooted in a broad pop-culture based understanding of what it means to be authentically human. Each of Aria’s activities could be easily described in a pop song, with vague enough details to feel universal. 

Both Servetalis and Georgovassili give skilled, authentic performances as two people with wildly different approaches to dealing with their loss of memory. Anna’s energetic, unfiltered reactions to the world are balanced by Aris’ restrained pursuit of understanding. Together, they are perfect opposites, with the shaky nature of their relationship adding richness to their shared moments.

In his first outing as a feature filmmaker, Nikou blends subtle comedy and tragedy to create a quietly moving cinematic experience. "Apples" is a film about what it means to be alive and part of the wider social structure of the world. It’s about the ways we distract ourselves from the memories that cause us the deepest pain. One cannot be sustained by the momentary joys alone, and no degree of documentation can substitute the authentic feelings of these initial moments. Life is fleeting, but the only way to find more joy is by accepting the intensity of pain and loss. If most experiences are universal, then existence is all about the details.

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Film credits.

Apples (2022)

Aris Servetalis as Aris

Sofia Georgovassili as Anna

• Christos Nikou
• Stavros Raptis

Cinematographer

• Bartosz Swiniarski
• Giorgos Zafeiris

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In the Greek film 'Apples,' a mysterious condition leaves people without memories

Justin Chang

Aris Servetalis plays a man who inexplicably loses his memory in Apples. Courtesy of Cohen Media Group hide caption

Aris Servetalis plays a man who inexplicably loses his memory in Apples.

I first watched Apples about two years ago, several months into COVID lockdown. At the time, the movie felt eerily of the moment, since its story takes place during a pandemic. In this pandemic, however, people aren't spreading a deadly virus; they're inexplicably losing their memories.

We see this happen in the opening scenes, when an unnamed middle-aged man (played by Aris Servetalis) leaves his Athens apartment one day, gets on a bus and falls asleep. When he wakes up, he can no longer remember his name, where he lives or where he was going.

He isn't carrying any ID, and so he winds up in a hospital where doctors examine him and wait for family members or friends to come and identify him. But no one shows up, and so the man is enrolled in a government program designed to help him and the many others like him cope with their amnesia.

He's placed in an apartment and given money for expenses. Each day he plays a cassette tape — the movie seems to be taking place pre-internet — and listens to a voice assigning him a specific task like "ride a bicycle" or "go watch a horror movie," in hopes that these experiences will help jog his memory. He's instructed to take Polaroids of these experiences and keep them in a scrapbook, which comes to resemble an extremely analog Instagram account.

It all sounds bizarre on paper. But Apples , the first feature from the director and co-writer Christos Nikou, unfolds with an understated deadpan wit that makes even its weirder touches seem plausible, even logical. At times it reminded me of some of the brilliant absurdist satires, like Dogtooth and Attenberg , that have put Greek cinema on the map over the past two decades.

But Nikou has a gentler, more melancholy touch. The script leaves a lot to the imagination: We learn no more about the cause or the outcome of the pandemic than we do about the avian attacks in Hitchcock's The Birds . We also don't learn much about the main character's background; there are no flashbacks to his earlier life and there's no voiceover narration, either.

But while the character is quiet and emotionally reserved by nature, Servetalis, the actor playing him, is a mesmerizing screen presence. Sometimes Nikou shoots him in close-up, and sometimes from a distance, creating a ghostly, disorienting effect. You can't stop watching him, whether he's walking the streets of an eerily underpopulated Athens or slicing and eating apples, his favorite fruit.

At one point he befriends a woman, played by Sofia Georgovassili, who's also trying to recover her memory through the government program. An attraction forms, but then quickly dissipates; their amnesia is more of a hindrance than a bond. Without their memories and their identities, it's hard for these two lonely, drifting souls to get on the same wavelength.

Speaking of memory: Watching Apples for the second time in two years, I was startled by how vividly I remembered much of it. In particular, I haven't stopped mentally replaying one extraordinarily moving scene in which our hero goes to a crowded dance club and begins doing the twist, losing himself in the music and the moment. Is he suddenly remembering how he used to dance, or is he blissfully surrendering himself to his amnesia? It's not immediately clear, and it's also not the only such ambiguous moment .

At times, our hero seems to experience flashes of clarity. He remembers his old address. He recognizes a dog from his old neighborhood. Is his memory coming back? But if so, why doesn't he share this good news with anyone, almost as if he preferred to stay in the dark? Is there some other explanation for what's going on?

I won't give anything away, especially since I'm not entirely sure myself. But as it unfolds, Apples seems to become a story about romantic loss as well as memory loss. Sometimes it suggests a lower-key version of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind , and like that tale of lost love, it asks whether some memories are best left forgotten.

As strange and singular as Apples is, its protagonist's condition hits on something universal. It's about how we deal with grief and loneliness, especially when memory becomes more of a curse than a blessing.

Review: Memory and identity vanish in soothing Greek existential drama ‘Apples’

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Memory, by choice or by accident, fails the aching characters in director Christos Nikou’s unassumingly superb first feature “Apples,” executive produced by Cate Blanchett , in which an epidemic of sudden amnesia sweeps across Greece.

Set in a nondescript past before smartphones became ubiquitous and analog technology still reigned (presumably the late 1990s, based on a movie referenced), the quiet film unfurls in a boxy aspect ratio and submerged in an opaque color palette of grays and light blues. The aesthetic choices exude a visual serenity that matches the story’s overall restrained tone.

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Expressionless, middle-aged Aris (Aris Servetalis) seems to be the latest victim of the unexplained affliction. Found on the bus sans documentation and with no family to claim him, he becomes an unidentified patient and begins a series of tests to determine what, if anything, he can recall. Like him, many others can’t remember who they were.

The illness not only removes all personal details from a person’s mind, but most information on how the world operates and its social norms. However, in Aris’ case, his predilection for the titular apples appears to suspiciously have been spared in the process.

To deal with those in his situation, the government has set up a program to help them start anew. Via cassette tapes, Aris receives a list of quintessential life experiences and skills he must pursue and document with a Polaroid camera. Some, like riding a bicycle or driving rely on muscle memory, while others push Aris out of his interpersonal comfort zone.

There’s a humorous absurdity to the tasks that seems to comment on our modern obsession with registering every moment with a camera. In a photo album, all these printed images of Aris’ new, forcefully constructed life accumulate like a tactile Instagram profile.

Greek film ‘Apples’ explores the role of memory in human existence

‘Could it be that we are the things we don’t forget? Because in a way, we are our memories,’ asks director Christos Nikou.

Jan. 12, 2021

One night at the movie theater, he comes across Anna (Sofia Georgovassili), another amnesiac also completing these pillars of the human condition to build a new identity. As a friendship develops between them, more questions emerge about who Aris and Anna are.

Gentle in their narrative approach, Nikou and co-writer Stavros Raptis play it close to the vest, letting the subtext and small shifts in the performance relay nods to its ideas on loss and reinvention. In their impeccable screenplay, one line of dialogue can inconspicuously but intensely expand our understanding of the offbeat premise and of Aris’ motivations.

There are other lyrical touches transmitted in thematically relevant imagery: Aris dresses up as an astronaut for a costume party, reaffirming in an unspoken manner the desire one can feel to leave behind all that you know, to explore new ground, to see one’s life from the outside in, like leaving the planet and looking back at it from outer space.

Even if one considers “Apples” part of the so-called Greek Weird Wave, such a subtly thoughtful and soothing approach to probe at existential concerns, rather than being predictably cynical or violent, makes it stand out.

That Nikou began his career as an assistant director to Yorgos Lanthimos on “Dogtooth,” while Servetalis appeared in that director’s 2011 film “Alps,” might inflate those assumptions about the collective bizarreness and deadpan humor that appears to characterize most of the Hellenic productions that reach our shores.

Late in the picture, in one of the film’s most surprisingly poignant scenes, Aris dances with abandon at a bar as if he has, for a moment or forever, forgotten about shame, reveling in a blissfully uninhibited state. It’s then that Nikou suggests the benefits of becoming a blank slate, unlearning fear and all other imposed social burdens. If no one knows who you were, not even you, then you can be a truer version of yourself.

Yet, what makes “Apples” a delicately affecting gem not to be missed is that the more its layers peel away, the more that apparently inconsequential facts like one’s favorite fruit gain importance as we examine who we become when we no longer have our baggage, both the beautiful and the sorrowful.

There’s a comforting benevolence to not recalling the pain once felt. If we could, we might agree to have all trauma wiped away, and have selective memory only treasuring the good parts of the past. But in reality, we tend to cling vehemently to what no longer is, because joy and suffering are often intertwined, components of a continuum that gives us meaning.

Forgetting can be a blessing, but perhaps the hurt that comes with not letting go is the price for having had a life worth remembering.

In Greek with English subtitles Not Rated Running time: 1 hours, 31 minutes Playing: Laemmle Monica Film Center, Santa Monica; Laemmle Playhouse 7, Pasadena

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At a time when memory and identity seem inextricably linked to social media (and the photographs along with it), a collective consciousness has been built around the outward appearance of the self.  Apples   asks what happens when the idea of the self is erased, when nothing is left and we have to build a new identity in an era where the very idea of it could become lost within the collective. The Greek film tackles memory and identity with a quiet rumination on what it means to be alive when those things are so susceptible to being lost. An effective portrait of ambiguity accompanied by a stellar lead performance,  Apples '  contemplative nature hides nuanced questions about the modern age underneath its placid surface.

Apples  follows Aris (Aris Servetalis) a man who, at the beginning of the film, wakes up with no memory of who he is and no identification to give him an idea of who he could have been. There's a pandemic sweeping the country (and quite possibly the world), one where people fall asleep and wake up with no memories. Sometimes their loved ones find them and set out to restore some semblance of identity, but those who go unclaimed are left to drift in a world populated with other amnesiacs and advertisements for a medicine called Memory+. In an attempt to rebuild some sort of life, Aris joins the "Learning How to Live" program where he will be given a place to live and instructions on how to, essentially, build a new identity.

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These instructions come in the form of recordings that tell Aris to do something (what may be considered a quintessential life experience) and document it via Polaroid camera. These experiences make up a new identity for Aris and these memories, documented in a scrapbook, are meant to stand in for the ones that are now missing. It's an interesting conceit, one handled with nuance and care. Aris is game for whatever the doctors throw his way, especially when it involves doing it with Anna (Sofia Georgovassili), a woman who is also part of the program. Together, they build a sort of collective memory, a book of shared (and unshared) experiences that may prepare them to live on their own one day.

Aris is childlike in his innocence, a hesitant but willful participant in these strange circumstances. Through these experiences,  Apples  is subtly asking questions about the things that make up who we are. Is it these prescribed experiences, like the task where Aris is told to go to a strip club and take a photo with one of the dancers, robotic-like in his interactions with the woman? Or is it in the spontaneity of everyday life, like when he and Anna struggle to find their car and accidentally set off the alarm of another? Aris and Anna run away from the vehicle with glee, happier than they looked while doing any of the tasks that were required of them.

Most of the time, Aris is almost a cipher; this feels intentional, as if viewers are supposed to imprint themselves onto him, imagining what it would be like to be in his situation. Apples  also makes the audience question the very meaning of loss. After all, what did someone really lose if they can’t even remember what it was? This kind of ambiguous loss hovers over the film like a spectral presence; it's not quite grief, but it is something immeasurable. Sometimes, Aris seems as if he doesn’t even want to remember anything at all. His fascination with apples begins early on in the film — it’s one of the first things he eats in the hospital after waking up and it is something he associates with the first act of kindness shown to him after his hospital roommate gifts him one. Aris proceeds to spend much of the movie buying copious amounts of apples when he goes to the store. When a grocer eventually tells Aris that apples are helpful with memory, he stops buying them, switching to oranges instead.

Apples  culminates in what may be Aris' most difficult task yet, climaxing with an emotional ambiguity that belies what the doctors are ill-equipped to see: These experiences Aris is supposed to go through aren't what makes him who he is.  Apples   doesn't even seek to answer that question and while that could be infuriating for some viewers, spoon-feeding answers to unanswerable questions would be disingenuous and the film knows this. Instead, it leaves the unknowable as is, mimicking the phantom loss that permeates the film and leaves the viewer moved by what has transpired.

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Apples  releases in theaters on June 24. The film 91 minutes long and is currently unrated.

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‘Apples’ Review: Greek Memory Game Plays Like ‘Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV: The Movie’

A metaphorical plague of amnesia cases finds real-world resonance in Greek director Christos Nikou's gently absurdist look at loss and reinvention.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

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Christos Nikou couldn’t have anticipated the almost unrecognizable world into which he would be releasing his debut feature, “ Apples ,” but it’s a testament to the strength of this lonely and aloof tragicomedy’s central allegory that it adapts so well to our pear-shaped times. What might have been the latest oddity of the Greek Weird Wave — or else a surreal collection of live-action “The Far Side” cartoons — instead feels soulfully relevant as reality aligns with the speculative world Nikou imagined.

Tipped to play the fall-fest trifecta of Telluride, Venice and Toronto, “Apples” takes place amid what sounds suspiciously like a pandemic — an unexplained spike in amnesia cases — although the scientists and media are predictably unclear about what’s happening. This isn’t the near future but a sort of eerily simplified recent past, a nostalgically analog civilization before cellphones and social media, when human connections had to be forged the old-fashioned way. Something is selectively wiping people’s memories, although in certain cases, it can be a blessing to forget, like clearing the cookies from one’s browsing history.

Not everyone’s as keen on their recall as you-know-who, whose peculiar “person, woman, man, camera, TV” refrain suggests an ideal tagline for “Apples.” The person in this equation is played by bearded, blank-faced Aris Servetalis, a sullen Athens man who can’t seem to remember his name. Early on, he’s discovered sitting vacant-eyed on the bus, evidently a victim of this spontaneous amnesia phenomenon. He has no identification, nor any loved ones to claim him, so the authorities take him to the nearby Neurological Hospital, where doctors working in the Disturbed Memory Dept. have developed an experimental technique to help patients begin a new life.

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The approach operates like “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” in reverse, and indeed, there are traces of Charlie Kaufman’s influence on Nikou’s understatedly absurdist script: The doctor prescribes the man a series of tasks — riding a bike, fishing for carp, paying for a lap dance — and a Polaroid camera with which to chronicle them. The resulting snapshots offer a wry commentary on 21st-century selfie culture, documenting what happened without any trace of enjoyment or enthusiasm. Will doing these things spark his memory? They’re certainly funny-sad to witness, like a Kafka character performing a silent-film comedy routine, as he awkwardly struggles with various situations.

As part of the program, our protagonist also gets a new apartment, which feels as forlorn and empty as the inside of his head. There’s more going on up there than lead actor Servetalis lets on, although it’s more effective for audiences to be left to speculate as he sits, eating an apple or staring off into the distance, like one of those melancholy humans lost in thought in an Edward Hopper painting.

At times, the man’s solitude is interrupted by stabs of recognition — not flashbacks (the movie remains stubbornly exterior to his experience throughout), but behavior that suggests some of his memories might still be intact. Of course, he’s actively building new ones through the hospital’s “New Identity” program. During a recommended outing to the cinema, he encounters a fellow patient, a woman (Sofia Georgovasili) who’s a few steps farther along in her recovery. She invites him to assist in her activities, which has the peculiar effect of allowing someone with no memory a chance to sample his future, since he’ll be getting the same assignments a few days later.

Will they fall in love? The question hovers as Nikou shows these two damaged people getting to know each other. The woman seems more responsive, more alive and open to the world, although there’s an explanation as to why the man appears so depressed, so reluctant to form connections. It’s treated as a twist, and sure enough, the movie deserves a second look with this new information in mind — unless your memory is good enough to replay it all in your head.

Nikou comes to this project having worked as an assistant director on Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Dogtooth” and Richard Linklater’s “Before Midnight,” but his voice feels distinct, more mature than those found in the disruptive debuts of his Greek peers. “Apples” has a ruminative quality that’s fairly uncommon in modern cinema, leaving space for audiences to project themselves into the man’s situation. But it also hides key information in the space between cuts, misleading us in ways that are consistent with the characters’ unreliable state of mind.

Overcast, underpopulated and squeezed into a subconsciously oppressive 4:3 frame, the movie isn’t meant to be realistic (authorities would surely have some other way of identifying people struck by amnesia, whether by fingerprints or DNA). Rather, it tickles the imagination, inviting us to consider the prospect of being given a new beginning, and whether starting from scratch would be such a terrible thing.

Reviewed online, Los Angeles, Sept. 1, 2020. (In Venice, Telluride film festivals.) Running time: 90 MIN. (Original title: “Mila”)

• Production: (Greece-Poland-Slovenia) A Boo Prods., Lava Films production, with the support of the Greek Film Center, Polish Film Institute, ERT, EKOME, Creative Europe Media Program, in co-production with Perfo Prod., Musou Music Group. (Int'l sales: Alpha Violet, Paris.) Producers: Iraklis Mavroidis, Angelo Venetis, Aris Dagios, Mariusz Wlodarski, Christos Nikou. Executive producer: Nikos Smpiliris. Co-producers: Ales Pavlin, Andrej Stritof, Stefanos Ganos, Stavros Raptis.
• Crew: Director: Christos Nikou. Screenplay: Christos Nikou, Stavros Raptis. Camera: Bartosz Swiniarski. Editor: George Zafiris. Music: The Boy.
• With: Aris Servetalis, Sofia Georgovasili, Anna Kalaitzidou, Argiris Bakirtzis. (Greek dialogue)

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‘Apples’ is a movie about amnesia that’s, well, hard to forget

A man wakes up on a bus without knowing who he is and enters a strange therapy program to rebuild his identity

There’s something going around in Greek filmmaker Christos Nikou’s “Apples,” a poetic fable about grief, memory and identity. Part darkly funny, part heartbreaking, it’s set during a kind of epidemic of amnesia, in which people suddenly forget who they are and where they are going.

There are enough of them that the hospital where victims are taken has a special program for those who aren’t quickly claimed by worried relatives (who may themselves be stricken): The patients are set up in apartments, with ill-fitting secondhand clothing and a cassette player, on which they listen to daily instructions from a therapist that — gradually, and somewhat surreally — reintroduce them to life and maybe help them reconnect with a sense of their vanished personality, if not an entirely new one.

Ride a bike. Jump off a diving board. Go to a costume party, a nightclub. Flirt, have sex. Document everything with Polaroids. Befriend a dying person.

Hold on. That last one is a fairly advanced lesson. But it’s what the film’s unnamed protagonist (played by Aris Servetalis) eventually works his way up to, after waking up on a bus one night with no idea how he got there. Over the course of his therapy, he befriends a fellow amnesiac (Sofia Georgovassili).

But this isn’t exactly a love story. Nor is it exactly sci-fi, although it has a dystopian flavor, as if disconnected from the world we know by a matter of inches, not miles. It seems to be set in the here and now, but there are no cellphones, no social media to create the disposable memories that are so ubiquitous in our real world. If it seems odd that so many people leave home without identification — even, in the case of afflicted motorists, a driver’s license — well, “Apples,” which was written by Nikou with Stavros Raptis, is an odd and often inexplicable thing. Its title refers to the food that the main character eats constantly. Perhaps a buried sense memory?

His amnesia isn’t total. He can remember the name of his neighbor’s dog, how to bake a cake and the lyrics to “Sealed With a Kiss,” the oft-covered, mushy 1960s love song best recalled from Bobby Vinton’s version. He even, at one point, seems to accidentally remember his old apartment number before he forgets it again.

But it’s his brief relationship with a dying man in a hospital that triggers something inside him. This epidemic, it seems, is caused not by a zombie virus or alien spores, but loss. And when his protective shell of forgetting eventually cracks wide open, like a walnut, the memories — and the pain — flood back, in a way that’s achingly apparent, even on this deadpan actor’s face.

At times, “Apples” feels superficially slight, even — pardon me — forgettable. But Nikou, in his feature directorial debut after working as an assistant director on sets with such filmmakers as Yorgos Lanthimos (“Dogtooth”) and Richard Linklater (“Before Midnight”), has pulled off a neat little trick: He’s told a story that, for reasons that are more easily felt than explained, is hard to shake off.

Unrated. At Landmark’s E Street Cinema. Contains some mature thematic material and sexual references. In Greek with subtitles. 91 minutes.

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‘Apples’ Review: An Amnesia Pandemic Strikes Athens in a Tender but Flavorless Debut

David ehrlich.

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2020 Venice Film Festival . Cohen Media Group releases the film in theaters on Friday, June 24.

Pandemics come in a handful of different varieties — some we accurately diagnose, and some we don’t even notice. A highly contagious outbreak of coronavirus (to pick a random example) leaves behind a trail of bodies that makes it rather easy for right-thinking people to recognize the disease for what it is. Other global health crises, however, can be harder to spot. The ones that poison our mental health. The ones that disguise themselves as progress. The ones that seduce us into forgetting who we are.

Set in an analog and uncertain version of the recent past (or perhaps in a parallel universe where the iPhone was never invented), Christos Nikou’s “Apples” begins in the midst of a slow-rolling plague that spreads mysteriously and leaves its victims with severe amnesia. Details are scant, but the crisis has been around long enough that people in Greece have learned to live around it; the healthy go about their normal business, while the sick are corralled into the “New Identity” program the government hosts at local hospitals and advertises on the radio in between Simon and Garfunkel songs.

It’s not as nefarious as it sounds. In fact, the Disturbed Memory Department is more humane than most Americans could imagine — it’s like a rehab for remembering. Or at least it would be if people could remember anything. Instead, “unclaimed” patients like Aris (Aris Servetalis) are tasked with building new identities, a process that involves following the bizarre instructions his doctors record for him on a cassette tape and taking Polaroids as proof that he followed through on each increasingly specific assignment. Ride a bike. Go to a costume party. Meet a girl in a bar, have sex with her in the bathroom, and then leave without saying goodbye.

If Nikou is never shy about following in Yorgos Lanthimos’ footsteps (the first-time helmer served as assistant director on “ Dogtooth ”), that signature deadpan strangeness only grows more pronounced as “Apples” starts to ripen. But this dry modern fable is softer and more delicate than “Alps,” “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” and the rest of its unmistakable blood relatives. It’s hazy where Lanthimos’ work is razor-sharp; vague instead of violently literal. There’s even a twinkly music box-like score that wouldn’t be out of place in a Drake Doremus movie (composer The Boy gilding the images with string flourishes that sound like synapses fusing together).

But if Nikou’s debut seems poised to become the most opaque movie ever made about the mind-obliviating corruption of digital technology — less a screed than a gently urgent reminder to exercise our memories instead of outsourcing them to the cloud — the film, like it’s drifting hero, struggles to forge an identity of its own.

Aris’ participation in the New Identity program will be familiar enough to anyone who’s seen “The Favourite.” He’s bashing his head against the living room wall of his distressed Athens flat the first time we meet him, handsome yet blank in a way that makes it hard to tell if he’s already forgotten who he is. From there, Aris falls asleep on a bus, and wakes up at the end of the route with no idea of where, what, or why he is where, what, and why he is. The authorities know exactly where to take someone in that condition.

The kind but clinical doctors who work in the Disturbed Memory Department insist that Aris’ family will find him soon enough and sort things out, but no one shows up. A taste for apples is Aris’ only connection to the person he was — some things are hardwired, but the tantalizing aftertaste of an unknown past has a way of making people hungry for a satisfaction they may never have. The doctors promise Aris that he can make a new beginning, but the implication is that he has no other choice.

Much of this terse and coiled film is devoted to watching Aris live out that reality, both alone and with other people like him. The script is fractured into cute, largely self-contained scenes that sketch out what life would be like for a man without a memory. None of the exercises that Aris is prescribed seem all that scientific, but most of them are endearing. At one point he attends a costume party with his fellow patients; everyone is dressed up like astronauts and superheroes, but even they don’t know who they are to begin with. Later, Aris visits a strip club and awkwardly asks a topless dancer to pose for a Polaroid selfie so that he can prove he was there.

In the movie’s best moments, the veneer of Lanthimos-like affectlessness that’s layered over Aris’ behavior reflects the sterility of our own social media use — of living in a world where personal identity has blurred into a series of symbolic disguises, and most of us have been conditioned to do things just for the sake of documenting them. “Apples” conveys a sense, palpable but unspoken, that emotion is the crucial difference between data and memory, and distancing ourselves from the feeling of our experiences makes us liable to forget who we are.

At times, it seems as if Nikou is trying to peel back the layers of Lanthimos’ ultra-blunt comic methodology and explore how it reflects our growing inability to feel things, as if the goal-oriented directives of modern living have dried up all the dopamine our brains can produce. The film’s delightful meet-cute takes place at a screening of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” where Aris notices a fellow amnesiac (Sofia Georgovasili) scared out of her mind and hiding under her chair. Later, she tells him the plot of “Titanic,” and admits that it made her cry her eyes out.

Getting to see every movie as if for the first time is something of a silver lining for these lost people who can’t feel anything of their own. Emotional responses — even terror and heartbreak — are what get under our skin and make us who we are. If this Charlie Kaufman-tinged fairy tale has a moral, it’s that people are the sum of the things they feel and don’t forget. Erasing painful memories or living at a remove from our own reality might seem appealing, but that numbness amounts to a kind of self-annihilation.

These ideas bob up and down throughout the short course of “Apples,” and Servetalis’ searching and cipher-like performance suggests a restless internal tension as Aris finds himself confronted by the vague possibility of remembering who he was. Is? But the movie, like its protagonist, struggles to navigate a path through a whole lot of nothing. We’re eventually given hard and clear answers about what happened to Aris before his amnesia, and even what might have prompted it, but it’s hard to elevate a story above the level of parable when its basic conceit prevents the hero from becoming a recognizable person until the final moments.

This is a movie full of lovely and lilting moments that invite you to reflect on the value of your own painful memories, and yet precious little of it is specific enough in a way that makes it hard to forget. Listening to someone relay the plot of “Titanic” is as acutely emotional as it gets. Odd bits stick out here and there — watching Aris dance an eerily slow version of the twist alone in his hospital bedroom suggests all sorts of buried meaning, but hints are all we get. They could belong to anybody. While Nikou skins this story with great tenderness, “Apples” ends without ever finding its core.

“Apples” premiered in the Orizzonti section of the 2020 Venice Film Festival.

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Apples review: Accidental COVID allegory is Lanthimos Lite

Any film about a mysterious malady sweeping the globe is bound to look timely through the lens of the here and now. But the droll, Greek, half-comic Twilight Zone allegory Apples wears its topicality unintentionally. Shot slightly before the global outbreak of COVID-19, this first feature from writer-director Christos Nikou operates through pure, unhappy accident as a premonition of how life with the virus has turned out, two-plus years into a pandemic with no end in sight. It captures, eerily and specifically, the way that so much of the world has almost resigned itself to the viral threat, accepting it as a new normal.

The fictional disease of Apples attacks only the mind. It’s transmissible amnesia, robbing the infected of long-term memories. Early on, we see a man sitting on a curb, the door to his nearby car wide open. “Wait here,” a bystander tells him when he confesses ignorance about how he got there. It’s an instruction everyone’s become used to issuing — the official protocol when you stumble upon someone afflicted with this bad case of forgetfulness.

Aris (Aris Servetalis), bearded and haunted, awakes on a bus to find himself among the cognitively rebooted. His name, his occupation, where he lives — it has all disappeared into the mental ether. Unclaimed by any loved ones and in possession of no identifying documents, Aris is assigned a number and remanded to the custody of the Disturbed Memory Department, a wing of the so-called Neurological Hospital. Here, he’s enrolled in a program designed to, essentially, reteach him how to live. Through a series of cassette tapes with daily instructions, like “ride a bicycle” or “go to a strip club,” he’s offered substitutions for the memories he’s lost. If our identity is shaped by our experiences, can a new one be forged through a bucket list of tasks?

Aris, whose enduring taste for the titular fruit supplies the film its title, staggers through his regimen in a lobotomy-patient daze. The faint absurdity of the program, codifying spontaneous pleasures into a self-help routine, betrays that Apples isn’t quite set in the world as we know it. Where it really takes place is Yorgos Lanthimos Land, that alternate dimension of poker-faced absurdism governed by the warped mind behind The Lobster , The Favourite , and Dogtooth . Nikou served as assistant director on the last of those darkest of dark comedies, an experience that evidently proved quite influential. Carefully shot in the boxy 4:3 aspect ratio, his first stab at a movie of his own is essentially a kinder, gentler, sadder variation on his fellow Greek director’s twisted portraits of society’s cruel design.

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At this point, Nikou lacks his mentor’s precision. His sensibility is a touch more sentimental, ballasting the awkward alien chitchat—here justified by the premise of personalities wiped completely clean—with an ever-present ruefulness. Still, what Apples is after is certainly in the same bizarro-world ballpark as Dogtooth and The Lobster : A satire of social conditioning, of the way our lives are shaped by rules or plans made by others. The film’s critique extends to a light jab at social media’s role in blueprinting existence. Part of the New Identity program, after all, is the insistence that Aris photographically document each new benchmark, snapping Polaroids of his progress like the quintessential head-damaged hero of memory-loss cinema, Leonard Shelby . Can we truly live if we’re always angling for the perfect shot, turning every day into an opportunity for selfies ?

Still, Apples is too subdued, too committed to its sustained note of sad-sack deadpan. to ever transform into a screed. The film takes its tonal cues from the foggy melancholia of its protagonist, a husk of a man by design. It’s hard not to wish, occasionally, for the film to break out of its dutifully maintained torpor, maybe to get at some feelings more volatile than a pod-person acceptance of going totally tabula rasa. Wouldn’t it make you angry and scared to entirely forget who you are, even if you didn’t know what you were missing about yourself? At a certain point, the emotional flatline of the film begins to feel like a failure of imagination, settling for a consistency of tragicomic mood over the messier possibilities of the conceit.

Nikou does have one complication up his sleeve — the question, again à la Memento , of just how involuntary Aris’s condition really is. As he begins to pal around with a fellow victim of the disease, the possibility of romance arising, evidence mounts that his memories may not be entirely gone. Are they recoverable? Or is there a more obvious explanation here, linked to the life Aris has lost? Maybe, depending on your circumstances, forgetting everything would be more of a gift than a curse. After the last couple of years of mass death and loneliness, that’s a notion many in the audience might find plenty persuasive.

Apples is now playing in select theaters . For more reviews and writing by A.A. Dowd, visit his  Authory page .

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Director Karen Maine’s new comedy, Rosaline, works overtime to find a new perspective in one of the most well-known stories of all time. The tale in question? None other than William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, which remains so iconic that its influence continues to be felt today. As its title suggests, Maine's film does not place its focus on either of that play’s eponymous, star-crossed lovers, though, but rather on the woman who had originally captured young Romeo’s heart before he set his eyes for the first time on her cousin, Juliet.

In Shakespeare’s play, Rosaline is mentioned frequently but never given an actual line of dialogue. Here, the character is reimagined as a brash and determined young woman who refuses to simply accept Romeo’s change of heart. Instead, she sets out to win him back through any means necessary. The film, in other words, attempts to build a fairly common rom-com plot out of the most iconic love story of all time. Rosaline, to its credit, mostly succeeds at doing so, thanks in no small part to the fiery and charismatic performance given by its young lead.

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With its lush sets and perpetually probing camera, Decision to Leave looks and moves like any other Park Chan-wook film, but it reverberates with the same untempered passion present in Golden Age noirs like In a Lonely Place and Double Indemnity. Unlike those two films, though, which center their stories around a hot-tempered screenwriter and naïve insurance salesman, respectively, Decision to Leave follows another common noir archetype: the lovelorn detective (played here by Park Hae-il).

In the film’s opening moments, Hae-jun, the detective in question, lands a case involving the mysterious death of a recreational rock climber. The case, in typical noir fashion, leads to Hae-jun crossing paths with Seo-rae (a spellbinding Tang Wei), his victim’s gorgeous but eccentric widow. Perturbed by how disinterested she is in unpacking her abusive husband’s death, Hae-jun begins to tail and spy on Seo-rae, unaware that doing so will only further intensify his attraction to her. As far as noir plots go, this is about as familiar as it gets. With its nods to Hitchcock and lightly self-aware attitude, Decision to Leave makes it clear that it doesn’t mind treading the same narrative terrain as so many of the noir classics that have come before it, either.

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Apples review – quirky amnesia mystery is funnily forgettable

Christos Nikou’s black comedy about a plague of forgetfulness is intriguingly absurd but not as memorable as it thinks it is

H ere is an enigmatically quirky Greek film about identity and memory, much talked about and talked up on the festival circuit. It’s the work of debut feature film-maker Christos Nikou, who cut his teeth as second assistant director on Yorgos Lanthimos’s pioneeringly weird Dogtooth in 2009 – that seductive film whose bizarre stylings ushered in an entire Greek new wave of cine-absurdism. This is a movie in that recognisable style, and I incidentally think the Greek auteurs really have brought absurdism back in ways not seen the first wave of Beckett, Ionescu and NF Simpson in the theatre. Apples is intriguingly deadpan and sometimes funny, though I couldn’t help feeling that it is also contrived, and even a bit flippant in a middleweight-arthouse mode, not quite as profound as it thinks but certainly displaying some impressively choreographed mannerisms of dysfunction. In Athens of the present day, or the near future, there is a new disease: amnesia. People are suddenly forgetting everything about themselves. Aris Servetalis plays Aris, a man who lives gloomily on his own; one day he leaves his flat, goes to sleep on a bus, and blearily wakes with no clue as to who he is. He is admitted to hospital, where no family member comes forward to take him away, and finds himself snacking on apples, trying to remember if he ever liked them or not. He is finally checked into an experimental new programme for amnesiacs who are languishing like unclaimed parcels in the lost property office. He will be moved into a featureless little apartment and coached in how to develop an entirely new identity.

Aris is given stimulating little tasks by his psycho-medical minders – ride a bike, go to a fancy dress party, go to the cinema – and takes selfie Polaroids along the way, to create a little photo album of his growing new personality. These tasks escalate in emotional difficulty and importance. And then he bumps into Anna (Sofia Georgovassili), who is undergoing the same treatment. An extraordinary moment comes when they are dancing together at a party when she asks him to follow her outside. Are they falling in love? Is Aris’s destiny being rebooted in ways that the medics don’t know about? Then Aris gets a certain new task that puts it all into perspective. What is amusing about Apples is that it shows how Aris and Anna, in undertaking these new tasks, are not like children exactly; they are more like students, and this is their existential freshers’ week, warily making friends, going to social events, trying on personalities. They have only the haziest idea as to what they can and can’t do. Anna takes Aris for a drive in a car and, being unsure about braking, simply drives it as carefully as she can into a tree. So what is it all about? Apples is many ways resembles Lanthimos’s 2011 film Alps , about people impersonating the dead for the benefit of grieving relatives. There is the same sense of something superficial and performative about identity. But this film’s amnesia need not be figurative to be relevant. Dementia is one of the great issues of the age. And yet, for me, it is not being taken seriously enough to count as any sort of meditation on that, and Nikou introduces a narrative tension about whether the condition is as permanent or incurable as the doctors think. (Oddly, there is another film out this week, Chad Hartigan’s tragi-romantic drama Little Fish , with a similar premise — and for all its faults, that film is more candid about the real wave of un-quirky and un-deadpan horror and panic that an actual outbreak of amnesia would cause.) Watching Apples, I found myself thinking of Fernando Meirelles’s little-liked 2008 film Blindness , adapted from José Saramago’s novel, in which there is an outbreak of contagious blindness. Nikou’s film has the alienation, the mass dysfunction, but not the fear, substituting a dry black comedy, leading to a rather emollient ending. It is often amusing, though not as memorable as all that.

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‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ Review: Hail, Caesar

The latest installment in an excellent series finds mythology turning into power.

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‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ | Anatomy of a Scene

The director wes ball narrates a sequence from his film..

I’m Wes Ball, director of “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.” This is a little sequence in the very beginning of the movie after our trio of apes here, Noa, Soona and Anaya, have just had a little adventure and they’re on their way back to their village, where we get to meet the life of Eagle Clan and where Noa and his family reside, this little isolated existence. And we get to see the way the apes live in this world with their eagles. And and how this ritual of collecting their egg, which they’re going to raise as companions, which is part of the way the Eagle Clan kind of works in their culture. And the goal was really just to set up a world that was wonderful, that was ultimately going to be forever changed when the course of events leads to Noa’s village being attacked for the most part, everything you see here was actually shot with the actors. We shoot it twice, we shoot it once with the actors and all of their little performance things and the camera movement and everything. So we are shooting a regular movie. It just happens to be that these guys are wearing these kind of strange suits along with the cameras and the dots on their face that captures all the performance. And then I have to go in and then re- duplicate those shots without the apes, which is where I choose. Whatever performance I choose now gets dropped into the scene itself. So this isn’t something where we just kind of animate the characters after the fact. We’re actually on location and they’re there in their digital costumes, essentially, acting out everything you see on camera, with the exception of, say, background action, there’s a group of apes in the background playing what we called monkey ball, and just we did that all on stage. So that’s kind of the beauty of the power of this process, is that we can populate this whole scene with hundreds of apes. But we only needed a handful of apes on set. This is Dar, Noa’s mother, who’s a fantastic character, played by Sara Wiseman, who did a great job. “I knew you would climb well.” “He waits.” And this character of Noa here, you kind start to see this relationship that he has with his father, which is an interesting kind of relationship that I imagine a lot of people could relate to. They don’t know quite how to communicate with each other, but there’s obviously still love there. It’s an interesting process where I can take all these different little elements and layer them all together and stack them into this — what you see is the end result here, this little idyllic community.

By Alissa Wilkinson

For a series with a goofy premise — what if talking apes overthrew humanity — the “Planet of the Apes” universe is uncommonly thoughtful, even insightful. If science fiction situates us in a universe that’s just different enough to slip daring questions past our mental barriers, then the “Apes” movies are among the best examples. That very premise, launched with talking actors in ape costumes in the 1968 film, has given storytellers a lot to chew on, contemplating racism, authoritarianism, police brutality and, in later installments, the upending of human society by a brutal, fast-moving virus. (Oops.)

Those later virus-ridden installments, a trilogy released between 2011 and 2017, are among the series’ best, and well worth revisiting. The newest film, “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” picks up exactly where that trilogy left off: with the death of Caesar, the ultrasmart chimpanzee who has led the apes away from what’s left of humanity and into a paradise. (The scene was a direct quotation of the story of Moses leading the Israelites to the Promised Land, but dying before he could set foot there.) The apes honor his memory and vow to keep his teachings, especially the first dictum — “ape not kill ape.” Caesar preached a gospel of peacefulness, loyalty, generosity, nonaggression and care for the earth; unlike the humans, they intend to live in harmony.

The teachings of peaceful prophets, however, tend to be twisted by power-seekers, and apparently this isn’t just a human problem. “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” directed by Wes Ball from a screenplay by Josh Friedman, leaps forward almost immediately by “many generations” (years matter less in this post-human world), and the inevitable has happened. The apes have fractured into tribes, while Caesar has passed from historical figure to mythic one, a figure venerated by some and forgotten by most.

That there even was a Caesar is unknown to Noa (Owen Teague), a young chimpanzee whose father, Koro (Neil Sandilands) is leader of his clan and an avid breeder of birds. That clan has its own laws, mostly having to do with how to treat birds’ nests, and that’s all that Noa and his friends Anaya (Travis Jeffery) and Soona (Lydia Peckham) have known.

But then one day tragedy strikes, in the form of an attack on the clan by the soldiers of Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand), the leader of a clan of coastal apes. Noa finds himself alone, searching for his clan, who have been carted away. On his journey Noa meets a human (Freya Allen) who, like the other humans, doesn’t speak.

At this point in the evolution of the virus, mutations have rendered any surviving humanity speechless and dull-witted, living in roving bands and running from predators; to the apes it’s as preposterous to imagine a talking human as a talking ape is to us. But he also meets Raka (Peter Macon), who believes himself to be the last of the faithful followers of Caesar’s peaceful teachings, even wearing Caesar’s diamond-shaped symbol around his neck. (Eagle-eyed viewers will recall that the symbol echoes the shape of the window in the room in which Caesar was raised as a baby.) Noa learns from Raka. And when he finds what he’s looking for, he realizes he has an important job to do.

“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is not quite as transporting as the previous trilogy, perhaps because the apes now act so much like humans that the fruitful dissonance in our minds has mostly been mitigated. It’s simpler to imagine the apes as just stand-in humans when they’re all talking, and thus easier to just imagine you’re watching, say, “The Lion King” or something.

But there’s still a tremendous amount to mull over here, like Proximus Caesar, who borrows the idea of Caesar to prop up his own version of leadership. The real Caesar was undoubtedly strong and brave, but Proximus Caesar has mutated this into swagger and shows of force, an aggression designed to keep his apes in line. He is not brutal, exactly; He is simply insistently powerful and more than a bit of a fascist. Every morning, he greets his subjects by proclaiming that it is a “wonderful day,” and that he is Caesar’s rightful heir, and that they must all work together as one to build their civilization ever stronger.

Visual cues indicate that Proximus Caesar’s kingdom is modeled partly on the Roman Empire, with its colonizing influence and its intention to sweep the riches of the ancient human world — its history, its labor, its technology — into its own coffers. By telling his version of Caesar’s legacy, Proximus Caesar makes the apes believe they are part of some mighty, unstoppable force of history.

But of course, history has a habit of repeating itself, whether it’s ancient Rome or Egypt, and in Proximus Caesar’s proclamations one detects a bit of Ozymandias : Look on his works, ye mighty, and despair! “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is set in the future, but like a lot of science fiction — “Dune,” for instance, or “Battlestar Galactica,” or Walter Miller’s “A Canticle for Leibowitz” — there’s a knowing sense that all this has happened before, and all this will happen again.

That’s what makes “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” powerful, in the end. It probes how the act of co-opting idealisms and converting them to dogmas has occurred many times over. What’s more, it points directly at the immense danger of romanticizing the past, imagining that if we could only reclaim and reframe and resurrect history, our present problems would be solved. Golden ages were rarely actually golden, but history is littered with leaders who tried to make people believe they were anyhow. It’s a great way to make people do their bidding.

There are some hints near the end of “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” of what might be next for the franchise, should it be fated to continue. But the uneasy fun of the series is we already know what happens, eventually; it was right there in the first movie, and the warning it poses remains bleak.

At the start of the 1968 film, the star Charlton Heston explains, “I can’t help thinking somewhere in the universe there has to be something better than man.” You might have expected, from a movie like this, that “better” species would be these apes. But it turns out we might have to keep looking.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Rated PG-13, for scenes of peril and woe and a couple of funny, mild swear words. Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes. In theaters.

Alissa Wilkinson is a Times movie critic. She’s been writing about movies since 2005. More about Alissa Wilkinson

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After Garfield's unexpected reunion with his long-lost father, ragged alley cat Vic, he and his canine friend Odie are forced from their perfectly pampered lives to join Vic on a risky heist... Read all After Garfield's unexpected reunion with his long-lost father, ragged alley cat Vic, he and his canine friend Odie are forced from their perfectly pampered lives to join Vic on a risky heist. After Garfield's unexpected reunion with his long-lost father, ragged alley cat Vic, he and his canine friend Odie are forced from their perfectly pampered lives to join Vic on a risky heist.

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‘dark matter’ review: joel edgerton and jennifer connelly in apple tv+’s relentlessly glum take on ‘it’s a wonderful life’.

Blake Crouch adapts his own novel in this nine-part dimension-spanning sci-fi drama also featuring Alice Braga and Jimmi Simpson.

By Daniel Fienberg

Daniel Fienberg

Chief Television Critic

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Have you ever watched It’s a Wonderful Life and wished that Frank Capra had paused to show us Clarence the Angel explaining to George Bailey how he was able to present him with the experience of a world in which he was never born?

Dark Matter

Related stories, apple tv+ cancels 'constellation' after single season, joel edgerton on failing 'guardians of the galaxy' audition: "the world is a much better place".

Joel Edgerton plays Jason Dessen, a Chicago-area physicist living an unremarkably content life with his wife Daniela ( Jennifer Connelly ), an art gallery something-or-other, and teenage son Charlie (Oakes Fegley). At one point, Jason had dreams of making big discoveries and winning big prizes, but in prioritizing his family, he chose a life that has him giving lackluster lectures to uninterested college students. In familiar TV/movie fashion, we happen to meet Jason as he’s trying to explain Schrödinger’s Cat and the paradox of “superposition” to a class; he’ll spend much of the rest of the series repeatedly trying to explain the same to us.

Jason’s friend Ryan (Jimmi Simpson), who does other science-guy stuff, has won some big science-y prize and Jason is semi-secretly resentful — something about the path not taken and the life not lived.

It might sound as if that summary, as well as the trailer for Dark Matter , is spoiler-y. It isn’t. One or two unexpected things happen in Dark Matter , but what I described was the premise, and the show is generally without twists. Also, it might sound from that summary like Dark Matter is a confusing show. It isn’t. All confusion in the story comes either from the characters on the screen functioning five steps behind the audience or from intentional decisions by the directors/editors to present simple things in confusing ways as an odd substitute for presenting confusing things in entertaining ways. This is not Counterpart , the short-lived Starz drama about the intersection between parallel worlds that may have been too smart for its own good. It’s more like Discounterpart .

The impressive line that Capra walks in It’s a Wonderful Life allows us to simultaneously see all the failures in George Bailey’s life and yet still know, even without Clarence telling him or us, that it was a good life. It’s both at once! Talk about superposition. Dark Matter wants to do something similar, which you’d probably understand even without the multiple winking nods and then the not-so-winking nod of a character running through a snowy street and past a movie theater showing It’s a Wonderful Life . Yet it fails.

It’s exactly the wrong way to start a series, because it puts the immediate emphasis on shadowy mystery, and we only then witness Jason1’s life and it, too, is muted. If the series doesn’t establish Jason1’s life in a way that makes us understand why he’s eager to get back to it, we’re only invested in his journey in a perfunctory way. We spend nine episodes watching Jason1 attempt to get his life back because cosmic disorder is bad, not because there’s any warmth to what we’re introduced to. Over the three episodes Verbruggen directs, there are almost no smiles, no jokes, no colors in the cinematography, nothing Capra-esque.

This is clearly what Crouch, creator and showrunner, wanted in his take on his own novel, because even after subsequent directors take over for Verbruggen, a downcast affect reigns. Multiple episodes occur in a conceptual realm known as The Corridor, a manifestation of the multiverse, a concept that Jason1 keeps needing to talk Amanda through, as if the Marvel Cinematic Universe didn’t exist in Jason2’s universe.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an actor taking less visible pleasure in a project that lets him play two different versions of the same character than Edgerton here. Edgerton keeps both men similarly intense and mumbly, so much that it’s nearly a thought experiment in anti-entertainment. If Jason1 didn’t acquire some facial wounds as part of the initial abduction there would be no distinguishing between the characters 95 percent of the time. The other five percent of the time, Jason2 has a “hard edge” so obvious that you want to shout at Daniela and Charlie for missing it.

Although she gets to try on several different hair styles — Jason isn’t the only character to exist in multiple realities — there’s little in Daniela to require an actress of Connelly’s stature. She has one meltdown in a later episode that’s so earned and so well-executed that I wished she’d been given more. Still, she has a bounty compared to Braga, who, for her part, at least gets a small mid-season arc, compared to several key characters from Jason2’s world so comically underdeveloped that their “storylines” are resolved in a closing montage after they’ve already been gone for three or four full hours. A show with this many actors playing this many alternate identities should be a smorgasbord of acting opportunities. Dark Matter is not.

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Apple unveils stunning new iPad Pro with the world’s most advanced display, M4 chip, and Apple Pencil Pro

Thinnest Apple Product Ever

World’s Most Advanced Display

Only Possible with M4

Outrageously Powerful Device for AI

Pro Cameras

Pro Connectivity

Apple Pencil Pro

All-New Magic Keyboard and Smart Folio

Powerful iPadOS Features

Logic Pro for iPad 2

Final Cut Pro for iPad 2

iPad Pro and the Environment

• Customers can order the new iPad Pro with M4 starting today, May 7, at apple.com/store , and in the Apple Store app in 29 countries and regions, including the U.S., with availability in stores beginning Wednesday, May 15.
• The new 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Pro will be available in silver and space black finishes in 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB configurations.
• The 11-inch iPad Pro starts at  $999  (U.S.) for the Wi-Fi model, and  $1,199  (U.S.) for the Wi-Fi + Cellular model. The 13-inch iPad Pro starts at  $1,299  (U.S.) for the Wi-Fi model, and  $1,499  (U.S.) for the Wi-Fi + Cellular model. Additional technical specifications, including nano-texture glass options, are available at apple.com/store .
• For education, the new 11-inch iPad Pro is available for  $899  (U.S.) and the 13-inch iPad Pro is $1,199 (U.S.). Education pricing is available to current and newly accepted college students and their parents, as well as faculty, staff, and home-school teachers of all grade levels. For more information, visit  apple.com/us-hed/shop .
• The new Apple Pencil Pro is compatible with the new iPad Pro. It is available for $129 (U.S.). For education, Apple Pencil Pro is available for $119 (U.S.).
• Apple Pencil (USB-C) is compatible with the new iPad Pro. It is available for $79 (U.S.) and $69 (U.S.) for education.
• The new Magic Keyboard is compatible with the new iPad Pro. It is available in black and white finishes. The new 11-inch Magic Keyboard is available for $299 (U.S.) and the new 13-inch Magic Keyboard is available for $349 (U.S.), with layouts for over 30 languages. For education, the 11-inch Magic Keyboard is available for $279 (U.S.) and the 13-inch Magic Keyboard is available for $329 (U.S.).
• The new Smart Folio is available for $79 (U.S.) in black, white, and denim finishes for the new 11-inch iPad Pro and $99 (U.S.) for the new 13-inch iPad Pro.
• Logic Pro for iPad 2 is available on May 13 as a free update for existing users, and for new users, it is available on the App Store for $4.99 (U.S.) per month, or $49 (U.S.) per year, with a one-month free trial. Logic Pro for iPad 2 requires iPadOS 17.4 or later. For more information, visit apple.com/logic-pro-for-ipad .
• Final Cut Pro for iPad 2 will be available later this spring on the App Store for $4.99 (U.S.) per month, or $49 (U.S.) per year, with a one-month free trial.
• Apple offers great ways to save on the latest iPad. Customers can trade in their current iPad and get credit toward a new one by visiting the Apple Store online , the Apple Store app, or an Apple Store location. To see what their device is worth, and for terms and conditions, customers can visit apple.com/shop/trade-in .
• Customers in the U.S. who shop at Apple using Apple Card can pay monthly at 0 percent APR when they choose to check out with Apple Card Monthly Installments, and they’ll get 3 percent Daily Cash back — all upfront.

Text of this article

May 7, 2024

PRESS RELEASE

Featuring a new thin and light design, breakthrough Ultra Retina XDR display, and outrageously fast M4 performance with powerful AI capabilities, the new iPad Pro takes a huge leap forward

CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA Apple today unveiled the groundbreaking new iPad Pro in a stunningly thin and light design, taking portability and performance to the next level. Available in silver and space black finishes, the new iPad Pro comes in two sizes: an expansive 13-inch model and a super-portable 11-inch model. Both sizes feature the world’s most advanced display — a new breakthrough Ultra Retina XDR display with state-of-the-art tandem OLED technology — providing a remarkable visual experience. The new iPad Pro is made possible with the new M4 chip, the next generation of Apple silicon, which delivers a huge leap in performance and capabilities. M4 features an entirely new display engine to enable the precision, color, and brightness of the Ultra Retina XDR display. With a new CPU, a next-generation GPU that builds upon the GPU architecture debuted on M3, and the most powerful Neural Engine yet, the new iPad Pro is an outrageously powerful device for artificial intelligence. The versatility and advanced capabilities of iPad Pro are also enhanced with all-new accessories. Apple Pencil Pro brings powerful new interactions that take the pencil experience even further, and a new thinner, lighter Magic Keyboard is packed with incredible features. The new iPad Pro, Apple Pencil Pro, and Magic Keyboard are available to order starting today, with availability in stores beginning Wednesday, May 15.

“iPad Pro empowers a broad set of pros and is perfect for anyone who wants the ultimate iPad experience — with its combination of the world’s best displays, extraordinary performance of our latest M-series chips, and advanced accessories — all in a portable design. Today, we’re taking it even further with the new, stunningly thin and light iPad Pro, our biggest update ever to iPad Pro,” said John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering. “With the breakthrough Ultra Retina XDR display, the next-level performance of M4, incredible AI capabilities, and support for the all-new Apple Pencil Pro and Magic Keyboard, there’s no device like the new iPad Pro.”

The new iPad Pro — the thinnest Apple product ever — features a stunningly thin and light design, taking portability to a whole new level. The 11-inch model is just 5.3 mm thin, and the 13-inch model is even thinner at a striking 5.1 mm, while both models are just as strong as the previous design. The 11-inch model weighs less than a pound, and the 13-inch model is nearly a quarter pound lighter than its predecessor — allowing pro users to extend their workflows in new ways and in more places. The new iPad Pro is available in two gorgeous finishes — silver and space black — both with 100 percent recycled aluminum enclosures.

The new iPad Pro debuts the Ultra Retina XDR, the world’s most advanced display, to provide an even more remarkable visual experience. The Ultra Retina XDR display features state-of-the-art tandem OLED technology that uses two OLED panels and combines the light from both to provide phenomenal full-screen brightness. The new iPad Pro supports an incredible 1000 nits of full-screen brightness for SDR and HDR content, and 1600 nits peak for HDR. No other device of its kind delivers this level of extreme dynamic range. Tandem OLED technology enables sub-millisecond control over the color and luminance of each pixel, taking XDR precision further than ever. Specular highlights in photos and video appear even brighter, and there’s more detail in shadows and low light than ever before on iPad — all while delivering even more responsiveness to content in motion. For pro users working in high-end, color-managed workflows or challenging lighting conditions, a new nano-texture glass option comes to iPad Pro for the first time. 1 Nano-texture glass is precisely etched at a nanometer scale, maintaining image quality and contrast while scattering ambient light for reduced glare. With its breakthrough tandem OLED technology, extreme brightness, incredibly precise contrast, brilliant colors, and nano-texture glass option, the new Ultra Retina XDR display is the world’s most advanced display, giving iPad Pro customers an unparalleled viewing experience.

The incredibly thin and light design and game-changing display of the new iPad Pro is only possible with M4, the next generation of Apple silicon that delivers a huge leap in performance. M4 is built on second-generation 3-nanometer technology that’s even more power efficient, which is perfect for the design of the new iPad Pro. With an entirely new display engine, M4 introduces pioneering technology for the stunning precision, color, and brightness of the Ultra Retina XDR display. The new CPU offers up to four performance cores and now six efficiency cores, 2 with next-generation machine learning (ML) accelerators, to deliver up to 1.5x faster CPU performance over M2 in the previous-generation iPad Pro. 3 M4 builds on the GPU architecture of M3 — the 10-core GPU includes powerful features like Dynamic Caching, and hardware-accelerated mesh shading and ray tracing, which come to iPad for the first time. Coupled with higher unified memory bandwidth, pro rendering apps like Octane will see up to 4x faster performance than M2. 3 M4 also delivers tremendous gains and industry-leading performance per watt. Compared to M2, M4 can deliver the same performance using just half the power, and compared to the latest PC chip in a thin and light laptop, M4 can deliver the same performance using just a quarter of the power. 4 A new advanced Media Engine includes support for AV1 decode, providing more power-efficient playback of high-resolution video experiences from streaming services.

The new iPad Pro with M4 features Apple’s most powerful Neural Engine ever, capable of 38 trillion operations per second, which is 60x faster than Apple’s first Neural Engine in the A11 Bionic chip. Combined with next-generation ML accelerators in the CPU, a high-performance GPU, more memory bandwidth, and intelligent features and powerful developer frameworks in iPadOS, the Neural Engine makes the new iPad Pro an outrageously powerful device for AI. With iPad Pro with M4, users can perform AI-enabled tasks even faster, like easily isolate a subject from its background in 4K video with just a tap with Scene Removal Mask in Final Cut Pro. With this advanced level of performance, the Neural Engine in M4 is more powerful than any neural processing unit in any AI PC today.

iPadOS also has advanced frameworks like Core ML that make it easy for developers to tap into the Neural Engine to deliver phenomenal AI features locally, including running powerful diffusion and generative AI models, with great performance on device. iPad Pro also supports cloud-based solutions, enabling users to run powerful productivity and creative apps that tap into the power of AI, such as Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Adobe Firefly.

The updated camera system on the new iPad Pro delivers even more versatility, and with its rich audio from four studio-quality mics, users can shoot, edit, and share all on one device. The 12MP back camera captures vibrant Smart HDR images and video with even better color, improved textures, and detail in low light. It also now features a new adaptive True Tone flash that makes document scanning on the new iPad Pro better than ever. Using AI, the new iPad Pro automatically identifies documents right in the Camera app, and if a shadow is in the way, it instantly takes multiple photos with the new adaptive flash, stitching the scan together for a dramatically better scan.

On the front, the TrueDepth camera system moves to the landscape location on the new iPad Pro. The Ultra Wide 12MP camera with Center Stage makes the experience of video conferencing in landscape orientation even better, especially when iPad is attached to a Magic Keyboard or Smart Folio.

iPad Pro includes a high-performance USB-C connector with support for Thunderbolt 3 and USB 4, delivering fast wired connectivity — up to 40Gb/s. Thunderbolt supports an extensive ecosystem of high-performance accessories, including external displays like the Pro Display XDR at its full 6K resolution, and external storage, all connected using high-performance cables and docks. iPad Pro supports Wi-Fi 6E for super-fast Wi-Fi connections for pro workflows on the go. Wi-Fi + Cellular models with 5G allow users to access their files, communicate with colleagues, and back up their data in a snap while on the go. Cellular models of the new iPad Pro are activated with eSIM, a more secure alternative to a physical SIM card, allowing users to quickly connect and transfer their existing plans digitally, and store multiple cellular plans on a single device. Customers can easily get connected to wireless data plans on the new iPad Pro in over 190 countries and regions around the world without needing to get a physical SIM card from a local carrier.

Apple Pencil Pro features even more magical capabilities and powerful new interactions that take the Apple Pencil experience even further. A new sensor in the barrel can sense a user’s squeeze, bringing up a tool palette to quickly switch tools, line weights, and colors, all without interrupting the creative process. A custom haptic engine delivers a light tap that provides confirmation when users squeeze, use double-tap, or snap to a Smart Shape for a remarkably intuitive experience. A gyroscope allows users to roll Apple Pencil Pro for precise control of the tool they’re using. Rotating the barrel changes the orientation of shaped pen and brush tools, just like pen and paper. And with Apple Pencil hover, users can visualize the exact orientation of a tool before making a mark.

With these advanced features, Apple Pencil Pro allows users to bring their ideas to life in entirely new ways, and developers can also create their own custom interactions. Apple Pencil Pro brings support for Find My for the first time to Apple Pencil, helping users locate Apple Pencil Pro if misplaced. It pairs, charges, and is stored on the side of iPad Pro through a new magnetic interface. iPad Pro also supports Apple Pencil (USB-C), ideal for note taking, sketching, annotating, journaling, and more, at an incredible value.

Designed for the new iPad Pro, an all-new thinner and lighter Magic Keyboard makes it more portable and versatile than ever. The new Magic Keyboard opens to the magical floating design that customers love, and now includes a function row for access to features like screen brightness and volume controls. It also has a gorgeous aluminum palm rest and larger trackpad that’s even more responsive with haptic feedback, so the entire experience feels just like using a MacBook. The new Magic Keyboard attaches magnetically, and the Smart Connector immediately connects power and data without the need for Bluetooth. The machined aluminum hinge also includes a USB-C connector for charging. The new Magic Keyboard comes in two colors that perfectly complement the new iPad Pro: black with a space black aluminum palm rest, and white with a silver aluminum palm rest.

The new Smart Folio for iPad Pro attaches magnetically and now supports multiple viewing angles for greater flexibility. Available in black, white, and denim, it complements the colors of the new iPad Pro.

iPadOS is packed with features that push the boundaries of what’s possible on iPad. With Reference Mode, iPadOS can precisely match color requirements of the Ultra Retina XDR display for tasks in which accurate colors and consistent image quality are critical — including review and approve, color grading, and compositing. Stage Manager enables users to work with multiple overlapping windows in a single view, resize windows, tap to switch between apps, and more. With full external display support of up to 6K, iPad Pro users can also extend their workflow, as well as use the built-in camera on an external display for enhanced video conferencing. Users can take advantage of the powerful AI capabilities in iPad Pro and intelligent features in iPadOS, including Visual Look Up, Subject Lift, Live Text, or Live Captions and Personal Voice for accessibility.

With iPadOS 17 , users can customize the Lock Screen to make it more personal — taking advantage of the larger display on iPad — and interactive widgets take glanceable information further with the ability to get tasks done right in the moment with just a tap. The Notes app gives users new ways to organize, read, annotate, and collaborate on PDFs, and working with PDFs is also easier with AutoFill, which intelligently identifies and fills fields in forms.

Logic Pro for iPad 2 , available starting Monday, May 13, introduces incredible studio assistant features that augment the music-making process and provide artists help right when they need it — all while ensuring they maintain full creative control. These features include Session Players, which expand on popular Drummer capabilities in Logic to include a new Bass Player and Keyboard Player; ChromaGlow, to instantly add warmth to tracks; and Stem Splitter, to extract and work with individual parts of a single audio recording.

Final Cut Pro for iPad 2 , available later this spring, introduces Live Multicam, a new feature that transforms iPad into a mobile production studio, allowing users to view and control up to four connected iPhone and iPad devices wirelessly. 5 To support Live Multicam, an all-new capture app also comes to iPad and iPhone, Final Cut Camera, 6 giving users control over options like white balance, ISO, and shutter speed, along with monitoring tools like overexposure indicators and focus peaking. Final Cut Camera works as a standalone capture app or with Live Multicam. Final Cut Pro for iPad 2 also allows users to create or open projects from external storage, giving editors even more flexibility, and offers new content options. 7

The new iPad Pro is designed with the environment in mind, including 100 percent recycled aluminum in the enclosure, 100 percent recycled rare earth elements in all magnets, and 100 percent recycled gold plating and tin soldering in multiple printed circuit boards. The new iPad Pro meets Apple’s high standards for energy efficiency, and is free of mercury, brominated flame retardants, and PVC. The packaging is 100 percent fiber-based, bringing Apple closer to its goal to remove plastic from all packaging by 2025.

Today, Apple is carbon neutral for global corporate operations, and by 2030, plans to be carbon neutral across the entire manufacturing supply chain and life cycle of every product.

Pricing and Availability

• Nano-texture glass is an option on the 1TB and 2TB configurations of the 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Pro models.
• iPad Pro models with 256GB or 512GB storage feature the Apple M4 chip with a 9‑core CPU. iPad Pro models with 1TB or 2TB storage feature the Apple M4 chip with a 10‑core CPU.
• Testing was conducted by Apple in March and April 2024. See apple.com/ipad-pro for more information.
• Testing was conducted by Apple in March and April 2024 using preproduction 13-inch iPad Pro (M4) units with a 10-core CPU and 16GB of RAM. Performance was measured using select industry‑standard benchmarks. PC laptop chip performance data is from testing ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED (UX3405MA) with Core Ultra 7 155H and 32GB of RAM. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of iPad Pro.
• Final Cut Pro for iPad 2 is compatible with iPad models with the M1 chip or later, and Logic Pro for iPad 2 will be available on iPad models with the A12 Bionic chip or later.
• Final Cut Camera is compatible with iPhone X S and later with iOS 17.4 or later, and iPad models compatible with iPadOS 17.4 or later.
• External project support requires iPadOS 17.5 or later.

Press Contacts

Tara Courtney

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Why ‘ghostbusters: frozen empire’ is one of 2024’s biggest hit movies.

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Ernie Hudson and McKenna Grace at the London photocall of 'Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.'

With a worldwide box office gross of $198.4 million (and still in theaters), Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is currently the fourth-biggest movie of 2024. Domestically, it holds the same honor, one which has blown the minds of some of the film's cast.

"That's incredible," exclaimed Mckenna Grace, who reprised the role of Phoebe Spengler in the sequel. "I'm a lot older now than I was when we made Ghostbusters: Afterlife , so I have a bit more perspective and awareness about it. I've been acting for about 13 years now, so a lot of my life has been on screen for most of my life, but I don't think about the fact that people are watching the films that I'm in or could know who I am."

"It seems strange, even though I know the film is out there. I'm reading the reviews and am so excited that people like what we did; it's strange to me but also cool. Since the film came out, I have tried not to get too deep in my head about what people are saying about it. I hope the Ghostbusters community is happy with it, and thus far, they have been."

2021's Ghostbusters: Afterlife rebooted the franchise and grossed $204.3 million against a $75 million budget. The success laid the groundwork for a lucrative, sustained revival, allowing producer Jason Reitman and director Gil Kenan to do things with Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire , which no previous Ghostbusters movie could do.

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" Afterlife was so important because it pulled us all back together again, onto the same page. Frozen Empire stepped out into a different direction," explained Ernie Hudson, aka Winston Zeddemore. "We got to see a little expansion in the team, certainly with the research center and the family returning to New York. I wanted so much for the fans waiting 40 years to know we're grounded and centered because it has become this family dynamic and an intergenerational thing."

"I was excited, and it felt like we had hit the spot, and I was looking forward to seeing how people took to it and reacted. I've been very happy. The box office shows it has reached its audience. You do these things and want it to be a blockbuster phenomenon. I know of people who have seen it four or five times. I was very excited, and it opens the possibility for a future in the Ghostbuster universe, and, to me, if it does that, that's a lot.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire sees the Spengler family, including Grace's Phoebe, return to the iconic New York City firehouse where it all started. There, they team up with the original Ghostbusters , including Hudson's Winston, who has developed a top-secret research lab. However, when an ancient artifact unleashes an evil force, the Ghostbusters have to team up to save the world from a second Ice Age. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is now available to rent or buy on Digital.

Mckenna Grace (front middle) and Ernie Hudson (right) in a scene from 'Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.'

Grace and Hudson felt even more deeply connected to their roles this time and loved their evolutions.

"I feel very connected to her, but I've always felt that Phoebe is a huge part of me. She is also a character in a franchise that has truly changed my life," the actress said.

"Phoebe is me but just very deadpan. I'm always very energetic and excited, and I'm just happy to be here, but Phoebe is just a lot more contained and smart. Growing up, I used to carry joke books with me and tell jokes to people to make friends, so at least half of me is Phoebe, and Jason and Gil were shaping that."

Hudson added, "It was slightly different for me this time because we established Egon's family in Ghostbusters: Afterlife . I felt that Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire opened the door for the future to step forward and see what was possible. I love the idea of Winston having evolved to have done very well over the past 30 or so years, but also the research center, where we have now begun to look at more than just running around and having fun trapping ghosts. What happens to the ghosts? If it was up to me, I think we could go deeper and see whether what we do helps them transition to whatever is next and how ghosts impact our lives."

"I've been Winston for 40 years. It was the beginning of the possibilities, but it wasn't quite what I wanted initially; it has evolved. What I wanted in this new iteration, as we move forward, was to see that evolution. I'm not where I was when I did the first Ghostbusters and was starting in the industry. I wanted to see that reflected. Thankfully, Jason, Gil, and Sony listened and thought the same way. We see that he has grown, has greater interest, and is also in a position to help the franchise become all that it can be."

The Ghostbusters movies have now grossed a combined $1.14 billion. Will the reboots be responsible for something the original films failed to achieve and become a trilogy? Hudson is hopeful.

"There was a time when we thought another Ghostbusters movie would never happen. Twenty years went by, and there were rumors after rumors," he recalled.

Grace continued, "I hope we do another, and they still want me. I hope I get to continue being a Ghostbuster and that the fans like me enough. I'm in a perpetual state of hoping people like what I do. After the first one, I would have died to be asked back to do another Ghostbusters . When it comes to my character, it's less about me trying to mold her and thinking about where Phoebe should go or where I'd like to see her be. I have left that in the hands of Jason and Gil. I'd just be excited to bring Phoebe back wherever they find or want her; wherever that is, I can work with that."

(Left to right) Ernie Hudson Jr., Paul Rudd, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace and Gil Kenan at the ... [+] London photocall for 'Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire' on March 21, 2024 in London, England.

Having already moved into an even more significant role in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire , has anyone considered a standalone movie or spin-off? She certainly hasn't.

"I feel like I'd be scared and miss everybody," she said. I always feel boring or repetitive whenever I answer questions like this, but I genuinely would be excited to come back in any capacity. I haven't really thought of or talked about that, but it would be crazy."

While the cast and creatives wait for an announcement, Winston continues to deliver for Hudson in other ways that mean even more to him than the character he has played for four decades.

"I just found out they're going to name the street I grew up on Ernie Hudson Avenue. For many of the kids back there where I grew up, it's that inspiration for what is possible because there were deliberate attempts to discourage us from being all we could be. They constantly told us what we couldn't be," he concluded. "What was amazing to me with Winston was that he was the everyman, but he was the favorite character for many kids no matter what color. He's a guy looking for a steady paycheck, but he's done something in his life. He has been an example of what is possible, and it is really important to me to be an example."

"I think a lot of them see themselves in that character in the sense that they weren't scientists or whatever, but they certainly believed in the possibilities. That's what Winston represents to me."

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