What to Watch on TV and at the Movies This Week

Your Netflix Watch of the Week is here!

Beauty in Black, Season 2, Part 2

It may be only Season 2, but the drama is getting turned up to 11 in Tyler Perry’s sudsy series about the ruthless backstabbing and bare-knuckle power plays within a family-run Chicago cosmetics empire. Taylor Polidore Williams stars as Kimmie, an exotic dancer who married into the business and is now running the show as the new CEO while fending off a den of well-dressed vipers looking to take her down.

Watch it: Beauty in Black, March 19 on Netflix

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

Your Prime Video Watch of the Week is here!

Bait, Season 1

In this new comedy series, Sound of Metal’s Riz Ahmed stars as a struggling actor who lands an audition for a major film role — Bond, James Bond — that’s not traditionally played by Pakistani Brits like him. As word of his possible big career break spreads, he finds himself bombarded by friends, family and strangers who all seem to have an opinion on his prospects.

Watch it: Bait, March 25 on Prime Video

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

New at the movies this week

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Late Shift, NR

The international feature films have been so spectacular this season, it’s been easy to overlook compassionate gems like the Swiss-German Late Shift. The European Film Academy nominated the film’s star, Leonie Benesch, for best actress in this taut, turbulent medical drama, which she carries on her narrow shoulders. Benesch plays Floria Lind, a dedicated, capable nurse working her high-tension shift on the postsurgical ward of an understaffed urban hospital. Floria tends to one patient after another: one blood pressure test, one temperature taken, one dose of pain pills delivered after the next. Each incident takes an emotional toll as the divorced single mother sings an agitated Alzheimer’s patient to sleep, comforts a terminally ill mother and tries to manage a demanding patient who behaves as if he’s the only sick person on the ward. Benesch is deeply moving as an angel of mercy in a hellish, often thankless but absolutely necessary profession. As TV’s hit The Pitt nears the end of another season, consider the quieter but no less powerful Late Shift. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Late Shift, March 20 in select theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Tow, R

Based on a true story, Tow stars a compellingly thorny Rose Byrne as Amanda Ogle, the Seattle woman forced to live out of her aged Toyota Camry while trying to maintain her hard-earned sobriety amid losing custody of her daughter (The Summer I Turned Pretty’s Elsie Fisher). When the sedan is towed while she’s at a job interview, Ogle’s fragile existence tilts toward chaos, then catastrophe when the heartless towing company sells her car out from under her while charging her an amassed $21,634 in towing charges and fines. Ashamed and heartbroken but not entirely without agency, she leans on the tough love of Barb (Octavia Spencer, 55), a recovering addict who runs a women’s shelter, and the help of Kevin (Dominic Sessa), her Gen Z lawyer who takes on the fat-cat attorney (Corbin Bernsen, 71) for the towing business’s parent company. While there are plot holes and continuity blips, the strong ensemble cast and director Stephanie Laing’s avoidance of melodrama make Tow a satisfying David and Goliath tale with an underdog who’s a real superhero. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Tow, March 20 in theaters

Also catch up with...

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ André Is an Idiot, NR

I once nagged my husband — to life. When he turned 50, I insisted he get a colonoscopy, as his family history is rampant with cancer. Since then, the recommended screening age has been lowered to 45, but André Ricciardi, the real-life star of this funny, sad, life-and-death affirming documentary, procrastinated (hence the wry film title). When he had the procedure at age 52, doctors discovered stage 4 cancer (Ricciardi died in 2023). A husband, father and boon companion with an idiosyncratic sense of humor, the shaggy San Franciscan reacted to the grim prognosis by filming his experience. What emerges in this remarkable documentary is a man who was a real mensch surrounded by good eggs, which makes the resulting footage funny, profane and endearing. André Is an Idiot serves as both a PSA for colonoscopies and a recipe for how to live and how to die, while expanding emotionally rather than shrinking in fear from the Big C. As colorectal cancer strikes ever-younger adults, this is a movie that can save lives without sacrificing laughter and warmth. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: André Is an Idiot in theaters

Don’t miss this: I Survived My First Colonoscopy (and You Will Too!)

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Undertone, R

Hurrah for genuinely scary movies without a scrap of gore. Podcaster Evy Babitch (The Handmaid Tale’s Nina Kiri, who carries the movie with subtlety and restraint) and her cohost Justin (The White Lotus’ Adam DiMarco, whom we only hear) have a popular podcast exploring and debunking supernatural events. She’s the voice of reason. He’s the believer. But then the mystery of their latest investigation — 10 audio clips of a woman talking in her sleep — begins seeping into Evy’s life. As she gives end-of-life care to her religious, nearly comatose mother (Michèle Duquet, 66), Evy begins to hear voices, nursery rhymes and babies crying even when she’s hung up her headphones. Madness? Drink? Devilry? With well-timed jump scares and minimalist production values, this thriller recalls The Blair Witch Project in its simplicity and scariness. There’s also a parallel in Undertone’s use of our current embrace of true-crime-podcast amateur investigators, much like how Blair Witch mined the moment of handheld-camera amateur filmmakers. Here, the sounds hold the key, so go see (and hear) Undertone in a theater with a top-notch sound system, and bring a buddy to cling to when the going gets scary. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Undertone, in theaters