Television

What’s StreamingSUPER 8 (2011) Stream on Amazon and Hulu. Rent on Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. Directed by J.J. Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg, “Super 8” has all the makings of a classic monster movie. It takes place in 1979, in a small Ohio town largely populated by steel workers and their children, including Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney), the story’s protagonist. Joe — who lives with his father, the local sheriff (Kyle Chandler) — is filming a zombie movie with his 11-year-old friends when they witness a train crash, and they investigate. “You know that, in the homestretch, big battles will be fought, lessons will be learned, the elusive monster will be revealed and other loose ends will be tied up,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The New York Times. He adds, “You may wish it did not all happen in such a perfunctory, predictable way.”DRIVING MISS DAISY (1989) Stream on Netflix. Rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy star in this film adaptation of Alfred Uhry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play. Miss Daisy (Tandy), an affluent Jewish woman in Atlanta, has been deemed no longer fit to operate a vehicle by her son, Boolie (Dan Aykroyd), who instead hires her a driver. He chooses Hoke Calhoun (Freeman) for the job. The 60-year-old widower has an incredible tolerance for Miss Daisy’s stubbornness and the film chronicles a friendship that lasts 25 years. “Miss Daisy and Hoke are as much outsiders for their age and sensibility as for anything else,” Vincent Canby wrote in his review for The Times, adding, “Theirs is the friendship of equals.”What’s on TV#TEAMPLUTO 11:01 p.m. on Discovery. On Feb. 18, 1930, Pluto was discovered at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz. But in 2006, it was reclassified as a dwarf planet. In this Discovery Channel special on Pluto’s 90th anniversary, scientists return to the Lowell Observatory to discuss the reasoning behind the change and the possibility of its gaining status as a planet once again.AMAZON EMPIRE: THE RISE AND REIGN OF JEFF BEZOS 9 p.m. on PBS. This two-hour special explores Jeff Bezos’s multi-billion-dollar company. In Amazon’s 26-year life span, the company and its founder have faced scrutiny over their wide reach and influence. “Amazon Empire” interviews critics who claim the company is nearing a monopoly status, as well as former executives, government officials and Amazon employees.HOT ONES: THE GAME SHOW 10 p.m. on TruTV. This new half-hour game show combines trivia and hot wings for the chance to win $25,000. In each episode, two teams compete in three rounds of trivia accompanied by chicken wings with increasingly spicy sauces. If the contestants can maintain their cool enough to advance through the rounds, they may earn a soothing milkshake and a cash prize. Sean Evans, an executive producer, also hosts. More

What’s on TVAMERICA’S GOT TALENT: THE CHAMPIONS 8 p.m. on NBC. This spinoff of Simon Cowell’s popular talent show closes out its second season with 10 franchise favorites vying for the title “ultimate champion.” The finalists, all acts that did well on previous seasons of “America’s Got Talent” or international versions of the program, include Alexa Lauenburger, whose dog act won the 2017 German competition, and Marcelito Pomoy, the winner from the Philippines in 2011. The dance group V. Unbeatable, a favorite of the judge Howie Mandel, and Sandou Trio Russian Bar, whose acrobatic performance last week was a standout, are also in contention. What’s StreamingTHE EXPANDING UNIVERSE OF ASHLEY GARCIA Stream on Netflix. There is no outrunning adolescence, even for science prodigies. Ashley (Paulina Chávez) spent her childhood becoming the “youngest person ever to earn a Ph.D.” but when the 15-year-old moves to California to do robotics work for NASA she finds herself facing the same problems as her peers, especially when it comes to romance. Ashley’s uncle Victor (Jencarlos Canela), a high school sports coach, isn’t prepared to parent a teenager, but her friend Brook (Bella Podaras) is there to pick up the slack, or at least guide her through traditional coming-of-age rituals like spin the bottle. .A QUIET PASSION (2016) Stream on Sundance Now. Rent on Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube. More than 100 years after her death, Emily Dickinson remains an alluring enigma. Her reclusive lifestyle and enigmatic poetry have left plenty of blank space for later generations to fill in on their own. Last year the movie “Wild Nights With Emily” depicted the writer as the “heroine of a romantic comedy,” while “Dickinson,” a new series on Apple TV+, imbued her life with “millennial angst and sexual fluidity.” This Terence Davies film subverts the caricature of Dickinson that has developed over the years a bit more subtly. The director, A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times, “possesses a poetic sensibility perfectly suited to his subject.” His Dickinson is “a prickly, funny, freethinking intellectual, whose life is less a chronicle of withdrawal from the world than a series of explosive engagements with the universe.” This complex portrayal, he wrote, traces the poet’s development by paying “scrupulous attention to the milieu that fed it” and the existential dilemmas that both motivated and frustrated it.A FAMILY SUBMERGED (2018) Stream on Mubi. María Alché began her cinematic career in 2004 as an actress in Lucrecia Martel’s “The Holy Girl.” Since then she’s studied directing at ENERC, the highly competitive film school in Buenos Aires and begun making her own work. This film, Alché’s debut feature, tells the story of Marcela (Mercedes Moran), a middle-aged mother who grows close with her daughter’s male friend as she mourns her sister’s death. According to A.O. Scott, it “shows signs of Martel’s influence in its blend of oblique narration and subtle psychological insight,” but also demonstrates Alché’s own “arresting visual sensibility.” More