What’s on TV
THE KINGMAKER (2019) 9 p.m. Showtime. Gold and diamonds commingle with political unrest and poverty in “The Kingmaker,” Lauren Greenfield’s documentary portrait of Imelda Marcos, the former first lady of the Philippines. Through interviews — including with Marcos, who speaks here at length — and other footage, Greenfield (“The Queen of Versailles”) examines Marcos’s time as first lady during the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s; her subsequent flight and exile; and her place in contemporary politics. The film ultimately “becomes less about one woman, her malevolent charms and quirks, and develops into an unsettling look at imperial power,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The New York Times. “Greenfield trots out the plunder and of course the shoes — those notorious emblems of Marcos’s excess — but also examines the appalling costs of that luxury,” Dargis wrote. “It’s an ugly story shrewdly told, with a sense of humor and also a deeper feeling for history.”
RUPAUL’S DRAG RACE 8 p.m. on VH1. “Friday, February 28th, 13 new candidates enter the race.” No, that sentence isn’t pulled from the nightmares of the Democratic presidential candidates bracing themselves for Super Tuesday; it’s from a trailer for the latest season of RuPaul Charles’s flagship drag show, which will kick off its search for “America’s first drag-queen president.” That search will be aided by a collection of celebrity guests peppered throughout the season, including Nicki Minaj, Whoopi Goldberg, Leslie Jones, Chaka Khan and U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
DATELINE 9 p.m. on NBC. In 2013, Karl Holger Karlsen pleaded guilty to murdering his son in order to collect a life insurance policy. Earlier this month, Karlsen was convicted of killing his wife years earlier for the same reason. Those cases are the focus of this week’s edition of NBC’s “Dateline” series, which brings together interviews with those close to the events — including Karlsen himself.
What’s Streaming
THE EDGE OF HEAVEN (2008) Stream on Criterion Channel; rent on Amazon. The writer-director Fatih Akin won the best screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival for “The Edge of Heaven,” his critically acclaimed look at generational differences and the experience of Turkish immigrants in Germany. As the lives of its disparate characters — mothers and daughters, a father and a son — weave together, “there is a sense of human connections becoming stronger and thicker, of a fragile moral order coalescing beneath the randomness and cruelty of modern life,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times. “By the end,” he added, “you know the characters in it so well that you can’t believe you’ve seen the movie only once, yet on a second viewing it seems completely new.”
ALL THE BRIGHT PLACES (2020) Stream on Netflix. Elle Fanning and Justice Smith star in this adaptation of a Y.A. novel by Jennifer Niven, directed by Brett Haley (“The Hero”). The story centers on a pair of Indiana teenagers, Violet (Elle) and Theodore (Smith), who help each other cope with mental illness.
Source: Television - nytimes.com
