Clockwise from top: I Saw the TV Glow, The Strangers: Chapter One, Outer Range, Bridgerton.
Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Amazon, Netflix, A24, Lionsgate
It’s time to enter the TV glow. After a limited rollout, a new A24 flick is hitting theaters (the big-screen glow?) nationwide, and it’s insanely worth the watch. I can’t shut up about I Saw the TV Glow, as you’ll soon see. But there are other things beaming and streaming through the glow of a screen this week: a thrilling season of our favorite steamy Regency romance, a new Ilana Glazer comedy, an Oscar-winning publishing-world satire, and more. Here are the best things for you to watch this weekend. —Savannah Salazar
Jane Schoenbrun’s second feature, after their lo-fi We All Went to the World’s Fair, is larger in vision and scale, partly because they have A24’s money (good for them!). I Saw the TV Glow tells the story of Owen (a fantastic performance from Justice Smith), a kid in the suburbs who just wants to watch The Pink Opaque, a Buffy-inspired show about two psychic teens (Helena Howard and Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan) fighting monsters on a different plane of existence. He bonds over the show with another queer high-schooler, Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine, who also turns out a force of a performance), but as the years go by, reality and fantasy begin to blur in a way Owen has trouble understanding. It’s a unique drama on the exploration of gender identity, loneliness, and how certain media can create a painfully personal language to interpret that dizzying journey. I Saw the TV Glow is sure to stick with you.
➽ It doesn’t hurt that I Saw the TV Glow has such a banger soundtrack with tracks from Florist, Bartees Strange, Sloppy Jane (featuring Phoebe Bridgers!), and Caroline Polachek. What’s a coming-of-age movie without good music?
It’s been way too long since Bridgerton has graced our screens, and season three is proving to be well worth the wait. Next up for love is third Bridgerton brother and world traveler Colin (a freshly spray-tanned Luke Newton), as he arrives back in London wooing members of the ton with his newfound charm and confidence. Then there’s his childhood friend Lady Whistledown herself, Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan), looking to find a husband of her own. He decides to help her, which, naturally, kicks off this wonderful friends-to-lovers story.
➽ Netflix has split this season into two parts (the second installment arrives June 13), because waiting two years for Bridgerton apparently wasn’t enough.
Ilana Glazer is back with another pregnancy story (this time a comedy) and another codependent friendship (this time with Michelle Buteau). In Babes, Glazer is Eden, a single woman who, after a one-night stand, finds out she’s pregnant and leans on her best friend, mother-of-two Dawn (Buteau), for support.
A movie franchise you can absolutely not convince me to watch in a million years, but I will recount it for you anyway (brave, I know). The Strangers: Chapter 1 is the first in a new trilogy, based on the 2008 movie, with another film coming out later this year and the final one out next year (as of now). Directed by Renny Harlin, this movie stars Riverdale’s Madelaine Petsch and Froy Gutierrez as a road-tripping couple who have to make an emergency pit stop and stay in an eerie, isolated Airbnb for the night. Because, sure, that sounds like a good idea.
➽ Okay, but where’s the Barbarian Mother vs. Dollface and Man in Mask spinoff?
Director John Krasinski is ditching the terrifying monsters of Quiet Place for imaginary friends in IF. The film stars Ryan Reynolds as a grown man who can see imaginary friends; he’s paired up with a young girl (Cailey Fleming) who can also see them, and the two go on to help find the kids who imagined them. Expect voice performances from Steve Carell, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Maya Rudolph, and so many others.
This limited series follows Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton’s (André Holland) attempt to flee to Castro’s Cuba to avoid the FBI; Newton and Hollywood producer Bert Schneider (Alessandro Nivola) cook up a scheme using a faux movie production for cover. —Roxana Hadadi
It can be hard for a biopic to re-create the outsize presence of a major performing artist, but Back to Black sets out to do the opposite — not to shrink its subject down to human scale, but to leave her diminished. —Alison Willmore (Read more here.)
Answer: No. But now you can come to your own conclusions on the Hunger Games prequel as it finally hits a streaming service this week! Oh, and if you have questions about that ending between Snow (Tom Blyth) and Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler), we’ve got you covered.
➽ Plus, writer-director Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction is finally streaming on Prime Video.
Photo: Claire Folger/Orion Releasing
Remember writer-director Cord Jefferson’s passionate speech about mid-budget movies at the Oscars? This is the film he won that award for! Adapted from the Percival Everett novel Erasure, American Fiction (starring Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown, and Issa Rae) was one of the buzzier titles of awards season last fall. Now, it’s free on Amazon Prime Video, so this is your chance to watch it if you happened to miss it during all the Oscars hoopla.
S.S.: What is it about Outer Range that is appealing to you?
Nicholas Quah: It’s a bizarro, elliptical show about the American West that’s almost completely made for weirdos. Very little about the first season feels like it was made by committee, let alone an algorithm … The first season ends in a way that flies straight off the deep end! There’s absolutely nothing like it! I should also say that, as a result of that ending, the second season has veered deeper into incomprehensibility. I guess I’m having fun still. I don’t know! Sons hang out with younger versions of their fathers! Whatever! My brain is melting.
S.S.: Do you think more people than just you and Ray should watch?
N.Q.: Yes! Who needs Yellowstone!
S.S.: Brolin over Costner.
N.Q.: 1,000 percent.
I Saw the TV Glow director Schoenbrun talked to Vulture about the many ‘90s television shows that inspired their new feature from Are You Afraid of the Dark? to Twin Peaks, but Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the absolute starting point. So why not take the chance to (re)watch?
Want more? Read our recommendations from the weekend of May 10.
