Monthly Archives: July 2023

The Entertainment Forecast

Friday, July 28 – Thursday, Aug. 3

Beanie Babies, Naked & Afraid Castaways, Streaming ‘Guardians’ & a ‘Jersey Shore’ Vacay

Find out how the Beanie Baby craze became a thing in ‘The Beanie Bubble.’

FRIDAY, July 28
The Beanie Bubble
Zach Galifianakis, Elizabeth Banks and Sarah Snook star in this original film about a not-so-distant time in the 1990s past when the world started treating little stuffed animals as adorable pets—and then highly valued collectible investments (Apple TV+).

Heels
Season two begins tonight for the series about a Georgia family of small-town wrestlers. With Stephen Arnell and Alexander Ludwig (10 p.m., Starz). 

This Fool
Half-hour comedy series set in South Central Los Angeles returns for season two tonight, with roommates Julio (Chris Estrada) and Luis (Frankie Quinones) embarking on new careers and new love lives (Hulu).

SUNDAY, July 30
Dark Winds
Season two begins tonight, with a largely Native American cast in a new tale of cops stalking a killer in the high desert of Navajo Country (9 p.m., AMC)

Naked and Afraid Castaways
And now yet another way to shed your clothes, shed a few pounds, and scrounge and scrape for survival. This new spinoff of the N&A franchise puts contestants on a tropical island strewn with wreckage and debris, including a shipwreck, abandoned military vehicles and a crashed plane. Can they find what they need, and fashion the rest, to endure 21 days? (8 p.m., Discovery Channel). 

MONDAY, July 31
Breeders
Emmy winner Martin Freeman and Daisy Haggard return to kick off the fourth and final season of the dramady about parents and their growing kids—a concept based loosely on Freeman’s own experiences (10 p.m., FX). 

American Nightmare: Becoming Cody Rhodes
Documentary series follows the comeback of pro wrestler Cody Rhodes as he chases the WWE championship title his superstar father, Dusty Rhodes, never attained (Peacock).

Here’s Lucy!
Before the was a TV comedy queen and a television groundbreaker, Lucille Ball was a rising starlet in a slew of Hollywood movies. Watch an all-day marathon of some of her best, including Room Service (1938), Too Many Girls (1940), Without Love (1945), Easy to Wed (1946) and more, including the feature-length “road” comedy The Long, Long Trailer (1954), co-starring her real-life husband Desi Arnez (6 a.m., TBS). 

Lucy and Desi star in the 1954 movie comedy ‘The Long, Long Trailer.’

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 2
Celebrity Wheel of Fortune
Tonight, Pat Sajak and Vanna White host as Paul Scheer, Luenell and Mary Lynn Raskub spin the wheel in hopes of winning a cool $1 million for their charities of choice (8 p.m., ABC).  

Big Brother
Ever get the feeling that someone is watching you? Well, maybe you’re a contestant on tonight’s kickoff for the 25th season of the voyeuristic competition, in which a new group of “houseguests” are observed, and eavesdropped on, to see who can hang in the longest (9 p.m., CBS).

Physical
Tonight begins season three of the critically hailed streaming dramady series, starring Rose Byrne as a 1980s aerobics instructor now fighting to outrun her competitors—and keep her personal life on a smooth pace (Apple TV+).

The ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ blast off for the latest adventure, coming to streaming.

Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3
The hit movie (released theatrically in May) comes to streaming, starring Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista and others in the cosmic band of misfits off on new adventures—this time with a heartrending backstory about Rocket the Racoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper). (Disney+).

THURSDAY, Aug. 3
Jersey Shore Family Vacation
Who isn’t ready for a little vacay? Original Jersey Shores cast member Sammi “Sweetheart” reunites with her former housemates in Philadelphia, where—among other “Shore” shenanigans—Deena makes a trip to the local Margaretville one for the record books! (8 p.m., MTV).

Another Disney Dud

Disney’s haunted-house redo is haunted by movie ghosts of another park attraction

Rosario Dawson, Tiffany Haddish, LaKeith Stanfield & Owen Wilson size up the spooks.

Haunted Mansion
Starring LaKeith Stanfield, Rosario Dawson, Owen Wilson & Tiffany Haddish
Directed by Justin Simien
PG-13

In theaters Friday, July 28

You’ve heard that old saying, “If at first you don’t succeed, try again.”

Disney’s initial attempt at turning its iconic haunted-house attraction into a movie, back in 2003, was a flop, especially with critics. Now the House of Mouse is trying, trying again, with a fresh take and a new cast.

But not new enough or fresh enough.

The new Haunted Mansion may delight some Disney fans, with its “ghostly” FX that dutifully replicates many of the giggly goosebumps of the actual Disney attraction. There are rooms that “stretch,” goofy-ghoul portraits, a ballroom of waltzing spirits, a cemetery a-swirl with specters, an ominous suit of armor, and the Hatbox Ghost, a fan-favorite cadaver from the ride. (Look him up Disney.fandom.com. He’s got quite a story.)

But this movie lives in kind of cinematic netherworld, too goofy to be truly scary and too ridiculously, rampantly cheesy to be truly funny, or fun. It’s good for a few chuckles (thanks mostly to the script, by Parks and Rec ace writer Katie Leopold, which gives Tiffany Haddish some nice nuggets). But most of the humor is forced, flat, rote and predictable, mired in a gooey, sentimental subplot that feels completely at odds with the sense of untethered, otherworldly escapism on which it’s so clearly, obviously based.

The cast is game and leans heavily into the hammy premise of how they all came to be together in a creaky old house awash in pesky paranormal activity on the outskirts of New Orleans. LaKeith Stanfield is a man of science grieving his late wife; Owen Wilson plays a priest; Tiffany Haddish is a local psychic with great Yelp reviews; Danny DeVito chews the scenery as an eccentric historian steeped in supernatural lore.  Rosario Dawson is a young-professional mom with a preteen son (newcomer Chase W. Dillon, who seems to be channeling the late child actor Gary Coleman from Diff’rent Strokes).

The characters find out that, if they try to leave the mansion, the pesky ghosts will follow them home, or wherever they go. Disney buffs will recall that’s just what visitors to the attraction are warned will happen as they exit the ride.  

The house is haunted by a pantheon of out-of-control spirits, including a ghost medium (Jamie Lee Curtis), and Jared Leto brings the Hatbox Ghost back from the crypt.

Jamie Lee Curtis as Madame Leota

Acclaimed movie maestro Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water, Pan’s Labyrinth, Nightmare Alley) initially wanted to make this movie, or at least write its screenplay. But shakeups at Disney shook him out of the project and ushered in Justin Simien, whose previous experience includes the TV series Dear White People and the satirical horror comedy Bad Hair. With del Toro at the helm, Haunted Mansion would have certainly been a different movie—and likely a much better one.

The overstuffed, hyper comedic mayhem gets even more overcrowded with familiar-face cameos from Dan Levy and Winona Rider (as tour guides), and Marilu Henner as a tourist. Time your movie bathroom break wrong and you’ll miss ‘em. Rider’s teeny role is likely a nod to another haunted-house movie, Beetlejuice, in which she starred in 2008, when she was 17.

But this Haunted Mansion is no Beetlejuice. Heck, it’s not even its predecessor, the previous Haunted Mansion (actually, The Haunted Mansion), which at least had the manic movie-star mojo of Eddie Murphy. And it’s no Pirates of the Caribbean, Disney’s 2003 live-action version of another of its popular park attractions, which went on to be a global box-office blockbuster of a franchise. This is another misfire, another Disney dud that feels like an under-performer, despite the work and intentions that went into it.  

A houseful of ghosts, once again, turns out to be no match for boatloads of buccaneers.

Neil Pond

The Entertainment Forecast

Friday, July 21 – Thursday, July 27

Nicole K roars like a lioness, hot dogs in Cali, dystopian drivers & a Zoey reunion!

Nicole Kidman stars in the new terrorism thriller ‘Special Ops: Lioness’

FRIDAY, July 21
Praise Petey
Animated series about a New York City “it” girl who attempts to modernize her father’s small-town cult. With voices by Annie Murphy, John Cho, Stephen Root, Amy Hill and Christine Baranski (10 p.m., Freeform).

Minx
Season two begins tonight of the L.A.-based workplace comedy, in which a young feminist (Ophelia Lovibond) aligns with a scrappy adult-magazine publisher (Jake Johnson) to create the first erotic magazine for women in the ’70s (9 p.m., Starz).

Jake Johnson and Ophelia Lovibond star in season two of ‘Minx,’ inspired by the rise in the 1970s of fem-centric magazines like ‘Playgirl’ and ‘Cosmopolitan.’

SATURDAY, July 22
Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private Investigators
Jo Joyner (who plays Lu Shakespeare) and Mark Benton (as Frank Hathaway) wrap up season one tonight with double episodes of this lively BBC crime-solving drama about a hard-boiled detective and his rookie sidekick poking around crimes and misdemeanors in Stratford-Upon-Avon (Ovation).

SUNDAY, July 23
Special Ops: Lioness
Espionage thriller stars Zoe Saldana as a CIA operative trying to prevent the next terrorist attack on America. With Nicole Kidman and Morgan Freeman (Paramount+).

Carnival Eats
In tonight’s episode, “Some Like It Hot Dog,” host Noah Cappe travels the country to sample more fair food, including the Devil Dog at the OC Winterfest in Costa Mesa, Calif., and other goodies in Tucson and West Palm Beach (9 p.m., Cooking Channel).

Shark Week!
Who better to host than the guy who lives under the sea? Jason Momoa (he plays Aquaman in DC movies) hosts this week-long dive into all stuff shark-y (Discovery).

MONDAY, July 24
Futurama
After a decade-long hiatus, the satirical animated sci-fi series (created by The SimpsonsMatt Groening) returns, with voices by Katey Sagal, John DiMaggio and Billy West (Hulu).

The Golden Boy
Put ‘em up! Boxing fans will feel like they’re in the ring with this two-part doc on a gloved legend, Oscar De La Hoya, the “Golden Boy” who won an Olympic gold medal at age 19 and went on to become a pro boxing legend—and a role model to the Mexican-American community (HBO).

TUESDAY, July 25
Under G-D
Kicking off a new season of the acclaimed PBS shorts, this 24-minute documentary looks at the abortion controversy through a group of Jewish women fighting to protect rights, uphold the separation of church and state, and oppose rabbis and other clergy who want to overturn the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade (available on streaming via PBS.org and the PBSApp).

BRING IT HOME

Another new release for movie buffs, Soundies: The Ultimate Collection (Kino Lorber) spotlights some 200 musical “jukebox” short films that kept Americans entertained during the World War II era. These early music videos included performances by Doris Day, Cab Calloway, Liberace, Duke Ellington, Spike Jones, Merle Travis and many more, and they played on coin-operated machines in neighborhood bars and taverns all over the country.

The madcap comedy thriller So I Married an Axe Murderer, starring Nancy Travers and a pre-Austin Powers Mike Myers, is 30 years old! Can you believe it? The new 4K anniversary release contains half an hour of unused and deleted scenes (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment).

WEDNESDAY, July 26
On the Case with Paula Zahn
In tonight’s episode, chilling evidence found inside a quaint Utah bookstore leads to the murderer of its beloved owner—or does it? (10 p.m., ID).

Abbott Elementary
It’s not quite back-to-school time, but classroom is in full session of TV’s award-winning comedy series. Tonight, the AE teachers must decide which two of them deserves a plum district award—a pair of courtside tickets to a 76ers game (9:30 p.m., ABC).

LISTEN UP!

Unleash your white winged dove and fly high with Stevie Nicks: Complete Studio Albums and Rarities (Rhino). Available digitally, as a 10-CD box 16 LPs, it’s all of her solo albums, newly unearthed tracks (of course) her hits, including “Stop Dragging My Heart Around” (with Tom Petty), “Leather and Lace” (with Don Henley) and more. Get your Stevie on! 

THURSDAY, July 27
The Slumber Party
Coming of age comedy fiim, based on a YA novel about a hypnotism stunt gone wrong, stars Darby Camp, Emmy Liu-Wang, Valentina Herrera and Dallas Liu (8 p.m., Disney).

Twisted Metal
Anthony Mackie (above) Wil Arnett and Thomas Hayden Church star in this new series, a rock-‘em, sock-‘em adaption of a 2001 video game about drivers and their cars in a Mad Max-ian dystopia (Peacock).

Zoey 102
Jamie Lynn Spears, Erin Sanders and other castmates from the Nickelodeon series Zoey 101 return for this new film about an over-the-top wedding and a wild high school reunion (Paramount+).

READ ALL ABOUT IT

What’s Fido thinking? Canine behaviorist Louise Glazebrook’s Teach Yourself Dog (Lawrence King) is a fun matching “memory game” of cards leading you to learn how to “speak dog” by recognizing their gestures and looks as signposts to what your fur babies are feeling.

You Dropped a Bomb on Me

The brainy blockbuster ‘Oppenheimer’ is a big, beautiful must-see about the man who made the device that ended World War II—and created the grim specter of global destruction

Oppenheimer
Starring Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon & Robert Downey Jr.
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Rated R

In theaters Friday, July 21

It opens with a screen that tells us about Prometheus, the Greek god who “stole fire from the gods and gave it to men.” His fellow Olympians weren’t too happy with him, and they sentenced Prometheus to spend eternity in torment, shackled to a volcano.

Oppenheimer is based on the book American Prometheus, about Robert J. Oppenheimer, the New York-born theoretical physicist who led America’s Manhattan Project, the top-secret “think tank” that created the atomic bombs dropped in on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan in August 1945. The bombs effectively ended World War II, but also created the grim specter of nuclear war as a reality, one that could—theoretically—lead to the destruction and doom of the entire planet.

Director Christopher Nolan’s grandiose, magnum opus of a historical biopic depicts Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) as a tortured, sometimes arrogant genius, wrestling with the wide-reaching global implications of what he’s doing, and later, with what he’s done. Like Prometheus, he harnessed the fire of the cosmos—splitting subatomic particles and unleashing the deadly “fire” power of a thermonuclear device—and was then pilloried for it, with accusations that he was a traitor, a spy, a Commie.

It’s a dense drama, powerful and potent, about a loaded moment in time at the intersection of politics, science, discovery, history, human emotion, psychodrama, creation and destruction, chain reactions and ethics, all swirling like protons and neutrons around something no one had ever done, or witnessed, before. It’s a cinch for year-end awards nominations, likely even some Oscars. Yes, it’s that good.

Cillian Murphy and Matt Damon

The all-star cast is outstanding, with everyone playing someone from real life, from Matt Damon as the hawkish Leslie Groves, the U.S. Air Force general who built the Pentagon and was chosen to oversee Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project, to Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s wife—whose former ties to the Communist Party become a major, troublesome part of her husband’s trajectory from the classroom to the world stage.  Robert Downey Jr. is a major part of the story as Lewis Strauss, head of the Atomic Energy Commission. There’s Florence Pugh, Oppy’s Communist lover, and Casey Affleck as the military intelligence officer who commands the Allied forces during the war.  Matthew Modine plays a scientist doing high-ranking R&D for America’s war machine. Kenneth Branagh is the Danish physicist Niels Bhor, and Tom Conti plays Albert Einstein.

But everything hinges on Oppenheimer, the central character in almost every scene. Murphy, an Irish actor who’s also appeared in Batman Begins and Inception, plus the British hit TV series Peaky Blinders, gives a stunning, career-high performance, conveying the inner turmoil, passionate convictions and strong opinions of the man tasked with making a device that would weaponize the science on which he had dedicated his life. Oppenheimer’s bombs ended the fighting and brought peace to a war that had been raging across the globe for six years. But what would be the cost to him, and to the world?

Director Nolan (who also wrote the screenplay and produced) is perhaps Hollywood’s leading movie maestro, known for his densely layered, often complex dramas and intense character studies across multiple genres, including a trio of acclaimed Batman blockbusters starring Christian Bale, the mind-bending Inception, Tenet and Memento, the gripping, innovative war drama Dunkirk, and the far-out space-travel drama Interstellar. He knows better than almost anyone how to make blockbusters with brains, and Oppenheimer is queued up to be one of the most intensely brainy, monumentally majestic, stylistically soaring blockbusters of the year.

And the “test” of Oppenheimer’s nuclear device, at Los Alamos in the American desert, is as gripping, jaw-droppingly dramatic and visually stunning as almost anything you’ve ever experienced at any movie, ever.

With booming, atmospheric sound design, lavish visuals, probing questions about the role of science in the world, and a dive into the mysteries of the universe and our place in it, Oppenheimer enters the race as one of the year’s most impressive, important films. I won’t even take away any points for its nearly three-hour running time. It takes a big movie to tell about history’s biggest bang. And Oppenheimer is big, beautiful and absolutely a must-see.  

—Neil Pond

The Entertainment Forecast

Friday, July 14 – Thursday, July 20

YA drama, DC backstories, a new ‘Bird Box’ & Clint Eastwood’s apes*%t movie classic

FRIDAY, July 14
The Summer I Turned Pretty
Season three of the series based on author Jenny Han’s angsty beach-tales novel trilogy launches tonight (above), with more YA coming-of-age drama and romance in the fictional seaside town of Cousin’s Beach (Prime Video).

Goliath
Three-part sports doc examines the life and career and long-lasting impact of basketball great Wilt Chamberlain, using artificial intelligence to recreate the late NBA superstar’s narrating voice. Creepy? Maybe, but you make the call! (On Paramount+ and Showtime’s streaming subscriber platforms)

Bird Box Barcelona
The frightening world of Bird Box—the 2018 Sandra Bullock sci-fi drama about a world in which some malevolent force drives people to mass suicide if they get a glimpse of it—returns (above) with a new cast and a Spanish spin (Netflix).

SATURDAY, July 15
Every Which Way But Loose
Get up early—or set your DVR—to see this light-footed 1978 apes*#t romcom romp, the highest-grossing movie of Clint Eastwood’s acting career, in which he plays a trucker turned boxer traveling in California with an orangutan named Clyde. With Sandra Locke, who made six films with Eastwood (and had a longterm relationship with him as well). Bill McKinney, who played the notorious “mountain man” in Deliverance, also appears. Worth checking out for some retro kicks! (7:45 a.m., TCM).

SUNDAY, July 16
The Prank Panel
“Pranxsperts” Johnny Knoxville, Eric Andre and Gabourey Sidibe help facilitate a granny’s participation in a sexy video. Va-va-voom! (8 p.m., ABC)

Zoe Bakes
Pastry chef and author Zoe Francois (above) makes her favorite recipes from easy main dishes to deserts (1 p.m., Magnolia).

MONDAY, July 17
A House Made of Splinters
This Sundance Award-winning documentary examines the consequences of the war in Ukraine on its youngest citizens, the children caught in the crossfire (check local listings, PBS).

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Rock fans will relish Backstage & Beyond Vol. 1, the new decades-spanning collection of writing and reporting by award-winning musical journalist Jim Sullivan on his lively encounters with Jerry Lee Lewis, Tina Turner, Neil Young, David Bowie, John Fogerty, the J. Geils Band, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper and many other legendary music-makers.

TUESDAY, July 18
Southern Storytellers
New three-episode series follows storytellers and “creators” whose books, songs, poems, plays and films all reflect on their regional roots. Included are country singer-songwriters Lyle Lovett and Jason Isbell and actor Billy Bob Thornton (9 p.m., PBS).

Justified: City Primeval
A U.S. Marshal (Timothy Oliphant) crosses paths with a sociopathic desperado called the Oklahoma Wildman (Boyd Holbrook) in this new spinoff series from the FX hit crime drama (10 p.m., FX).

WEDNESDAY, July 19
I Wanna Rock
Hey, all you metalheads! This totally rad three-part docuseries looks at the head-banging ‘80s, providing the untold stories of success (and failure) in the ere of leather pants, Spandex and massive hair through interviews with bands and artists who lived it (Paramount+).

CMA Fest
If you didn’t make it to Nashville for the real deal in June, here’s the next-best thing: A TV special hosted by country stars Dierks Bentley, Elle King and Lainey Wilson, featuring performance highlights from the music-festival event by dozens of artists (8 p.m., ABC).

The Deepest Breath
Take a big gulp of air and head under the waves in this jaw-dropping documentary (above) about divers who plunge into the one of the most dangerous sports in the world: freediving, holding their breath for extended underwater excursions (Netflix). 

THURSDAY, July 20
Superpowered: The DC Story
Rosario Dawson hosts this limited series examining the durable comic-book company, its origins, superheroes and many TV and movie spinoffs (Max).

Don’t Kill the Babysitter
Nail-biter about a Venezuelan woman (Valentia Andrade, above) hired as an au pair for an American couple, whose “overprotection” their young daughter makes the new nanny suspect—quite correctly—that something more sinister is going on (8 p.m., LMH)

Impossible Odds

Tom Cruise returns to his leading role in the action-packed, stunt-tacular seventh installment of his blockbuster big-screen franchise

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning—Part One
Starring Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Hayley Atwell & Esai Morales
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie
PG-13

In theaters Wednesday, July 12, 2023

What does a runaway train, renegade AI, a four-sided, two-piece doodad and a doomed Russian sub have in common? They’re all part of Tom Cruise’s latest “impossible” mission.

The seventh installment of the blockbuster franchise that began more than 25 years ago finds Cruise’s iconic character, Impossible Missions Force (IMF) agent Ethan Hunt, scrambling all over the place in a race for a four-sided key that could trigger a digital geopolitical doomsday in the wrong hands.

Everybody’s trying to get their paws on that mysterious gizmo, which can unlock access to an all-knowing, all-seeing, super-processing artificial intelligence known as The Entity, “a truth-eating digital parasite” with the dark power of total domination. And everyone, it seems, is also trying to stop Ethan, which certainly adds an additional level of difficultly to his job.

“The world is gonna be coming after you,” Ethan is warned, and it sure does.

It’s a big mission for a big movie on a grand scale—golly-whopping spectacle, breathless action and a threat that’s even bigger, and so much badder, than Big Brother.

The gang’s all here, for Mission: Impossible movie fans who’ve grown up watching the IMF continue the globetrotting spy shenanigans first introduced in the 1960s TV series. Cruise, the consummate movie star, is as dapper and unflappably cool as ever, rallying his loyal team (Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg), confronting a couple of formidable old foes (Esai Morales and Vanessa Kirby) and reuniting with a former ally (Rebecca Ferguson).

New characters include Hayley Atwell (well-known to Marvel movie fans) as a cagey thief with a criminal past, and Pom Klementieff (from Guardians of the Galaxy) plays a French assassin and lets her lethal skills do the talking. We’ll likely see them again in Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part 2, which is already in the can and due for release next summer.  

Rebecca Ferguson reprises her role from previous Mission: Impossible flicks.

Director Christopher McQuarrie also returns to the franchise; he’s directed Cruise in several projects, include two previous Mission movies. He certainly knows how to move things along, make it an exciting, exhilarating ride and pepper the menu with some levity and laughs.  

The movie hinges on issues of privacy, deception, manipulation and misinformation in this modern era of digital overload. And it’s also about empathy; Ethan Hunt cares about those closest to him, and even about people he doesn’t know. The Entity, like all tech by design, is amoral and cares about nothing and no one, only about whatever its objective is programmed to be. (You think your laptop or smartphone, or Siri and social media, really care about you? Uh, no. So just imagine if they became your master and overlord.) Ethan and the Entity represent a battle between good and evil on a global stage, with the fate of the planet hanging in the balance.

But the plot is just so much blather and blah-blah, after all, when it comes to Tom Cruise and his Impossible missions—everyone wants to see the stunts, and Dead Reckoning certainly delivers. There’s a wild multi-vehicle chase through the narrow streets of Rome, with Cruise and Atwell handcuffed together (!) in a tiny Fiat, pursued by a monstrous Humvee, Italian cops and America CIA agents. Cruise zooms cross-country on a motorcycle, then shoots himself off a high cliff, out-Bonding James Bond in a jaw-dropping aerial sequence. And an extended bit through the Swiss Alps on that runaway train, well, it’s a nail-biting, death-defying, cliff-hanging choo-choo blast, a topsy-turvy, over-the-top obstacle course of everything but the kitchen sink, including pots, pans, parachutes, a flaming oven and a grand piano.

Vanessa Kirby plays a woman with a complicated past that intersected with Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) previously.

Everything is made even more exciting by knowing that Cruise performs almost all his own stunts. Wowza—it’s hard to imagine any other star ever even considering the elaborate, bonkers things that he’s made the lifeblood of his movies.

And, of course, there’s high-tech face-swapping, a bit of bruising street-fight physicality, plus a dash of sword fighting, knife slashing and even some sleight of hand magic.

Last year, Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick became the must-see movie of the summer, signaling that Hollywood was ready to welcome COVID-weary audiences back into theaters. Will he re-do that summer blockbuster magic with Dead Reckoning? Can his movie once again revive a sagging box office, rejuvenate franchise fatigue (sorry, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Little Mermaid and Fast X) and remind viewers—who’ve gotten just a little bit too comfortable with at-home streaming—why they should love the big screen?

It’s a bit early to know for sure, but I’m ready to predict: Mission: Accomplished!

—Neil Pond

The Entertainment Forecast

Fri., July 7 – Thurs., July 13

In-law outlaws, burly barnbuilders, ghosts on camera & Miss America’s scandalous secrets!

“The Outlaws” are really in-laws, and they’re coming to Netflix!

FRIDAY, JULY 7
The Out-laws
Andy Divine, Nina Dubrev, Ellen Barkin and Pierce Brosnan star in this comedy about a to-be-married bank executive who suspects his in-laws are criminals (Netflix).

Salute to Summer
Nick Jonas headlines this live performance special from the Universal Citywalk, produced in partnership with the U.S. Army. Saaaaa-lute, indeed! (Peacock).

SATURDAY, July 8
Barnwood Builders
In the new season of this home-build reality series, host Mark Bowie and his team of West Virginia crafters (above) salvage more antique barns and cabins, repurposing the wood to create awesome new homes (9 p.m., Magnolia).

SUNDAY, July 9
Paranormal: Caught on Camera
Have you ever seen a ghost? Well, this series offers the next best scary thing as it begins a new season of videos purporting to capture unexplainable paranormal phenomena—apparitions, bedroom monsters, shape-shifting extraterrestrials, Bigfoot sightings, weird lights in the sky, and more things that go bump in the night (9 p.m., Travel Channel)

Running Wild with Bear Grylls
New season of the outdoor adventure series finds celebs (including Russell Brand, Bradley Cooper, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rita Ora and Troy Kotsur) push past their comfort zones to find out if they’ve got the right stuff to hang in the elements with the resourceful survivalist (9 p.m., National Geographic).

BRING IT HOME

Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen reunite in Book Club: The Next Chapter (Universal Pictures Home Entertainment) for a frisky “girls’ trip” to Italy. With Andy Garcia, Craig T. Nelson and Don Johnson. Bonus features includes interviews with the cast.  

MONDAY, July 10
BBQ Brawl
Ten-episode competition features pitmasters from across America vying for the title of “Master of ‘Cue” with the help of coaches Bobby Flay, Anne Burrell and Sunny Anderson (9 p.m., Food Network).

Secrets of Miss America
Here she is—and she’s swimming in scandal! Find out all about America’s oldest “beauty pageant,” the shocks and controversies at its core, and the organization’s struggle to remain relevant in today’s more-enlightened world (10 p.m., A&E).

Miracle Workers: End Times
It’s a miracle. Well, maybe not exactly. But it is the newest installment of the caustically witty series in which the same actors (Daniel Radcliffe, Steve Buscemi, Geraldine Viswanathan and Karan Soni) return each season, but as all-new characters in brand-new scenarios. This time it’s a dystopian future overrun with radioactive mutants, killer robots and a tyrannical homeowner’s association with outrageous fees (10 p.m., TBS).

NOW HEAR THIS

The Grateful Dead perform in Des Moines, Iowa at the State Fairgrounds in May 1973.

Heads up, Deadheads! The newly released Here Comes Sunshine: 1973 (Rhino) is a whopping 17-disc set includes five complete concerts recorded live during the Grateful Dead’s heyday, including one marathon that clocks in at five hours and features Butch Trucks and Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers band sitting in. Jam on!  

TUESDAY, July 11
The Ashley Madison Party
Unscripted docuseries follows the rise, fall and resurgence of the dating website targeted to marriage cheats and adultery (Hulu).

Iconic America: Our Symbols and Stories
In eight episodes beginning tonight, host David Rubinstein explores America’s history through an examination of iconic symbols, including the American Bald Eagle, the Statue of Liberty, the Hollywood sign, Fenway Park, cowboys and the Golden Gate Bridge (10 p.m., PBS). 

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Impress your friends with all the “movie meals” in Scrounging: A Cookbook (A24 Books), a collection of late-night, last-ditch, throw-together recipes inspired by more than 50 films, including The Breakfast Club, Home Alone, The Martian, Kramer vs. Kramer, Napoleon Dynamite and many more.

Readers of a certain age will certainly remember the late 1960s TV series Laugh In, revolutionary at the time by putting a spicy hippie-counterculture spin on the old-fashioned television variety format. Read all about the man who started it all, producer George Schlatter, in his autobiography Still Laughing: The George Schlatter Story (Rare Bird Books). The behind-the-scenes tale traces his coming-of-age in Hollywood and his idea for a brand new comedy that would ride the ‘60s crest of political upheaval, the Vietnam War, the drug culture and other timely—often controversial—topical events.

WEDNESDAY, July 12
The Afterparty
Tonight begins season two of the whodunnit mystery comedy series, with Tiffany Haddish (below), Sam Richardson and Zoe Chao reprising their roles alongside newcomers including Ken Jeong, Elizabeth Perkins, Zach Woods and Paul Walther Hauser (Apple TV+).

Celebrating Harry Belafonte
Several evenings of special programming begins tonight honoring the late singer, who died in April. Belafonte was the first Black actor to become a Hollywood leading man, a pop hitmaker and social-activist crusader. It all begins with two of his films from the 1950s, Carmen Jones and The World, The Flesh and the Devil (8 p.m., TCM).

Quarterback
Peyton Manning produced this series, which gives unprecedented access to NFL QBs Patrick Mahomes, Kirk Cousins and Marcus Mariota during games and off (Netflix).

THURSDAY, July 13
Full Circle
An investigation into a botched kidnapping uncovers long-held secrets in present-day New York City in this new streaming series starring Zazie Beetz, Claire Danes, Jim Gaffigan, Timothy Oliphant and Dennis Quaid (Max).

Project Greenlight
Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani are producers of this new docuseries, a reinvention of the HBO series of the same name that pulls back the curtain on the filmmaking process as it follows female director Meko Winbush making her first feature film, Gray Matter (Max). 

The Jewel Thief
Watch this unbelievable true-story account of a criminal mastermind, Gerald Blanchard, who leads detectives on a cat-and-mouse game across the globe while he commits increasingly elaborate heists in a quest for fame and notoriety (Hulu).