It seems the closer we get to October, the more it feels like studios are rushing out a bunch of new releases that don’t quite fit under the umbrella of the Halloween season.
This week is especially jam-packed with new titles, both in cinemas and on the small screen. However, don’t expect many big studio tentpoles or high-profile films. Instead, this week’s lineup is filled with smaller mid-to-low-budget dramas, indies, and genre films all fighting for your attention.
Meanwhile, on the TV front, a ton of shows are returning for their second seasons this week, making the small-screen lineup much busier than usual. So there’s plenty to choose from. Scroll down, take a look, and see what makes your must-watch list this week.
🎥 In Theaters This Week
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🎥 The Transformers: The Movie: 40th anniversary
(Thurs, Sept 17th thru Mon, Sept 21st — 4K re-release)
One shall stand, one shall fall... and an entire generation may still need a minute to catch their breath. The Autobots and their leader, Optimus Prime, are hit hard by a devastating Decepticon assault just as the planet-devouring Unicron embarks on a path of destruction across the galaxy, leaving Hot Rod to step up and claim the Matrix of Leadership. The late Peter Cullen, Frank Welker, Judd Nelson, Leonard Nimoy, and Orson Welles make up the voice cast. 40 years later, the battle is heading back to theaters in 4K. Now Autobots, roll out!
🎥 Last Train to Fortune
(Thurs, Sept 17th — limited release; in NY)
Malcolm McDowell plays Cecil Peachtree, a bookish English schoolteacher stranded on his way to a new job in the frontier town of Fortune. After outlaw Jedidiah Dooley (James Paxton) robs him, Cecil makes the gunslinger an offer: get him safely to town and take his first month’s pay. Gunfights, jailbreaks, saloons, and an unlikely friendship follow as two men with very different educations discover they might have something to teach each other.
🎥 Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie
(Thurs, Sept 17th — limited release)
Salman Rushdie survived the 2022 attack that left him with life-altering injuries, but recovery meant more than simply healing. Drawing on his memoir Knife, Alex Gibney’s documentary combines Rushdie’s reflections with personal footage filmed by his wife, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, capturing the private work of rebuilding his life. The result looks beyond the violence itself to a writer reclaiming his voice and control of his own story.
🎥 Resident Evil
(Fri, Sept 18th — wide release)
A routine delivery turns into one very bad night for Austin Abrams’ medical courier, Bryan, as a biological disaster sends him racing through an increasingly dangerous city. Zach Cregger, the filmmaker behind Barbarian and Weapons, directs this standalone reinvention of the survival-horror video game franchise. Turns out working the night shift can always get worse.
🎥 The Weight
(Fri, Sept 18th — wide release)
Ethan Hawke stars as Samuel Murphy, a widower in 1930s Oregon who is sent to a brutal prison and offered one very dangerous way out. Warden Clancy (Russell Crowe) wants Samuel and several other inmates (Austin Amelio and Avi Nash) to smuggle stolen government gold out of a remote mine, survive the trip, and maybe earn their freedom. Julia Jones joins them as an Indigenous runaway in director Padraic McKinley’s period thriller, where the promise of liberty starts looking a lot like a death sentence.
🎥 Bad Apples
(Fri, Sept 18th — wide release)
Saoirse Ronan stars as Maria, a primary-school teacher pushed to the breaking point by one violently disruptive student. Desperate to get her classroom under control, she makes a drastic choice that actually seems to work... for a while. But solving one problem only creates a much bigger one. Directed by Jonatan Etzler, this dark comedy-thriller follows Maria as one bad decision leads to another, eventually sparking a citywide search for a missing boy whose whereabouts she knows all too well.
🎥 Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom
(Fri, Sept 18th — wide release)
A simple attempt to fix the pumpkin patch goes very wrong when Shaun and the flock accidentally unleash a mysterious creature on Mossy Bottom Farm. With Halloween fast approaching, strange things start happening, the Farmer disappears, and Shaun has to lead the others through eerie woods and unexpected dangers to put things right. Aardman Animations brings its trademark stop-motion charm to this adventure, where even a little farmyard mishap can turn into a full-blown monster problem.
🎥 Without Blood
(Fri, Sept 18th — limited release)
Salma Hayek Pinault plays a woman who has spent years living with the loss of her family after a devastating war. Her search for answers brings her face-to-face with a man, played by Demián Bichir, who may know what really happened. Written and directed by Angelina Jolie from Alessandro Baricco’s novel, the drama turns that meeting into something far more complicated than revenge, as both are forced to confront memory, guilt, and whether the truth can bring any kind of peace.
🎥 The History of Concrete
(Fri, Sept 18th — limited release)
Concrete is everywhere. But getting people to sit through a documentary about it is the harder sell. After How To with John Wilson, filmmaker John Wilson sets out to turn one of the most ordinary, seemingly unexciting materials around us into something worth watching. That plan quickly starts to crack, turning the project into a funny, self-aware look at filmmaking, creative compromise, unexpected connections, and what happens when real life becomes more interesting than the movie you thought you were making.
🎥 The Musical
(Fri, Sept 18th — limited release)
Tony Award winner Will Brill stars in this dark comedy as Doug, a frustrated playwright stuck teaching middle-school theater while his career goes nowhere. Things get worse when his ex and fellow schoolteacher (Gillian Jacobs) starts dating the school’s painfully ordinary principal, played none other than by Rob Lowe. Fed up and nursing a bruised ego, Doug decides revenge is the only answer. His plan: stage an outrageously inappropriate student musical to trash the principal’s good name, using his entire classroom of innocent kids as unwitting accomplices.
🎥 Tiny Fugitives
(Fri, Sept 18th — limited release)
Summer camp is temporary. At least, it’s supposed to be. A reckless group of 12-year-olds decides they’d rather stay for good than go back to ordinary life, putting them on a collision course with Bob, Johnny Knoxville’s 50-year-old lifer counselor, who is determined to stop them. Michael Lewen directs this irreverent comedy about adolescent independence and increasingly elaborate sabotage, with Blake Anderson and Jay Baruchel joining the chaos.
🎥 Sunny Dancer
(Fri, Sept 18th — limited release)
The Last of Us star Bella Ramsey plays Ivy, a 17-year-old cancer survivor who is ready for everyone to stop defining her by what she’s been through. Her parents have other ideas, sending her to a summer camp for young people affected by cancer; something Ivy quickly dubs “Chemo Camp.” Writer-director George Jaques turns that unwanted summer into a warm, irreverent coming-of-age story about finding people who understand her without pitying her.
🎥 April X
(Fri, Sept 18th — limited release)
Heated Rivalry breakout Connor Storrie trades hockey sticks for black-market body parts in this sci-fi noir thriller. He stars as Bax, a hustler searching for his missing twin sister, April (Lilly Krug), in a futuristic post-Soviet city where dreams can be recorded and memories stolen. His search pulls him deeper into a neon-lit underworld where every clue brings him closer to the truth... and further into danger.
🎥 You Had to Be There
(Fri, Sept 18th — limited release)
Before Saturday Night Live, SCTV, and Broadway turned them into household names, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Gilda Radner, Victor Garber, Andrea Martin, and Paul Shaffer all found themselves in the same 1972 Toronto production of Godspell. Filmmaker Nick Davis looks back at the friendships, timing, and creative spark that came out of that show, and how one unlikely stage production helped bring together a group that would go on to leave a huge mark on entertainment.
🎥 Who’s Watching
(Fri, Sept 18th — limited release)
An awkward office crush turns into something much darker in this psychological horror thriller from Cursive frontman Tim Kasher. Zachary Ray Sherman stars as Caleb, a socially isolated coworker who decides to make a “documentary” about Krista, played by Gracie Gillam. What he calls fascination starts looking more like surveillance, then stalking, as his camera becomes one more excuse to keep pushing past boundaries he has no business crossing.
🎥 Ghost in the Shell: 30th Anniversary
(Fri, Sept 18th — re-release, 4K restoration)
Major Motoko Kusanagi and Section 9 are hunting the Puppet Master, a mysterious intelligence that can hack human minds and rewrite identity. Mamoru Oshii’s landmark 1995 anime, adapted from Masamune Shirow’s classic manga, mixes cyberpunk action with noir atmosphere and questions about what makes someone human. Three decades later, its ideas about artificial intelligence, manufactured bodies, surveillance, and digital identity feel less like distant science fiction and more like the world catching up to the movie.
🎥 My Brother’s Wedding
(Fri, September 18th — re-release, 4K restoration)
One of the great voices of American indie cinema, Charles Burnett has spent decades making films that never quite got the attention they deserved. Now his 1983 cult classic is getting a new 4K restoration and another shot at finding its audience. Starring Everett Silas, Jessie Holmes, and Gaye Shannon-Burnett, the film follows an aimless young Black man caught between family obligations, neighborhood loyalty, and a future he still hasn’t figured out.
🎦 Streaming This Week
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🎦 The Napa Boys
(Fri, Sept 18th — streaming on Prime Video)
This knowingly fake fourth entry in a mock franchise from sketch comedians Nick Corirossi and Armen Weitzman sends its wine-loving crew on one last ludicrous quest. Nostalgia, midlife panic, and meta-humor ferment into chaotic self-awareness. A farewell tour for a saga that never technically existed. Think Sideways but with the absurdity of Wet Hot American Summer. It’s a farce where the joke is the franchise itself.
🎦 Best of the Best
(Fri, Sept 18th — premiering on Netflix)
In this college dance comedy, Never Have I Ever’s Maitreyi Ramakrishnan and Priyanka Kedia star as childhood best friends Maya and Anjali, who head to UCLA expecting to take on college together. Then they join its fiercely competitive Bollywood-fusion dance team, where rehearsals, rivalries, team politics, and a shot at the U.S. Championship start putting real pressure on a friendship they’ve had for years. Sometimes great friendship means knowing when to stay in sync.
🎦 Goody Goody
(Fri, Sept 18th — premiering on Shudder)
Home births and raging blizzards are already a bad combination. In this horror thriller, Samantha Robinson stars as an expectant mother determined to go through with an all-natural delivery, while Colleen Foy’s experienced midwife starts to realize something isn’t right. With a brutal ice storm making it nearly impossible to leave, the house quickly goes from shelter to trap. And the real problem may not be the weather, as the pregnancy begins showing signs of something seriously wrong... something no midwife could possibly be prepared for.
🎦Stop! That! Train!
(Sun, Sept 20th — streaming on Netflix)
Disaster movies finally get dragged onto the rails. Drag queens Ginger Minj and Jujubee star as two coach train stewardesses aboard the Glamazonian Express, where a catastrophic “Stormaganza” threatens to send the ride crashing toward Los Angeles. Directed by Adam Shankman, this campy disaster spoof turns drag performance, disaster parody, and RuPaul as the U.S. President into one runaway spectacle.
🎦 How to Live on Earth
(Sun, Sept 20th — streaming on YouTube)
Benedict Cumberbatch presents this hopeful environmental documentary built around a big question: can we create a safer, more sustainable future by working with nature instead of against it? Director Fredi Devas travels around the world meeting scientists, farmers, engineers, activists, and communities already trying to do exactly that, from restoring rainforests to rethinking how cities are built. Instead of simply warning about what’s going wrong, the film focuses on what people are already doing to make things better.
✅ On VOD This Week
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✅ The End of Oak Street
(Tues, Sept 15th — on VOD/Digital)
There goes the neighborhood! But to where is the real question? Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor star as parents who are suddenly forced to hold their family together after a cosmic event rips their once-familiar neighborhood out of suburbia and drops it into a strange prehistoric world. Written and directed by It Follows filmmaker David Robert Mitchell, this sci-fi mystery turns ordinary suburbia into hostile prehistoric terrain, where roaming dinosaurs are now part of the neighborhood.
✅ Tony
(Tues, Sept 15th — on VOD/Digital)
Before Anthony Bourdain became a culinary icon, he was merely a 19-year-old aspiring writer searching for direction. Dominic Sessa stars in Matt Johnson’s 1976-set origin story, which sends the young Tony to Provincetown for a summer job at a Cape Cod restaurant. Hired by a commanding chef (Antonio Banderas), he is pulled into the frantic, profane, and seductive world of professional kitchens, where pressure, precision, and hard work begin reshaping his own ambitions. What starts as seasonal work quickly becomes the spark that changes the course of his life.
✅ The Rivals of Amziah King
(Tues, Sept 15th — on VOD/Digital)
Things are about to get sticky in rural Oklahoma. Matthew McConaughey stars as Amziah King, a bluegrass-loving beekeeper running a successful honey operation with a ragtag group of misfits. Things get complicated when his estranged foster daughter Kateri (Angelina LookingGlass) returns after a devastating loss, giving the two a chance to repair their relationship, while a dangerous local bigwig (Kurt Russell) looks to muscle in on Amziah’s business. Written and directed by The Vast of Night’s Andrew Patterson, this mixes family, bluegrass, and beekeeping with a fight over who gets to control the hive.
✅ Finding Emily
(Tues, Sept 15th — on VOD/Digital)
Love can be maddening... especially when you’re texting the wrong person. Musician Owen (Spike Fearn) teams up with psychology student Sami (Angourie Rice) to track down the girl he believes is his soulmate after a phone-number mix-up. Their campus-wide search soon becomes a viral story of unrequited love, while unexpected feelings begin growing between Owen and Sami, proving the heart rarely follows a straight line in this British rom-com.
✅ It Ends
(Tues, Sept 15th — on VOD/Digital)
One wrong turn can sometimes last forever. In this existential horror thriller, Phinehas Yoon, Akira Jackson, Noah Toth, and Mitchell Cole play four recent college graduates whose late-night food run lands them on an endless two-lane road, where the surrounding woods hide otherworldly threats. They soon realize they’re trapped on a road to nowhere... one that may never end.
✅ Nimrods
(Tues, Sept 15th — on VOD/Digital)
Mason Thames, Kylr Coffman, and Ryan Foust star as three high school friends and bandmates who think they’ve landed the gig of a lifetime: opening for Green Day on New Year’s Eve. The only problem? It’s all an elaborate prank. Hitting the road for Los Angeles armed with guitars and big dreams, they find themselves chasing a rock-star fantasy that quickly becomes one bad decision after another. Written and directed by Lee Kirk and also starring Mckenna Grace and Jenna Fischer, this coming-of-age rock comedy features Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tré Cool appearing as themselves.
✅ Gator Face
(Tues, Sept 15th — on VOD/Digital)
Florida already has enough things that can kill you without adding an alligator-worshipping cult to the mix. A group of friends learns that the hard way when their vacation leaves them stranded in a remote swamp controlled by fanatics who feed their victims to very real alligators. Writer-director Padraig Reynolds blends slasher horror, creature-feature thrills, and old-school practical gore as they try to escape “Gator Face” ...and whatever is waiting for them in the water.
✅ Lion Fist
(Tues, Sept 15th — on VOD/Digital)
Mathis Landwehr stars as Joe Bernardt, a fighter finally out after four years of wrongful imprisonment, only to learn that his son needs an operation he can’t afford. With nowhere else to turn, Joe enters a brutal martial-arts tournament with $100,000 on the line. This action throwback leans into old-school tournament showdowns and brings along genre veterans like Kurt McKinney, Gary Daniels, Keith Cooke, Billy Blanks, and Cynthia Rothrock for the ride.
✅ Who’s Watching
(Fri, Sept 18th — on VOD/Digital)
An awkward office crush turns into something much darker in this psychological horror thriller from Cursive frontman Tim Kasher. Zachary Ray Sherman stars as Caleb, a socially isolated coworker who decides to make a “documentary” about Krista, played by Gracie Gillam. What he calls fascination starts looking more like surveillance, then stalking, as his camera becomes one more excuse to keep pushing past boundaries he has no business crossing.
✅ Barry and Me
(Fri, Sept 18th — on VOD/Digital)
12-year-old orphan Georg is stranded at a remote monastery in the Great St. Bernard Pass, where life is cold, demanding, and lonely. Things begin to change when he rescues a starving St. Bernard puppy and secretly raises him as Barry. This Swiss family adventure follows the bond between boy and dog as Georg finds himself caught between the orphanage’s rules and his determination to protect the one companion who has finally made the mountain feel a little less lonely.
📺 On TV This Week
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📺 Agatha Christie’s Tommy & Tuppence
(Tues, Sept 15th — on BritBox)
Tommy writes mysteries. Tuppence would rather be out solving them. Josh Dylan and Antonia Thomas play Agatha Christie’s amateur detectives in this six-part series, which brings their adventures into the present day with smartphones and social media now part of the equation. The mysteries may involve locked rooms, red herrings, and dangerous secrets, but their relationship is just as complicated. They fall in love, fall out of it, and somehow keep ending up back together, with Imelda Staunton’s Aunt Ada watching it all unfold.
📺 R.J. Decker: Season 2
(Tues, Sept 15th — on ABC)
South Florida is full of strange people, stranger crimes, and second chances. Scott Speedman returns as R.J. Decker, the former newspaper photographer and ex-con now working as Florida’s most unlikely private investigator. Season 2 sends him into another round of bizarre cases while keeping his messy personal life close at hand, including his journalist ex, her detective wife, a trusted former cellmate, and now a powerful cartel he’s sent to investigate after a murder hits close to home.
📺 The Creep Tapes: Season 3
(Tues, Sept 15th — on Shudder and AMC+)
Peachfuzz is back, which means some unsuspecting videographer has agreed to film his latest personal project. Mark Duplass returns as the socially awkward serial killer whose secret archive opens up another six episodes of found-footage horror, with franchise co-creator Patrick Brice directing and co-writing the season. Kate Siegel, Nic Hamilton, Elliott Fulham, and Ora Duplass join the latest group of people who probably should have asked a few more questions before taking the job.
📺 Slow Horses: Season 6
(Wed, Sept 16th — on Apple TV)
Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) and the rest of Slough House (Jack Lowden, Christopher Chung, Tom Brooke, Aimee-Ffion Edwards, Rosalind Eleazar) are in trouble again, although that hardly qualifies as news anymore. Season 6 sends the disgraced MI5 agents on the run after Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) pulls them into a dangerous game of retaliation and revenge. Even when they’re running for their lives, you get the feeling Slough House would still find a way to make it look disorganized.
📺 Neagley
(Wed, Sept 16th — on Prime Video)
Frances Neagley has spent plenty of time helping Jack Reacher deal with other people’s problems. This time, the case is hers. Maria Sten reprises her role as Neagley in the eight-episode Reacher spinoff, playing the former Army investigator turned Chicago private eye who starts digging after a beloved friend dies in a suspicious accident. The search pulls her toward a much larger threat, with Alan Ritchson returning as Reacher in a guest role. Sure, Reacher may show up, but Neagley clearly doesn’t need him taking over.
📺 City of Blood
(Wed, Sept 16th — on Hulu)
Berlin is falling apart, and the people controlling the blood supply aren’t entirely human... wait, what? In this near-future German dystopian thriller, sisters Bea and Phoebe reunite in a divided Berlin where the wealthy are protected from climate collapse while everyone else deals with heat, corruption, and crime. Meanwhile, vampires (yes, vampires) have taken control of organized crime and now want political power too. Lea Drinda and Soma Pysall star in this eight-part adaptation of the graphic novel Berlinoir, where blood is both currency and necessity, and humans aren’t automatically the good guys.
📺 Golden Axe
(Wed, Sept 16th — on Paramount+)
This animated comedy series is not only a throwback to the sword-and-sorcery fantasy of the ’80s, but also brings SEGA’s classic arcade game to television, with Liam McIntyre, Lisa Gilroy, and Matthew Rhys voicing veteran heroes Ax Battler, Tyris Flare, and Gilius Thunderhead. Then there’s Danny Pudi’s Hampton Squib, a first-time adventurer with plenty of enthusiasm and not nearly enough experience. Fighting monsters is one thing. Dragging the rookie through the quest may be these warriors’ hardest job yet.
📺 The Doll
(Wed, Sept 16th — on Netflix)
Tomasz Schuchardt and Sandra Drzymalska star in this six-episode adaptation of one of Poland’s most celebrated novels, playing two people drawn together despite the class barriers between them. This period drama mixes desire, wealth, class, and obsession as their connection begins to challenge the expectations of the world around them. Love may be complicated enough, but in a society where status matters this much, wanting the wrong person can come with a serious price.
📺 Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story
(Thurs, Sept 17th — on Netflix)
“Lizzie Borden took an axe” is the rhyme everyone remembers, but there’s a lot more to the story than that. Ella Beatty stars as Lizzie, the Massachusetts woman accused of murdering her father and stepmother with an axe in 1892, sparking a nationwide media frenzy. Charlie Hunnam and Rebecca Hall play Lizzie’s father and stepmother, Andrew and Abby Borden, with Billie Lourd, Vicky Krieps, and Sarah Paulson joining this fourth installment of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s true-crime anthology.
📺 Stranger Things: Tales From ’85: Season 2
(Thurs, Sept 17th — on Netflix)
Defeating the Horde Queen apparently wasn’t enough to earn these kids a quiet Valentine’s Day. Season 2 of this animated prequel spinoff reunites Eleven, Mike, Will, Dustin, Lucas, Max, and Nikki as ghostly apparitions and swarms of creatures called hate sprites start popping up around Hawkins. Signs of another gate send the Hawkins Investigators Club from school hallways and the Palace Arcade into an unexplored mine beneath town. At this point, finding something horrible underneath Hawkins is practically a daily occurrence.
📺 Not a Stranger
(Thurs, Sept 17th — on Netflix)
Funda (Elçin Sangu) just wants to get back to painting after becoming a first-time mother, so hiring a nanny seems like a perfectly reasonable solution. Then Nazlı (Melis Sezen) enters the picture. In this Turkish psychological drama series, Funda’s home life with her husband begins to take an unsettling turn after they welcome the new nanny into their lives. The arrangement was supposed to make things easier. Instead, Funda may have invited something into her home that won’t be so easy to get rid of.
📺 The Traitors: New Blood
(Thurs, Sept 17th — on NBC)
Alan Cumming is opening the castle again, but this time there isn’t a celebrity in sight. Ordinary Americans take their shot at being Faithful or Traitors in this new edition of the reality competition, working together to build the prize fund while secretly trying to eliminate one another. The Traitors get to “murder” the competition, the Faithful vote to banish their suspects, and everyone gets a reminder that trusting complete strangers on reality television is rarely a winning strategy.
📺 The Howard Stern Show
(Thurs, Sept 17th — on HBO Max)
Howard Stern has spent decades behind a microphone. Now his long-running SiriusXM program comes to HBO Max in a weekly filmed format, turning the live radio show into streamable episodes built around Stern’s interviews, conversations, and whatever else happens in the studio. It’s less a new show than a new way to watch the one Stern has been doing for years.
📺 JAŸ-Z in 8
(Fri, Sept 18th — on HBO and HBO Max)
Rap superstar JAŸ-Z and producer extraordinaire Rick Rubin sit down for eight conversations about their love of music. Yup, sounds pretty straightforward... and that’s the point. This eight-part HBO documentary series gives these two music heavyweights room to talk about lyrics, life experiences, the creative process, and the decisions behind one of hip-hop’s most influential careers. Rubin directs and asks the questions, skipping the usual rush through a greatest-hits retrospective. The point here is the conversation itself, with the freedom to contextualize the music and the experiences behind it.
📺 MobLand: Season 2
(Fri, Sept 18th — on Paramount+)
Being the Harrigans’ fixer was never going to be a safe line of work. Tom Hardy returns as mob enforcer Harry Da Souza as the family’s criminal empire comes under pressure from rising rivals while Conrad and Maeve (Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren) struggle to keep their own house together. With violence spreading and loyalties getting harder to trust, Harry once again finds himself stuck in the middle with a giant mess to clean up. For a fixer, he certainly works for people who create a lot of headaches... which is code for dead bodies.
📺 Outlander: Blood of My Blood: Season 2
(Fri, Sept 18th — on STARZ)
Apparently one generation of star-crossed lovers wasn’t enough for the Outlander universe. Season 2 returns to Julia Moriston (Hermione Corfield) and Henry Beauchamp (Jeremy Irvine), and Ellen MacKenzie (Harriet Slater) and Brian Fraser (Jamie Roy), as war, family obligations, clan politics, and separation keep getting in the way of both romances. The story once again moves between World War I and the 18th-century Scottish Highlands. It seems falling in love is the easy part in this world. Staying together in the same timeline is where things get complicated.
📺 The Scandal
(Fri, Sept 18th — on Netflix)
What could possibly go wrong with turning seduction into a wager? Quite a bit, apparently. Director Jung Ji-woo brings Dangerous Liaisons to period Korea, with Son Ye-jin starring as Lady Cho, a noblewoman in Joseon high society who proposes a secret game to celebrated playboy Cho Won (Ji Chang-wook). His target is Hui-yeon (Nana), who has no idea she’s part of someone else’s bet. Desire, reputation, and manipulation are all in play, and none of them tend to end well.
📺 American Hostage
(Sun, Sept 20th — on MGM+)
Jon Hamm stars as Indianapolis radio reporter Fred Heckman, who suddenly finds himself dragged into a very real hostage crisis. Set in 1977 and based on a true-life standoff, this eight-episode thriller follows Tony Kiritsis (Giovanni Ribisi), who takes mortgage executive Dick Hall hostage and demands airtime on Heckman’s news program. What starts as an interview quickly turns into something closer to a live negotiation, where every question, pause, and choice could help keep a man alive... or push the situation in the wrong direction. Which begs the question: at what point does reporting on the news mean becoming part of it?
📺 Youth
(Sun, Sept 20th — on HBO and HBO Max)
Turning 50 isn’t slowing Alex down; if anything, it’s giving her a reason to speed things up. Sharon Horgan stars as the newly divorced London literary agent who decides middle age is as good a time as any to get back into sex, romance, and whatever comes next. Of course, reinventing yourself gets a little harder when you’re also dealing with aging parents and a son who really should be more grown up by now. Horgan also created and wrote this comedy drama, where starting over is anything but a clean break.
📺 Trespasses
(Sun, Sept 20th — on PBS and the PBS app)
Belfast, 1975, is not exactly the easiest place to fall in love with the wrong person. Furious breakout Lola Petticrew stars as Cushla, a young Catholic schoolteacher who begins an affair with Michael (Tom Cullen), an older, married Protestant barrister. Their relationship crosses religious and political lines at a time when the Troubles make even private choices dangerous. Gillian Anderson co-stars as Cushla’s alcoholic mother in this four-part adaptation of Louise Kennedy’s novel, where romance comes with consequences during an era of violence, suspicion, religious tension, and division.
