What to Watch on TV and at the Movies This Week

The A List: 15 Stories from Asian and Pacific Diasporas (HBO, HBO Max)

As we celebrate AAPI Heritage Month in May, this documentary asks 15 high-profile trailblazers, including stars Sandra Oh, 54, Bowen Yang, Kumail Nanjiani and U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth, 58, to ponder what being considered AAPI means to them. Their reflections — full of joy, humor and sorrow — tell a rich, important story about navigating identity and finding community in the American landscape.

Watch it: The A List, May 13 on HBO, HBO Max

Your Netflix Watch of the Week is here!

Remarkably Bright Creatures , PG-13

The last time Sally Field, 79, starred in a feature film, she was saddling up with Lily Tomlin, 86, Jane Fonda, 88, and Rita Moreno, 94, to hit on legendary New England Patriots QB Tom Brady in 2023’s 80 for Brady. This time, the two-time Oscar winner is captivated by a very different creature. Field plays a lonely small-town widow who works as a cleaning lady at an aquarium and develops an unlikely bond with a giant Pacific octopus. I can think of maybe three actors in the world who could pull off his kind of thing. Field is one of them.

Watch it: Remarkably Bright Creatures, May 8 on Netflix

Don't miss this: The Best Things Coming to Netflix This Month

Your Prime Video Watch of the Week is here!

Off Campus, Season 1

HBO Max’s racy Heated Rivalry isn’t the last word in hockey-based romances. This new series, based on the YA bestsellers by Canadian author Elle Kennedy, centers on Briar University’s all-star hockey BMOC, Garrett, and an introverted songwriter named Hannah who captures his off-ice attentions.

Watch it: Off Campus, May 13 on Prime Video

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

New at the movies this week

⭐⭐⭐☆☆ Animal Farm, PG

George Orwell published his novella fable Animal Farm in 1945; more than 80 years later, the work’s themes — here expressed in animation — remain timeless. After a farmyard full of animals overthrow their oppressive and abusive human master, they embark on a revolution where all animals are declared equal, but the movement is quickly curdled by a bully of a boar named Napoleon (voiced by Seth Rogen). Director Andy Serkis, 62, who provides two voices in the film, is joined by a terrific ensemble of actors that includes Glenn Close, 79, Steve Buscemi, 68, Kieran Culkin, Jim Parsons, 53, and Woody Harrelson, 64. Despite all that star power, though, the film's updated script (now there's a generic evil corporation to battle instead of the original's Soviet-style socialism) and pacing geared toward shorter attention spans yield an Animal Farm that’s a bit heavy-hooved. But if it gets your grandkids to read the book, let’s consider that a win for the two-legs. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Animal Farm, in theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ I Swear, R

This British biopic, which won five BAFTAs, has a rare rating on Rotten Tomatoes: Both its critical score and audience response align at 97 percent. The drama follows the true story of John Davidson, who manifested symptoms of Tourette’s syndrome in his tweens. The condition, which can include spontaneous cursing and physical tics, turns the football-playing lad’s life upside down, along with any plans for a neurotypical future. Although the script and editing are uneven, the heartwarming story of his brave fight to understand his socially off-putting condition is winning. As an adult, Davidson goes on to help others with the condition as well as police, educators and social workers to better understand the disorder’s tics and triggers. (In 2019, Queen Elizabeth II recognized Davidson’s decades of service with an MBE, a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.) Earlier this year at the BAFTA ceremony, Davidson, who was in the audience, blurted racial slurs as Black actors took the stage, causing a media brouhaha that might have been more easily reconciled if the participants had all watched this film. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: I Swear, in theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ The Sheep Detectives , PG

The love child of Midsomer Murders (25 years on PBS and counting) and beloved farm-film Babe, The Sheep Detectives is both a paean to the cozy mystery and a delightful talking-animal movie. In it, a flock of rams, lambs and ewes are living the pastoral life until, one dark and stormy night, their beloved shepherd, George Hardy (the charming Hugh Jackman, 57), drops dead. Could he have been poisoned? Armed with a breezy script that playfully logs the tropes of the cozy mystery, the furry friends set out to solve the case, employing the tools they’ve absorbed during Hardy’s nightly mystery bedtime stories. The stellar human cast includes Emma Thompson, 67, Succession’s Nicholas Braun and The Bear’s Molly Gordon. Among those voicing the four-legged beasts are Patrick Stewart, 85, Bryan Cranston, 70, and Regina Hall, 55. It’s a movie that’s fun for all ages, but it will particularly appeal to those, like me, who revel in a good small-town whodunit and appreciate the ditzy Dr. Dolittle of it all. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: The Sheep Detectives, May 8 in theaters

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⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Amrum, NR

Just when I thought I couldn’t sit through another coming-of-age film, much less one set in WWII under the blight of Nazism, I discovered how wrong I could be. Amrum is a small miracle of a movie. Based on the boyhood of cowriter Hark Bohm (who died in November at 86), the beautifully shot film stars Jasper Billerbeck as 12-year-old Nanning, who lives with his mother and siblings on a remote German North Sea island under the flight path of Allied bombers making their last runs over Germany. When his despairing mother has a fourth child, all she wants to eat is white bread, honey and butter — nearly impossible to obtain in a time of scarcity. His quest to satisfy her hunger, and his discovery of his roots in the local Nazi-resistant fishing village while his father is away fighting for the Germans, creates an enormous tension. The tremendous German American actress Diane Kruger, 49, has an eyelash of a role as a resistant local farmer, but it’s as resonant as the entire film. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Amrum, in theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ The Devil Wears Prada 2, PG-13

As a veteran of the magazine and print wars (with stints at the New York Post and Us magazine), I wondered how the long-anticipated The Devil Wears Prada sequel would handle the industry’s steep decline. It does — and with humor, grace and a forgiving heart. Two decades have passed when now-seasoned and award-winning journalist Andy Sachs (Ann Hathaway) gets pink-slipped and finds the only journalism job available is as a senior editor at Runway magazine, where her career began. This reunites her with her Cruella De Vil editor, Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep, 76), a caricature of Vogue’s Anna Wintour, also 76, and Priestly's devoted deputy, Nigel (Stanley Tucci, 65). Her old nemesis, Emily (Emily Blunt), now working for a luxury retailer, is also on hand. The movie captures the industry’s decline and fall, and the impact of that on a variety of egos, first among them that of Priestly. While it’s jollier than the original and filled with fashion eye candy, this Devil is also gentler, as if the writers themselves have been knocked about a bit by entertainment industry vagaries and seek a softer landing. Streep, Tucci, Hathaway and Blunt all step up to the dramedic challenge, even if the idea of “let’s all get along” at the end seems a bit forced. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: The Devil Wears Prada 2, in theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Hokum, R

At last, a modern horror film that relies on creepy atmosphere instead of over-the-top gore. Severance star Adam Scott, 53, plays the misanthropic best-selling author of historical thrillers who heads to the remote Irish hotel where his long-dead parents honeymooned, planning to scatter their ashes and bury memories of some childhood trauma. The place is suitably unsettling as the locals share folklore about witches and a haunted honeymoon suite that’s kept locked up. Director Damian McCarthy strikes a delicate, dread-inducing balance between (apparently) supernatural thrills and the more explicable shock of humans doing very bad things. And that includes Scott, who’s a jerk for much of the film but ultimately elicits our sympathy as things go from bumpy in the night to downright deadly. —Thom Geier

Watch it: Hokum, in theaters