What to Watch on TV and at the Movies This Week

Your Prime Video Watch of the Week is here!

Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War (2026, R)

John Krasinski has spent three seasons playing the titular young CIA analyst and former U.S. Marine thrust back into the field of bullet-dodging covert operations. Now he’s getting a feature-length movie. Wendell Pierce, 62, returns as his boss, the deputy director of the CIA, and Michael Kelly, who turns 57 on May 22, is a former spook now working as a private contractor. The gang reteams to confront a radicalized military group that seems preoccupied with blowing things up and killing anyone who gets in their way.

Watch it: Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War, May 20 on Prime Video

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

New at the movies this week

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Is God Is, R

There’s nothing even remotely stagy about writer-director Aleshea Harris’ film debut, based on her award-winning off-Broadway play. Kara Young and Mallori Johnson pulsate with Black female rage as twin sisters who are commissioned by their long-presumed-dead mother (Vivica A. Fox, 61) to seek vengeance on their monster of a father (Sterling K. Brown, 50) for deliberately setting a fire that badly scarred all three of them. The sisters hit the road like latter-day Hamlets turned avenging angels, pausing only occasionally to ponder the ethics of their pursuit and the possibility of forgiveness. Harris creates a kinetic, well-crafted mix of Quentin Tarantino, the Old Testament and Clint Eastwood Westerns that’s a bloody good time, with a humanist heart beating just beneath the wounded skin.  —Thom Geier

Watch it: Is God Is, May 15 in theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ The Wizard of the Kremlin, R

When I wonder whom I’d cast to play Vladimir Putin, 73, my first thought isn’t British charmer Jude Law, 53. And yet, in this accomplished literary adaptation of Giuliano da Empoli’s 2022 novel of the same name, Law plays the Russian president with a smooth surface, a double helping of self-possession and a ruthlessness that only increases as time passes. He’s the sun around which fictional apparatchik Vadim Baranov (an understated and compelling Paul Dano) revolves as the merciless Putin rises to power in the post-Soviet era. As hopes for a republic dissolve into chaos and corruption, Kremlin spin doctor Baranov is among the inner circle that rises with the leader. They do his bidding until being pushed out the metaphorical window when they know too much or cease to be useful. This shrewd political-espionage drama further benefits from a classy ensemble, including Alicia Vikander, Tom Sturridge and Jeffrey Wright, 60, and will appeal to lovers of John LeCarré and TV’s Slow Horses. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: The Wizard of the Kremlin, May 15 in theaters

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⭐⭐⭐☆☆ 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