Monthly Archives: June 2026

The Entertainment Forecast

What to watch, and more! Week of June 12 – June 18

A girls’ trip goes sideways, fighters gonna fight and spooky stories come to life

The Mexican stop-motion film ‘I Am Frankelda’ is a gorgeous ode to scary storytelling.

FRIDAY, June 12
I Am Frankelda
Animated tale of a gifted writer in Mexico whose dark tales full of monsters come to life (Netflix).

Find Your Friends
A girls’ fun trip to a boozy bacchanalia in the desert takes a nasty turn when they run into some very inhospitable locals, below. Starring Bella Thorn (Shudder).

SATURDAY, June 13
My Adventures with Superman
Season three begins of the animated series about Clark Kent (voiced by Jack Quaid) as he begins working as an intern at the Daily Planet with Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen (midnight, streaming on Adult Swim on Max).

The Jealous Bride
Amber Stevens stars in this twisted tale of love, jealousy, and obsession based on bestselling novel My Sister’s Daughter by Liv Constantine (8 p.m., Lifetime).

SUNDAY, June 14
Patience
Season two of the crime drama about an autistic woman who works in criminal records tackling puzzling crimes begins tonight. Starring Ella Maisy Purvis (8 p.m., PBS).

The Ultimate Fighter
UFC Hall of Famers compete as coaches as former champs Daniel Cormier and Michael Bisping mix it up in the ring (Paramount+)

MONDAY, June 15
The Last Twins
Liev Schrieber narrates this gripping story of an unsung hero of the Holocaust who defied the Nazis to protect dozens of young boys, many of them twins, targeted by Dr. Josef Mengele for brutal medical experimentation (10 p.m., PBS)

TUESDAY, June 16
Becoming Katherine Graham
Documentary about the woman who took over the Washington Post newspaper after her father and husband, leading to a new era of acclaimed investigative journalism (9 p.m., PBS).

WEDNESDAY, June 17
Alone
Season 13 begins of the extreme-survival series, this time bringing contestants from all over the globe to the Arctic Circle—and its freezing temps, intense isolation and dangerous wildlife (9 p.m., History Channel).

The Kimberley: Australia’s Wild West
New series about Australia’s remote northwest region, from a First Nations perspective, chronicling a year of extreme tropical seasons to reveal the stories hidden within the rugged landscape (10 p.m., PBS).

THURSDAY, June 18
The Capture
Holliday Grainger stars in this series about deepfakes, a government exposé and a geopolitical crisis (Peacock).

I Will Find You
A father wrongly imprisoned for his son’s murder receives evidence that his child may be alive. Series stars Sam Worthington (above), Milo Ventimiglia and Britt Lower (Netflix).

NOW HEAR THIS

Just in time for Father’s Day is Fun Intended from the Chicago-based band DadJoke. It’s the brainchild of award-winning composer Dave Remmick, who blends rock, punk, post-punk, funk, metal, jazz, folk, Broadway/Disney and R&B on silly, bone-tickling tunes like “I Hope Nobody Drops a Big Rubber Horse on My Head,” “You Have to Go Potty Too,” “What Did the Dinosaurs Say” and many more.

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The groundbreaking mid-20th century American photographer Helen Levitt, known for her street photography around her home of New York City, is the subject of this chronicle of her wide-ranging work. Take a trip back in time to the teeming street life of Gotham, as documented through her lens (Thames & Hudson).

She was a blonde goddess of the silver screen. And now, on what would have been her 100th birthday, The Marilyn Monroe Century (Abrams) celebrates her life, her transformation from Norma Jeane Mortensen into a 1950s blonde bombshell. Packed with photos by Bruno Bernard, the most sought-after shutterbug of Hollywood’s Golden Age (he was known as “Bruno of Hollywood”), it’s a tribute to the iconic, one-of-a-kind movie star, who died in 1962.

It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it. In Trash (Melville House), “trashman” Simon Pare-Poupart spills the, ahem, dirt—as well as a few good yuks—about his 20 years in waste management…and why he’s still on the job, because of his love for the physical rush, his rough-and-tumble colleagues, and an honesty and freedom that no other job has given him.

Today we can pick up a phone and make a call to just about anywhere in the world. But it wasn’t always that way. In Lightning Beneath the Sea (W.W. Norton), author James M. Tabor tells the almost unbelievable tale of how the first 2,000-mile cable was laid—in the mid-1800s—across the Atlantic Ocean, beset by storms, freak accidents and even sabotage—to usher in a new era of global communication.

How do animals, ahem, have sex? And what can we learn from it? You might be surprised, in Perrin Roosevelt Ireland’s illuminating Poking the Squid (W. W. Norton), to find out the many ways and means critters go about reproducing. It’s a wild illustrated ride through a spectrum of behaviors, including queerness, infidelity, consent, cannibalism and gender fluidity.

BRING IT HOME

Attention, horror fans! Scream 7 (Alliance Home Entertainment) slashes its way onto home video this week, with Neve Campbell, David Arquette and Courtney Cox returning for more mayhem with the supernatural villain known as Ghostface.

NOW HEAR THIS

After surgery for lung cancer, Barry Manilow is back, baby! His new What a Time, his 33rd album, features a set of 13 eclectic and reflective songs, including “Once Before I Go,” “Touched by an Angel” and “Don’t Trouble the Water.”

Movie Review: “Disclosure Day”

Director Steven Spielberg’s eye-popping new sci-fi drama about a decades-long government coverup of alien encounters

Disclosure Day
Starring Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth & Colman Domingo
Directed by Steven Spielberg
In theaters Friday, June 12

Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor take the leads in Disclosure Day, director Steven Spielberg’s new epic sci-fi thriller about the unraveling of a massive government conspiracy covering up evidence that we are not alone in the universe.

The top-notch cast also includes Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo and Wyatt Russell.

Blunt gives a performance that’s among her all-time best as Margaret Fairchild, a Kansas City meteorologist who suddenly develops amazing and alarming abilities, like speaking in foreign languages and reading minds. O’Connor is Daniel Kellner, a mathematics whiz turned whistle-blower determined to reveal what he knows about a covert global cybersecurity force that’s quashed nearly 80 years of proof about extraterrestrial “close encounters.”

They both become targets of a massive, rip-roaring manhunt to round them up and shut them down. What else do they have in common? Well, you’ll find out—but I won’t spoil it here.

Colin Firth is Noah Scanlon, the head of the coverup, convinced that the mind-blowing reality about aliens would “tip the balance” of a world already on the precipice of nuclear self-destruction. Eve Hewson (Bono’s daughter!) is Kellner’s girlfriend, a former novitiate in a monastery who plays a significant role in helping spread, well, another kind of word from on high. Colman Domingo, who makes almost every film he’s in better by just being in it, is the head of the movement to rip open decades of secrecy, to have a reckoning, a day of disclosure when the truth will be made known to everyone. Wyatt Russell is Jackson, Margaret’s romantic partner, who doesn’t understand—at least at first—what’s going on.

Spielberg, who launched the very idea of “summer blockbusters” back in 1975 with Jaws, has made some of the top-performing, most widely beloved and critically lauded movies of all time. Sometimes it feels here, with his first film in four years (since The Fablemans), that he’s looking into the skies and beyond the way he did in E.T. The Extraterrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind—with awe, empathy and hope.

And the soundtrack, by his longtime collaborator John Willams, drives home the gamut of emotions. It’s no wonder Williams has received more than two dozen Grammys and five Oscars.

Disclosure Day has it all—thrills and chills, danger and derring-do, and the beating heart of a love story. It’s got a pulse-pounding train scene that can match anything Tom Cruise has done in the Mission: Impossible world, and its heady thoughts on how the existence of extraterrestrials might mesh with the Bible will certainly stir some discussion. (Plus, three main characters are named Noah, Margaret and Daniel.)  

Its suggestion that communication with aliens is closely aligned with music, mathematics and nature will likely mean you’ll never look at that bright red cardinal at your bird feeder, or on your windowsill, the same way again. It’s a movie that makes you think about what’s up here, what’s down here, and how it might all be connected. About childhood and crop circles, secrets and lies, the past and the future, and the multi-faceted experience of our very existence.

Spielberg has crafted another cinematic triumph, a moving picture that’s moving in more ways than one, one that reminds us again of the eye-popping, jaw-dropping magic and the majesty of a big story playing out on big screen, pulling us in, making us feel. Head down to the multiplex, folks, because it certainly feels like blockbuster time again.

—Neil Pond

The Entertainment Forecast

What to watch, and more! Week of June 5 – 11

A classic ‘Beach Party,’ a bloodsucking rock star & the new ‘Cape Fear’

Annette and Frankie rock out in the 1960 surf-and-sand classic.

FRIDAY, June 5
Cape Fear
New remake stars Patrick Wilson, Amy Adams and Javier Bardem—channeling his No Country For Old Men vibes as a very, very bad guy who terrorizes the husband-and-daughter attorneys who once put him behind bars (Apple TV).


Office Romance
Jennifer Lopez and Brett Goldstein lead a raunchy romantic comedy (below) about two workaholics and their secret workplace affair. With Tony Hale, Betty Gilpin, Bradley Whitford and Edward James Olmos (Netflix).

SATURDAY, June 6
Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery
Faith-based movie about love, temptation and forgiveness features the acting debut of former NBA champ Matt Barnes as an affable detective (8 p.m., Lifetime).


Beach Party
Frankie (Avalon)
and Annette (Funicello) kick up the sand in this lighthearted 1963 romp which launched a “beach party” movie craze of six more “teenage” fun flicks (TCM).

SUNDAY, June 7
The Tony Awards
Who’s the best of Broadway? Find out in tonight’s 79 annual awarding of the top theatrical honors, hosted by P!NK from Radio City Music Hall (8 p.m., CBS).


The Vampire Lestat
Sam Reid stars in this new series (above) as a blood-sucking rock-star vampire. Yes, you read that correctly (AMC).

MONDAY, June 8
The Golden Girls of Summer
Binge to fan-favorite episodes of The Golden Girls every Monday through June and into July (10 p.m., MeTV).


Alice & Steve
Jemaine Clement
and Nicola Walker star in this new comedy series about a friendship that devolves into an all-out feud (Hulu).

TUESDAY, June 10
Spielberg Cinema
Steven Spielberg co-hosts an evening of his films Close Encounters of the Third Kind, A.I. Artificial Intelligence and Minority Report (TCM).


Every Year After
Series based on the bestselling romantic novel spins a tale of second chances over eight years of a couple’s relationship. Starring Sadie Soverall and Matt Cornett (Prime Video).

THURSDAY, June 11
Sweet Magnolias
Three lifelong best-friend Southern belles (above) juggle relationships, family and careers in South Carolina. Starring JoAnna Garcia Swisher, Brooke Elliot and Heather Headley (Netflix).


Surviving Earth
New landmark series showcasing how life not only survived but thrived through Earth’s most catastrophic environmental crises (NBC).

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In The Book of Birds (W.W. Norton), authors Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris not only tell you how to identify all sorts of flying fowls, but also how to identify with them. It’s a celebration of endangered birds and a strikingly illustrated alphabetical-order compendium on the many mysteries of birdlife, from egg to air, how birds intersect with and enrich us, and how we can help them keep brightening our lives with their winged splendor.

The highly anticipated The One Day You Were My Husband (Pamela Dorman Books), the third novel from author Rosie Walsh, is a feverish page-turner about a young woman whose marriage lasts only one day when her husband is taken away by armed men, never to be seen or heard from again—and her discovery, years later, that becomes an obsession.