There are several options to tune into this week, whether you’re a fan of documentaries, dramas, reality TV or anything else. But it can be hard to keep track of everything going on over at every streamer. So, we’ve gone ahead and picked out some easy options for you.

You can find five new TV shows to stream this week below.

Boy Band Confidential

If you’re in the mood for a new docuseries, and were an *NSYNC fan at your core, you’re going to want to check out “Boy Band Confidential.” Executive produced by Joey Fatone, the four-part docuseries premieres on Monday on ID, and is set to take viewers back to the boy band boom of the 1990s, but digs into the darker side of it and what it meant for the men performing.

Beef (Season 2)

“Beef” returns for another season on Netflix this week, this time starring Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan alongside Charles Melton and Cailee Spaeny. This beef centers on the latter couple, who witnesses an alarming fight between their Millennial boss and his wife. It gets…intense, to say the least (and not give anything away).

MasterChef

If you’re more so looking for a competition series that will also make you self-conscious about your cooking abilities — or, perhaps, inspire some confidence in them — you can tune in on Wednesday for a new season of MasterChef on Fox. This season, the show “takes the competition worldwide … celebrating international cuisine,” with Gordon Ramsay returning as host and judge.

Margo’s Got Money Troubles

Over on Apple TV, you can check out “Margo’s Got Money Troubles,” starring Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, Nick Offerman and Nicole Kidman, among others. You won’t be able to binge it, but you will be able to get sucked into a new series that follows Fanning as a new mom, who creates an OnlyFans page to help support her baby.

From (Season 4)

“From” returns for its fourth season on MGM+ this weekend, if you’re looking for more of a horror vibe this week. Per the official synopsis, “in Season Four, the closer the residents of town get to the answers they seek, the more terrifying their search becomes.” MGM also promises the season “will open doors that some in town will end up wishing had remained closed.”

The post 5 New Shows to Watch This Week on Netflix, Apple TV and More appeared first on TheWrap.

Just like that, “DTF St. Louis” is over. The mystery has been solved, and the solution is more tragic than anyone — including Detective Homer (Richard Jenkins) and Special Crimes Officer Jodie Plumb (Joy Sunday) — could have seen coming. It is revealed in the HBO dramedy’s seventh and final episode that it was, indeed, Clark Forrest (Jason Bateman) who met up with his best friend Floyd Smernitch (David Harbour) at the Kevin Kline Community Pools in the early hours of the same day that the latter was eventually found dead.

The two men danced in their underwear together and Clark tried, desperately, to give Floyd the arousal, the validation, that he had been searching for. It all ends messily, though, with Clark collapsing to the floor and realizing that he’s just a middle-aged, lonely guy who does not and never has known what he is doing. Floyd comforts him and stays behind only to see his stepson Richard (Arlan Ruf) watching him through one of the building’s windows. Richard, it turns out, signed onto Floyd’s computer earlier that night to check off his daily goals and saw his stepfather’s DTF St. Louis account still open.

He saw Floyd’s profile. He saw the set meeting time at the Kevin Kline pools, and he went there to tell Floyd that he was disgusting and did not deserve to be married to his mom, Carol Love-Smernitch (Linda Cardellini). Heartbroken and shattered, Floyd signed to a confused Richard that he loved him before knowingly chugging the entire, fatal dose of Amphezyne that he’d poured into his can of alcohol. Floyd took his own life. His suicide means that Carol will not get the life insurance policy that Clark had set up for him, and when Clark returns home at last from prison, he finds that his wife and daughters are gone.

“DTF St. Louis” ends on this tragic note, and it is one that series creator Steven Conrad hopes will resonate with viewers.

“Seven hours is a lot of somebody’s time, and you just hope that it that feels like it left you with something,” the writer and director told TheWrap. “The challenge of the entire thing is to go, ‘Okay, this has to end in a way where Homer did his job, Jodie did her job, but the audience also feels like this wasn’t just a crime being solved. That there was some other transmission, you know, in the midst of all of it.”

The finale does not offer much hope for its survivors’ futures moving forward. 

Regarding Carol’s life after “DTF St. Louis” Episode 7, Conrad said, “She’s not going to get an insurance settlement. They don’t pay those out for suicides. But her impulse to let Richard know that Floyd wanted to give this message of love to him overwhelmed that consequence. So she’s just gonna keep scrapping. She’ll come to terms with the fact that what Floyd needed was some tenderness, and Clark could give it to him. Carol could not anymore. She’d really tried and it was gone. It was just gone.”

“She’ll have to make peace with the idea that she no longer had a way to save Floyd, and she’ll struggle to make sense of that. But she does have that fighter’s instinct,” Conrad added. “Floyd never knows that he’s in a fight, that being alive as an adult means being in a fight for your life. She knows it. She’ll keep fighting.”

As for Clark?

“He’s gonna have to grow up,” the “DTF” creator acknowledged. “One of the cool things about the show is that he comes across initially as kind of a serial philanderer. But then we reveal in Episode 6 that he’d never had an affair before. Carol was the first time he ever strayed, and I think it makes more sense that he’s terrible at it. [Laughs] I don’t think he’s gonna do it again if he gets another chance.”

Below, Conrad dives further into the tragedy at the heart of “DTF St. Louis,” his partnership with HBO, how the series explores the crushing reality of financial insecurity and the “responsibility” that made it impossible for Harbour’s Floyd to ultimately make it out of the series alive.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

TheWrap: What did you have first: The clues or solution to Floyd’s death?

Steven Conrad: I knew conditionally what the consequence was going to be. The tagline for the app is, ‘All the Excitement. None of the Consequences.’ That’s the gamble that these guys make. Obviously there’s no such thing as no consequences, and I recognized in Floyd… he just felt like a stepfather to me. Some guys are, you know? And there can be good ones and there can be indifferent ones. The struggle for a good stepdad is it’s a rock up the hill. It’s a tough job. There’s no benefit to the doubt.

So I knew that was going to be what he was carrying around, and I knew that someone as sweet as him could find a way to get there. To get the rock up the hill. And then I knew Floyd was going to drop it and break it. I also knew that there wasn’t a version where the child was capable of doing anything that could amount to someone’s death. It had to be emotional and unfixable, and then fixable by another terrible decision that isn’t going to fix anything, either.

The show is so tonally distinct. It is not afraid to be absurd at times and also deeply tragic at others. What was your partnership like with HBO? What kind of notes did they have?

Conrad: I have to say, and this is a compliment to the partnership, that they’re an engaged group of filmmaking partners. By engagement, I don’t even just mean that they are checking in. They’re engaged in the sense that they’re in it before you make it — expecting it to look and feel and weigh and be measured in a specific way. It needs to be sound, right? No extra parts. Let’s just make sure that the components of this are all very, very good. They are in it like that.

When you’re trying to find your bandwidth of tone, you can break a spell very easily by just not being able to read where the audience is in each moment. At the same time, if you don’t continue to try to delight, then you’re going to lose them another way. It’s the difference between them shaking their head if you swing and miss and them leaning back and looking at their phones. So HBO and I tried to identify together, “Where are we? Are we trying too hard? Is this not going to feel organic?” People who have done it less than them will say, “I just don’t believe this,” but HBO is smart enough to know that characterization doesn’t have anything to do with making a show. It’s not supposed to be believed. It’s supposed to be experienced. So they think of it in terms of the experience. “Can we make the experience of this tighter?”

Take something as simple as the detectives going to arrest Clark in the pilot. The sheriffs, they’re all running up the stairs and they’re chanting, “Here we go. Here we go. Here we go.” That makes no sense! [Laughs] Except that now there’s a charge to the scene, a pre-charge to the arrest that I wanted the audience to feel. When I wrote it and shot it, though, it began with them all congregated at the bottom of the stairs practicing the chant and some guys just weren’t getting it. Homer had to help out and then they finally did it and I filmed them doing it up three flights of stairs. I showed that to HBO and they said, “One set of stairs.” Who’s to say which one is better? But they never told me to take it out, and that is one of the wildest things anybody dreamt up for “DTF.” It was always about measuring what we were going to ask the audience sit in in every moment.

It is very rare to see characters in a show or movie who are financially struggling the way Carol and Floyd are. Their heads and mouths are basically just floating right at the water line the whole show. Why was it important for you to explore that kind of crushing financial situation in “DTF”?

Conrad: That’s a great description of it, because they’re very near suffocating. If that water line goes up another inch, there’s going to be real consequences. The way Carol explains it is that Richard’s life is vulnerable. They have a home, and someone could take their home. You’ve got to start chipping away at this debt, because it’s going the other direction every year. There are penalties, consequences to Floyd’s spirit, his really naive and very beautiful spirit… You know, people can be lighter when someone in their life is doing the heavy lifting. I saw a documentary once about Ennio Morricone, and he was being interviewed with his partner on a couch, and she described herself as the “protector of his talent.” I thought, “God, that’d be a nice thing to have.”

But imagine if you were an artist and someone was right next to you thinking, “He’s not paying the household bills. He’s not going shopping or putting gas in the car.” Floyd is one of those spirits that, because of his gifts, he’s been allowed to float around a little bit. Until now. Until this summer. This summer, the rent’s come due, and they can’t pay it. So Clark is a kind of impulsive salve to Carol. Like she knew, instinctively, that they could give each other something they both needed. I don’t think in reflection it was as transactional as we make it seem while plotting out the whodunnit. In my estimation, people are drawn to each other because that other person has something that we need. It could be that they’re just very funny. It could be that they’re very honest, and you need that gift in that specific period of your life.

Floyd and Carol weren’t going to make it through the year no matter what happened to him. At one point, Floyd mentions that Carol’s first husband was a “bad guy,” and I sort of left it to the audience to fill in the blanks. But that’s Richard’s father, and you can imagine very easily Carol having to contend during those years with someone who was cruel. And then here comes Floyd 10 years ago and he’s giant and he’s kind and he’s the antidote. He makes her feel safe and she is, therefore, attracted to him. 10 years later, he doesn’t make her feel safe anymore. He makes her feel vulnerable, and there goes the intimacy. Clark comes around and Clark makes her feel safe. So the clearest way for me to explore this trade, this trade of what someone might be able to give somebody else when they really need it, was when I could say that it’s money. Money is the quiet plight of so many people’s lives that robs their sleep, because you can’t find a way out.

Obviously, the show also has middle age on its mind and middle age is a terrifying time because you have to confront the idea that you’re not going to get the promotion. The invention you’ve been working on is still in the garage. It’s still years and years away. The solution has eluded you and now you’re facing more years of the same, and the same isn’t the same anymore because suddenly the same is a sinking hole. So money, it just felt like an identifiable pressure and something that could ultimately be tied to sexuality. The show obviously has sex on the mind and those two things — money and sex — are two things that come swimming around in middle age, for sure.

DTF, the app, lurks around in the background for much of the show, and then the finale reveals it to be this emotional grenade, basically. Why did a hookup app feel like the right thing to push everything over the edge in this story?

Conrad: That’s a great pickup. There’s a moment that doesn’t really make any sense in the show, but it happened so I could put a point on all of it. It’s when the detectives are finally studying the last set of security footage, noticing there’s two bikes, and then Homer has the deduction that Richard was riding the other. He says, “It’s the boy,” and then the last thing he says, for no reason, is “DTF St. Louis.” But it’s to make a point about this recklessness. Clark and Forrest were playing. They were being reckless, and they’re parents. This broke everything, and it’s not even like somebody met someone on DTF who destroyed their lives. It was just the flirting with this little fire.

When we started talking about the show and about Jason and David’s performances, we talked about two kids in a fort playing with matches. It’s fun for a minute, but something terrible could happen. DTF St. Louis is this book of matches, and the something terrible happening is allowing this recklessness into your life. It’s taking your eyes off your home for a minute, not realizing that there’s a monster in there now and something that could hurt your kid because you looked away. It’s there. It’s in your house, and the sum of that, the responsibility for that mistake, that recklessness, is what puts Floyd past being able to survive another minute.

All episodes of “DTF St. Louis” are streaming now on HBO Max.

The post ‘DTF St. Louis’ Creator Unpacks Finale Twists, Floyd’s Fate: ‘No Such Thing as No Consequences’ appeared first on TheWrap.

HBO’s “Euphoria” returned for Season 3 with a bang, dropping viewers into a new California-centric reality for its main cast, all of whom have had some big changes since we last saw them in East Highland in Season 2.

The Season 3 premiere wastes no time in addressing the time jump, with Zendaya’s first line as Rue saying, “A lot of people ask what I’ve been up to since high school, and honestly nothing good.”

Check out the biggest updates for Rue, Sydney Sweeney’s Cassie, Jacob Elordi’s Nate, Alexa Demie’s Maddy, Maude Apatow’s Lexi and Hunter Schafer’s Jules from the “Euphoria” Season 3 finale below.

Rue

The Season 3 premiere opens with Rue “somewhere in Mexico” getting some help for her car to start before heading to the border, where she faces some more car trouble as she literally gets stuck on the border into the Texas. She eventually ditches her car and heads out on foot into Agua Dulce, where she stays with a religious family under the guise of being a student journalist named Ruby, hoping to “expose the pure evil that’s pouring across our border.”

One of the family’s many daughters later drops Rue off at the bus station, bringing her to California, where she greets Laurie (Martha Kelly) who asks for her car and says she’ll “add it to [her] tab.”

Flashing back to a few years after high school, Rue explains that Laurie and her henchmen found her while working at a smoke shop and told her that, with interest, she owes her over $43 million, but she’ll settle for $100K. “And that is how I became a drug mule,” Rue explained, before seeing her learn to swallow sealed bags of fentanyl in Mexico and driving across the border, eventually taking Faye (Chloe Cherry) with her. Once back, the duo would excrete the drugs. 

Rue explains that after Fezco’s house got raided, Laurie left East Highland and went into business with her cousin and nephew, which seem to serve as surrogate family for Rue, who’s become their No. 1 mule. In the off time, Rue drives Ubers over Los Angeles, where she reunites with Lexi.

She also keeps seeing her sponsor Ali (Colman Domingo), with whom she confides about her new spiritual journey.

Lexi

When Rue greets Lexi at her LA apartment, Lexi is as put together as always, and, of course, out of the loop about Rue’s real work. Rue also tells Lexi she should call Fez (Angus), who is in prison for 30 years after the raid, explaining his absence from Season 3 after his untimely death.

Rue explains that Lexi has been working in Hollywood on a nighttime soap for industry legend Patty Lance (Sharon Stone). While she’s been relegated to assistant tasks, her suggestions are taken seriously by her boss

Cassie and Nate

Since high school, Cassie has moved to, as Rue puts it, a “right-wing suburban bubble” we can only guess is the equivalent of Orange County. Cassie is producing racy content for TikTok that Nate, who has since taken over his dad’s construction business, has an issue with. 

Cassie’s motive to make money immediately becomes clear: she’s not getting everything she wants for the house and their upcoming wedding as Nate builds in Southern California. His big project is a retirement community by the ocean.

After looking enviously at Maddy’s Instagram, Cassie gives Nate an ultimatum over a candle-lit dinner: he condones her OnlyFans account so she can pay for the florals of her dreams, or they postpone the wedding. He agrees, but makes her promise she won’t show her face and her bust at the same time.

Maddy

Lexi and Maddy cross paths frequently in Hollywood, with Maddy working in management, representing influencers and a few actors, including Dylan Reed, who stars on the soap that Lexi works on. At this point, she’s only an assistant, though, meaning her wage is much smaller than the 10% made by her boss.

Jules

While we don’t see Jules in the Season 3 premiere, Lexi tells Rue that Maddy told her Jules has been working as a sugar baby.

Rue’s adventure

Things shift for Rue when she goes to deliver drugs to Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), and stumbles into a house party she can’t resist but joining. She quickly connects with Alamo and even asks for a job at his strip club. Everything is going swimmingly until a girl overdoses on the drugs brought by Rue, but Rue promises she didn’t have anything to do with it.

Alamo tests Rue’s luck by shooting an apple on top of her head, though, luckily, he shoots accurately, giving Rue the laugh of her life.

“Euphoria” Season 3 premieres Sundays on HBO.

The post ‘Euphoria’ Season 3 Premiere Recap: What Has the Cast Been Up to Since High School? appeared first on TheWrap.

The Season 3 premiere kicks off with Christopher Cross’ “Ride Like the Wind” as Zendaya’s Rue drives “somewhere in Mexico” heading to the border, before shifting to some California-centric tracks like Waylon Jennings’ “Sunset and Vine” to reflect the season’s new West Coast setting. And it goes beyond Rue, as the premiere catches up with other beloved characters from the HBO drama series — now in their twenties and managing the challenges that come with young adulthood.

Check out all the songs in “Euphoria” Season 3 below. This story will be updated as new episodes debut weekly on Sundays.

Episode 1:

• “Ride Like the Wind” by Christopher Cross
• “Love Is Like Oxygen” by Sweet
• “Sunset and Vine” by Waylon Jennings
• “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window” but Patti Page
• “Teufel” by Schwarzer Engel
• “Reckless” by Lil Blood
• “Trouble Man” by Marvin Gaye
• “Little Green Apples” by the Temptations

“Euphoria” Season 3 premieres Sundays on HBO.

The post All the Songs in ‘Euphoria’ Season 3 appeared first on TheWrap.

HBO’s “Euphoria” went through several tragedies in between its second and third seasons, one of which was the untimely death of series star Angus Cloud in July 2023.

Cloud, who died of an accidental overdose, did not film any of “Euphoria” Season 3 prior to his passing, with the show facing delays following the conclusion of its second installment in February 2022. His absence from the show, however, is addressed in the “Euphoria” Season 3 premiere, which dropped Sunday on HBO.

Rather than making Cloud’s character, Fezco, also deceased in the show, the Season 3 premiere reveals that he is serving a 30-year prison sentence after his house was raided in the Season 2 finale.

“I tried really hard to keep him clean while he was here — I loved him very much, and … losing [him] was really hard,” creator Sam Levinson told TheWrap. “I just thought … if I couldn’t keep him alive in real life, then maybe I could at least keep them alive in ‘Euphoria.’ I wanted to honor him this season … he’s a big part of the thread of this season and … I hope he’d be proud.”

Fezco, is brought up in a conversation between Zendaya’s Rue and Maude Apatow’s Lexi in the Season 3 premiere, when Rue, out of the blue, encourages Lexi to call Fez.

“Yeah, I know. I feel guilty, but I just I haven’t had any time. I’ve been really busy,” Lexi responds, to which Rue pushes back by saying “Well, you’re free today.”

“He misses you,” Rue responds. When Lexi asks if Fez said that to her, Rue responds, “multiple times.”

“I don’t know. My hours and his hours don’t really line up, so its hard,” Lexi says. “Just like pick up the phone and call him, its not like he’s going anywhere — he’s in prison for 30 years,” Rue says.

Their conversation also addresses the sparks between Fez and Lexi that kicked off last season, and were notably interrupted when Fez couldn’t make it to Lexi’s play due to the drug raid.

Fezco and the drug raid is also mentioned earlier in the episode as the reason that Martha Kelly’s Laurie left East Highland and headed to California to team up on a drug business with her family.

Sadly, Cloud isn’t the only “Euphoria” team member to pass in between seasons, with both producer Kevin Turen and star Eric Dane also passing.

“Euphoria” Season 3 premieres Sundays on HBO.

The post How ‘Euphoria’ Season 3 Addresses Angus Cloud’s Death appeared first on TheWrap.

The Sam Levinson-created series will journey beyond high school for its potentially final (at least according to Zendaya) season. Season 3 sees Rue on the run from the cartel in Mexico, Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) and Nate (Jacob Elordi)’s wedding and Maddy (Alexa Demie) and Lexi (Maude Apatow) take their talents to Hollywood.

This season will have notable absences, including Barbie Ferreira and the late Angus Cloud. The latest season will see one of Eric Dane’s final on-screen performances before his death.

Keep reading for a full breakdown of the “Euphoria” release schedule.

When does “Euphoria” Season 3 premiere?

The first episode of Season 3 will premiere at 9 p.m. ET on HBO Sunday, April 12. New episodes will release at the same time every week, concluding on May 31.

Is the series streaming?

Yes. “Euphoria” will also be available to stream on HBO Max at 9 p.m. ET on Sundays.

When does the finale come out?

• Episode 1: premieres Sunday, April 12
• Episode 2: premieres Sunday, April 19
• Episode 3: premieres Sunday, April 26
• Episode 4: premieres Sunday, May 3
• Episode 5: premieres Sunday, May 10
• Episode 6: premieres Sunday, May 17
• Episode 7: premieres Sunday, May 24
• Episode 8: premieres Sunday, May 31

Is this the final season?

Well it likely is, according to star and former executive producer on the series, Zendaya. The actress, who won an Emmy Award for her performance as Rue, stepped back from her behind-the-scenes role for Season 3.

She revealed on Drew Barrymore’s talk show that she thinks that the third season will be the last.

“That closure is coming,” Zendaya told Barrymore.

Who returns for Season 3?

“Euphoria” Season 3 stars Zendaya, Hunter Schafer, the late Eric Dane, Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney, Alexa Demie, Maude Apatow, Martha Kelly, Chloe Cherry, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and Toby Wallace, among others.

Returning guest stars include Colman Domingo, Dominic Fike, Nika King, Alanna Ubach, Sophia Rose Wilson, Melvin Bonez Estes, Daeg Faerch, Paula Marshall, Zak Steiner and Marsha Gambles.

The post ‘Euphoria’ Season 3 Episode Release Schedule: When Do New Episodes Drop? appeared first on TheWrap.

The streaming service has also expanded its film library this month with a collection of classic and contemporary movies, including an influential 1980s noir thriller directed by crime-movie maestro Michael Mann and an endearing early ’90s coming-of-age comedy. Prime Video’s April arrivals additionally include a quotable, culinary-themed social thriller that was released just a few years ago and an acclaimed dramedy that rightly earned a lot of awards attention in 2024.

Here are the seven best movies new to Prime Video you can stream in April.

“Thief” (1981)

In Michael Mann‘s “Thief,” a low-level safecracker (James Caan) falls in love with a diner waitress (Tuesday Weld), dreams about raising a family with her and tries to escape his life of crime by getting out from under the thumb of a narcissistic Chicago mafia boss (Robert Prosky). The film’s story is, in other words, a very familiar one to fans of the noir and crime genres. But there is so much more to “Thief” than just its story — the visual beauty in every frame, the hypnotic power of its Tangerine Dream score, the blue-collar frustration simmering throughout it and, perhaps most powerfully of all, the middle-aged desperation and exhaustion driving its protagonist.

It may not be as well-known or widely beloved as other Mann films — namely, “Heat” and “Collateral” — but it holds many of the same qualities that make those movies great. Caan’s lead performance is seismic, and the film itself is as complete an achievement of artistic vision and control as anything else Mann has ever made.

“The Aviator” (2004)

2004’s “The Aviator,” director Martin Scorsese’s second collaboration with longtime creative partner and leading man Leonardo DiCaprio, is one of the more under-appreciated entries in Scorsese’s filmography. An ambitious, visually inventive dramatization of the life of aviation pioneer and filmmaker Howard Hughes (DiCaprio), “The Aviator” works simultaneously as a complex portrait of obsessive-compulsive disorder and a glamorous exploration of the undaunted, reckless levels of ambition that helped build both Hollywood and modern America from the 1920s through the 1940s.

Cate Blanchett won her first Academy Award for her performance in the film as Katharine Hepburn, one of the great loves of Hughes’ life, and rightly so. Her chameleon-like performance is emblematic of “The Aviator” itself, a film overflowing with technical artistry that yet never loses its grasp of the moving, sometimes ugly humanity at the center of it.

“The Sandlot” (1993)

A love letter to both childhood and baseball, 1993’s “The Sandlot” is a coming-of-age comedy that will live on for-ev-er. Directed and co-written by David Mickey Evans, the film follows a diverse group of young kids who play recreational baseball together as they grow closer and experience different adventures over the course of a single summer in the early 1960s. Full of quotable lines and memorable, enduring cinematic moments, “The Sandlot” works whether you are 12 or 34.

Nostalgic and yet clear-eyed, it is a film that understands the ways both good and bad that childhood is so different from adulthood, and it captures that separation, as well as the fleeting beauty of youth and hard-earned camaraderie, with equal parts humor and heart. It is not just a classic, but the rare kind of film that feels like it has existed forever, despite only being 33 years old.

“The Terminator” (1984)

It is a testament to the artistry of “The Terminator” that, despite being ripped off and imitated countless times over the past 40 years, the film still stands on its own. Directed and co-written by “Avatar” and “Titanic” filmmaker James Cameron, the film’s story of a cyberkinetic assassin sent back in time to kill the mother (Linda Hamilton) of mankind’s future savior gives it the chance to work alternately across its 107 minutes as a thrilling chase movie, inventive retro-future drama and chilling, unrelenting slice of sci-fi horror.

Co-writers Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd bely the complexity of the film’s time travel story with a simple, elegant narrative structure defined by periodic confrontations, chases and escapes, and the result is a high-concept thriller that effortlessly holds your attention and, in typical Cameron fashion, delivers some of the most indelible images in cinema history along the way.

“Spy Game” (2001)

2001’s “Spy Game” is one of the most underrated films that “Top Gun” director Tony Scott has ever made. Set during the last days of the Cold War, the film follows a veteran CIA operative (Robert Redford) who sets out to save his former protege (Brad Pitt) from execution in a Chinese prison and, in doing so, begin to unravel the betrayals that created the high-stakes situation in the first place.

Twisty and propulsive, “Spy Game” is slighter than its star power and Cold War premise would suggest, but not as superficial as its minuscule reputation would have you believe. It is an entertaining and stylish spy thriller made by one of cinema’s most boundary-pushing mainstream stylists, and it is well-deserving of two hours of your time.

“The Menu” (2022)

An acid-tongued, blackly comic thriller, “The Menu” is a contemporary spin on a typical haves-vs-haves-not horror film set in the world of high-end culinary dining. Ralph Fiennes leads and supercharges the film with his performance as the maniacal chef of a famous, ultra-exclusive restaurant who decides to surprise his latest guests with a menu full of increasingly savage and distressing turns.

Anya Taylor-Joy co-stars in the film as the female date of a restaurant-obsessed foodie (Nicholas Hoult) who finds herself fighting for her life, and “The Menu” steadily and expertly ratchets up the tension over the course of its 107 minutes. The result is an immensely entertaining thriller — one that lingers in your mind afterward less because of its surprising social and cultural observations and more because of the gusto with which it and its performers lean all the way into its absurd, heightened horror reality.

“American Fiction” (2023)

Speaking of biting comedies with an edge, 2023’s “American Fiction” marked the feature directorial debut of writer-director Cord Jefferson. Based on a 2001 novel by Percival Everett, the film follows a frustrated Black novelist and professor (Jeffrey Wright) who, in a moment of frustration and grief, writes a satirical takedown of stereotypical “Black” stories only for the book to be taken seriously and lead to immense financial and personal success.

Both a scathing social satire and a surprisingly moving exploration of having to grow up and become responsible for more than just yourself, “American Fiction” scored five Oscar nominations in 2024. Jefferson took home the Best Adapted Screenplay award that year, while Wright and co-star Sterling K. Brown both earned nominations for their performances in the film. Its success was deserved, to say the least, and if you missed it in theaters, now is as good a time as any to stream it on Prime Video.

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But even though it doesn’t hit target metrics as a tech industry satire, it’s still fairly effective as a more general “rich people are messed up” character-driven dramedy.

“The Audacity” is the first series created by Jonathan Glatzer, an Emmy-winning writer who previously worked on “Succession” and “Better Call Saul.” “Succession” is an obvious influence on “The Audacity,” which goes heavy on witty insults and mockery of corporate-ese (“Our position has always been ‘human life is valuable, full stop’”). The show primarily follows Duncan Park (Billy Magnussen), the unstable CEO of Silicon Valley data-mining company Hypergnosis, and his wealth-envious therapist JoAnne Felder (Sarah Goldberg). Duncan is trying to juice his company — and its stock price — by any means necessary, and JoAnne is insider trading on confidential information her rich clients tell her during their sessions. When Duncan finds out what JoAnne is doing, he tries to leverage her into sharing what she knows. Their ongoing dance, a sort of will-they/won’t-they with white collar crime, is the show’s most entertaining and fleshed-out plot thread — though it moves more slowly than it should, because the show has too many other characters to service.

In addition to Duncan and JoAnne, characters with arcs include Anushka Bhattachera-Phister (Meaghan Rath), Hypergnosis board member and idealistic Chief Ethicist at Apple-esque tech company Cupertino; Martin Phister (Simon Helberg, playing a very different type of nerd than the one he played on “The Big Bang Theory”), Anushka’s mopey husband who is developing an AI chatbot; Carl Bardolph (Zach Galifianakis), a cantankerous billionaire who’s one of JoAnne’s clients and becomes Duncan’s frenemy; Lili Park-Hoffsteader (Lucy Punch), Duncan’s status-obsessed wife who’s on the board of their daughter’s elite private school; Tom Ruffage (Rob Corddry), a harried and bemused Department of Veterans Affairs deputy trying to hire a company to help him modernize the VA’s systems; and four other characters this paragraph is getting too long to name.

The show is overstuffed with drama, and would have been better served by a more judicious character development schedule — maybe some of these plotlines could have been saved for the second season already in the works, and stress-tested for coherence a bit better (some late-season choices made regarding Galifianakis and Corddy’s characters are baffling). None of the other stories are as compelling as Duncan and JoAnne’s, and you may find yourself itching to get back to them whenever they’re not onscreen.

That being said, the other characters and plotlines are plenty enjoyable, thanks to punchy dialogue and strong performances. Glatzer has smart insights into the minds of the hyper-wealthy — Galifianakis’ character says that at some point, every person as rich as him has to decide whether they want “humanitarian legacy or planetary reach? Do we want to save the world or control it? Heal or conquer? Both have their charms, but I will tell you this: most of us go Dr. Evil” — and the talented cast elevates the well-written but inconsistent material. Rath is a standout as a well-meaning but complacent idealist caught between her genuine desire to help people and the cold power of the almighty dollar, and it’s great to see Galifianakis do his comically volatile thing again.

Leads Magnussen and Goldberg, meanwhile, are truly terrific. Magnussen shows off tremendous range as Duncan moves from brash to pathetic to competent to sociopathic. And when it comes to making viewers empathize with deeply unsympathetic characters, “Barry” veteran Goldberg is one of the finest actors working today.

But for all its positive qualities, “The Audacity” has a serious problem with its satire. That’s partially beyond its control, due to how quickly the tech world has changed since it was ordered to series in 2024, and partially a failure to recognize and anticipate that its satirical targets would feel stale by the time the show came out. All of the energy in the tech sector has shifted into AI. The ways that AI will/already are disrupting everything — and how companies will survive and profit from it — is the only thing the tech industry is talking about. That conversation is happening in San Francisco, not down the Peninsula in Silicon Valley, and the people having it are much younger and scrappier than the tech titans of “The Audacity.” It’s not that AI isn’t part of “The Audacity” — Martin’s chatbot is like a self-aware ChatGPT with a mouth that talks — but the show is out of touch with how important AI has become. It would be like “The Studio” trying to satirize contemporary Hollywood while talking about Netflix as if it were still a DVD rental company.

Part of what made “Silicon Valley” so successful was its verisimilitude. Former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo was a consultant. The product the Pied Piper guys were making was realistic for their resources and technical ability. “The Audacity” doesn’t have that same handle on the material. Duncan’s CTO Harper (Jess McLeod) singlehandedly develops a surveillance algorithm that’s so powerful, it would put Palantir out of business if it were real. Martin’s chatbot is unrealistic in its degree of sophistication and the design of its user interface. Duncan drives an electric Hummer, an unpopular vehicle, and not a Cybertruck, the preferred mode of transport for tech douches. (Maybe that’s an intentional choice showing that Duncan is out-of-step with what a modern tech CEO is supposed to be, or maybe it isn’t.)

Taken individually, these seem like nitpicking gripes, but all together they build to a sense that the writers don’t understand the world they’re satirizing. They didn’t have a Dick Costolo. They were focused on character to the detriment of other things. The show they ultimately made is funny and well-acted and observant about the ways people inflict pain on each other, but doesn’t meet the moment in which it exists.

“The Audacity” premieres Sunday, April 12 on AMC and AMC+. The premiere also airs at 9.m. ET/PT on Samsung TV Network.

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A lot has happened since February 2022, so drug haze or not, it would be understandable if the exploits of Rue (Zendaya) and her friends, acquaintances and enemies have faded from memory. But as the series prepares for its long-awaited return on Sunday, it can’t hurt to brush up on where the dust settled on the drug-addled, scandal-ridden and love-blind teenagers of East Highland.

Here is everything you need to remember about “Euphoria” before strapping in for Season 3.

The play from high school hell

The Season 2 finale of “Euphoria” claimed lives and sent two people to prison, and yet the most remembered and memed part of the season (and maybe the entire show) remains the meta school play that chronicled the dating drama between Cassie (Sydney Sweeney), Maddy (Alexa Demie) and Nate (Jacob Elordi) — all rendered in autobiographical form by aspiring playwright and Cassie’s sister, Lexi (Maude Apatow). Maybe one of the most thrilling and completely unbelievable escalations of petty high school feuds in TV history, Cassie’s interruption of the play for an on-stage meltdown, followed by a physical fight with Maddy for the bloodthirsty audience, was exhilarating to watch. But the aftermath shattered most of Cassie’s relationships, most severely with her sister and her best friend — at least for the time being. After admitting Nate broke up with her while they nurse their battle wounds in the bathroom, Maddy’s premonition/threat that this is only the beginning of Cassie’s heartbreak rang through the halls like cannonfire.

Rue and Jules make up — kind of

While Cassie watched every one of her bad decisions play out in front of her and the entire school on stage, Rue and Jules (Hunter Schafer) relished the drama from the audience while trying to avoid their own issues. Like most of the people in her life, Rue’s relapse and continued drug-fueled decision-making pushed away Jules. But after being rejected by every rehab in the area and her own exhausted mother, Rue clings to this reality check like a life raft in the raging sea of her addictions. After the play, Jules tells Rue she misses her, and they settle some sort of affection as Rue informs viewers, through narration, that she managed to stay clean for the rest of the school year. TBD on the foreseeable future.

The Jacobs household implodes

Nate and his father Cal (the late Eric Dane) have spent the entire series drowning in a laundry list of their inherited family trauma, sexual repression and male toxicity. As father and son, they have simply shared way too many experiences for comfort. Cal slept with an underage Jules (whom he also filmed), and Nate fell in love with her while chatting behind fake names online. Season 2’s genuinely moving revelation of Cal’s relationship with his best friend as a young man (only for that to go south real quick) informs his sexual deviance in adulthood, which, in turn, informs Nate’s own confused handling of his masculinity and sexuality. Being confronted by this in Lexi’s play, through a homoerotic gym-set musical number set to “Holding Out for A Hero,” was the last straw for Nate and Cassie’s relationship. In the finale, Nate tipped the police off to Cal’s library of recorded sexual encounters with underaged partners. But before he is arrested, a remorseful Cal confesses his biggest regret is not protecting Nate like he should have — an apology a traumatized Nate rebuffs in favor of revenge. Dane filmed scenes for Season 3 before his death in February 2026, so Cal will get some sort of resolution to his story. But don’t hold your breath for a happy ending, for anyone really.

Gunfight at the O.K. corral (aka Fezco’s House)

One of the biggest burdens resting on Season 3’s shoulders is the death of another one of its cast members — Angus Cloud. The most tragic part of the Season 2 finale was the police raid on Fezco (Cloud) and Ashtray’s (Javon Walton) operation. The drug-dealing brothers from other mothers have been trying to outrun their problems since day one, but Ashtray’s bludgeoning of their supplier Mouse early in Season 2 was ultimately their undoing. Fez, who had been trying to clean up his act and make it to his crush Lexi’s play, was always at the mercy of his more volatile mini-me, and that’s where he found himself in the finale as well. Their house is raided after Ashtray kills their associate Custer, a police informant who was wearing a wire to catch their confession about Mouse. Despite Fez’s pleas to surrender, Ashtray opens fire on the police and is fatally shot, while Fez is wounded and arrested in the hail of bullets. Cloud’s death in 2023 makes this whole storyline even more heartbreaking, but Season 3 will hopefully address what happened to the gentle and least problematic drug dealer in a show overrun with them.

Deal with the soft-spoken devil

Speaking of drug dealers, the most menacing presence lingering over the show may be Laurie (Martha Kelly), the former schoolteacher turned supplier who Rue runs afoul of in Season 2. A frustratingly naive Rue accepts a suitcase of drugs worth $10,000 from Laurie with the insinuation that she will sell them to her classmates. But when the drugs go missing, Laurie’s monotone can’t hide her threat — Rue is to pay her back through any means necessary and force is one of them. By the end of Season 2, the debt remains uncollected and trailers for the new episodes haven’t been shy about revealing that Laurie hunted Rue down after high school to resurrect that threat. In other words, Rue and company can’t run from the problems forever.

“Euphoria” Season 3 premieres Sunday on HBO and HBO Max.

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“Who’s this? I don’t recognize the number,” James Austin Johnson’s Trump asked as his phone rang in the cold open. He was then surprised to discover the unknown caller was the first lady herself (played by Chloe Fineman). “You’re calling me? That’s not a good sign,” Johnson’s Trump joked, and things did not get any better when she told him she wanted to host a press conference denying all ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

“Uh, darling, I gotta admit, this sounds a little insane,” Johnson’s Trump told his wife, before asking, “Who are you? Me?” The first lady surprised the president again when she said she did not want to just stop with Epstein.

“I thought I could also say, ‘I, Melania Trump, in no way, helped out the Gilgo Beach serial killer.’ That way no one is suspicious,” Fineman’s Melania pitched, to which Johnson’s unsettled Trump replied, “Darling, I think that’s gonna make everyone way more suspicious.”

Undeterred, Fineman’s first lady alternatively offered, “What if I announce I barely partied with Diddy? Would that help?” You can watch tonight’s “SNL” cold open yourself below.

Trump makes some urgent phone calls from the Oval Office pic.twitter.com/UtBjQYrxyo

— Saturday Night Live (@nbcsnl) April 12, 2026

The cold open itself began with Johnson’s Trump drafting his widely condemned Easter Sunday threat to Iran with the help of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (Ashley Padilla). Even Leavitt ended up expressing some concern about him ending his Truth Social threat with, “Praise be to Allah.”

“It’s a sarcastic attack on the world’s largest religion. They famously have a great sense of humor about that kind of stuff,” Johnson’s Trump explained. In response, Padilla’s Leavitt told the president, “As your press secretary, this puts me in a tough position, sir.” Trump chose to comfort Leavitt by telling her that, like ousted former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, she’s doing a “terrific job.”

As Padilla’s Leavitt walked away, Johnson’s Trump broke the “SNL” fourth wall, telling viewers, “All three of those [women] were played by Ashley. It’s an interesting detail.” The president then called Tiger Woods (Kenan Thompson), who relayed that he had checked himself into a rehab facility in Switzerland after his recent DUI car crash and, much to Trump’s annoyance, did not have any time to golf soon.

Johnson’s Trump ended the “SNL” cold open by calling Colin Jost’s Pete Hegseth, who asked him if he was really negotiating with the Iranians. “Don’t worry about the negotiations. I just heard they’re going really, really bad,” the president said. “I sent in my secret weapon, [Vice President] JD Vance. After those Iranians spent 20 hours talking to JD, they said, ‘Please sir, just go back to bombing us.'”

“Keep up the good work,” Johnson’s Trump subsequently told Jost’s Hegseth. “If you think of a good reason why we went to war, could you let me know?”

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