New this week: ‘Only Murders in the Building,’ ‘More Power’
MOVIES
— The biggest new movie streaming this week is “The Princess,” coming to Hulu on Friday starring Joey King as a royal who refuses to marry her intended (with good reason, as he’s a sociopath). Still, the act of defiance gets her kidnapped and imprisoned while her betrothed tries to overthrow the kingdom.
— Netflix is adding an army of titles starting Friday including several films featuring recently departed actors. Ray Liotta’s star-making turn as aspiring mobster Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese’s “GoodFellas” is one of them. Also arriving on Netflix on Friday are “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and “Boogie Nights,” featuring two memorable performances by Philip Baker Hall, who died earlier this month at 90, as a dogged detective and an unsentimental producer.
— Amazon Prime Video is getting Ridley Scott’s “House of Gucci” on Saturday. The gaudy, operatic, two and a half hour family drama stars Adam Driver as the ill-fated Gucci heir Maurizio Gucci and Lady Gaga as his scorned wife Patrizia Reggiani, alongside a starry cast including Al Pacino, Jared Leto (unrecognizable under prosthetics) and Jeremy Irons.
TELEVISION
— Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez are back as unlikely crimesolving New York City neighbors in Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building.” In season two, the amateur sleuths are the talk of the town, or at least their apartment building, when they’re linked to the death of the building board’s president. In a cruel twist, the trio that began a podcast to unravel a murder are under scrutiny by a rival podcast. Shirley MacLaine and Cara Delevingne are among the high-profile visitors when the series returns Tuesday with two episodes and others out weekly.
— “Home Improvement” sitcom buddies
Tim Allen and Richard Karn reunite for “More Power,” a nonfiction series that explores the development and mechanics of tools, from big (bulldozers) to small (batteries). Each half-hour episode focuses on one implement, which gets dissected in Allen’s workshop with help from April Wilkerson of YouTube do-it-yourself fame. Karn explains the tool’s history, followed by field testing and a segment in which a skilled creator is challenged to devise innovative and “crazy new builds.” The series debuts Wednesday on History Channel.
— Ken Burns adds his heft to “Hiding in Plain Sight: Youth Mental Illness,” which gives a voice to young people — ages 11 to 27 — with mental health conditions and those in their lives, including parents, teachers and friends, along with mental health care experts. The two-part, fourhour film directed and co-produced by
Erik Ewers and Christopher Loren Ewers, with Burns as executive producer, airs Monday and Tuesday on PBS. The film is part of Well Beings, a public media campaign that uses storytelling to help erase the stigma from physical and mental health issues.
MUSIC
— Imagine Dragons are back with the second half of their two-album “Mercury” project. “Act 1” came out in 2021 and the new set — “Act 2” — drops Friday and promises another 18 tunes.
— Super-producer Jack Antonoff has a ’70s-era treat for us with the soundtrack for “Minions: Rise of Gru.” It features Diana Ross, Tame Impala, St. Vincent, Brockhampton, Kali Uchis and others covering hit ’70s material from Kool & the Gang, Nancy Sinatra, the Carpenters, John Lennon and many more.