What to Watch on TV and at the Movies This Week

​Your Prime Video Watch of the Week is here!

Cross (Prime Video)

Prime is so keen on this new crime series based on 77-year-old James Patterson’s best-selling Alex Cross novels that it’s already greenlit a second season. Cross, a veteran of the FBI and the Washington, D.C., police department with a PhD in psychology, is no stranger to the screen. There have been three films featuring Cross, starring Morgan Freeman, 87 (twice), and Tyler Perry, 55. This time, Leverage alum Aldis Hodge stars as the savvy detective as he tracks a serial killer who has a thing for creepy masks and a knowledge of Cross’s personal history.

Watch it: Cross on Prime Video

​Don’t miss this: The Best Things Coming to Prime Video this month

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

New at the movies …

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Red One, PG-13

Amazon plunked down $250 million on this Yuletide action-comedy, a diverting if busy attempt to update the Santa Claus legend for the Marvel generation. The head of North Pole security (Dwayne Johnson, 52) teams up with a deadbeat dad/hacker (Chris Evans) after a surprisingly buff Santa (J.K. Simmons, 69) gets kidnapped the day before Christmas Eve. Jake Kasdan, who directed the last two Jumanji movies, has a knack for world-building, and he tosses a sackful of thematic and genre elements into the mix like some overstuffed snow globe. But when the flakes settle, we’re left with a satisfying holiday entertainment about embracing our inner child. Bonus points for Simmons’s turn as a gym-rat Santa who bulks up for an annual gift-giving marathon that burns 134 million calories. —Thom Geier (T.G.)

Watch it: Red One, only in theaters Nov. 15

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A Real Pain, R

Holocaust humor is rare, but A Real Pain is a counterintuitive outlier: vivid, moving, funny and emotionally devastating. Lanky actor/playwright Jesse Eisenberg wrote and directed this bold family dramedy based on his own experience visiting his late great-aunt’s haunted hometown. The short and snappy, never sappy, film rides along with American cousins David (Eisenberg) and Benji Kaplan (Succession’s Kieran Culkin). David has organized a trip to Poland, their grandmother’s homeland. Their guided group tour culminates in a visit to the Nazi death camps, before they peel off to see their late grandmother’s house. David appears to be high-functioning OCD; Benji is seemingly bipolar, the life of the party one moment, the next a disruptive agent — a real pain. The Kaplans’ neurotic jaunt unfolds as a lively, insightful, conflicted, emotional exploration of generational trauma and mental illness. Culkin spins brilliantly in the flashier part, Eisenberg’s troubled partner on the rocky road to a visceral understanding of the mantra “never forget.” —Thelma M. Adams (T.M.A.)

Watch it: A Real Pain, in theaters Nov. 15

​Don’t miss this: Winter Movie Preview 2024 in AARP Members Edition

Also catch up with …

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Bird, R

In this ecstatic coming-of-age drama set among the squatting classes in Northern Kent, England, Newcomer Nykiya Adams, in a refreshingly natural performance that carries the movie, plays Bailey. She lives with her brother Hunter and father Bug (ubiquitous, powerful Barry Keoghan). Largely unsupervised, Bailey wanders the wastelands and garbage dumps, drops in on her mother, her abusive mate and comforts their litter of little half-siblings. Because Bailey’s on her own so much, she has an adult’s sense of responsibility and resilience in a marginal society that’s impoverished but not loveless. In a magic realism twist, she encounters a stranger, Bird (a magical Franz Rogowski). The unusual being helps Bailey achieve a bird’s eye view, and find her way, in the chaos in which she lives. Bird's five nominations from the British Independent Film Awards recognize the film’s unique beauty, strong performances, and the originality of director Andrea Arnold’s vision. – Thelma M. Adams (T.M.A.)

​Watch it: Bird, in theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Emilia Pérez 

Director Jacques Audiard’s rampageous musical fantasia/crime drama stars Karla Sofía Gascón as a ruthless Mexican drug lord who hires a high-powered attorney (Zoe Saldaña) to find him a doctor so he can transition to female and start a new life under a new name: Emilia Pérez. He doesn’t tell his young wife (Selena Gomez), who goes from clueless to furious. The initially upright attorney helps run the gangster biz, and it gets harder and harder to separate the good guys and gals from the bad, and tragedy from comedy. Plus, everybody keeps breaking out into exuberant song. Who knew Saldaña was such a terrific singer? And who says a violent gangster film can’t also be a musical, and more over the top than any opera? —Tim Appelo (T.A.)

Watch it: Emilia Pérez, in theaters and on Netflix

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Heretic, R

​Ecclesiastical horror may make audiences think about The Exorcist in all its iterations, but in this taut three-hander issues of religious doctrine, faith and belief intersect with scary movie staples. Sister Paxton (Chloe East) and Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher), two perky young Mormon missionaries proselytizing in Boulder, CO, knock on one last door for the day as a storm breaks. With a twinkly smile, bespectacled Mr. Reed (a wily Hugh Grant, 64, leaning into playing the heavy) invites the young women in for blueberry pie, Cokes and theological discussions. When the young women become increasingly uncomfortable, they discover themselves in a locked-house mystery with deadly consequences. Chatty but chilling. – T.M.A.

​Watch it: Heretic, in theaters

⭐⭐⭐☆☆ The Piano Lesson, PG-13

​​Denzel Washington, 69, a longtime advocate of Pulitzer Prize winner August Wilson, produces this faithful adaptation of his play The Piano Lesson. His son Malcolm Washington directs the drama led by sibling John David Washington (following the latter’s successful run on Broadway). His character, Boy Willie, crosses the Mason-Dixon Line in 1936 with a truckload of watermelons to visit his sister Berniece (an Oscar-bound Danielle Deadwyler) at the Pittsburgh home of Doaker Charles (a delightful Samuel L. Jackson, 75). Willie wants to sell the family’s sole heirloom, a 137-year-old intricately carved upright piano, to buy land back home. Berniece refuses, leading to an inheritance tug of war and a teaching moment. The soft spot is director Malcolm Washington. Despite passion for the material, he can't control this beast transferred from the stage. The Piano Lesson lurches in tone from slavery-era memory drama to supernatural horror to fraught family face-offs, never fusing to create an organic piano concerto. – T.M.A.

Watch it: The Piano Lesson, in select theaters, on Netflix Nov. 22

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, PG

In this faith-based movie by the director of The Chosen, the (partly) bad guys aren’t godless pagans, but Christians who need to get less judgmental. When the director of a church’s 75th annual Christmas pageant breaks her legs, Grace (terrific actress Judy Greer) takes over. But the brattiest kids in town, notorious for arson, stealing, smoking and rambunctiousness, hear about the church’s free snacks, invade the Sunday School and seize roles in the play. They ask questions about the Nativity, outraging the righteous. But peace on earth may still prove possible.

Watch it: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, in theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Here, PG-13

Forrest Gump stars Tom Hanks, 68, and Robin Wright, 58, reunite in another film that triggers Boomer memories, as a couple who live out their long lives before our eyes, thanks to state-of-the-art AI that makes them look like teens, octogenarians, and ages in between. The camera stays in one spot, depicting the history of their living room, their marriage and family ups and downs, and a century of U.S. history, with flashbacks to other centuries (and even prehistoric times). It’s not a Gump-like blockbuster, but it’s a fascinating, absorbing and moving meditation on time and aging. —T.A.

Watch it: Here, in theaters

​⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Anora, R

​The hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold movie returns in Cannes Film Fest top prizewinner Anora. The titular Brooklyn sex worker (an incandescent Mikey Madison, a likely Best Actress nominee) plies the pole and private dance rooms wearing little more than a chain and a bubble butt. When her boss introduces her to Ivan (Mark Eidenshtein), the scion of a Russian mob clan, she names her price to be his girlfriend for a week. The cute, goofy guy is loaded but defines fecklessness. A quickie Vegas wedding gives Ani hope she can attain the luxe life of a Kardashian without selling her flesh. But when Ivan’s parents jet in from Moscow to annul the match, all hell breaks loose in an antic, comic, visceral way. Ivan goes AWOL, his folks go batty, and the feral Anora keeps fighting for a fleeting autonomy. In an awards season of overlong seriousness, Madison’s Anora pops like Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment. —T.M.A.

Watch it: Anora, in limited theaters now, more theaters in November.

​⭐⭐⭐☆☆ Blitz, PG-13

Steve McQueen’s intimate war movie is the dynamic story of loving single mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan) and her mixed-race son George, 9, born out of wedlock. When the Germans bomb London in 1940, she dispatches him to the countryside for safety. George, repeatedly experiencing race-based bias, jumps off the train in the middle of nowhere and embarks on a big adventure back to the bombed-out wreckage in search of Rita. The vivid musical interludes and frantic dancing as explosions make every moment seem like the final one and images of bombs cascading down are all the stuff of London wartime lore. With a big empathetic star in the lead, racial conflicts contrasted with the notion of a unified sense of Britishness, and life-or-death stakes, Blitz should be explosive and emotionally powerful. But while it packs cinematic punch, it lacks emotional pull and seems surprisingly disengaged from its characters and subject. It’s tepid tea when it should have been whiskey neat. —T.M.A.  

Watch it: Blitz, in theaters, on Apple TV+ Nov. 22

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Conclave, PG

Ralph Fiennes, 61, ascends to the head of the Best Actor line in Edward Berger’s tense pontifical thriller that transfers the conflicts of Succession to the Vatican’s private chambers. When the existing pope expires, Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Fiennes) must organize the Conclave, the secret meeting of cardinals to elect the successor. Lawrence, spurning the papal mitre himself, must navigate the political scrum of rivals and attendant conspirators. These include conservative throwback Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto, 71), ambitious Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow, 79), the wise-but-weak Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci, 63) — and a little-known ringer Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz). Isabella Rossellini, 72, is a grace note of strength, speaking truth to power as Sister Agnes. Even for those that have never sat on the edge of their pew at mass, this battle for the soul of the church is sure footed, suspenseful, satisfying and executed without a scrap of fat — a prime movie for grownups. —T.M.A.

Watch it: Conclave, in theaters

⭐⭐⭐☆☆ Goodrich, R

​Michael Keaton, 73, projects a rumbled charm as a sixtyish man so absorbed in his job as the owner of a struggling L.A. art gallery that he’s incredulous when his wife checks into rehab, leaving him with primary parenting duties for their 9-year-old twins. He soon leans on his grown, now pregnant daughter from his first marriage (Mila Kunis), who both welcomes and resents his sincere but awkward attempts to finally rebalance his work-life scales. There’s an easygoing, improvisational quality to individual scenes, but there’s also a glut of secondary characters and rushed subplots that feel like narrative cul-de-sacs. — Thom Geier (T.G.) 

Watch it: Goodrich, in theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ The Apprentice, R

​Nobody’s opinions about Donald Trump, 78, and his rise in the 1980s will be changed by watching this juicy drama that’s pretty much ripped from the headlines of the New York Post and New York magazine. However, Sebastian Stan rises to a career high as Trump, portrayed (fairly or unfairly) as a germophobic opportunist haunted by his father Fred’s disapproval and his callousness in the face of his older brother’s alcoholism and suicide. Jeremy Strong (Succession) is superb as Svengali-like lawyer Roy Cohn, who skillfully disregards the law and mentors the young real estate mogul. His lack of compassion comes back to haunt Cohn as he’s dying of AIDS and his now more powerful mentee no longer takes his calls. The Apprentice would have benefited from a script crafted with more tension and suspense, but the performances are terrific. — T.M.A.

​​Watch it: The Apprentice, in theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Blink, PG

Making memories becomes a critical family mission in the National Geographic documentary Blink. French Canadian parents Edith Lemay and Sebastien Pelletier discover three of their four children have an incurable genetic eye condition that leads to blindness. So the close-knit crew circles the globe in search of beauty while everyone can see it. This latter-day Swiss Family Robinson embarks on a yearlong backpacking adventure to imprint visual memories — from zebras in Zimbabwe to wild horses in Mongolia — on the trio of children whose sight has already begun to dim. Yes, there’s family chaos, and tears will be shed, but the compelling, compassionate nonfiction film captures the conscious creation of a deep emotional connection that’s universal. This is a family committed to seeing each other, whatever their vision disabilities. —T.M.A.

Watch it: Blink, in theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ 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, 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.” —Tim Appelo (T.A.)

Watch it: White Bird, 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, in theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ 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 theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ 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 is 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