Natalie Portman’s ‘Lady in the Lake’ Is a Soggy, Pretentious Failure

Boldness is often a storytelling virtue…except when it’s not, as is the case with Lady in the Lake.

An adaptation of Laura Lippman’s 2020 best-seller of the same name (whose title is borrowed from Raymond Chandler’s 1943 classic), director Alma Har'el’s seven-part Apple TV+ period-piece murder mystery, premiering July 19, indulges in non-stop fanciful embellishments, symbolism, dream sequences, and cross-cutting. All of...