UPFRONT/WATCH
Now Playing
AARP critic Tim Appelo’s picks of upcoming movies and shows worth considering
THE TASTE OF THINGS
In theaters February 9
• Gourmets and film fans are salivating over this French romance about a 19th-century chef (Benoît Magimel, 49) and his cook and lover (Juliette Binoche, 59, Magimel’s real-life ex), who won’t marry him. Except (maybe!) if he cooks for her. The Wall Street Journal raved, “Like a sip of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, the film leaves one feeling a little drunk, desperately hungry and entirely alive.”
THE NEW LOOK
On AppleTV+ February 14
• Boasting what’s apt to be the best-dressed cast of the TV season, this series about 1940s fashion revolutionary Christian Dior (Ben Mendelsohn, 54) is also a World War II drama—his rival Paris designer Coco Chanel (Juliette Binoche) was a Nazi collaborator, while his sister (Maisie Williams, Game of Thrones) was tortured in a concentration camp. Glenn Close, 76, plays legendary Harper’s Bazaar editor Carmel Snow, who famously exclaimed at Dior’s 1947 show, “It’s such a new look!”
ELSBETH
On CBS February 29
• In a spin-off series, Elsbeth Tascioni (brilliant Carrie Preston, 56), the quirky attorney on The Good Wife and The Good Fight, leaves Chicago to help NYPD Captain Wagner (The Wire’s Wendell Pierce, 60) solve crimes with her scatterbrained yet high-IQ imagination.
WILLIE AND ME
In theaters February 9
• In a lightweight comedy, a German housewife (Eva Hassmann, 51) makes a pilgrimage to the Las Vegas farewell concert of Willie Nelson. See Nelson act, sing and kick up his heels in a German folk dance—not bad for a guy who’s 90.
ORDINARY ANGELS
In theaters February 23
• A recovering alcoholic hairdresser (Hilary Swank, 49) rallies her townsfolk to get a 3-year-old a liver transplant to save the child’s life as a historic snowstorm shuts down Louisville. It sounds too miraculous to be true, but it’s based on an inspiring real story.
BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE
In theaters February 14
• We’re eager to see Kingsley Ben-Adir, who played Malcolm X in One Night in Miami, play the Jamaican superstar, and curious to hear him sing reggae hits—the actor’s voice is blended with the real Bob and his son Ziggy Marley. The scene where the peacenik singer gets shot while rehearsing “I Shot the Sheriff” in 1976 really happened.