What to Watch on TV and at the Movies This Week

Your Netflix Watch of the Week is here!

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025, PG-13)

Writer-director Rian Johnson has assembled an impressive all-star cast (an AARP Movies for Grownups nominee for best ensemble) for his third and latest Knives Out murder mystery. Daniel Craig, 57, is back on whodunit duty as the Southern-dandy sleuth, Benoit Blanc. This time he’s sniffing out the killer of an upstate New York monsignor who may have been murdered by a member of his flock. The list of suspects and eccentric townsfolk includes — deep breath — Glenn Close, 78, Josh Brolin, 57, Kerry Washington, Jeremy Renner, 54, Thomas Haden Church, 65, Andrew Scott, Jeffrey Wright, 59, and Josh O’Connor.

Watch it: Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, Dec. 12 on Netflix

And don’t miss this: The Best Things Coming to Netflix this Month

Your Prime Video Watch of the Week is here!

Fallout, Season 2

Nearly two years after this action series introduced us to its postapocalyptic world, we pick up where we left off. Ella Purnell’s Lucy, a former bomb-shelter dweller thrust into action-hero mode, is still roaming the Mojave Desert with the Ghoul (Movies for Grownups nominee for best actor, television, Walton Goggins, 54), a former Hollywood star turned trigger-happy bounty hunter with a heavily irradiated face. The two form an uneasy alliance as they head for New Vegas and an encounter with a powerful figure from the Ghoul’s past (Justin Theroux, 54).

Watch it: Fallout, Season 2, Dec. 17 on Prime Video

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

New at the movies this week

⭐⭐⭐⭐ ☆ Dust Bunny, R

How is it possible that People’s sexiest man alive is Wicked’s Jonathan Bailey while Mads Mikkelsen, 60, walks the earth? The daring Danish actor best known domestically for playing a Bond villain and Dr. Hannibal Lecter reunites with his Hannibal creator, Bryan Fuller, 56, for a strange and wondrous action fantasy. He plays the mysterious neighbor of Aurora (Sophie Sloan), an 8-year-old convinced the monster under her bed has eaten her parents. That phantom is the titular Dust Bunny, and now unsupervised, the terrified Aurora enlists a hit man living down the hall in her building to help her catch the fiend. Mikkelsen, who has made many off-kilter Danish comedies as well as award-winning dramas, and has terrific comic timing, is fabulous connecting with his young costar, charming the audience while performing stunts that would impress Jackie Chan. Sigourney Weaver, 76, costars as Mikkelsen’s handler. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Dust Bunny, Dec. 12 in theaters

⭐⭐⭐☆ ☆ Ella McCay, PG-13

James L. Brooks, 85, has made memorable crowd-pleasers — Broadcast News, As Good As It Gets and Terms of Endearment, to name a few. His latest film is a political comedy that boasts an unbeatable ensemble including Albert Brooks, 78 (no relation), Jamie Lee Curtis, 67 (who continues to enjoy an apex career moment), Woody Harrelson, 64, and voice-of-Marge-Simpson Julie Kavner, 75. With this cast, the movie should be a slam dunk. The title character (Emma Mackey, a cross between Margot Robbie and Anne Hathaway) is an idealistic, type A millennial lieutenant governor who achieves her ambitions prematurely when Albert Brooks’ governor abruptly resigns to join the president’s cabinet. McCay’s moment of glory is short-lived as chaos erupts: Her high-school-sweetheart spouse (Slow Horses star Jack Lowden) gets bent out of shape, and worse, she becomes irretrievably tangled in scandal. Writer-director Brooks, as usual, juggles a lot of narrative balls and contrasting characters. There are bright moments and some laughs, and the ever-brilliant Albert Brooks shines despite a truncated role. But the whole effort, alas, is overstuffed and undercooked. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Ella McCay, Dec. 12 in theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐ ☆ Goodbye June, R

With a holiday weepie destined to be watched year after year in the spirit of Love Actually, actor Kate Winslet, 50, makes an intelligent directorial debut. Goodbye June gathers an extended family around the deathbed of their cancer-stricken mother, June (Helen Mirren, 80, who is incapable of a false note). Winslet casts herself as the alpha daughter, along with Andrea Riseborough as a stay-at-home mom and Toni Collette, 53, as their hippie-dippie sister. (This trio could easily take on Chekhov’s Three Sisters or Shakespeare’s King Lear.) With the great Timothy Spall, 68, as the patriarch, they inhabit a generous movie that is familiar in shape: the family reunion forced by adversity. Goodbye June excels at plumbing the ensuing deep, conflicting emotions that arise but without sentimentality. We experience the grief of saying goodbye to a beloved while they’re still living, navigating seemingly unbreachable estrangement and struggling toward emotional reckonings. Goodbye June brought me to tears by releasing pent-up emotions on the screen and in my heart. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Goodbye June Dec. 12 in select theaters and streaming Dec. 24 on Netflix

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⭐⭐⭐⭐ ☆ Fackham Hall , R

For those who believe Downton Abbey and its progeny were already veering toward self-satire via nostalgia with a spritz of ahistorical political correctness, here comes the full-on satire they craved. Fackham Hall, pronounced “f*** ‘em all,” stars the redoubtable Damian Lewis, 54. Best known as Henry VIII in TV’s historical saga Wolf Hall, he’s perfectly cast as clueless patriarch Lord Davenport. Having, alas, buried four sons, the aristocrat intends to marry off one of his daughters to keep the roof of his sagging ancestral pile over his family's heads. Enter the egregious first cousin Archibald (Harry Potter’s Draco Malfoy, Tom Felton), eager to marry one of his two beautiful but reluctant relatives. There are twists, turns and ridiculous faux pas in a congenially entertaining riff on the series’ more ridiculous aspects, delivered without spite but with love and a wink. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Fackham Hall, in theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐ ☆ Rosemead , R

This bighearted yet unsentimental mother-son story takes its name from its setting, a suburban enclave east of Los Angeles with an Asian majority population. The immigrant widow Irene (Lucy Liu, 56) is a small-business owner, running a copy shop in a strip mall. She has bigger dreams, and makes sacrifices, for her high-school-age son, Joe (a terrific Lawrence Shou). But, in this based-on-a-true-story family drama, Joe’s early indications of mental illness and obsession with school shootings derail Irene’s vision of the future and drive her to previously unthinkable actions. Liu, in a challenging, unvarnished part far from her more polished characters in Charlie’s Angels or TV’s Elementary, does some of her best work, making a large impact on a smaller canvas. Her subtle performance is not to be missed while, among Oscar handicappers, there’s buzz that she might just snag that fifth slot among the best actress nominees. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Rosemead, in theaters