What to Watch on TV and at the Movies This Week

Sunny Nights, Season 1 (Hulu/Disney+)​

SNL alum Will Forte, 55, and D’Arcy Carden (The Good Place) play American siblings who relocate to Australia to start a spray-tan business — but quickly run afoul of some nasty (and very quirky) folks who are not only Down Under but downright underworld criminals. This comedic crime series won raves when it debuted last year in Oz.

Watch it: Sunny Nights, March 11 on Disney+

Your Netflix Watch of the Week is here!

Vladimir, Season 1

The always welcome Rachel Weisz, 55, headlines this erotically charged comedy series about an English professor who becomes infatuated with a handsome new faculty member (The White Lotus’ Leo Woodall). Her reckless obsession ends up threatening both her marriage and her career. There was a time when these sorts of steamy, adult-oriented shows seemed to be all over the small screen. Lately, not so much. To which we say: Welcome back! And let the hilarious (and sexy) bad decisions begin!

Watch it: Vladimir, March 5 on Netflix

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

Your Prime Video Watch of the Week is here!

Scarpetta, Season 1

Kay Scarpetta, the forensic pathologist at the center of Patricia Cornwell’s best-selling book franchise, makes the leap to TV in a series that follows two timelines. Nicole Kidman, 58, dons the lab coat of Scarpetta as she’s forced to reexamine an early case that established her reputation. She’s joined by a police detective (Bobby Cannavale, 55), an FBI profiler (Simon Baker, 56) and her sister (Jamie Lee Curtis, 67). The show features many flashbacks to the 1990s with other actors (including Cannavale’s real-life son Jake) playing younger versions of the key characters.

Watch it: Scarpetta, March 11 on Prime Video

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

New at the movies this week

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Bride!, R

Actor, director and writer Maggie Gyllenhaal’s brilliant reimagining of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is told largely from the bride’s perspective. It begins in gangster-riddled 1930s Chicago with the desperately lonely Frankenstein's Monster (a magnetic Christian Bale, 52) approaching an eccentric doctor (Annette Bening, 67) to make him a wife. She tempts fate and complies by resuscitating wild party girl Ida (a wonderfully outrageous Jessie Buckley). The dark, violent and feminist rom-com generates heat between the scarred, broken pair as they run from the law, Bonnie and Clyde–style. Along the way, there’s no shortage of monster-movie references, stitched together and remade like Frankie himself. To see the pair dancing to “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” a snippet of genius echoing Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, is pure bliss. The costumes, design and music choices, along with a dynamo supporting cast including Penélope Cruz, 51, Gyllenhaal’s spouse, Peter Sarsgaard, 54, and her brother, Jake Gyllenhaal, combine to deliver an electric shock of a movie. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: The Bride!, March 6 in theaters

⭐⭐⭐☆☆ Heel, PG-13

Set in a mansion straight out of Wuthering Heights, this horror film has an outlier quality, evolving in unexpected and often peculiar ways. Nineteen-year-old urban hooligan Tommy (ferocious Anson Boon, who previously played Johnny Rotten in the 2022 limited series Pistol) has never met a drug he doesn’t like, a nightclub he can’t shut down or a brawl he won’t start. One night while blitzed, he’s kidnapped and secreted away to the aforementioned remote manse, where he’s chained by the neck and forced to watch anti-addiction propaganda. His kidnappers are odd ducks with their own dark secrets. As played by the excellent Stephen Graham, 52, and a whispery Andrea Riseborough, their bizarre mix of creepiness and compassion takes the movie to strange heights. Whether Heel advocates for or indicts troubled-teen reprogramming is never clarified, but its despair at the societal decline caused by teens’ pervasive drug and social media abuse — and adults’ apparent helplessness at bringing them to heel — resonates. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Heel, March 6 in theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, R

Peaky Blinders fans, rejoice! The final episode of Tommy Shelby’s epic journey as a thinking man’s crime boss in industrial Birmingham, England, sticks the landing (we’re looking at you, Game of Thrones). The great Cillian Murphy returns in the lead, brooding while writing his memoirs at his tumbled-down Midlands estate. As WWII ramps up, Tommy’s forced into one last bloody quest (based on historic events), while his eldest son, Duke (a great casting choice in Barry Keoghan), runs riot. The supernatural elements that have always been a part of Tommy’s life haunt him, bringing in his dead brother Arthur, his daughter Ruby and more ghosts from the past. The film gets some of its rich texture from fantastic support by a villainous Tim Roth, 64, Stephen Graham, 52, and Rebecca Ferguson in a juicy role as a Romani medium/soothsayer. Ultimately, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man — full of emotion, explosive action and propulsive rock ‘n’ roll — is a succession story. But who will lead the Birmingham Blinders through the war and into the modern age: Tommy or Duke? —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, March 6 in select theaters, March 20 on Netflix

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⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, PG-13

I couldn't help falling in love with this movie, which is why you should see it in an IMAX theater, if possible, to be properly immersed in the King’s talent. Directed by Aussie showman Baz Luhrmann, 63, the thrilling, kinetic documentary is notable for what it's not: a dissection of the seamier elements of his personal history (already addressed by Luhrmann’s biopic Elvis and Sofia Coppola’s 2023 Priscilla). Luhrmann assembles newfound footage and audio and plugs into what made Elvis great: a generational voice grounded in gospel and R&B, an electric connection to his audience and with his fellow musicians, and the Olympian heights of his performances, in which he leaves everything in a pool of sweat on the floor. There's an eyelash of background — growing up poor, a military stint, marriage and family with Priscilla and the impact of his Svengali, Colonel Tom Parker. But this doc focuses on the music. It’s crammed with Elvis in performance, an experience that could have you dancing in the aisles of the IMAX theater (if not throwing panties at the screen). —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: EPiC, in theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Ghost Elephants , NR

Deep in the jungles of Angola, conservation biologist and explorer Steve Boyes seeks the illusive ghost elephants, giant beasts rarely seen by men and on the verge of extinction, if not already gone. In the hands of Fitzcarraldo filmmaker Werner Herzog, 83, who wrote, directed and narrates the National Geographic nature documentary, it becomes a nearly impossible spiritual quest worthy of Don Quixote. Along the way, we encounter, along with Boyes, poisonous spiders, rugged terrain, a king in leopard skins and Bushmen using ancient methods to track the earth’s largest land mammals while performing trance rituals that puncture the divide between elephant and man. In Herzog’s hands, this is not just animal footage, as beautiful as that is. It’s a wise movie that combines spirit and science, championing the need for (and inherent beauty of) biodiversity while highlighting the genetic ties that bind the majestic elephants, the African men and the Western explorers. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Ghost Elephants, in limited theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Undercard , NR

Undercard doesn’t reinvent great boxing films like Raging Bull or Rocky, but the rough-around-the-edges little indie with a big heart gives comic Wanda Sykes, 61, a chance to punch above her weight as a retired boxer turned trainer. Cheryl “No Mercy” Stewart carries the world on her shoulders. She battles to stay sober, living in her van with her daughter, Meka (poised child actor Estella Kahiha). The police arrest her, and child services threatens to take away her kid. Plus, one protégé betrays her, while the next offers redemption. It’s a lot of adversity for this old fighter trying to make a better life while practicing the fine art of self-sabotage on Miami’s mean streets. Although the direction is uneven and the script has rough patches, Undercard is more than just a standout performance from Sykes. As the sports drama builds to its inevitable final bout, which delivers the requisite nail-biter scene in the ring, Undercard lionizes the underdog finding her way with abundant heart and a fire in her belly. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Undercard, in theaters