What to Watch on TV and at the Movies This Week

Widow’s Bay, Season 1 (Apple TV)

Sometimes it’s hard to overcome your past — especially when the supernatural is involved. That’s the situation confronting a new mayor (The Americans’ Matthew Rhys, 51) when he tries to boost tourism to his blue-collar island community in New England. Turns out that the long-whispered rumors that the town is cursed are legit. Hiro Murai, who switched up the comedy genre on shows like Atlanta and The Bear, directs half of the first 10 episodes.

Watch it: Widow’s Bay, April 29 on Apple TV

Your Netflix Watch of the Week is here!

Apex (2026, R)

If you’re looking for a tense cat-and-mouse thriller, you’re in luck. Charlize Theron, 50, goes on the run in this outdoorsy slice of suspense playing a rock climber who moves to the Australian wilderness for solitude. Alone and stranded in the middle of nowhere, she crosses paths with a sociopath (Carry-On’s Taron Egerton) who gets his kicks toying with her and chasing her through the rugged landscape. Think of this one as a Down Under Deliverance. Eric Bana, 57, rounds out the cast.

Watch it: Apex, April 24 on Netflix

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

Your Prime Video Watch of the Week is here!

The House of the Spirits, Season 1

When Chilean American author Isabel Allende, now 83, learned that her 100-year-old grandfather was dying, she wrote him a letter that evolved into her beloved 1982 novel, The House of the Spirits — the basis for this eight-part limited series that blends loose history and magical realism. The story centers on three generations of women in an unnamed conservative South American country riven by political upheaval, class struggle and ongoing violence against women. (AARP cover star Eva Longoria, 51, is an executive producer.)

Watch it: The House of the Spirits, April 29 on Prime Video

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

New at the movies this week

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Fuze, R

Sometimes an audience just wants to watch things explode. I know I do. In this taut contemporary thriller, the suspenseful plot emerges on two tracks. In one, a military bomb squad (led by Golden Globe-winner Aaron Taylor-Johnson) works with London Metropolitan Police (led by Surface’s Gugu Mbatha-Raw) to defuse an unexploded WWII-era bomb found on a construction site. Meanwhile, a few blocks away, a team of professional thieves led by The White Lotus’s Theo James and Avatar’s Sam Worthington burrow with explosives beneath a bank to blast their way in. In this dual-action thriller that comes to an explosive, unified conclusion, the tension ratchets up, the stars are bigger than life, and the bullets and shrapnel ricochet. Fuze is an enjoyable, ticking-clock caper about karma, explosives, friendship and betrayal. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Fuze, April 24 in theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Lorne, R

As the title hints, this agreeable documentary from Oscar-winner Morgan Neville, 58, is about Lorne Michaels, 81, the notable producer who created NBC’s Saturday Night Live in 1975 and has sustained it over a run of 51 years (minus a sabbatical from 1980 to 85). Michaels isn’t an easy documentary subject: He’s reluctant to talk about himself, limits Neville’s access to his wife and three children, and can’t be persuaded to talk smack about anyone. But, because the series has spawned so many comedy stars from Jane Curtin, 78, Eddie Murphy, 65, and Mike Myers, 62, to the latest crop including Michael Che and Colin Jost, it’s left largely to these comic talents to tell their boss’s story. If you delight in learning (as I did) that Myers based his classic Dr. Evil voice on Michaels’ Canadian phrasings, you’re in for a treat. As are all SNL fans. —Thelma M. Adams 

Watch it: Lorne, in theaters

⭐⭐⭐☆☆ Michael , PG-13

A B C, it’s as easy as 1 2 3. That Jackson 5 song was the beating heart of my middle school years. But telling the kaleidoscopic story of pop superstar Michael Jackson in what is essentially a jukebox musical moonwalks a very fine line. In the hands of Antoine Fuqua, 60, the family-approved biopic stars Jackson’s terrific nephew Jaafar Jackson in his feature debut. The film excels in capturing the ebullience of the early days for this Mozart of Motown. He’s portrayed as a lonely angel with generational talent who’s felt the wrong side of the belt courtesy of his father, Joseph (the deep-voiced and demonized Colman Domingo, 56). He’s the Captain Hook to Michael’s Peter Pan. While the music and dancing are vibrant, the narrative tension is one-note and toothless. Reports of 22 days of reshoots rejiggering the third act to take a big pink eraser to the saga of Jackson’s alleged abuse of children and drug addiction, takes the sting out of the tabloid fate of my middle-school idol — and seems like pandering to the Jackson clan listed in the closing credits.—Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Michael, April 24 in theaters

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⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Everyone Is Lying to You for Money, NR

Grownups with children who came of age in the aughts will know Ben McKenzie as the boy-next-door-handsome star from the teen soap The O.C. (he played heartthrob Ryan Atwood). But the Southland actor is here to share something else: He just didn’t understand cryptocurrency (although, unlike me, he has an econ degree). And, so, the charming Angeleno set out to write, direct and star in a documentary to explain the sleight of hand that he calls “the biggest Ponzi scheme in history.” McKenzie, who interviews players including the now-incarcerated Sam Bankman-Fried and then reports back to his down-to-earth wife and Gotham costar Morena Baccarin, makes the journey to get to the bottom of cryptocurrency both entertaining and understandable. Is this leading man a winning bet as a documentary filmmaker? I’d invest. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Everyone Is Lying to You for Money, in theaters

⭐⭐⭐☆☆ Mother Mary, R

Anne Hathaway, 43, has had memorable screen moments, earning a 2013 Oscar for singing the role of Fantine in Les Misérables. Despite those vocal chops, she works a little too hard to convince us she’s Mother Mary, a global pop star in the Taylor Swift–Lady Gaga mold. Despite being at the top of her fame, Mother Mary returns for solace and connection to the onetime best friend and costume designer who cocreated her celestial image, Sam Anselm (rising-force-to-watch Michaela Coel). Sam is unwelcoming, bitter for being left behind in the singer’s spectacular rise. Their reconciliation, heightened by supernatural elements and long, longing glances, plays like a tortured A Star Is Reborn. If you were a fan of 2010's horror drama Black Swan, you may enjoy this crazy ride. Or you may wish that Mother Mary, to quote Paul McCartney, 83, should have just let this one be. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Mother Mary, in theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Normal, R

There will be blood. A mad mash-up of Fargo and Dog Day Afternoon, this short, swift action-comedy cements the claim of Bob Odenkirk, 63, to grownup action hero status. The Better Call Saul star cowrote and stars as a good-hearted sheriff down on his luck who takes a temporary gig in small-town Normal, Minnesota. There’s nothing normal about this backwater since the mayor (sitcom legend Henry Winkler, 80) has rescued his economically beleaguered burg by allowing Japanese yakuza to park their gold bars, illicit drugs and armaments in the vault of the local bank. When two marginalized out-of-towners decide to rob that institution, Odenkirk's Sheriff Ulysses discovers, hilariously, that there’s no such thing as an easy law enforcement gig. While the pacing is a bit uneven, the movie explodes in the final third, and Odenkirk is just the right everyman to ground the inane violence in an appealing sincerity. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Normal, in theaters