Nov 13 2026
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Books, DVDs, Movies, Music, Pop Culture, Television

The Entertainment Forecast

What to Watch, and More! Week of Nov. 13 – Nov. 19, 2026

Jessica Chastain goes country, Miranda Lambert leads CMA noms & Jesus gets crossed

FRIDAY, Nov. 13
Heartland
Jessica Chastain, above, stars in this country-music-favored flick as a Nashville singing star searching for her missing niece in the underbelly of Music City. With Garrett Hedlund, Jennifer Nettles and John Hawkes (Netflix).

12 12 12
Follows an FBI agent (Anthony Mackie) and a career criminal (Jamie Dornan) across three timelines of a heist: the 12 months of planning, the 12 hours of the heist, and the 12 days afterward (Apple TV).

SATURDAY, Nov. 14
Homicide for the Holidays
Series looks into real-life crimes and killings at this otherwise festive time of the year (10 p.m., Oxygen)

Kids’ Choice Awards
Honoring kid-friendly entertainment, this year’s top nominees include Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Toy Story 5, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and Percy Jackson and the Olympians (8 p.m., CBS and Nickelodeon).

SUNDAY, Nov. 15
The Chosen
New season of the religious drama focuses on the final days of Jesus (Jonathan Roumie) as he faces his crucifixion (Prime Video).

MONDAY, Nov. 16
Crime and Punishment in America
Four-part documentary series (produced by Ken Burns) explores the history of criminal justice in America from the colonial era to today. Narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, Laura Linney, Bobby Cannavale, Matthew Rhys, Michael Stuhlbarg, David Hyde Pierce and BD Wong (PBS, checking local times).

TCM Spotlight: Leaders of the Band
Tune in for a full evening of 1940s and ‘50s flicks about bandleaders and musicians, including Glenn Miller, Gene Krupa, Cab Calloway and the Dorsey brothers (TCM).

TUESDAY, Nov. 17
When a Witness Recants
Documentary about the 1983 murder of a junior highschooler, and the collateral damage on a close-knit community (HBO Max).

WEDNESDAY, Nov. 18
The CMA Awards
Lainey Wilson returns to host tonight’s 60th annual toast to country music performers and their work, with Miranda Lambert’s seven nominations leading the way (8 p.m., ABC and Disney+).

Gentle Monster
Léa Seydoux, above, plays a concert pianist trapped between the man she loves and the growing fear of what he’s done (Netflix).

THURSDAY, Nov. 19
The Pursuit: F1 Academy
New series about elite female racers competing in one of the world’s most demanding sports (Disney+).

The Altruists
Julia Garner and Anthony Boyle star in this limited series about a Gen Z Bonnie and Clyde accused of stealing millions (Netflix).

BRING IT HOME

Step up to the plate with Baseball: Echoes from the Bleachers, a documentary about how “America’s game” often mirrored things going on in America for real. Featuring never-before-seen archival footage, it’s done in partnership with the Baseball Hall of Fame. BUY HERE.

A neurologist details the brain’s amazing abilities to adapt and heal after injuries in How to Use a Fork (W.W. Norton), with extraordinary stories of human recovery.

READ ALL ABOUT IT

The genre-defying work of London-born artist Es Devlin is on display in the 900+ plus pages of the cube-like A Concise Atlas of Es Devlin (Thames & Hudson), which brings together the wide spectrum of her spatial expressions in art, live performance, sculpture, Super Bowl halftime shows and more.

Why are we so fascinated with ghosts, and finding them? Ghosted by Alice Vernon takes a “haunting” look at the history of these paranormal all-stars, and how we have long sought to connect with them through everything from seances to smartphone apps.


Find out where make-believe monsters walked in Where Hollywood Shot the Monster Movies (McFarland), a photo-packed compendium of sites where a spectrum of horror, sci-fi and fantasy films were filmed, including Planet of the Apes, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, Blackbeard’s Ghost, Not of This Earth and hundreds more.

NOW HEAR THIS

Put some “spice” into your life with The Singles Collection, a rockin’ roundup of the songs of the Spice Girls, available in a golly-whoppin’ 14-disc colored vinyl set or a CD collection. It’s every single the all-girl group released, paired with the original B-sides, and timed to the 30th anniversary of their first album. This Spice is nice!

The new Snap, Crackle & Bop! by the British “jazz-rap” fusion band Us3—founded in the early 1990s by London-based producer Geoff Wilkinson—is a cool-cat mix of cross-cultural hip-hop and jazz to get your toes tapping and your fingers snapping with tracks like “Catch the Vibe,” “Cool Cat” and “I Like to Party.”

Nov 11 2026
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “Paper Tiger”

Adam Driver leads an impressive cast in this masterfully tense ’80s-set mob drama

Paper Tiger
Starring Adam Driver, Miles Teller & Scarlett Johansson
Directed by James Gray
Rated R

In limited release Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, wider release Nov. 20

Movies about “organized crime” and gangsters have been around for more than a century, a long line connecting Edward G. Robinson’s Little Caesar to Marlon Brando’s Godfather, Robert De Niro’s Goodfellas and, most recently, John Travolta as John Gotti.

Paper Tiger is a movie about the Russian mob—and more specifically, about a family that runs afoul of Soviet mobsters taking up shop in New York City in the 1980s. Miles Teller plays Irwin, an engineer with two teenage sons; Scarlett Johansson is his wife, Hester; and Adam Driver is Gary, Irwin’s older brother, a New York cop who enlists Irwin for a project to help out some, ahem, businessmen involved with development of an industrial area and cleanup of a polluted canal.

And yes, those shady businessmen are Russians, part of a bigger network of shady businessmen, a much murkier mass of organized crime. Gary and Irwin’s business deal—their ill-advised attempt to apply a legitimate solution for an illegitimate operation, and profit from it with mob money—soon escalates into something more intimidating and life-altering, threatening Irwin’s family.

Director James Gray—whose resume includes several other crime dramas, including Little Odessa, We Own the Night and Blood Ties—knows how to ratchet up the tension, and he makes the movie “feel” like the ‘80s, from clothing, hairstyles and dialogue to little details, like a battered pay phone on a desolate-looking brick wall, covered in graffiti. There’s a lot of darkness and dim light, from scenes that happen at night, in basements and murky, smoke-filled rooms, on cloudy days that block out the sunshine, and inside a house ransacked by intruders while a family sleeps. It’s an effectively appropriate feel of shadows and shadiness from another era.

The cast is all top-notch, with a pile of awards, nominations and box-office mojo to back them up. Driver, especially, drives the story, as a flashy divorcee and wheeler-dealer (he drives a Mercedes, and charms with his fancy piano playing) working both sides of the law. Teller, who played an up-and-coming drummer in the excellent Whiplash, taps into another kind of downbeat rhythm as a husband and father finding himself in a dilemma with no clear way out. And Johansson, one of the most successful stars of the modern era, settles into a new groove as a suburban housewife and mom, simmering with resentment about the dire circumstance she’s in.

The movie takes its title from a phrase used to describe something, or someone, that appears intimidating but really isn’t much of a threat, like how Paul doesn’t seem too worried about the Russian mob, a gaggle of menacing goodfellas with names like Bogoyavich and Yunov. “They huff and puff” like paper tigers, he tells his brother, assuring him that he’s got everything under control.

Until he doesn’t.

Paper Tiger is a first-class, slow-burn thriller about organized crime from the perspective of mob outsiders who’ve stepped barely inside the criminal world, seen things they weren’t meant to see, and now feel the slow, sure squeeze of its vice-like grip. There are a couple of twists and turns as the plot thickens, but—as in The Godfather—it all comes down to family, as Irwin, his brother, his wife and their sons desperately seek to find a way out of their mobster mess, while dealing with more “mundane” everyday issues like an upcoming graduation party or Hester’s alarming onset of a serious medical condition.

It mostly keeps the mobsters in the background, an ever-present threat looming and lurking in the shadows. There’s no real “action” until the movie’s closing moments, played out in a somberly poetic scene in a thicket of marsh grass alongside a lonely stretch of highway—a scene that almost feels like an homage to another mobster movie, and how Joe Pesci’s Casino character, Nicky Santoto, met his end in a cornfield.

This Paper Tiger purrs, growls and ultimately pounces, sinking in its teeth and leaving its mark as a worthy new entry into the mob-movie must-see canon.

—Neil Pond

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Nov 06 2026
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Books, Movies, Music, Pop Culture, Television

The Entertainment Forecast

What to watch, and more! Week of Nov. 6 – Nov. 13!

Paw Patrol goes prehistoric, Awkwafina hits the kitchen & Ron Howard goes to the moon.

FRIDAY, Nov. 6
Possible Love
Korean critics’ darling of a film about two married couples—a laid-off worker and his wife, and a documentary filmmaker and her husband—whose paths cross, bringing both marriages face to face with their different lives and hidden desires (Netflix).

Awkwafina: The Awkward Cook
The actress and comedian embarks on a cross-country culinary road trip to revive her family’s beloved Chinese restaurant, with one big challenge: she never learned to cook (Apple TV).

SATURDAY, Nov. 7
Cue the Laughs
New comedy clip show—featuring funny real-life slips, antics, pranks, flubs and more—hosted by actor/comedian Adam Ray (10 p.m., IFC).

SUNDAY, Nov. 8
The Institute
Season two of the drama begins, as Luke (Joe Freeman) and his young friends search for a way to end the Institute and its insidious deeds for good, above (MGM+).

City of God
New season begins of the series spinoff from the 2002 film about crime, drug cartels, politics and the fight for justice in South America (HBO).

MONDAY, Nov. 9
The Madam LeBlanc Mysteries
It’s no mystery why this show is such a hit. Season five kicks off with creator/star Sally Lindsay and guest stars sniffing out more crime clues in the scene mountains of France (Acorn).

TUESDAY, Nov. 10
History’s Mystery Files
New series hosted by Lost’s Jorge Garcia explores strange things and goings-on (9 p.m., History Channel).

We Chose to Go to the Moon
Ron Howard makes a special introductory appearance for this “living history” documentary about the dramatic tale of America’s race to space and decision to land a man on the Moon, along with music of the era, recollections from astronauts and families, and re-enactments (PBS).

WEDNESDAY, Nov. 11
Evolution
New series explores the origins of life, from a simple cell to the vast array of creatures and organisms today (9 p.m. CBS).

Monsters Inside Me
New season of uncovering the invisible threats behind terrifying medical mysteries (10 p.m., Discovery Channel).

THURSDAY, Nov. 12
The Good Daughter
Meghann Faye and Rose Byrne, above, star in this new original series as sisters trying to piece together lives, including their own, that were shattered by violence nearly three decades ago (Peacock).

Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie
The pups go prehistoric when they crash onto Dinosaur Island and must help the animals escape from a volcanic explosion (Paramount+).

READ ALL ABOUT IT

What is real, and what is illusion? In How to Design a Universe (Bloomsbury), Royal astronomer Catherine Heymans explores consciousness, quantum physics and dark matter—and how humans could conceivably construct a “virtual” universe as rich and diverse as our own. It’s a trip!

How can a high-fashion scarf reach around the world? In The Liberty Scarf (Thames & Hudson), you’ll learn how, more than a century ago, a shop in London became world-famous for its neckware.

BRING IT HOME

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia! Didn’t you know that all 117 episodes (that’s five seasons) of the classic ‘70s sitcom The Brady Bunch (CBS DVD) have now been rounded up into one collectible package? And that, of course, includes the one from 1971 where you ask Davy Jones of the Monkees to the prom!

Nov 04 2026
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “La Bola Negra”

Spanish-language queer epic explores forbidden love during wartime

La Bola Negra
Starring Guitarricadelafuente, Carlos González & Penélope Cruz
Directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi
Rated R

In select theaters now, streaming on Netflix Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2026

Assuredly a new queer classic, this impressively ambitious drama straddles two centuries with an epic tale of homoerotic love, passion and longing.

It interweaves characters from past and present in a grandiose narrative incorporating magnificent cinematic storytelling and arching historical embellishment, rooted in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s when the fascist right-wing army of Italy’s Benito Mussolini invaded Spain and sparked a revolution.

Carlos (Milo Quifes) is a dashing young man from a wealthy family in Grenada before the war, blackballed (la bola negra) and rejected for his homosexuality when he tries to join an exclusive social club. Should Carlos deny his true self, as his father demands, or live life on his own terms?

A few years later, as the war begins, a village trumpet player named Sebastián (the Spanish singer-songwriter known as Guitarricadelafuente, making an impressive film debut) is conscripted into the invading Italian Nationalist forces. He’s charged with guarding a handsome young prisoner of war (Miguel Bernardeau, playing a character based on the real-life Spanish football player-turned-actor-turned-soldier Rafael Rodriguez Rapún). Both young men feel the force of attraction between them.

And in present day, there’s Alberto (Carlos Gonzàlez), making requests for gay hookups on Grindr while researching queer dissidence in Spanish music when he gets a cryptic phone call from a lawyer representing his late grandfather. His character, too, is based on a real person, Alberto Conejero, the playwright who wrote La Bola Negra along with the film’s two co-directors.

There’s also a horrific local tale about a lynched gay boy and his grieving mother, one that comes full circle at the end of the film. And you’ll learn how everything—the characters, their plotlines and their fates—is connected to a manuscript of an unfinished play by Frederico Garcia Lorca, the real-life poet who became a gay martyr after he was assassinated by Nationalist forces at the beginning the war. In many respects, the film is a “completion” of Lorca’s lost work, existing both within and outside the storyline.

Penèlope Cruz has a dynamite scene in the middle of it all, as a flamboyant cabaret performer who provides the balm of bawdy entertainment for war-weary soldiers…and a message about sexual identity that hits the heart of the movie. Backstage, she tells Sebastián about her dalliance with another performer, a man who posed as a woman. “Transvestitism,” she says, “is the fantasy of possibility. War is its opposite.”

And yes, that’s Glenn Close as an author with a gay connection of her own, who points Alberto toward solving the mysteries of his past.

La Bola Negra is breathtakingly beautiful, and sometimes even dreamlike, with an aching tenderness that makes its moments of war brutality even more wrenching—especially when one character must do something that breaks his heart…and will probably break yours. And if you’ve ever wanted to see handsome young soldiers frolicking naked, or bathing or pissing, here you go. It’s boldly gay all the way, and it’s already been lauded with praise at film festivals, creating a buzz that might even take it to the Oscars like a small handful of other queer-milestone movies, including Brokeback Mountain, Moonlight, Milk and Philadelphia.

And though much of this homoerotic history story is set nearly a century ago, in a faraway time and place for American audiences, it resonates with heightened potency today, and the idea that even fascism and extreme repression are no match for love—even a transgressive love during wartime, a love that dares not speak its name.

—Neil Pond

Nov 02 2026
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “Wild Horse Nine”

John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell team up for a CIA-fueled Easter Island adventure

Wild Horse Nine
Starring John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell & Steve Buscemi
Directed by Martin McDonough
Rated R
In theaters Friday, Nov. 6, 2026

A pair of jaded CIA operatives venture to Easter Island as part of a covert coup, on the timeline backdrop of the real-world 1973 military buildup to overthrow of Cuba’s socialist president, in this masterfully orchestrated mashup of political intrigue with buddy comedy, pathos, mysticism and musings on mortality, meddling, conspiracies and cover-ups.

Easter Island, offshore South America in the Pacific Ocean, is the famous site of the móai, the massive stone “heads” that were made from quarried island rock and considered sacred by ancient Polynesian people.

The agents are Sam Rockwell, who plays Lee, and John Malkovich as Chris, who’s older, losing his memory and dying from terminal cancer. The movie unfolds in layers as we learn why they’ve come to Easter Island, what Chris has been carrying in his satchel for a decade, how their past is creeping into their present—and why their boss (Steve Buscemi) is so focused on preventing Chris from spilling the beans about what knows and what he’s done. And, as we watch Chris continually dictating into a handheld recorder what he intends to be his memoir, he’s done a lot and he knows a lot—like the real story behind…well, you’ll find out.

Accomplished director Martin McDonogh (The Banshees of Inisherin, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Minnesota, and In Bruges) blends it all together in a terrifically engaging, tough-but-tender tale that unfolds under the stoic, silent gaze of inscrutable monolithic faces that were carved centuries ago. It’s a powerfully human saga of two friends and coworkers who’ve spent their lives in the shadows, who’ve dealt in assassinations and turbulence the world over, and who now confront another kind of change.

Chris and Lee may snipe at each other, curse at each other, and become exasperated with each other. But they’re joined together with a bond of friendship and camaraderie forged in the fires of time, one that can’t be broken.

To add another wrinkle of intrigue, they meet a couple of young, liberated women (Marina de Girolamo and Ailin Salas), who may—or may not—be on the same side of things as them. “Why do you lie all the time?” one of them asks Chris when he admits to a wild fabrication. “I’ve always done it,” he tells her. “And it’s kinda hard to stop.” And how does Lee’s wife (Parker Posey), her extramarital fling with a clown and her ransacked house play into things?

Grammy-winning singer/actor Tom Waits has a scene as Chris’ estranged brother.

Rockwell and Malkovich make a dynamite screen duo, with rhythms that bounce off each other with natural ease and a chemistry that’s almost tactile. It’s no surprise Malkovich—who’s been making movies since his Oscar-nominated breakthrough role in Places in the Heart in 1984—is an odds-favored front-runner for another Oscar nod.

The setting—the hillsides, blue skies, beaches and giant noggins of Easter Island—is intoxicating and sometimes even other-worldly. Could those wild horses really be spirit animals? Are there moths, or dinosaurs, in heaven? Does it really matter where you die?

Conspiracy theorists will appreciate how the story suggests that certain government agencies have their fingers in, well, just about everything—and how the line between good things and bad things can get blurry, and bloody.

And the Rolling Stones song that plays over the closing credits, “Out of Time,” caps it all off—in a place where time seems to stand still, like the móai, but where more than one timeline is about to run out, and huge faces made of stone take in the ever-changing ocean tides with inscrutable, unfathomable indifference.

—Neil Pond

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Oct 30 2026
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The Entertainment Forecast

What to Watch, and More! Oct. 30 – Nov. 5

All about “SCTV,” a Muhammad Ali biopic & celebrating Sally Field

FRIDAY, Oct. 30
SCTV: The Greatest Show You’ve Never Heard Of
The rise, fall, and enduring legacy of one of the most influential sketch comedy series, above, in television history (Netflix).

Nocturne
Liev Schreiber, Zazie Beetz and Stephen Graham star in this new series about an ex-soldier turned homicide detective who moves to a small town in Western Pennsylvania for a quiet life. Only it turns out to be not so quiet (Apple TV).

SATURDAY, Oct. 31
The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror Marathon
Watch episodes from all 36 seasons of the Halloween tradition of TV’s longest-running animated series—over 17 hours of fun and fright! (begins 8 a.m., FXX).

Saturday Night Live
The iconic late-night sketch-comedy series returns with actress Indie Navarrette (13 Reasons Why) hosting, and musical guest Gracie Abrams (11:30 p.m., NBC).

SUNDAY, Nov. 1
The Gilded Age
The British historical drama returns for season four with another sprawling ensemble cast including Carrie Coon, Christine Baranski, Cynthia Nixon, Morgan Spector and Taissa Farmiga (HBO).

Mrs. Doubtfire
The late Robin Williams’ classic 1992 comedy, above, about an eccentric dad who dresses like a British nanny so he can care for his kids at the home of their mother (8 p.m., ABC).

MONDAY, Nov. 2
St. Dennis Medical
Tonight begins the further mockumentary comedic adventures of staffers at an underfunded Oregon hospital, with an ensemble cast led by David Allen Grier and Wendy McLendon-Covey (NBC).

The Holiday Spark
Perpetually single firefighter Dean (Joey Graziadei) enlists children’s book illustrator Laura (Jamie Chung) to help plan his firehouse’s holiday party yet, kindling a different kind of fire (Roku Channel).

TUESDAY, Nov. 3
The Rise and Fall of Reggie Deakins
Tracy Morgan returns to season three of the sitcom about a disgraced former football star on a mission to rehabilitate his image. With Daniel Radcliffe (NBC).

WEDNESDAY, Nov. 4
The Greatest
New authorized biopic of Muhammad Ali, above, stars Jaalen Best as the superstar champion boxer (Amazon Prime).

A Dog’s Perfect Christmas
From the bestselling author of A Dog’s Purpose, a teenager, her grandfather and his trusty basset hound struggle to keep the household together at Christmas. With Dennis Quaid, Milo Ventimiglia, Jennifer Tilly, Mary Steenburgen and Thomas Haden Church (Netflix).

THURSDAY, Nov. 5
Happy Birthday, Sally Field
A day-long event honoring the actress on her 80th birthday includes her films Places in the Heart, Smoky and the Bandit, Hooper and Absence of Malice (TCM).

High-End: The Watch Theft Ring
Documentary about Chile’s notorious scandal that exposed a million-dollar network involving luxury watches and jewelry, international thieves and high-profile figures (Netflix).

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Devon Rohana’s Mister in the Stars (Random House Children’s Book) is a great way to teach little ones about grief and moving on, as a little girl finds words to express her feelings when her older brother passes away.

The Beverly Hills Housewife (Thames & Hudson) is a panoramic read about the 1960s artist David Hockney, how he was captivated by Los Angeles socialite Betty Freeman, how she became his muse for an iconic painting that encapsulated the era—and how it sold for nearly $8 million in 2009.

If you’re afraid of heights, steady yourself for Kilian Jornet: Beyond Endurance (Thames & Hudson), a dizzying photo-packed first-person account of the famed climber’s record-breaking challenge in which he summited more than 80 peaks in just 19 days!

NOW HEAR THIS

British Invasion pioneers The Zombies went through the vault to put together Continue Here (Beechwood Park Records), a mono re-release of original 1960s singles and B-sides that followed up their breakthrough hit “She’s Not There,” but never appeared on previous albums.

Carly Simon returns with Comes in Waves, her first new album or original songs in nearly 20 years. It’s a fresh reminder of her songwriting prowess and introspective musicality, made the more stirring by her announcement—after her recent cancer surgery for basal cell carcinoma—that she’s been living with Parkinson’s disease.

Hey, hey, it’s The Monkees! Made for TV (Rhino) is a new 60th anniversary collection of episodes and music from the group’s first television season, back in 1966, featuring tunes including “I Wanna Be Free,” “Last Train to Clarksville,” “I’m Not Your Steppin’ Stone” and—of course!—the “(Theme From) The Monkees”!

BRING IT HOME

Jason Bateman, Linda Cardellini and David Harbour lead the cast of the hit HBO series DTF: St. Louis (Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment), about a group of grownups looking for love through a no-strings-attached dating app. But oh, they find out there are indeed some strings.

Masters of the Universe (Amazon MGM Studios), the recent big-screen spinoff of the hit Mattel franchise, stars Nicholas Galitzine, Camila Mendes, Alison Brie, Jared Leto and Kristen Wiig in a ripping sci-fi fantasy tale about a Sword of Power and the warlock Skeletor.

Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a… You know the rest, now you can own the classic Gone with The Wind (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment). The newly hi-def restoration of the classic 1939 drama about the Old South, starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh—and a pre-Superman George Reeves!—which brought home a whopping 10 Academy Awards.

Oh give me a home / Where the dinosaurs roam… Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor star in The End of Oak Street (Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment), a rip-roaring wild ride about a neighborhood that suddenly becomes dino central!

Oct 23 2026
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The Entertainment Forecast

What to Watch, and more! Week of Oct. 23 – Oct. 29

A tribute to Tammy, the year’s top horror flicks & a wild ride in a cable car

FRIDAY, Oct. 23
Newlyweds
New sitcom about the later-in-life love story of a free-spirited woman and a buttoned-up professor who marry impetuously after a whirlwind courtship. Starring Téa Leoni and Bill Daly (NBC).

Great Performances: Tammy Wynette—Forever Yours
Tribute concert to the late great country crooner, recorded at the iconic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, includes performances by Terri Clark, Wynonna Judd, War & Treaty, Mandy Barnett, Lorrie Morgan and many more (9 p.m., PBS).

SATURDAY, Oct. 24
American Graffiti
Yes, the 1973 coming-of-age classic about 1960s teens, starring Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss, Cindy Williams, Charlie Martin Smith and Paul LeMat, with a car cameo from a cowboy-hatted Harrison Ford and an appearance by Wolfman Jack (TCM).

SUNDAY, Oct. 25
The Fangoria Chainsaw Awards
Live annual awards ceremony honoring the best in on horror films of the year, hosted by Devon Sawa from Final Destination and Chucky (Shudder).

The Wolves of Real Estate
Three-part documentary explores how three successful brothers ascended in the elite world of luxury real estate and private security in Miami and New York, all while harboring an extremely dark secret (Peacock).

MONDAY, Oct. 26
The Daily Show Presents: Jordan Klepper Fingers the Pulse: Red Flags
Half-hour special with the Daily Show’s special correspondent diving—again—into the MAGA movement to gauge which way the wind is blowing (11:30 p.m., Comedy Central).

The Mob
Parker Posey hosts this new reality competition series, above, where celebrity contestants shake down, hustle and whack their way into mob-movie-inspired jobs (Hulu).

TUESDAY, Oct. 27
In Pursuit: Lessons in American Leadership
What can we learn from U.S. Presidents and First Ladies? A lot, as this documentary shows, weaving together archival materials with contemporary voices to honor America’s 250th birthday (10 p.m. PBS).

Toxic: What Happened in the Haight House?
Host Elizabeth Chambers examines the shocking 2023 death of a seemingly perfect family in Utah (9 p.m., ID).

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 28
Hanging by a Wire
Documentary about a cable car malfunction high in the mountains, stranding eight passengers suspended above a vast valley, with time running out (Paramount+).

Minions & Monsters
The third installment of the blockbuster animated franchise shows the backstory of the Minions in their early days, “going Hollywood” and trying to make a monster movie (Peacock).

THURSDAY, Oct. 29
Ghosts
In this Halloween-themed episode, while Sam is in Australia on the set of her new film, Kyle (new series regular Ben Feldman) steps up to help babysit the ghosts (9 p.m., CBS).

READ ALL ABOUT IT

If you love old houses full of secrets and stories, check out Sanctum (Thames & Hudson), a photographic exploration of homes and other places as living museums, full of personality, vibes and portent, living on in “dilapidated grandeur” long after their inhabitants have gone.

Learn about some of the world’s most revered holy places in Mosque: An Architect’s Exploration of Form, Faith and Meaning (Thames and Hudson), which showcases the temples and shrines that lie at the heart of any Islamic city as sites for group prayer, serenity and spiritual connection.

NOW HEAR THIS

Who’s that a-knockin’? It’s The Doors, in a new double-live album compilation that revisits their 1970 Roadhouse Blues tour. Unbound and Dangerous has classic tracks including “Break on Through,” “Roadhouse Blue” and “The End,” and many more tunes.

Tap you toes to the hip honky-tonk of Buck Owens and His Buckeroos with Live at the Mint, Las Vegas 1968 (Sundazed Music), a previously unreleased live recording (with almost 40 tracks) of the boys from Bakersfield performing at the legendary hotel and casino.

BRING IT HOME

Wake up! It’s time to watch The Morning Show! Season three of the hit drama starring Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, Billy Crudup and Mark Duplass—about a high-pressure TV show and its cast of characters—is now available on DVD.

Halloween’s almost here, so get your chill bumps ready with Horror of Dracula (AV Entertainment), the Hammer Studios’ 1958 horror classic newly resurrected from the archives, starring Christopher Lee as Hollywood’s favorite undead bloodsucker and Peter Cushing as Dr. Van Helsing. Buy it HERE.

Willem Dafoe stars in Late Fame (Magnolia Home Entertainment), based on the true story of poet Ed Saxberger, who wrote a book of poetry in the ‘70s that no one cared for…until it was rediscovered by a fervent fan and a group of young literati who christened him a genus.

Oct 22 2026
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “Klara and the Sun”

Despite a solid cast, this futuristic fable doesn’t have much of a glow

Klara and the Sun
Starring Jenna Ortega, Amy Adams & Mia Laura Thara
Directed by Taika Waititi
Rated PG-13

In theaters Friday, Oct. 23, 2006

In the not-so-distant dystopia of this futuristic fantasy flick, robots that look identical to people will be sold in stores, just like furniture or appliances. Pick one out, take it home, and it’s yours.

Klara (Jenna Ortega) is a female bot, marketed as an AF, an artificial friend. She fervently wants someone to pick her for purchase before her discontinued model gets sent to the AF scrapheap for recycling by the store manager (Natasha Lyonne). Lucky for Klara, another girl, Josie (Mia Laura Thara), selects her from the display window, and boom—she’s boxed up and delivered.

Klara is solar-powered and outright worships the sun; she talks to it, thanks it, asks it for things. She thinks it lives in a barn, on a hill outside her window. Without the sun, her battery would be ka-put. She thinks a robotic harvester is a monster.

Director Taika Waititi (JoJo Rabbitt, What We Do in the Shadows) has a solid cast, including Amy Adams as Josie’s bitchy mom and Steve Buscemi as a shady doctor specializing in a very specific kind of grief therapy. Ortega, just into her early 20s, has been acting since her childhood in Disney’s Stuck in the Middle, and in movies like Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Netflix’s Addams Family spinoff series Wednesday.

But here Waititi seems to confuse quirks for substance, despite its capable cast. It’s sappy and soppy, full of peculiarity but coming up empty on most everything else. Its attempts at humor and comedy seem forced and fall flat. It swirls with stuff, but little of it sticks. It glops sentimental hokum over situations of hurt and loss, romps through ideas about love and friendship, takes a quick jab at racism, and touches lightly on the dangers and downsides of genetic engineering and human replicating.

There’s even a flimsy grab at the cinematic coattails of The Wizard of Oz (a robotic scarecrow) and an oddly placed reference to The Little Mermaid. Adams is atrociously cast in evil-stepmom mode that doesn’t fit her at all. Buscemi, known for his wily and menacing performances in edgy films like Fargo and Reservoir Dogs, seems so stiff, constrained and out of place, in his one scene, you can practically see him cashing his paycheck when he’s out of camera range.

Ortega throws herself in her role—sometimes literally—but Klara’s “childlike” innocence, and her first-time experiences in the outside world, come off as contrived and stage-y.

And for a movie taking place, we’re told, after an apocalyptic world war has left everything in ruins, well, those golden fields of wheat—through which Klara likes to leap throughout the film—look remarkably healthy.

At one point, Amy Adam’s character asks a house full of genetically enhanced weirdo kids, “What the hell is going on here?”

I have to admit, by the time the movie was over, I was wondering the same thing.

—Neil Pond

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Oct 20 2026
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “Wicker”

A far-out romantic fable about a fisherwoman and her super-stud “made man”

Wicker
Starring Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård, Elizabeth Debicki & Peter Dinklage
Directed by Alex Houston Fischer & Eleanor Wilson
Rated R

In theaters Friday, Oct. 23, 2026

Remember how, as kids, we never questioned the absurdity of fairy tales—talking animals, troublesome witches, thundering giants, fire-breathing dragons, a world full of ogres, trolls and elves?

Wicker asks us to take a similar leap of fanciful imagination in its far-out fable of a village fishmonger who weds a man made wholly of wicker.

Award-winning Olivia Colman is the fisherwoman, who makes her living catching and selling fish. When she walks down the street, covered in grime, emanating the odor of fish guts and hawking her fresh catch, the other villagers make fun of her. “We can smell you comin’!” one sneers.

After being chided—at a local wedding festivity—for her undesirability and her lack of a mate, she asks the local basket weaver (Peter Dinklage) to make her one.

Wicker is a bawdy love story about an unconventional relationship and a couple of outsiders—the fisherwoman and her wicker man—who completely shake up their small village and everyone in it.

Alexander Skarsgård, wearing a remarkable full-body “wicker” suit, is sensational as the wicker man. He’s a hunk, even if he’s made of interwoven twigs and tree branches. A wooden man of few words, he’s super handy around the house (or the hut, as it is) and great between the sheets. Yes, in this story, a human female and a fabricated man can indeed have sexual relations, splinters be damned. In fact, their lovemaking is so intense, it breaks the bed.

This isn’t a fairytale for kids.

Peter Dinkage is the basket weaver who creates the wicker man.

Colman, the esteemed British Oscar and Emmy winner, demonstrates her dramatic mastery here, selling the preposterousness and taking her character through a gamut of emotions—and making them all believable.

And the wicker man truly loves his fisherwoman. “I was made to be with you,” he tells her, and he truly means it—and not just because it’s literally true. But he doesn’t want to sit with her by the fireplace. “I’m highly flammable,” he reminds her.

He certainly fires up the village. All the women are a-flutter, the men envious. Why can’t they, too, have earth-shaking, soul-quaking relations like the fishmonger and her wicker man? The tailor’s wife (Elizabeth Dibicki) becomes the movie’s central “villain,” jealously conniving to chip away at the couple’s happiness.

There are twists and turns and surprises, but I won’t give them away. It’s romantic and sensual, sexy and sometimes funny, often poetic and even achingly lovely. It’s a parable about love and marriage, lust, desire and jealousy, outcasts and insiders.

Basing their movie on a 2008 short story by Ursula Willis, co-directors Alex Houston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson have themselves woven a delightful cinematic fable, one that “feels” like a fairytale or bedtime story, although one liberally salted with f-words and sexual innuendo. This is a world away—or at least a couple of kingdoms over—from “Cinderella” or “The Three Little Pigs.”

But like in classic fairy tales, no one in the story is given a real name; everyone is known by what they do—the fisherwoman, the tailor’s wife, the doctor, the baker. It may also remind you a bit of Frankenstein’s “monster” or Edward Scissorhands, two other “outsiders” who made lasting impressions in our collective consciousness.

Wicker will likewise linger in your memory, this story of a man of woven wood who changes everything—and everyone—around him. And wow, how good he is in the sack.

—Neil Pond

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Oct 16 2026
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Books, DVDs, History, Movies, Music, Photography, Pop Culture, Television

The Entertainment Forecast

What to watch, and more! Friday, Oct. 16 – Thursday, Oct. 22

A star-studded Dolly tribute, a billion-dollar romance scam & a famous Bigfoot photo

FRIDAY, Oct. 16
Norm: The Tale of Norm McDonald
Documentary by Judd Apatow traces the life and career of the stand-up and Saturday Night Live performer from his rise as the deadpan anchor of “Weekend Update” to his enduring legacy as dry, deadpan comedian (Netflix).

Tenzig
Based on true events, the little-known story of Tenzing Norgay (Genden Phuntsok), a gifted Himalayan climber who, alongside New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary (Tom Hiddleston), became the first to summit Mount Everest, below (Apple TV).

SATURDAY, Oct. 17
Super Scam Me
Emmy Award-winning journalist Mariana van Zeller hosts this new investigative documentary special exposing a $1 billion romance scam (9 p.m., National Geographic).

Sins of an Amish Husband
Based on a New York Times bestseller, this drama follows a devout Amish woman as she begins to uncover horrendous secrets in her marriage (8 p.m., Lifetime).

SUNDAY, Oct. 18
Helluva Boss
Season three begins of the animated musical black comedy about a company that offers hitman services, with voices by Brandon Rogers, Richard Horvitz and Vivian Williams (Prime Video).

MONDAY, Oct. 19
Saluting Myrna Loy
Tune in any time today or tonight to see the films of the Montana girl who became a Hollywood mainstay in films including The Best Years of Our Lives, The Prizefighter and the Lady, Maise Gets Her Man and many more (TCM).

TUESDAY, Oct. 20
Capturing Bigfoot
Documentary about the famous footage, from 1967, of a creature walking through the woods of Northern California, above. But the story didn’t end, or even begin, there (Prime Video).

Between Steps
Korean YA drama follows the love story of two university students navigating the unexpected detours within a robotics lab (Hulu).

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 21
CMA Presents I Will Always Love You: A Celebration of Dolly Parton
Live star-studded two-hour event from Nashville celebrates the late, great singer-songwriter, her music and her legacy (9 p.m., ABC).

Where’s Wanda?
German-language dark comedy about a neighborhood couple trying to find their missing daughter begins season two tonight (Apple TV).

THURSDAY, Oct. 22
Swipe Right on the Devil
A young woman disappears after a Tinder date, it launches a missing-person case that leads to horrific discoveries (Hulu).

After the First 48
Revisits some of the most powerful cases originally featured on The First 48 and features exclusive interviews with detectives, prosecutors, defense attorneys and families of victims (9 p.m., A&E).

BRING IT HOME

The original Broadway cast is featured in Hadestown: The Musical (Bleeker Street), which puts a jazzy New Orleans spin on a couple of ancient Greek myths. 

Own two hours of devilish fun with South Park: The Complete Twenty-Seventh and Twenty-Eighth Seasons (Paramount Home Entertainment), with all the delightfully non-PC antics and adventures of Kenny, Eric, Kyle and Stan…and creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

Watch all the debut season of TV’s gripping spy-thriller series with The Agency: Season One (Paramount Home Entertainment), starring Michael Fassbender, Jeffery Wright, Jodie Turner-Smith and Richard Gere.

Armie Hammer stars in Citizen Vigilante (Quiver Distribution) as a crusading crime fighter who becomes a social media sensation—and draws the attention of some dangerous enemies.

Set sail for the 1978 British murder mystery Death on the Nile, with Peter Ustinov, Angela Lansbury, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, George Kennedy and David Niven among the all-star ensemble cast. Extras include commentary and interviews. Buy HERE

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Where in America can you find a June Sucker Fish? How about a Tricolored Bat? The “walking” Northern Snakehead Fish? You can find the answers (and a whole lot more!) in Animals of the 50 States (Abrams), a colorfully illustrated guide to all the wildlife, state by state!

Teeny stuff can be super cool, and The Portrait Miniature (Thames and Hudson) examines the history of precious, hand-holdable paintings, typically displayed in lockets, delicate frames or small boxes, and often exchanged as tokens of love or remembrance…centuries before the selfie, or even photos, became a thing!

Monkey see, monkey do! Primatologist Frans de Wahl gives a guided tour in My Family Album (W.W. Norton), a photo-packed look at our “family tree” full of bonobos, chimpanzees, capuchin monkeys, baboons and macaques—with insights on what we can learn from them.

He’s known for his art, but he was also a prolific writer—of letters. Claude Monet: A Life in Letters (Thames & Hudson) presents a collection of his many pieces of correspondence from his early formative years to his death, 100 years ago, at age 86.

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Did you know that even our prehistoric ancestors collected things? In the fascinating Objects & Us: Why Things Matter (Thames & Hudson), author Gus Casely-Hayrord shows how the human need for material “stuff” can tell important stories about who we are, what we need, what we want, what we do, what we value and how we live.

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In Ark (Thames & Hudson), Stephen Ellcock presents a visual treasury of amazing images depicting living wonders across all five kingdoms of nature, from microscopic organisms to healing plants and astonishing animals that swim, fly and run—reminding us of the wonderous connectivity of all creation.

NOW HEAR THIS


Hear a Beatles classic like you’ve never heard it before with Rubber Soul (Apple Corp/Capitol), the new special edition, multi-disc remix of the landmark 1965 album with Fab Four faves including “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” “I’m Looking Through You,” “Norwegian Wood” and “Nowhere Man,” plus a bounty of alternative takes, home demos, session outtakes and other goodies.

Oct 15 2026
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “You Can See Everything”

Elizabeth Holmes documentary peels back the layers in a search for elusive truth

You Can See Everything
Starring Elizabeth Holmes & Nathan Fielder
Rated R
Directed by Nathan Fielder & Lance Oppenheim

In theaters Friday, Oct. 16

Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the debunked blood-testing-tech company Theranos, is currently serving an 11-year sentence for defrauding investors of mega-millions. Nathan Fielder is an actor and filmmaker best known for his docu-comedy prank-reality shows Nathan for You and The Rehearsal.

Before she went away to prison in 2023, Holmes invited Fielder into her family for almost a month to make a documentary, ostensibly to show her side of the story and reveal that she had no secrets, nothing to hide about herself or her company.

“You can see everything,” she tells Fielder at one point, before heading down to the beach to frolic in the surf with her partner (and later husband) Billy Evans and their two young children.

With Theranos, Holmes claimed to have invented a new kind of technology that would revolutionize and simplify blood testing for all kinds of diseases and maladies. Only it didn’t, and she was charged—and convicted—of bilking investors after she’d become America’s wealthiest self-made female billionaire.

Fielder’s documentary, which clocks in at just under three hours, is a mesmerizing curiosity that blurs the lines between reality, fabrication and performance art. Fielder becomes an integral part of picture, a character in the real-life drama, asking probing questions, listening in on conversations and watching from the sidelines. We only get a glimpse of his co-director, Lance Oppenheim, whose recent film Primetime featured Robert Pattinson as To Catch a Predator vigilante Chris Hansen.

At the midpoint of the movie, actress Amanda Seyfried, who played Holmes in the Hulu miniseries The Dropout, enters the picture to “stage” additional scenes and help steer the project once Holmes has been sent to prison and unavailable for interviews. She’s once again “playing” Elizabeth.

But is Elizabeth also playing Elizabeth? There’s a lot of attention given to a New York Times profile in which Holmes supposedly said that portrayals of her—like Seyfried in The Dropout—are fabrications, not really her. “They’re playing a character I created,” she’s quoted as saying. Holmes insists she didn’t say it, wouldn’t say it—and that she has proof, recordings of the interview. But despite Fielder’s prodding, those recordings never show up.

Is Holmes a manipulator, or is she being manipulated? Is she playing a character, one she created? She tells Fielder that she’s never knowingly told a lie, that she never defrauded anyone. Is she telling the truth? Does she even know what the truth is? In scene after scene, Fielder asks questions and Holmes stares at him, unblinking and grinning, nodding like a bobblehead. It seems fake, an emotionless, rictus-like mask projecting warmth, openness and innocence. But masks always hide something. What is she hiding?

“She just sees things differently,” Evans offers, not quite as insightfully as he might have intended.

The documentary becomes a real-life psychodrama, with a soundtrack that sometimes sounds like what you might hear in a suspenseful horror movie, full of tension and tautness.

Fielder, above, uncovers a murky history of questionable alliances and relationships, like Holmes’ former boyfriend, Theranos cofounder Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, the much older Pakistani businessman—a sugar daddy?—who was also convicted of fraud. Evans also comes off as creepy, insisting to be paid for making the documentary, volunteering that he hacked into Holmes’ Twitter account to impersonate her, creating an AI version of Holmes that he says will be free for anyone to use, even to make pornography. He also admits that he’s out for revenge, and he’s going to “f*uck ‘em all.” Early in the film, we watch him take over in kitchen, unhappy with the way Elizabeth is scrambling the eggs. In a detail that’s more telling than Evans probably realizes, we see his house pets, snakes and lizards, slithering across the floor.

Evans and Holmes both admit they’re anxious to rise from the ashes, to “put the band back together again” and mount an even more monumental return of Theranos, a 2.0 version with new medical tech involving lasers. They insist they’re deeply in love, life mates meant for each other.

There’s an air of ick, of toxicity, of something being “off,” of closely guarded secrets and misdirection, of grandiose greed and ambition colliding with truth and consequences, of refusals to accept reality. The film peels back the layers of an onion only to find more layers. It exposes even more questions than answers.

At one point, Holmes and Fielder have a dinner-table discussion about magicians, like David Blaine, who can make you believe the unbelievable, that what you’re seeing is what there is. But it turns out it’s all trickery, masterstrokes of performance, magnificent manipulations.

Like the manipulations we see in the riveting, almost hypnotically spellbinding You Can See Everything. We may be seeing everything we can see. But what can’t we see? What’s behind the mask? And can we believe any of it?

-—Neil Pond

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Oct 14 2026
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “Whalefall”

Gripping belly-of-a-whale drama has an even deeper message

Whalefall
Starring Austin Abrams, Josh Brolin & Elisabeth Shue
Directed by Brian Duffield
Rated PG-13

In theaters Friday, Oct. 16

A young scuba diver searching offshore for the remains of his deceased father instead finds himself in the belly the planet’s largest predator. Euphoria’s Austin Abrams plays Jay, who gets gulped into the massive maw of a sperm whale. Yep, just like Jonah in the Old Testament, or Geppetto in Pinocchio.

But this is no Bible tale, nor a Disney ‘toon.

Director Brian Duffield knows how to rachet up the tension, like he did in the alien-invasion thriller No One Will Save You (2023). Never having been in a whale’s belly, I can’t say for sure, but Whalefall feels alarmingly realistic and genuinely horrifying. The music by Joseph Trapanese, and the exceptionally detailed set design—to depict the oozing, heaving, churning, splashing, squishing, squeezing insides of a whale—create a truly immersive, submersively unnerving experience.

And Abrams—whose other roles include the movies Weapons and Resident Evil, and playing Ron Anderson on TV’s The Walking Dead—knows how to sell it. He makes us feel the panic, the claustrophobia, the intense helplessness and the overwhelming dread as Jay’s oxygen tank begins to empty, and the whale’s digestive system starts to do its thing.

You’d probably scream, whimper, cry and coil into a fetal position, too. And at some point, you’d do just about anything to survive.

And he’s not alone in there. There’s also a giant squid, and it’s not too happy about the tight quarters, either. Thank goodness there’s also an incandescent jellyfish, which Jay uses as a flashlight.

Before all that happens, though, we see the warm relationship Jay had with his mother (Elisabeth Shue) and his sisters (Jane Levy and Emily Rudd) after their salty dog of a dad, Mitt (Josh Brolin), ended his suffering from mesothelioma by becoming one with the sea. We learn that Mitt and Jay didn’t always get along; and that Jay moved away, far inland to Iowa, to get some distance from him.

The most surprising thing about Whalefall (based on 2023 novel by Daniel Kraus) is the poignant father-son relationship central to its story. Even though he’s deceased, Mitt gets a lot of flashback time, and how the movie creates a “reconnection” with Jay and Mitt is one of its impressive narrative feats, interweaving Jay’s dire circumstances with flashbacks in an arc that eventually gives him the much-needed closure for which he’s been longing.

It’s interesting that Whalefall never depicts the whale as a monster; instead, it’s just doing what whales do. Mitt used to say that whales are vital parts of the ecosystem. As Jay fights for his life, it’s almost like father, son and sea beast have become part of the same spiritual loop, the same existential ecosystem, the eternal essence of the water. Has Mitt been reincarnated as the whale? Is Jay hallucinating as he runs out of air?

Beyond its nail-biting undersea drama, Whalefall has a message about how everything is connected. Water, people, family, whales, living and dying, all are parts of something bigger, something as symbiotic and deep and wide, as full of mystery and wonder as the vastness of the sea itself.

Mitt always knew that. “The ocean always provides,” he told young Jay, noting how when a whale dies and sinks to the floor of the ocean—known as whalefall—it creates a thriving biological community for other sea creatures as its body decomposes and its energies are released.

Like the ocean, Whalefall also provides—in this case, a whale of a life-or-death tale with an even deeper message.

—Neil Pond

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