Staying Fit
All rise: Jean Smart’s Deborah Vance is back in the spotlight! Hacks, the whip-smart comedy about an unsinkable Vegas comic, is back on Max for its third season, and that is reason alone to put down the garden shears and pick up the remote. Read on for the nine best things you need to be watching on Max in May.
Coming May 1
The Florida Project (2017, R)
Writer/director Sean Baker’s critically acclaimed slice-of-life glimpse into the ironically magical world of young children in poverty in a residence motel on the fringes of Florida’s Magic Kingdom features a richly empathetic Willem Dafoe, 68, as the manager of the Magic Castle motel (for which he earned an Oscar nomination). But it’s the young actors, including Brooklynn Prince, then 8 years old, who give the film its delicate heft and poignancy without ever straying into melodrama. A gem of a film.
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The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017, R)
This boundary-stretching, absurdist horror film by Yorgos Lanthimos, 50 (Poor Things, The Favourite), introduced the world to Barry Keoghan long before he charmed in The Banshees of Inisherin and danced naked in Saltburn. Teenager Martin (Keoghan), whose father has died, is invited into the home of a cardiothoracic surgeon and his wife (Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman, 56). It gets very weird and artfully disturbing from there.
Coming May 2
Hacks, Season 3
The world needs more Deborah Vance, the Joan Rivers-esque, unsinkable comedian wisecracking her way through the slings and arrows of aging while headlining in Vegas. And the world definitely needs more Jean Smart, 72, the Emmy winner who inhabits Vance with elan and venom in equal measure. In the third season, the achingly millennial comedy writer Ava Daniels (Laraine Newman’s daughter, Hannah Einbinder) reunites with her unlikely mentor.
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