Staying Fit
What’s on this week? Whether it’s what’s on cable, streaming on Prime Video or Netflix, or opening at your local movie theater, we’ve got your must-watch list. Start with TV and scroll down for movies. It’s all right here.
On TV this week …
Shirley, PG-13 (Netflix)
Oscar winner Regina King, 53, has generated plenty of advance buzz for her role as Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to the U.S. Congress. John Ridley’s biopic, which also stars Lance Reddick, 60, Terrence Howard, 55, and Lucas Hedges, focuses on Chisholm’s historic long-shot bid for the presidency in 1972.
Watch it: Shirley, March 22 on Netflix
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Your Netflix Watch of the Week is here!
3 Body Problem, Season 1
Netflix has bet big, very big, on this sci-fi mystery series based on a 2008 trilogy by Chinese author Liu Cixin, 60. Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff, 53, and D.B. Weiss, 52, who have a $200 million deal with the streamer, teamed with True Blood alum Alexander Woo on the mega-budget project — which touches on the mysterious deaths of the world’s top scientists, virtual-reality headsets that produce bizarro images of the past, plus an imminent alien invasion of Earth. It’s heady, brain-stumping stuff. Let’s hope we don’t need footnotes or a crash course on late-20th-century Chinese history to follow the goings-on.
Watch it: 3 Body Problem on Netflix
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Your Prime Video Watch of the Week is here!
⭐⭐⭐☆☆ Road House, R
In case we needed further proof that in Hollywood everything old is new again, director Doug Liman, 58 (The Bourne Identity), gives us a flashy update of Road House, the 1989 Patrick Swayze guilty pleasure about a bare-knuckle bouncer who’s “nice until it’s time to not be nice.” This time around, Jake Gyllenhaal stars as a lethal loner haunted by tragedy from his UFC past. Hired to keep the peace at a beachfront bar in the Florida Keys that’s being terrorized by a greedy developer (Billy Magnussen) and his goons, Gyllenhaal punches his way up the food chain until peace is restored. The brawls are nice and crunchy, and the insanely shredded Gyllenhaal is believable as a brute with a heart of gold, but the villain pales next to the original’s Ben Gazzara, and the presence of real-life UFC star Conor McGregor is more cartoonish and distracting than menacing. —Chris Nashawaty (C.N.)
Watch it: Road House on Prime Video
Don’t miss this: The 10 Best Things Coming to Prime Video in March
What’s new at the movies …
⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ The Neon Highway, PG-13
In a dramatic musical showcase for Beau Bridges, 82, the amiable actor plays crusty Claude Allen, a once-famous country singer with a talent for self-sabotage who is on his final, broke, booze-fueled self-pity party. Then he encounters cable-guy-with-a-dream Wayne Collins (Rob Mayes), a blue-collar worker who once envisioned country stardom and still carries a surefire hit crumpled in his pocket. That original song is “The Neon Highway,” an ode to the dreams and disappointments of performing the honky-tonk circuit. If only Allen can record it, the road to redemption for both men is in sight. Mayes sings better than he acts; he’s no foil for that charmer Bridges, who makes every scene feel as comfortable as an old slipper and earns every tear that comes his way. —Thelma M. Adams (T.M.A.)
Watch it: The Neon Highway, March 22 in theaters
⭐⭐☆☆☆ Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, PG-13
The surviving Ghostbusters — let’s call them Distinguished Gentlemen of the Supernatural — are back for the second time since 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Frozen Empire dispenses with the heartland treacle of Afterlife and brings us back to the franchise’s New York origins. One cheer for that. The cast is appealing back to front: Dan Aykroyd, 71, Bill Murray, 73, Ernie Hudson, 78, and Annie Potts, 71. They even bring back William Atherton, 76, the EPA jerk from the 1984 picture, now the mayor. Paul Rudd, 54, Carrie Coon (The Leftovers), Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things) and Mckenna Grace (The Handmaid’s Tale) are the newbies. Another cheer for that. But if only the filmmakers could’ve shoehorned some actual jokes into this overstuffed confection, or served up action that didn’t look like it was edited in a digital shredder! —Glenn Kenny (G.K.)
Watch it: Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, March 22 in theaters
Also catch up with …
Manhunt (Apple TV+)
In the ultimate American true-crime miniseries — if a bit fictionalized at points — Game of Thrones’ Tobias Menzies, 49, is Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of war, and Lili Taylor, 57, is Mrs. Lincoln, both driven to the brink of madness on the 12-day hunt for the president’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth (Anthony Boyle). Two-fisted, disreputable detective Lafayette Baker (Patton Oswalt, 55), who shared in the $100,000 reward for nabbing Booth before he could get a hero’s welcome in the South, is on the case, too.
Watch it: Manhunt on Apple TV+
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Palm Royale (Apple TV+)
Kristen Wiig, 50, plays a divorcée trying to break into 1969 Palm Beach high society in a highly promising miniseries with the most illustrious comedy cast of the year: Carol Burnett, 90, Laura Dern, 57, Allison Janney, 64, Julia Duffy, 72, Josh Lucas, 52, and Ricky Martin, 52.
Watch it: Palm Royale on Apple TV+
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Grey’s Anatomy (ABC)
In the 20th season of the steamy hospital drama, we’ll see the aftermath of multiple cliff-hangers featuring two crucial smooches and two near-death experiences, by a patient (Sam Page) and his surgeon (Kim Raver, 54). The titular Dr. Grey (Ellen Pompeo, 54), won’t be a regular anymore, but she’ll do voice-overs and maybe even appear on screen. “It’s not a complete goodbye,” Pompeo says.
Watch it: Grey’s Anatomy, Thursdays, 9 p.m. ET on ABC
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