What to Watch on TV and at the Movies This Week

Your Netflix Watch of the Week is here!

Lord of the Flies

William Golding’s classic novel about a group of English schoolboys stranded on a desert island who turn their new tropical paradise into a cruel and dysfunctional tribal dystopia is getting the prestige treatment in this highly anticipated four-episode limited series. Don’t be put off by the fact that you were probably forced to read this book in school; it’s actually a really terrific cautionary tale loaded with action, adventure and Big Ideas. Plus, it’s not like we’re asking you to watch Ethan Frome.

Watch it: Lord of the Flies, May 4 on Netflix

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

Your Prime Video Watch of the Week is here!

Citadel, Season 2

It’s been three long years since Amazon’s pricey superspy series hooked us with its jet-setting adventures, twisty plot and engaging performances by Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas — with an assist from Stanley Tucci, 65, and Lesley Manville, 70, as senior members of rival agencies. The second season will dig further into the deadly duel between the Citadel and Manticore, with everybody’s loyalty being tested. Plus, there are still those five nuclear warheads on the loose.

Watch it: Citadel, May 6 on Prime Video

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

New at the movies this week

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Amrum, NR

Just when I thought I couldn’t sit through another coming-of-age film, much less one set in WWII under the blight of Nazism, I discovered how wrong I could be. Amrum is a small miracle of a movie. Based on the boyhood of cowriter Hark Bohm (who died in November at 86), the beautifully shot film stars Jasper Billerbeck as 12-year-old Nanning, who lives with his mother and siblings on a remote German North Sea island under the flight path of Allied bombers making their last runs over Germany. When his despairing mother has a fourth child, all she wants to eat is white bread, honey and butter — nearly impossible to obtain in a time of scarcity. His quest to satisfy her hunger, and his discovery of his roots in the local Nazi-resistant fishing village while his father is away fighting for the Germans, creates an enormous tension. The tremendous German American actress Diane Kruger, 49, has an eyelash of a role as a resistant local farmer, but it’s as resonant as the entire film. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Amrum, in theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ The Devil Wears Prada 2, PG-13

As a veteran of the magazine and print wars (with stints at the New York Post and Us magazine), I wondered how the long-anticipated The Devil Wears Prada sequel would handle the industry’s steep decline. It does — and with humor, grace and a forgiving heart. Two decades have passed when now-seasoned and award-winning journalist Andy Sachs (Ann Hathaway) gets pink-slipped and finds the only journalism job available is as a senior editor at Runway magazine, where her career began. This reunites her with her Cruella De Vil editor, Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep, 76), a caricature of Vogue’s Anna Wintour, also 76, and Priestly's devoted deputy, Nigel (Stanley Tucci, 65). Her old nemesis, Emily (Emily Blunt), now working for a luxury retailer, is also on hand. The movie captures the industry’s decline and fall, and the impact of that on a variety of egos, first among them that of Priestly. While it’s jollier than the original and filled with fashion eye candy, this Devil is also gentler, as if the writers themselves have been knocked about a bit by entertainment industry vagaries and seek a softer landing. Streep, Tucci, Hathaway and Blunt all step up to the dramedic challenge, even if the idea of “let’s all get along” at the end seems a bit forced. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: The Devil Wears Prada 2, May 1 in theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Hokum, R

At last, a modern horror film that relies on creepy atmosphere instead of over-the-top gore. Severance star Adam Scott, 53, plays the misanthropic best-selling author of historical thrillers who heads to the remote Irish hotel where his long-dead parents honeymooned, planning to scatter their ashes and bury memories of some childhood trauma. The place is suitably unsettling as the locals share folklore about witches and a haunted honeymoon suite that’s kept locked up. Director Damian McCarthy strikes a delicate, dread-inducing balance between (apparently) supernatural thrills and the more explicable shock of humans doing very bad things. And that includes Scott, who’s a jerk for much of the film but ultimately elicits our sympathy as things go from bumpy in the night to downright deadly. —Thom Geier

Watch it: Hokum, May 1 in theaters

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⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ 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, 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, in theaters