What’s Streaming
THE GREAT BEAUTY (2013) Stream on the Criterion Channel. Rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. In Paolo Sorrentino’s “The New Pope,” a new episode of which airs tonight at 9 p.m. on HBO, the line between the sacred and the profane is vanishingly thin. The Roman Catholic Church, as Sorrentino presents it, is a throbbing tangle of contradictions where spirituality and corruption coexist in flamboyant contradiction, often within its individual members. Desire, he indicates, is omnipresent, but its object takes many different forms. This film covers similar territory in much the same way but on a greater scale. Its protagonist, Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo), is an aging, hedonistic journalist who undertakes a journey to discover authentic beauty and give up its many alluring counterfeits.
THE CABIN IN THE WOODS (2012) Stream on Hulu. Rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. Much like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” the television series Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard collaborated on, this movie by the pair is a comment on the genres that it draws upon. Its setup is one of horror’s most basic: A group of young people descend on the titular cabin and are soon set upon by a wide variety of terrors. But the youngsters are not alone. Two men ensconced in a mysterious control room (Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford) also appear. “There is a scholarly, nerdy, completist sensibility at work here that is impressive until it becomes exhausting,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times.
What’s on TV
AMERICA’S CHOICE 2020: IOWA CAUCUS 4 p.m. on CNN. Eyes will be on the Hawkeye State as voters there take the first step in determining which Democratic candidate will square off against President Trump in November. The coverage on CNN will begin in the afternoon and stretch into the night. Caucusing is complicated. The process begins around 7 p.m. C.S.T. (8 p.m. E.S.T.) at school gymnasiums, public libraries and other locations across Iowa. Over two rounds, voters make their choice by congregating in designated sites. After the first round, anyone whose first-choice candidate received less than 15 percent of the caucus vote have to choose another candidate, try to join forces to muster enough support to a nonviable candidate or remain unaligned. Once this portion is complete, the final tally is made.
CREED (2015) 9 p.m. on BET. The director Ryan Coogler reunites with Michael B. Jordan to reinvigorate Sylvester Stallone’s “Rocky” franchise. Jordan plays Adonis, Apollo Creed’s son from an extramarital affair. Apollo Creed, you’ll recall, was a longtime friendly rival of Rocky Balboa’s (Stallone) who was killed in a fight with Ivan Drago in “Rocky IV.” In this sequel/spinoff, Adonis, or Donnie as he’s called, wants Rocky to train him to follow in his father’s footsteps despite Apollo’s sad end. A.O. Scott called the film “a dandy piece of entertainment, soothingly old-fashioned and bracingly up-to-date.”
Source: Television - nytimes.com
