What to Watch on TV and at the Movies This Week

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ The Outrun, R

Ever since Irish American Saoirse Ronan broke into stardom as a teen (with a supporting actress Oscar nomination) in Atonement, she has defied the standard debutante star career path. Three best actress nominations followed, for Brooklyn, Lady Bird and Little Women. Her turn in The Outrun is her most daring. She plays Rona, an Orkney islander whose journey to success and stability in a university down south in London is cut short. She’s one of those people who’s the life of the party — until she isn’t, as alcohol takes her to the dark side, dragging along anyone close to her. During a blackout, she assaults her long-suffering boyfriend (Paapa Essiedu). She spews bridge-burning truths at friends and parents (Stephen Dillane, 67; Saskia Reeves, 63). She breaks down, crawls over broken beer bottle glass to AA, struggles to stay sober, relapses. The drama forces the audience to see the ugliness of addiction, even when coiled in the body of a beautiful, intelligent young woman. Rona’s one-day-at-a-time battle against drink is gladiatorial, as is Ronan’s performance. —T.M.A.

Watch it: The Outrun, Sept. 27 in theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ White Bird, PG-13

Marc Forster, cinema’s king of uncloying sentiment (Finding Neverland, A Man Called Otto), adapts a young-adult novel with a moral. To teach her grandson (Bryce Gheisar) a lesson about the importance of not bullying other kids, a famous French Jewish artist (Helen Mirren, 79) tells him how her much-bullied classmate (Orlando Schwerdt) and his mother (X Files ’ Gillian Anderson, 56) hid her from the Nazis in their barn. “We had both seen how much hate people are capable of, and how much courage it took to be kind,” she says. “When kindness can cost you your life, it becomes like a miracle.”

Watch it: White Bird, Oct. 4 in theaters

⭐⭐☆☆☆ Joker: Folie à Deux, R

The joke’s on us. Promising twice as much star power as the frantic 2020 Oscar competitor, Joker, the musical sequel Joker: Folie a Deux is half as entertaining and three times more irritating. Joker best actor winner Joaquin Phoenix, 49, returns to play the jocular Gotham villain, following the Joker’s murder of a variety show host on live TV. With no narrative drive, but lots of dancing and singing, the comic book movie shifts between suspenseless courtroom drama, brutal behind-bars beatdowns — and music! New this time is Lady Gaga as love interest Lee, aka Harley Quinn. The pair makes sweet-and-sour music together. An emaciated Phoenix still rivets but Gaga, the better singer and dancer, lacks the acting chops to meet him halfway. When a judge asks, “Mr. Fleck, where is this going?” the answer, despite Oscar-worthy production values, is circling the drain. —T.M.A.

Watch it: Joker: Folie à Deux, Oct. 4 in theaters

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Will & Harper (Netflix)

In this enlightening and funny documentary feature, comedy legend Will Ferrell, 57, goes on a cross-country road trip with his longtime friend and 13-year SNL writer Harper Steele after she comes out as a trans woman. The two share their feelings about how this new chapter in Steele’s life will change their friendship. Spoiler alert: It turns out it won’t. If anything, their bond gets stronger.

Watch it: Will & Harper on Netflix

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Lee, R

Brave, determined Lee Miller was an American pioneer. The hard partying model-turned-war-photographer famously shot a selfie bathing in Hitler’s tub after his suicide. As WWII waned, she dared to enter and document the horror of the concentration camps to ensure that Westerners became aware of the true extent of the German genocide. When British Vogue didn’t dare publish the horror, Miller turned to the American version, breaking the harrowing images. Kate Winslet fills the part near to bursting as a beautiful iconoclast who found her vocation behind a Rolleiflex. The movie details her love affair with British conscientious objector Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgård, alluring from his first half smile at the nearly topless Miller) and introduces her Jewish photography partner, Life shooter David E. Scherman (a dramatic coup for Andy Samberg). Based on the memoir of Miller’s son, Antony Penrose (Josh O’Connor), the script’s interview format seems like a crutch for a female-driven story built on pain, passion and the truth-telling power of combat photography. —T.M.A.

Watch it: Lee, in theaters

⭐☆☆☆☆ Megalopolis, R

Francis Ford Coppola, 85, mostly self-financed this megabudgeted fable set in a parallel-universe New York City with many telling parallels to Ancient Rome on the verge of a Humpty Dumptyish fall. The movie is only for Coppola completists — but they have to see it. Adam Driver, in a Caesarean haircut, plays a mashup of a visionary genius like Elon Musk, the time-and-space-bending superhero Neo from The Matrix (with Laurence Fishburne, 63, as his sidekick and occasional narrator) and 20th-century urban planner Robert Moses, who displaced tens of thousands of working-class homes to build an elaborate highway system. There’s a lot going on here: stunning split-screen visuals, cartoonishly broad performances from the likes of Aubrey Plaza and Shia LaBeouf (as a cloddish nepo baby aptly named Clodio), and pseudo-intellectual dialogue lifted from Shakespeare, Marcus Aurelius and the Roman historian Suetonius. This puzzling film, in the tradition of the Roman Colosseum, will leave you longing for less circus and more bread. —Thom Geier (T.G.)

Watch it: Megalopolis, in theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Saturday Night, R

Believe it or not, there was a time — Oct. 11, 1975 — when Lorne Michaels’ late-night institution Saturday Night Live looked like it might not even get its first show on the air. Director Jason Reitman (Juno) takes a page from the Aaron Sorkin playbook, structuring this breathlessly paced comedy as a tick-tock of the 90-minute dash leading up to the show’s rocky, not-ready-for-prime-time debut. The SNL cast members are all scruffy nobodies, the guest host (Matthew Rhys as George Carlin) is wired on coke, the cranky writers don’t play well with others and NBC’s brass (embodied by a snaky Willem Dafoe, 69) wants it to fail. The mythologizing borders on shameless — Lorne Michaels, 79, will love it — but Reitman’s film has a real rat-a-tat energy and sense of without-a-net danger thanks to its game young cast (Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd, Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase and Rachel Sennott as Rosie Shuster are the standouts). Saturday Night may not be the most factually accurate account of what went down in Studio 8H a half century ago, but it’s a delightfully giddy hit of pop nostalgia. —Chris Nashawaty (C.N.)

Watch it: Saturday Night, in limited release (Oct. 11 nationwide)

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ The Wild Robot, PG

Was I wrong to expect a robot gone wild from the title, maybe joining a rave? As it turns out, the titular automaton, warmly voiced by Lupita Nyong’o, has crashed on a jungle island. The intelligent bot’s programmed to bond with a (human) taskmaster. Instead, she finds herself in the wild amid, basically, the cast of Bambi. Through her tech, “Roz” learns the animals’ languages. From there, the amusing, beautifully crafted animation becomes a talking animal movie (which I love). Based on Peter Brown’s best-selling picture books, the robot rescues an orphaned egg, then bonds with the newborn gosling, Brightbill (Kit Connor). Aided by a fast-talking red fox (Pedro Pascal) and a stampede of beavers, skunks, possums, crabs, a lone bear and more (Bill Nighy, 74, Matt Berry, Ving Rhames, 65, and Mark Hamill, 73, to name a few), she must learn to mother Brightbill. In a lovely turn of events, Roz learns to lead with her heart, not her electrical wiring, becoming an honorary wild creature in a vibrant and winning intergalactic goose-chase. —T.M.A.

Watch it: The Wild Robot, in theaters

⭐⭐⭐☆☆ Salem’s Lot (Max)

We’re in Stephen King country here — rural Maine circa the mid-’70s, the small town of Jerusalem’s Lot, a.k.a. “Salem’s Lot” to the gossiping, busybody locals who call it home. After a young boy is kidnapped and sacrificed to the creatures of the night, townsfolk start dropping like flies. Top Gun: Maverick’s Lewis Pullman stars as Ben Mears, an author who moved to the big city 20 years earlier, returned home to research a novel and teams up with a local woman (Makenzie Leigh), the town’s intrepid doctor (Alfre Woodard, 71), a jaded school teacher (Bill Camp, 62), an alcoholic priest (John Benjamin Hickey, 61) and an 11-year-old boy weaned on monster movies (Jordan Preston Carter) to wave crucifixes and drive wooden stakes through the hearts of the freshly bitten. Salem’s Lot 3.0 has some effective gotcha moments, and it knows when to play things straight and when to sprinkle in tongue-in-cheek comic relief. Better still, the film’s thirsty bloodsuckers look exactly like Max Schreck from 1922’s Nosferatu. Go get some popcorn — and holy water — and check it out. —C.N.

Watch it: Salem’s Lot on Max

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ The Substance, R

In a year of major comebacks for actresses over 50, the biggest may be Demi Moore, 61. The one-time Ghost romantic lead slays as an over-the-hill Hollywood star who hosts a bouncy exercise show recalling that of Jane Fonda, 86. Frustrated by her waning power and dismissed by her ageist boss (an exaggerated Dennis Quaid, 70), the desperate thespian becomes vulnerable to an offer for “the substance.” This mysterious fictional chemical treatment splits her into her young, supple, gorgeous self (played by Margaret Qualley) every other week. What could go wrong? With this cross between David Cronenberg body horror and Sunset Boulevard, Moore inserts herself into the Oscar conversation, giving a performance that is both literally naked and operatically dark. —T.M.A.

Watch it: The Substance, in theaters​

⭐⭐⭐☆☆ Wolfs, R

The good news is that even though Brad Pitt, 60, and gorgeously graying George Clooney, 63, spend some of Wolfs zinging each other about their ages, the two still look every inch the global superstars in their matching black leather jackets. They need them during the course of a snowy Manhattan night that goes wrong when Pitt is mistakenly called to a hotel room to dispose of a corpse where Clooney, who's in the same “fixer” or “cleanup” trade, is already on the job. These lone “wolfs” — get it? — are forced, buddy-cop style, to work together in a convoluted story involving a local DA, a young man (Austin Abrams with the freshest monologue in the film), and Albanian and Croatian drug kingpins. Also showcased are Clooney’s considerable driving skills during a chase sequence near the Brooklyn Bridge. Pitt and Clooney haven’t worked together since they made the last of the Ocean's trilogy in 2007. This doesn't come close to equaling those films, but it's a nice return to form. —Dana Kennedy (D.K.)

Watch it: Wolfs, in theaters and on Apple TV+

His Three Daughters (Netflix)

After a string of poor showings at the Oscars, Netflix hasn’t thrown in the towel (yet) on awards-bait movies. This prestige drama from writer-director Azazel Jacobs, 52, finds costars Elizabeth Olsen, Carrie Coon and Natasha Lyonne as estranged sisters forced to reunite to look after their dying father (Jay O. Sanders, 71) — and possibly bury a lifetime’s worth of hatchets. With a near-perfect 99 percent critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s a good bet for Oscar consideration.

Watch it: His Three Daughters on Netflix

Matlock (CBS)

Who could possibly top Andy Griffith from the 1980s, playing the folksy, cantankerous old attorney people underestimate at their peril? Oscar and Emmy winner Kathy Bates, 76.

Watch it: Matlock on CBS

Don’t miss this: AARP’s Favorite Network Shows of 2024 (So Far) in AARP Members Edition

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ My Old Ass, R (Prime Video)

While tripping on mushrooms, a teenager (Nashville alum Maisy Stella) encounters her future thirtysomething self, played by master of deadpan Aubrey Plaza. But will she heed the hindsight-fueled advice of her middle-aged mentor — especially when she meets the hunky older guy she’s been told will ruin her life? And does she have a big lesson to teach her older self, too? The film won raves at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and its finale is more romantic than any rom-com of the year. —T.A.

Watch it: My Old Ass, in theaters and on Prime Video

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, PG-13

The sequel doesn’t quite pack the exhilarating punch of the 1988 original, and the plot is scattershot even by director Tim Burton’s standards. But he hasn’t lost his gloriously ghastly/silly visual imagination, his love of film homages (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Trainspotting, 1960s Italian horror flicks) and his bubbly sense of humor. Michael Keaton, 73, is still aces as the cartoonish titular demon pursuing the same goth girl (Winona Ryder, 52) for a marriage that’s his ticket out of the afterlife. Lydia’s now a grownup with a daughter (Jenna Ortega) in a similar predicament. And Catherine O’Hara, 70, remains inimitably narcissistic as Lydia’s appalling artist mom. Monica Bellucci, 59, is lively as a dismembered cadaver who staples together her hacked-up parts, sucks out people’s souls and wants to marry Beetlejuice. There’s a climactic wedding-day scene in which everybody lip-syncs to “MacArthur Park,” the grandiose 1968 tune, which makes more sense than people realize (its composer really saw a cake melting in the rain in that park by his ex’s office, and to him, it symbolized his lost wedding plans). But the song is way more fun as a senseless send-up in a Beetlejuice movie. —Tim Appelo (T.A.)

Watch it: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, in theaters

Don’t miss this: Test Your Knowledge in AARP’s ‘Beetlejuice’ Trivia Quiz

Rebel Ridge (Netflix)

The only thing that may be better than a dirty-cop movie is a dirty-cop movie starring a sinister Don Johnson, 74. The Underground Railroad’s Aaron Pierre plays a Black former Marine who travels to a small, largely white town to bail his cousin out of jail and stumbles on to a conspiracy involving the police. Directed by Jeremy Saulnier (2015’s tense and taut Green Room), Rebel Ridge is an extremely interesting late-night thriller.

Watch it: Rebel Ridge on Netflix

Don't miss this: Don Johnson Tells AARP He Will Never Retire: ‘I’m Getting Better!’ in AARP Members Edition

The Idea of You (Prime Video)

The best (and best reviewed) 2024 movie on Prime Video this week is this rom-com about a midlife single mom (Anne Hathaway) who has a whirlwind romance with the 24-year-old superstar lead singer of the hottest boy band on the planet. The film’s popularity inspired AARP’s number 1 hit watch list: 12 Classic Older Woman-Younger Man Movies to Watch After Anne Hathaway’s ‘The Idea of You.’

Watch it: The Idea of You on Prime Video

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Sing Sing, R

The spark in this drama based on a true story set in Ossining, New York’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility — home of the electric chair dubbed “Old Sparky” — is the power of theater to liberate inmates, even a lifer. Charismatic Oscar nominee Colman Domingo, 54 (Rustin), is achingly good as Divine G, a model prisoner, insistent on his innocence, who drives a volunteer theater group. It’s a chit of good behavior on his epic legal journey to win parole. With a layered performance, graceful, compassionate and angry, he finds a form of release within the reality of his confinement. The movie fuses the inherent conflicts of felons coexisting in a ratty prison with a priceless view of the Hudson River, and the dramatic conflicts they plumb while digging into theatrical roles, including Shakespeare’s ever-relevant Hamlet. Bravo! —T.M.A.

Watch it: Sing Sing, in theaters​​​​