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      ‘Yakuza Princess’ Review: Crime, Amnesia and Ancient Swords

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      This mayhem-filled film from Brazil has no higher function beyond its beheadings.You know this movie isn’t kidding around from its opening scene. Set in Osaka “20 years ago,” the blue-tinted sequence depicts a solemn ceremony broken up by bloody gun assassinations, culminating with a young boy taking a bullet in the back of his neck. So when I say “isn’t kidding around,” what I mean is “wants to impress you with the crass opportunism of its violence.”Based on a graphic novel, “Yakuza Princess” is not a Japanese film; it’s a Brazilian one. The director is Vicente Amorim and the graphic novel, called “Samurai Shiro,” is by Danilo Beyruth. Much of the action takes place in São Paulo, which has one of the largest Japanese expatriate communities in the world. The Japanese pop musician Masumi (who never appears at all comfortable in her role) plays Akemi, who is newly 21 in that Brazilian city and living an ordinary life.At the same time, in Osaka, the Yakuza soldier Takeshi (Tsuyoshi Ihara) is on a hunt that involves him blowing people’s brains out. Back in São Paulo, a hospitalized amnesiac white man breaks out of his medical situation, taking a very shiny (and noisy) ancient sword with him. (The character is played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, his face scarred up like Karloff’s version of Frankenstein’s monster.)It seems inevitable that this group must somehow form a family. OK, not that, but yes, their paths intersect because — of course — Akemi was the sole survivor of that opening massacre. And Takeshi was somehow related and … well, it’s all pretty complicated and not terribly relevant, because fraught chases, frantic fights and various beheadings are really what the movie is all about.The cynical pro forma luridness “Yakuza Princess” grinds out suggests that sensationalist cinema, or at least its most ostensibly mainstream iteration, is currently depleted of resources.Yakuza PrincessRated R for oodles and oodles of violence. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Faya Dayi’ Review: A Dream State

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      Jessica Beshir’s debut feature settles into a trance-like flow.Shot in a rural Ethiopian town, the tone poem “Faya Dayi” settles into a trance-like flow. We watch men and occasionally women musing to one another — about their dreams for the future or about distant lovers, mothers and fathers — but the feel is dreamlike, like a falling dusk, even when the concerns are concrete.Some of that comes from the local importance of khat — an addictive leaf that induces altered states when chewed (variously euphoric and melancholic). But while many are shown harvesting, warehousing, or otherwise touched by the crop, not everyone is under its influence. The documentary’s mystical sensation, after all, springs from choices by the director, Jessica Beshir, particularly the allusive style and monochrome black-and-white photography.Beshir left Ethiopia as a teenager and, returning as an adult to see family, she was struck by khat’s dominance. Also the cinematographer and producer, she flouts common vérité approaches in mapping out the changed community. Ritual objects and dramatic fragments — two kids bathing, a scuffle over emigrating, a madeleine-like musing on coffee — hold center stage more than bright narrative threads. The smoky texture of the images led me to think of her technique as a kind of sfumato: shading in and out of moods of presence, absence and longing.A voice-over recalls the Sufi tale about seeking eternal life (a nod to the spiritual role of khat). Unifying this elliptical canvas is the sense of a contemplative search, which can also mean an escape from an altered homeland, perhaps to dull what feels lost.Faya DayiNot rated. In Amharic, Harari, and Oromo with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters. More

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      ‘Memory House’ Review: Seeking a Niche Between Present and Past

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      An Indigenous worker in Brazil finds a surreal portal of sorts to the culture of his forebears.While I don’t exactly agree that the worst of times generate the most compelling art, political turmoil can certainly inspire some of the angriest work. Case in point: the recent surge of class-conscious films by a number of Brazilian directors, such as Kleber Mendonça Filho (“Bacurau”), responding to the government’s austerity policies and its willful neglect of the country’s cultural heritage.“Memory House,” by the filmmaker João Paulo Miranda Maria, follows suit in somber and surreal fashion, pitting an aging Indigenous Black man from the rural North against the xenophobic inhabitants of an Austrian enclave in the South.Captured by the cinematographer Benjamin Echazarreta in menacing slow zooms and long, contemplative shots, the film follows Cristovam (the renowned actor Antônio Pitanga), an unfortunate outsider toiling away in a sterile-white milk factory where the employees are overtly likened to the livestock.Stoically withstanding an onslaught of racist encounters — the most devastating of which involves the killing of his three-legged pet dog by a group of white teenagers — Cristovam stumbles upon an abandoned house filled with folkloric relics of his cultural past, which prompt jarring hallucinations that occasionally have violent consequences.Better as a mood piece than a political statement, “Memory House” superficially nods to the bloviating politicians and coldblooded capitalists who dictate the lives of people like Cristovam. As he reconnects with his roots, eventually donning a full bull costume in an act of spiritual reclamation, his white neighbors take on an increasingly homogeneous appearance, suggesting an authoritarian hereafter.Trapped in a hopelessly alienating world, Cristovam would rather buck than surrender; a fatal end would seem inevitable, but wisely, Miranda Maria pulls back the reins with a glimpse of empathy that teases a potential way forward.Memory HouseNot rated. In Portuguese and German, with subtitles. In theaters and on virtual cinemas. More

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      ‘We Need to Do Something’ Review: I Think I’ll Stay In

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      A family rides out a diabolical storm by holing up in a bathroom in this slice of confinement horror.As if timed to hurricane season, “We Need to Do Something” kicks off with a family of four riding out a storm in a big suburban bathroom. Then it turns out that the weather forecast is not the issue: the family’s antsy teenager, Melissa (Sierra McCormick), may have sort of unleashed the forces of hellfire through black magic high jinks with a schoolmate.Ill-advised incantations are an All-American horror pastime — “The Gate” (1987), in particular, remains burned in my brain — but the gambit here is to lock us into a single room. The pressure cooker is on: the alcoholic father (Pat Healy) hectors the mother (Vinessa Shaw), while guilty panic leaves Melissa a wreck. Flashbacks reveal some generic hexxing against a gross guy by her and Amy (Lisette Alexis), the dully intense goth she hooked up with. Melissa’s little brother, Bobby (John James Cronin, possessed by the spirit of Ralphie from “A Christmas Story”), is the story’s innocent bystander.Confinement is a classic testing ground for a horror director (there’s even a genre: the haunted house). Sean King O’Grady, making his debut feature, stirs together parental menace, teenage malaise and creature effects (one tedious, one absolutely delicious). The power of suggestion is the chosen method for the chaos outside — offscreen voices and noises — but despite some nifty freak-outs, the movie’s buildup can lack a certain snap.The anxieties of pandemic quarantine were apparently an inspiration for the film, but what might come to mind as well are the bunker sequences of postapocalyptic nuke dramas. Some viewers, especially city folk, might simply marvel at the downright shocking expanse of the suburban bathroom.We Need to Do SomethingNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      'Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles' Review

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      In the Disney+ concert film “Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles,” the pop star Billie Eilish pays tribute to the star-struck hauntedness of that city.The concert film “Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles” finds the pop musician Billie Eilish performing in her hometown, and taking her place in the long lineage of stars who have been shaped by the mythology of Los Angeles.Eilish sings a tight set consisting of songs from her most recent album “Happier Than Ever.” There are brief sequences in which an animated Eilish cruises down billboarded boulevards, or looks over a sprawling vista. But the best tribute to the city comes from the choice of venue, the Hollywood Bowl, and Eilish’s guest collaborators — most notably, the Los Angeles Philharmonic.The Hollywood Bowl amphitheater is completely emptied for this virtual concert, and Eilish plays to an absent crowd. The contrast between the spectacle onstage and the vacuum in the audience suggests the star-struck hauntedness of the City of Angels better than the more direct visual metaphors employed in the animated sequences of the film — trite images of Eilish growing wings and floating into the clouds.As Eilish croons about the pressures of fame, the Hollywood Bowl cradles her, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic lifts her. Strobe lights flash, and the directors, Robert Rodriguez and Patrick Osborne, swirl the camera, peering down at Eilish with distant drone shots. But despite the modern technology, the setting and the sound draws attention to what is retro about this young star’s style, the influences from bossa nova, jazz, and traditional choral music that pop up in her chart-topping records. If there is a surprise to be had in this concert footage, it is that modern pop retains a glimmer of classic Hollywood mystique — here, there’s as much Judy Garland as there is Lana Del Rey.Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los AngelesNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 6 minutes. Watch on Disney+. More

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      ‘Mogul Mowgli’ Review: Rapping for Dear Life

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      Riz Ahmed plays a hip-hop artist who faces illness and identity crises in Bassam Tariq’s electrifying new film.We first meet Zaheen, whose rap moniker is Zed, onstage at a club in New York. Wiry and wired, with a whispery intensity and a quick sense of humor — and played by Riz Ahmed with everything he has — Zed is on the verge of a career breakthrough after years of almost-stardom. He’s also about to break up with his girlfriend, Bina (Aiysha Hart), and face an illness that will precipitate a wrenching identity crisis.But before all that, if you listen to the verses he spits, it’s clear that the puzzles and paradoxes of identity are the wellsprings of his art. A London-bred son of immigrants from Pakistan, he writes seething, witty rhymes about the complicated history of the skin he lives in. He’s a British citizen descended from colonial subjects; a Muslim who is skeptical of piety and tradition; a man of the 21st century burdened by an earlier era’s legacy of partition, displacement and war.Nothing about Zed is simple, and he revels in his own complexity. “Mogul Mowgli,” Bassam Tariq’s astute, compact fictional feature debut, is a portrait of the artist as a son, brother and patient. Not that he’s summed up by such roles, or any others. “Only a few fit those words, so I’m repping for the rest of us,” he raps.Ahmed, who wrote those lyrics (and collaborated with Tariq on the screenplay) reps the character faithfully. Zed’s illness makes “Mogul Mowgli” a companion of sorts to “Sound of Metal,” in which Ahmed played a drummer facing the existential crisis of hearing loss. An autoimmune disease, arriving midway through this movie, quickly renders Zed unable to walk or stand without assistance. Stuck in a hospital bed, he is thrown back into a difficult relationship with his father (the superb Alyy Khan) and into a series of reveries.These unnerving episodes — existing somewhere between dream and memory, fantasy and hallucination — evoke moments from Zed’s childhood and also some of the traumas of South Asian history. One recurrent figure is a wildly dancing man, his face obscured by garlands of flowers. He is identified as Toba Tek Singh, a Punjabi place name that is also the title of a short story (by Saadat Hasan Manto) about the absurdity and tragedy of the 1947 partition of British India into India and Pakistan. Rather than explain the reference, Tariq and Ahmed let Toba Tek Singh stand as a kind of avatar and warning for Zed, who does what he can to master the madness of his circumstances.The film moves briskly though the phases of his predicament. He squabbles with his manager (Anjana Vasan), deals with an obnoxious fan, and endures the admiration of a younger rap acolyte known as RPG (Nabhaan Rizwan), a fool with facial tattoos and wisdom that would make Ali G proud. (“There’s no Drake without Whoopi Goldberg. No Nelson Mandela without apartheid.”)With the director of photography (Annika Summerson) and the sound designer (Paul Davies), Tariq stitches domestic drama, satire and magical realism into a tissue of moods and meanings, held together by the shattering credibility of Ahmed’s performance. In his work, Zed tries to bring coherence to the baffling anarchy of experience. “Mogul Mowgli” accomplishes just that.Mogul MowgliNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Coming to Terms With the Legacy of Rick James

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      For a new documentary, the director and the star’s daughter examine both his pioneering work and his misogyny, as well as a sexual-assault conviction.It’s no question that Rick James is a legend for helping bring “punk-funk” to the mainstream with classics like “Mary Jane” and “Super Freak”; for breaking down the color barrier in rock ’n’ roll; and for confronting the whiteness of MTV in the ’80s. But how do you reckon with the man who is just as famous for committing sexual assault and perpetuating misogyny in the music industry? To Sacha Jenkins, director of the fascinating new documentary, “Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick James,” the answer is complicated.“I think it’s undeniable that he was a brilliant, genius musician and artist, and I think it’s undeniable that he had demons, and it’s undeniable that he did some really horrible, unsavory things,” Jenkins said on a recent video call from Martha’s Vineyard. “So, how do you reconcile the two?”Jenkins talks about his work on the film with the same analytical approach he took to James’s life, allowing audiences to draw their own conclusions about the person behind the larger-than-life image. There is certainly a plethora of biographical information for viewers to take into account in his documentary, debuting Friday on Showtime. “I just wanted to provide folks the tools to make their own decisions,” he added.Jenkins traces James’s story chronologically, from the outspoken musician’s childhood home in 1960s Buffalo, which the singer describes as having, “nice hills, ghetto, rats this big,” stretching out his arms in an archival interview seen in the film.“Bitchin’” details how James began selling drugs there, and how he was in and out of jail several times as a teenager until he joined the military. By 18, he had already experienced the trauma of being sexually abused as a child, getting “whoopings” from his mother and witnessing his father beating her.“I guess you can say, in a way, I was an abused child,” James recalls matter-of-factly in an interview. “But I had a lot of love in my family.”The director Sacha Jenkins, left, with James’s brother, Carmen Sims, center, and Gregory Cromwell, who worked security for James.Christine Shaw, via Mass AppealIt’s fair to suggest that James, who died at 56 in 2004, was already contending with demons he never truly confronted. Even his daughter, Ty James, who is interviewed in the documentary and is a producer, wasn’t privy to the details of his adolescent trauma. “It floated around a little bit, but it wasn’t something that I was totally abreast of,” she said on a separate video call.The world watched those demons play out in personal and professional affairs that were frustrating, toxic and, ultimately, devastating. In essence, he wanted freedom to be a devil-may-care rock star like Mick Jagger — with just as much access to drugs and women. After all, early in his career he performed with Levon Helm (before the Band), and formed the Mynah Birds with the rockers Nick St. Nicholas (who would go on to Steppenwolf) and Neil Young. Later, James battled Motown, because the label wanted to place him in the doo-wop genre, and white-owned networks like MTV because they refused to play music by Black artists.“We’re being sat in the back of the bus, television-style,” he tells a reporter. “This isn’t ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ There are Black people here, and we make music. Don’t we exist?”He had the loud, unapologetic flair of a Black man who grew up powerless, getting beat up by white kids on the block, and who proved revolutionary in another white space: the music industry. In 1981, he called out law enforcement brutality in the song “Mr. Policeman.” “I’m very vocal about injustice,” he says in archival footage. “I’ve never been one to bite my tongue and I never will.”So, in some ways, James was a hero. Even Jenkins, a musician himself, relates to him. “I was someone who liked rock ’n’ roll, hip-hop, skateboarding — a broad range of things. And I was sort of an oddball,” recalled the director, known for “Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men” and “Word Is Bond.” He continued, “But today, you can have rappers who are influenced by heavy metal, and no one’s going to say, ‘You’re a white boy or you’re a sellout.’ Rick was an early proponent of that.”But the empowerment he gained from his success also granted him excess and entitlement he’d never experienced growing up. “You mix all of those early learnings with an environment where no one tells you no, that math adds up to a bad equation,” Jenkins continued.This “bad equation” included, by the singer’s own estimate, a $6,000-to-$8,000 weekly cocaine addiction, a parade of women in and out of his home — some of whom, the film claims, he videotaped performing sexual acts at parties. “Daddy had his share of women, that’s for sure,” Ty James says in the film.She first met her father when she was 13 and she and her brother were sent to stay with him. She remembers “walking over naked girls at 7 in the morning.”James battled MTV when it refused to play music by Black artists.Mark Weiss, via ShowtimeTy James didn’t meet her father until she was sent to live with him at 13. ShowtimeThis was indicative of the era when rock stars hosting orgies in their mansions or using drugs on tour buses were normalized — even popularized. Jenkins argues that contextualizing the time period is just as critical to examining the musician’s legacy. “You can judge Rick James by today’s metrics, or you can try to be realistic about the times he was living in and what he was doing,” he said.By maintaining a bad-boy image, James and many others “would probably stand out like a sore thumb and be ostracized” today, Gail Mitchell, executive director of R&B and hip-hop at Billboard magazine, says in the film. Offstage, the budding musician Roxanne Shante recalls how he took her under his wing but also how he referred to a woman he was living with as “Bitch” so many times that Shante thought that was the woman’s name.Still, the songs he wrote and produced for female acts like Teena Marie and the Mary Jane Girls highlighted a surprising consciousness. “I knew I could write for girls,” James says in the film. “It was easy for me to write for them. I’ve been such an asshole to them that I could kind of reverse and know how they feel.”But in 1991, he was arrested for holding a 24-year-old woman hostage, tying her up, forcing her to perform sex acts and burning her with a crack cocaine pipe. James served five years in prison.To omit that period when considering his legacy is to avoid the whole truth and his humanity — both good and bad. That’s something even Ty James, a self-professed “daddy’s girl,” had to face before agreeing to be a part of “Bitchin’.”“I said, ‘You know what? I’m totally OK with that because my dad did his time for the things he got in trouble for,’” she said. “It goes to show that nobody’s perfect, especially dealing with the type of demons he dealt with. I’d already lived through it. Coming to terms with that was the hardest part.”As Jenkins said, every Rick James fan has wrestled with these contradictions at some point, including the director. “He processed his flaws in a way that created songs that still stand the test of time,” he reflected. “He made music reflective of his life experiences — being a Black man of a certain class in America. Is it misogynist? Sure. But has misogyny gone away suddenly? Has racism gone away suddenly? I don’t think so.” More

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      The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Amazon, HBO, Hulu and More in September

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      Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our favorites for September.Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of September’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime VideoBilly Bob Thornton in “Goliath.”Greg Lewis/Amazon Prime Video‘Goliath’ Season 4Starts streaming: Sept. 24Billy Bob Thornton says goodbye to one of the best characters of his career with the fourth and final season of “Goliath,” a California legal drama inspired by film noir. Thornton has spent three seasons playing Billy McBride, a formerly high-powered and high-living lawyer who crashed hard and has since been trying to redeem himself, one seemingly unwinnable case at a time. For this last run of episodes, Billy finds himself in San Francisco, fighting his mental, physical and emotional frailties while helping a big-time law firm earn a potential billion-dollar settlement against some opioid-peddling pharmaceutical companies. Once again, an ace supporting cast (including the series regular Nina Arianda and the newcomers Bruce Dern, Jena Malone, J.K. Simmons and Elias Koteas) works magnificently to deliver a moody and complex mystery with juicy twists.Also arriving:Sept. 3“Cinderella”Sept. 10“LuLaRich”“Pretty Hard Cases”“The Voyeurs”Sept. 17“Do, Re & Mi”“Everyone’s Talking About Jamie”“The Mad Women’s Ball”New to Apple TV+Jared Harris in a scene from “Foundation.”Helen Sloan/Apple TV+‘Come From Away’Starts streaming: Sept. 10Two national tragedies — the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the COVID-19 pandemic — play a role in this recording of the Tony-winning musical “Come From Away,” shot in a Broadway theater earlier this year in front of a specially selected live audience of emergency responders, health care workers and 9/11 survivors. The show is a tuneful and impressionistic document of a true story from that day, describing the moments of kindness and connection that happened when the friendly Canadian small town of Gander, in Newfoundland, took care of over 7,000 passengers from planes diverted to its airport. Both an imaginative piece of journalism and an emotional recollection of a difficult time, “Come From Away” is a cathartic entertainment, tempering heartbreak with hope.‘Foundation’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 24One of the most influential science-fiction franchises of all time, Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” is as relevant today as it was when the original trilogy of books was written in the 1940s and ’50s. The long-in-development, flashy-looking TV version embraces the modern parallels. Jared Harris plays the brilliant mathematician Hari Seldon, who has crunched the numbers and has determined that the millennia-old galactic empire is due for an irreversible collapse in a few centuries, leading to 30,000 years of chaos. But that chaos could be reduced to a mere 1,000 years if society took immediate steps to preserve its knowledge and culture. The show’s creators, David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman, tell a story that spans multiple planets and decades but is ultimately about how ordinary human weaknesses and fears sometimes keep us from realizing our grandest ambitions.Also arriving:Sept. 17“The Morning Show” Season 2New to Disney+From left, Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman, Peyton Elizabeth Lee and Mapuana Makia in a scene from “Doogie Kamealoha, M.D.”Karen Neal/Disney‘Doogie Kamealoha, M.D.’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 8This remake of the ’90s family dramedy “Doogie Howser, M.D.” moves the action from Los Angeles to Hawaii and changes the protagonist from a teenage boy to a teenage girl (played by the Disney Channel favorite Peyton Elizabeth Lee). But the premise remains the same: What if a child genius finished college and medical school early and became a licensed doctor by age 16? Like the original, this new “Doogie” is a coming-of-age story about a precocious kid, who discovers that knowing a lot about how to fix human bodies hasn’t wholly prepared her for the more adult problems of romantic heartbreak and workplace woes.Also arriving:Sept. 1“Dug Days” Season 1Sept. 3“Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles”Sept. 22“Star Wars: Visions” Season 1New to HBO MaxOscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain in the HBO remake of the Ingmar Bergman series “Scenes From a Marriage.”Jojo Whilden/HBO‘Scenes From a Marriage’Starts streaming: Sept. 12Based on the acclaimed 1973 TV mini-series from Ingmar Bergman, “Scenes From a Marriage” stars Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac as a seemingly content upper-middle-class couple whose relationship begins to splinter when the circumstances in their lives prompt them to scrutinize what they have. Written by the playwright Amy Herzog and the writer-producer-director Hagai Levi (best-known for the original Israeli version of the show that became HBO’s “In Treatment”), this new “Scenes” follows the arc of Bergman’s original story while taking into account what has changed in the past 50 years of gender dynamics. Chastain and Isaac anchor the series, playing a husband and wife who still love and appreciate each other but who have outgrown their old expectations.Also arriving:Sept. 2“Adventure Time: Distant Lands — Wizard City”Sept. 10“Malignant”Sept. 15“A la Calle”Sept. 17“Cry Macho”Sept. 23“Ahir Shah: Dots”“Doom Patrol” Season 3Sept. 26“Nuclear Family”Sept. 30“The Way Down”New to HuluKayvan Novak as Nandor in a scene from Season 3 of “What We Do in the Shadows.”Russ Martin/FX‘What We Do in the Shadows’ Season 3Starts streaming: Sept. 3This hilarious horror mockumentary had a great run last year, with the cast and writers expanding on the show’s initial concept: a Staten Island version of the 2014 New Zealand movie about bickering vampire roommates. “What We Do in the Shadows” is still an episodic sitcom, with each chapter telling its own story. But the larger arc that started to develop in Season 2 continues in Season 3 as this band of slacker bloodsuckers and their shrewd human assistant Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) find themselves presented with new opportunities. Although the characters have richer back stories now — filled with bizarre, centuries-old grudges — this show’s primary asset is still its performances, as some very funny actors react with deadpan irritation at the paranormal craziness surrounding them.‘Y: The Last Man’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 13For over a decade, the Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra comic book series “Y: The Last Man” has been in development for a screen adaptation — first for the movies and then for TV. There’s a good reason the project’s producers have been so persistent: “Y” has an irresistibly juicy premise, depicting a society where an apocalyptic event has killed every mammal with a Y chromosome on Earth except for one. The comics are also filled with memorable characters and thrilling plot twists. This version retains both the grabby story and the fascinatingly eclectic cast — including the title hero, Yorick Brown (Ben Schnetzer). But the series’s head writer, Eliza Clark, has also updated the original’s exploration of gender roles.Also arriving:Sept. 2“Trolls: TrollsTopia” Season 4Sept. 3“The D’Amelio Show” Season 1Sept. 8“Wu-Tang: An American Saga” Season 2Sept. 10“The Killing of Two Lovers”Sept. 16“The Premise” Season 1“Riders of Justice”“Stalker”Sept. 29“Minor Premise”New to PeacockFrom left, Sumalee Montano, Ashley Zukerman and Rick Gonzalez in a scene from “Dan Brown’s the Lost Symbol.”Rafy/Peacock‘Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol’Starts streaming: Sept. 16“The Lost Symbol” is the third novel in Dan Brown’s popular series of books about Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor who specializes in symbology and classical art — and who often ends up using his know-how to help the authorities crack the secret codes underlying international conspiracies. Tom Hanks has played Langdon in the movie versions of Brown’s stories. Ashley Zukerman has taken on the role for a TV adaptation that is meant to serve as an entry point for newcomers. As with the books and the films, this version is a complicated tale of good versus evil, featuring a lot of scenes of smart folks solving ancient puzzles in dark and dangerous chambers.Also arriving:Sept. 2“A.P. Bio” Season 4 More