There’s a wonderfully slouching, offhand charisma Natasha Lyonne brings to her performance in “Poker Face,” back for a second season on Peacock. You don’t see this kind of thing very much at the moment, but like Jerry Orbach in those old episodes of “Law & Order,” it’s the shrugging, easy-going cynicism of a New Yorker who has been around enough to see the world for what it is.

Never staying in one place for long, Lyonne’s Charlie Cale picks up odd jobs as she goes — at an apple orchard for a while, then moving on to a new gig minding the printer in an otherwise empty office, or picking up shifts as a lunch lady at a prep school — when inevitably she stumbles upon a crime. Usually murder. Her unfailing ability to detect lies, plus her innate curiosity, means she’s something of an amateur sleuth. That doesn’t make her many friends, so she heads off in her 1969 Plymouth Barracuda to somewhere new to start all over again.

The premise established in Season 1 has Charlie fleeing from the mob, which is another reason for her transient life on the road. But “Poker Face” doesn’t actually need a Big Bad to justify her meandering existence, and creator Rian Johnson and showrunner Tony Tost (the latter taking over from Lilla and Nora Zuckerman) resolve and dispatch with this lingering threat early in Season 2, allowing Charlie to simply go from one place to the next for no particular reason beyond her own restlessness and wanderlust. That’s premise enough.

Season 1 became increasingly grisly by the end, which I thought was a mistake. Tonally, that’s not why we’re watching “Poker Face,” which, at its best, plays around with the tropes that made a TV classic like “Columbo” so indelible. It’s a case-of-the-week format wherein we, the audience, know whodunit because we see the crime play out in the first 20 minutes of each episode. But instead of a police lieutenant with a cigar and a rumpled raincoat, the show is centered on a delightful drifter with shaggy red hair and a disposable vape.

Recently, Lyonne announced that she plans to direct and star in a movie that combines “ethical” artificial intelligence and traditional filmmaking techniques (which is disingenuous on its face; the ethical issues around AI are too big and systemic for any one person to combat them). Was I disappointed? Deeply. Did the news taint my feelings towards “Poker Face”? Somewhat, unfortunately. But it doesn’t change my appreciation for Lyonne’s talents and the way she can deliver an otherwise forgettable line. “Is it just me, or is there, ah, something of a petty tyrant workplace situation happening around here?” Charlie wonders, stumbling into yet another gig that will become more complicated than she anticipated. There’s no ruse she can’t crack, but she’s modest when someone expresses their gratitude: “Me? No, I just asked a few questions.”

Even the scenarios themselves are wonderfully detailed and colorful. Cynthia Erivo is the standout of the season, playing quadruplets who, as children, starred on a show called “Kid Cop.” Mom stole all their earnings and upon her death they learn there is a secret fifth sister they never knew about who has been left the full inheritance.

In another episode, Charlie rents out of her car to a low-budget movie and ends up playing an extra as a corpse in a coffin. Another episode explicitly makes fun of cops and their inadequacies. Another centers on a minor league baseball team, the Cheesemongers, who play at Velvety Canned Cheese Park, where a few players attempt a latter day version of the Black Sox scandal. Occasionally the show takes a slight detour, as when Charlie meets a group of con artists, who — after learning of her lie detecting abilities — realize she’s not there to bust them and reveal how their signature scam works. A strategic error. She may be unflappable, but her moral compass always wins out.

Sometimes the murder is premeditated. Sometimes it happens in the heat of the moment. These are desperate people making terrible decisions and the guest stars are a who’s-who of recognizable names, including Giancarlo Esposito, Katie Holmes, John Mulaney, Carol Kane, Margo Martindale, Sam Richardson, Melanie Lynskey and John Cho, plus Steve Buscemi, who provides his voice as another road warrior to whom Charlie occasionally talks on the CB radio.

There’s an intentional throwback quality to the show that’s so enjoyable. One episode uses music and filming techniques (like zooms) that harken back to ’70s-era TV dramas, and you realize these tropes have gone out of style and entirely dropped away. It’s fun to see them revived again.

“Poker Face” isn’t going for anything deep. And yet it’s still filled with sardonic commentary all the same, including this doozy: Despite their size, muscle bros at the gym are really just a bunch of babies.

‘Poker Face’ Season 2

3.5 stars (out of 4)

Rating: TV-MA

How to watch: Season 2 premieres on Peacock May 8

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Take note: if you have any anxiety about flying, James Madigan’s “Fight or Flight” will not be for you. But if a cheap and cheerful one-setting action thriller a la “Bullet Train” featuring one of the preeminent heartthrobs of the Y2K era is up your alley, well then belly up to this (airport) bar. This flick isn’t a masterpiece, not even a vulgar one, but it’s cheeky and entertaining enough in its giddy hyper-violence, thanks almost entirely to the star turn of Josh Hartnett, who has proven in his recent renaissance that he’s especially great in bozo mode.

Hartnett was the brooding bad boy in movies like “The Faculty” and “The Virgin Suicides,” which rocketed him to stardom in the late ’90s. But in recent years, his career has been reinvigorated, playing characters like “Boy Sweat Dave” in Guy Ritchie’s “Wrath of Man,” and turning in an especially delicious double-time in M. Night Shyamalan’s “Trap.” In “Fight or Flight,” Hartnett looks straight out of the 2000s with his bleached hair and cargo shorts, the only difference is that he’s now unleashed, freed from those moody shackles; wild-eyed and frequently covered in fake blood the vibrant hue of strawberry jam.

Indeed, “Fight or Flight” wouldn’t work without his fizzy central performance that brings an edge of mania to the absurd premise, which is essentially “Assassins on a Plane.” The script is by Brooks McLaren and “Shazam” actor D.J. Cotrona, and it draws on the kind of “John Wick”-style story that that film perfected when it posed the question, what if there was a bounty on a hit man’s head? “Fight or Flight” borrows the conceit and sets it in a confined, high-altitude setting, taking a humorous tone for its action thrills.

Hartnett plays a down-on-his luck drifter named Lucas Reyes, who wakes up in Bangkok with a hangover, a black eye, and his hated ex Katherine Brunt (Katee Sackhoff), calling him for a favor. A high-level security professional, Lucas is her last option after a hacker known as Ghost has stolen billions in cryptocurrency following a terrorist attack. Katherine needs Lucas to get on the same plane in order to deliver the hacker into custody (alive), and he’s the only one she knows on the ground at the moment. When he boards the flight, he’s not aware that a bounty on Ghost’s head has spread across the dark web, and thus, the rest of the passengers are mostly assassins, looking to make an easy buck.

And so, aviation mayhem ensues, as Lucas fights off a coterie of bad guys through a haze of drugs and liquor. He has his own reasons for wanting to complete the task, events in his past that explain why he ended up on his journey to the heart of darkness through the bottom of a whiskey bottle in Southeast Asia. They are honorable, of course, and when we meet Ghost, we find out their motivations are similarly altruistic, if a bit shallowly written.

The filmmakers would rather focus on the outlandish violence anyway. Hartnett holds his own up and down the aisles, through the cargo hold, and into the bathroom, making use of the space and tools within his vicinity. But it’s more fun to watch his face move than his body, his crazed eyes and tight grins delivering the high-wire tension. He has great chemistry with a feisty flight attendant, Isha (Charithra Chandran), and faces every foe with a gritted-teeth intensity and a sense of genuine surprise whenever he bests one. Madigan is fond of the trick that is setting particularly bloody sequences to high-energy, tonally mismatched tunes — Hartnett bashes and stabs his way through everything from punk to polka aboard that flight.

But then the already goofy “Flight or Flight” takes a turn to the insanely cartoonish as it begins its descent, into a tangle of hallucinatory madness, unearned twists and mind-boggling cliffhangers. It’s a true Looney Tune with a shocking amount of digital blood, and almost squanders whatever appeal it may have churned up, except it all happens so fast. Surprisingly, Hartnett’s Lucas hasn’t worn out his welcome, even if the movie around him has fallen apart midair. Ergo, the old truism has never been truer: when it comes to “Fight or Flight,” your mileage may vary.

‘Fight or Flight’

2 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for strong bloody violence, language throughout and some drug material)

Running time: 1:42

How to watch: In theaters May 9

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By LARRY NEUMEISTER

NEW YORK (AP) — The founder and former CEO of the cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius Network was sentenced Thursday to 12 years in prison after a prosecutor labeled him a predator who “preyed on hope” by enticing vulnerable customers to risk their life savings for a supposedly safe investment.

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Alexander Mashinsky, 59, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl, who said a substantial term in prison was necessary for someone who engaged in “extremely serious” crimes that enabled him to pocket over $45 million while some of his customers lost everything and suffered severe psychological harm.

Celsius declared bankruptcy in 2022, exposing risky financial bets Mashinsky had made with some of the $20 billion that thousands of customers poured into the company. He had promised that their money would be safe and secure at Celsius, which pitched itself as a modern-day bank where crypto assets could earn interest.

The defense blamed the collapse of Celsius on a “cataclysmic downturn” of cryptocurrency markets in May and June of 2022 and said in court papers that Mashinsky’s “actions were never predatory, exploitative or venal. He never acted with the intent to hurt anyone.”

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Allison Nichols cast him as a financial predator, telling the judge Thursday that Mashinsky had deceived customers from the start by exaggerating Celsius’ ability to build momentum.

“He preyed on hope,” she said. “Mashinsky knew exactly what he was doing — selling these people hope.”

She said the customers were not going to be made financially whole regardless of money that can be recovered through bankruptcy proceedings.

Before he was sentenced, Mashinsky sobbed several times as he apologized to customers and referenced his difficult past as his family was able to leave a small Ukrainian town in the former Soviet Union with help from the United States when he was 7.

The family moved to Israel, where Mashinsky served three years in the Israeli Defense Forces as a fighter pilot before coming to America.

Mashinsky said he “never meant to hurt anybody here after all this country has done for me.”

“I’m truly sorry,” he said, describing himself as someone “who came from nothing.”

When he pleaded guilty in December, Mashinsky admitted to misleading customers between 2018 and 2022 by promising their investments were safe even as he fabricated Celsius’ profitability and put customers’ funds at the mercy of uncollateralized loans and undisclosed risky market bets.

His attorney, Marc Mukasey, said victim impact statements submitted to the court were “rather brutal” toward his client.

“We hear the intensity of their pain,” he said. “Our sympathies are with everyone.”

Several victims spoke at the sentencing hearing.

Cameron Crewes, who serves on a victims’ committee, called for a “harsh sentence,” saying nearly 250 victims died before they could see justice served or get adequately compensated for losses.

“Many people have been wiped out,” he said.

In a statement, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said Mashinsky “made tens of millions of dollars while his customers lost billions.”

He added: “America’s investors deserve better. The case for tokenization and the use of digital assets is strong, but it is not a license to deceive. The rules against fraud still apply.”

Reports that the White House may propose nearly a 50% cut to NASA’s Science Mission Directorate are both mind-boggling and, if true, nothing short of disastrous.

To make those cuts happen — a total of $3.6 billion — NASA would have to close the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, and cancel the mission that will bring back samples of Mars, a mission to Venus and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is nearly ready to launch.

Every space telescope besides the Hubble and the James Webb would be shut down. According to the American Astronomical Society, some cuts would include projects that help us understand the sun’s effects on global communications, a potential national security threat.

Casey Dreier, the policy advocate for the Pasadena-based Planetary Society, says, “This is an extinction-level event for the Earth- and space-science communities, upending decades of work and tens of billions in taxpayers’ investment.”

In addition, NASA as a whole would see a 20% cut — just as we are moving forward with the Artemis program. Artemis is NASA’s step-by-step “Moon to Mars” human spaceflight campaign. Artemis II is set to launch sometime next year and will send four astronauts on a lunar fly-by, the first time humans have been in close proximity to another celestial body in more than 50 years. While it seems likely that Artemis will continue in some fashion, a 20% overall agency budget cut won’t leave any part of NASA unaffected.

The president promised a “golden age of America”; his nominee to head NASA promised a “golden age of science and discovery.” This would be a return to the Dark Ages.

Taking a blowtorch to space science would also have little effect on the federal budget while setting back American leadership in space — and the inspiration it provides across political divides — by generations.

The Astronomical Society warns that our cutbacks will outsource talent “to other countries that are increasing their investments in facilities and workforce development.” And, as Dreier points out, spacecraft would be “left to tumble aimlessly in space” and billions wasted that have already been spent. “Thousands of bright students across the country,” he wrote recently, “would be denied careers in science and engineering absent the fellowships and research funds to support them.”

Here’s the dollars-and-cents context. NASA’s budget since the 1970s “hovers” between 1% and 0.4% of the federal discretionary spending, according to the Planetary Society’s analysis, yet for every dollar spent, NASA generates $3 in the national economy. NASA’s giveback was worth nearly $76 billion in economic impact in 2023, supporting more than 300,000 jobs. NASA’s bang-for-the-buck is astronomical, pun intended.

Cutting waste is one thing. Evisceration is another. When it comes to science — from public health to climate change — the current administration is doing the latter, not the former.

Meanwhile, China continues its space ambitions, with plans for a human lunar campaign and its own “sample return” mission to the Red Planet. For now, fortunately, the bipartisan support for NASA seems to be holding. Democrats and Republicans in Congress, led by the Planetary Science Caucus, have spoken out against this attack on NASA. And the Planetary Society has engaged thousands of passionate activists to fight this battle.

Humans yearn for connection to the universe — so we watch launches on social media, we follow the tracks of rovers on Mars and we marvel at creation in pictures transmitted from the James Webb Space Telescope. We borrow telescopes from the public library and look to the heavens.

Bending metal — the actual process of making rovers and spaceships and telescopes — drives economic activity. Fascinating results — the data from space science missions — fire the imagination.

We choose to go to space — sending humans and probes — and we pursue knowledge because curiosity is our evolutionary heritage. We explore other worlds to know them and, in doing so, we discover more about ourselves.

If you agree, let Congress know. That may be the only backstop against dumbly going where no budget has gone before.

Christopher Cokinos is a nature-and science writer whose most recent book is “Still as Bright: An Illuminating History of the Moon from Antiquity to Tomorrow.” Los Angeles Times.