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While Netflix has Ryan Murphy busy investigating (or flat-out making up) the motives of killers like Jeffery Dahmer, the Menendez Brothers and Lizzie Borden, the streamer has enlisted director Janus Metz to tell the story of Ted Kaczynski, the math prodigy turned reclusive murderer known as the Unabomber — also the movie’s title. But Unabomber, written by Sam Chalsen and Nelson Greaves, is not some sweeping birth-to-death survey of Kaczynski’s life. It instead focuses on a young Kaczynski’s time at Harvard University, where he participated in a brutal psychological study that, in the movie’s framing, may have helped form the anarchic worldview that eventually led to his infamous deeds.

Never mind that Kaczynski himself has said that the study, conducted by psychology professor and sometime government operative Henry Murray, didn’t have much effect on his life. Unabomber presupposes that it did, that Murray’s cruel (and later condemned) experiment in breaking down the philosophical principles of test subjects, stoked a rage — at academia, at technology, at universities — so fierce that Kaczynski later decided to enact his revenge. Perhaps not figuring that argument compelling enough on its own, the film tacks on a 1990s-set plot covering the days leading up to Kaczynski’s capture in Montana.

Both narratives concern people prying into Kaczynski’s psyche and finding only further questions. In the 1950s, in the hallowed, lacquered-wood halls of Harvard, we watch a perspicacious boy genius — Kacyznski was all of 16 when he started college — as his intellect, his curiosity and his naiveté are weaponized against him, hardening his most radical beliefs into ideology. In the 1990s section, we observe relative lay people as they try to divine specific clues from Kaczynski’s manifesto, markers that might give away something crucial.

These twin analyses are both facile and unenlightening. The investigation arc is so boilerplate that it has an FBI agent placing a pile of documents on her desk and saying to them, “Talk to me.” The 1950s portion of the film is at least able to conjure up some mid-century moodiness, skulking around in the nervous temper of early Cold War days, as academia colluded with government agencies to buttress the country against the perceived Soviet threat. (At its best, the film calls to mind Robert De Niro’s unfairly maligned CIA origin story The Good Shepherd, which begins its postwar tale on the leafy quads of Yale.)

And yet, the ultimate conclusions of that half of the film are just as unpersuasive as everything that happens 40 years later. That’s largely owed to starchy, frequently clichéd writing. But sadly one must put some of the blame on the actor playing Kaczynski, Jacob Tremblay, who long ago escaped the confines of Room and now, at 19, has found himself in this dark mess.

His clean-cut boyish features do actually resemble Kaczynski at that age, but Tremblay otherwise has trouble evoking the volatile storms of Kaczynski’s mind. His voice cracking and eyes wide with alarm, Tremblay effectively communicates Kaczynski’s youth, but it all plays as bratty and insouciant rather than registering as the beginnings of true menace. Tremblay was a better fit for his other recent film about extremism, 2025’s Sovereign, in which his guilelessness served a more poignant purpose.

As Murray, Russell Crowe has dusted off his A Beautiful Mind professorial duds and phones in a performance of avuncular appeal masking sinister motives. We believe that Murray cares, in some way, for Kazcynski — or, at least, that he’s impressed by the student’s prowess — but not enough to stop his predatory work.

The portraiture is not very detailed beyond that. Part of the problem may be that, for the bulk of the experimentation, Murray is out of the room. Kaczynski is instead sparring with a fellow student, a haughty older boy played by the reliable Gus Halper, who did towering work as another collegiate monster in the under-seen 2016 frat-hazing thriller Goat. Had Tremblay and Crowe been given more opportunity to go toe to toe, something in the picture might have caught flame.

Instead, Unabomber trudges through its motions, toggling between grim school daze and a tediously generic FBI manhunt. In the latter part, Shailene Woodley does her best to give some texture to her rogue agent character, Joanne, but she has precious little to work with.

Perhaps cognizant of that, the filmmakers give Joanne a brief, humanizing button at the end of the film, a moment of solitude in which she has a cathartic cry as she processes all that she’s just experienced. The scene might register as thoughtful were it not such a blatant rip-off of the closing seconds of Zero Dark Thirty, in which a dogged investigator who’s finally caught her prey sheds tears of relief and exhaustion and something more ineffable. It doesn’t pack the same punch the second time around, and at the end of something so bland.

Watching Unabomber, one longs for a smarter, more sophisticated, more probing version of this same double-act. A better film about what might have radicalized Ted Kaczynski that also delineates how he was eventually captured could be startling and revealing, complicating the public idea of Kaczynski as mere renegade madman. But this film serves up only the most basic, obvious version of that — try as it might, at times, to immerse us in murky psychological depths. In the end, it has all the markings of a final paper written by a student who got all the dates right, but failed to find the real meaning behind any of the history.

Situated in the hills of Studio City sits a home studio that’s birthed a slew of popular songs.

“The first session I did here was with MUNA in 2019,” says Leland. The 39-year-old producer owns that home studio. It’s first iteration was situated inside the main house on his property and has since expanded into its own little oasis.

Steeped in warm colors, with luxurious candles burning away, Leland’s current studio feels more like a chic getaway spot rather than a workspace. It’s become a home base for him and other creatives in his circle to collaborate. His dog, Crosby, is a frequent visitor and how he’s keeping track of the passing time — the MUNA session had to be in 2019 because he has a photo of one of the band’s members with the dog as a puppy.

The actual studio only accounts for, at times, 50 percent of where the creativity’s happening when artist comes to Leland’s place. “The writing doesn’t have to happen in the studio. The recording can happen in the studio,” the producer explains. “I feel like a lot of it is just sitting out here having conversations.”

An artist might be staying in the cottage on the property while they’re there working. “They can just walk down to the studio, which has been really nice,” says Leland. The Shards star Hayes Warner, another collaborator of Leland’s, stayed in his cottage while she was filming the Ryan Murphy show. Leland wrote music for the series, which is set to release a soundtrack next month.

On a day where he’s welcoming an artist into the studio, the producer tends to start the day with a hike. He’ll walk to Fryman — if you ever see someone dangerously walking down Laurel Canyon Boulevard, it’s likely Leland. He’s only had one close call, he points out, and it was actually from a friend. “One of my best friends happened to be driving down Laurel Canyon, and he was like, ‘Girl, did I almost hit you?’ I was like, ‘Yes, but I would’ve wanted it to be a friend,’” he says cheekily.

After his hike, hopefully without any close calls, Leland will get fresh flowers for the studio, along with a candle or incense. His routine tends to change depending on who he’s working with that day.

“I love getting the studio ready for a session. I love that part of it,” the producer says. “Or cleaning up after a session, which is usually just Goop [Kitchen] bags, water and Coke Zero.”

The space is meant to be a space of peace and quiet, even if that’s not always what’s happening in the studio itself. Leland, who’s also RuPaul’s Drag Race‘s producer and songwriter, explains that it can range from longtime collaborator Troye Sivan to Charli xcx, who he says recorded some of the Wuthering Heights album in the studio, to Demi Lovato. A Drag Race executive producer or even RuPaul might be around while Leland’s tinkering on Sivan’s work, so they’ll share it.

If Leland’s working with an artist for the first time, he’ll listen to their music on his morning hike — or he’ll listen to anything he’s anticipating will be a good reference point for the work that’ll happen later that day. No matter how familiar with the project or the artist, he wants to be prepared and have something in his back pocket.

Some artists, however, have a good idea coming into their sessions with Leland. “When Rebecca Black came in, I was so excited to work with her and she had such a clear vision for what she wanted to make, and it was just so fun,” he says. The pair wrote the track “Corsetry” from her latest album in the space.

“I have the same feeling about [Black] that I had when Adéla first walked into the room,” Leland says of the pop princess of the moment. The 22-year-old has been blowing up this summer. Leland and the pop star — who broke out as a contestant on the audition project Dream Academy that formed the girl group KATSEYE — worked together on songs from her first EP, “SexOnTheBeat” and “DeathbyDevotion.”

Leland, by his on admission, loves working with women. “I love a pop girl,” he says. But by far, the producer’s most impactful collaboration, both professionally and creatively, remains Sivan. Getting to be part of a gay pop star’s career is something he’ll never take for granted.

“So many songs that you love that are by the female pop stars that we love, a lot of the times there’s a queer person as one of the collaborators when you look up the credits,” Leland says. “I think now my ear is trained to where I can tell if a gay person was in the room or not.”

He adds, “I really think for songs, you can tell. And not that every song needs to have a gay person in the room, obviously, but I think depending on what you’re going for, you can really hear if there was some queer energy in the room or not. I feel like it’s been so fun to sometimes be that person with the different artists that come through.”

Leland and Sivan collaborated once again for the pop star’s upcoming album She’s the Best, set to be released next month. Many of the great pop stars of the past weren’t publicly out, so watching Sivan’s career get to the point it’s at now has been almost surreal for Leland. “People like Troye are allowed to be pop stars, and you’re allowed to have that experience, and maybe not allowed, you’re demanding it,” the producer says.

“I always want the music to speak for itself. I don’t want opportunities because I’m queer. I want opportunities because I’m good. I don’t want opportunities for Troy because he’s a gay pop star,” says Leland. “I want opportunities for him and for our music because the music is good and the music videos are good and the team’s good and the energy is good.”

He adds, “I want that support from the queer community because the music is great and the art is great. I want that support from the straight community because the music is great and the art is great, not just because any of us happen to be queer.”

Tech and media titans… as well as a small army of Fox News hosts descended on the White House Thursday evening to attend the state dinner honoring China’s president Xi Jinping.

President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump hosted the dinner, which was heavy on corporate bigwigs.

According to a guest list released by the White House, attendees included Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison, just days after his company inked a settlement to clear its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery… including CNN, which saw its reporters denied access to the state dinner even after a federal judge reinstated their press passes to the White House complex.

But it was mostly tech giants in attendance, with photos showing Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk sitting at the head table with Trump and Xi, joined by Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Apple’s Tim Cook.

Earlier this week, there were reports that Ellison may ask Musk to invest in Paramount as part of its WBD takeover.

Other attendees included OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, TikTok investor Jeff Yass, and LCMH CEO Bernard Arnault, along with a slew of other CEOs from finance, manufacturing and other industries.

And there was also a Fox News contingent, with hosts Jesse Watters and Laura Ingraham as well as anchor Bret Baier all making the cut too. Podcast hosts, including Katie Miller (the wife of White House aide Stephen Miller) and David Sacks (tech investor and All-In co-host) were on the list, as was Cheryl Hines, who was there with her husband RFK Jr.