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      ‘All My Friends Hate Me’ Review: Party Animals

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      Things turn nasty when a peculiar stranger infiltrates a reunion of college pals in this clever horror-comedy.Cringe comedy hurtles toward psychological horror in “All My Friends Hate Me,” Andrew Gaynord’s delicious, fearless dive into age-related angst and chronic insecurity.Years have passed since Pete (Tom Stourton) has seen his old friends from college, four of whom are throwing him a 31st birthday party at an ancestral home in the British countryside. After a couple of unnervingly odd encounters en route, Pete, already anxious and out of sorts, arrives to find the house empty. His mood is not improved when, hours later, his friends return from the pub with a weird stranger named Harry (Dustin Demri-Burns), who seems rather too familiar with Pete’s past and personality.Dancing on the line between funny and menacing, the ingenious script (by Stourton and Tom Palmer) is a tonal tease, a limbo where every joke has a threatening edge and every “Just kidding!” only increases Pete’s unease. No one is interested in his volunteer work with refugee children; instead, they seem to be criticizing him at every turn, especially the unsettling Harry, whose mysterious notebook becomes a focus for Pete’s growing anger and paranoia.Cleverly playing with our sympathies, Gaynord, in his feature debut, stirs upper-class twittery and working-class pragmatism into scenes prickling with ambiguity. Was it really a prearranged prank when Harry pursued Pete with an ax? And was Pete’s nightmarish birthday roast a ruse to force him to confess a long-ago sin?Tightly paced and slickly composed, “All My Friends Hate Me” loses its nerve a trace in the final moments. Yet its commitment to unearthing the masochism that lurks at the heart of any reunion is unwavering.All My Friends Hate MeRated R for liberal drug use and conservative nudity. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Turning Red’ Review: Beware the Red-Furred Monster

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      A 13-year-old girl becomes a red panda when she loses her cool in Domee Shi’s heartwarming but wayward coming-of-age film.A quirky Asian teenager transforms into a giant red panda whenever she gets excited … even the premise gives me pause. Which makes the task of reviewing the new Disney/Pixar film “Turning Red” (on Disney+ March 11) especially tricky. Because that’s the idea behind this sometimes heartwarming but wayward coming-of-age movie, which toes the line between truthfully representing a Chinese family, flaws and all, and indulging stereotypes.Meilin Lee (voiced by Rosalie Chiang) is a typical 13-year-old girl: she dances, has crushes on boys and has a cohort of weird but loyal besties who share her obsession with the glossy-lipped members of the boy band 4*Town. She’s also Chinese Canadian, living in Toronto in 2002, where her family maintains a temple. There she helps her loving but overbearing mother, Ming (Sandra Oh), and tries to be the perfect daughter — even when that means burying her own thoughts and desires in the process. This becomes a lot more difficult when she goes through her changes — not of the period variety, but the panda kind.The character writing and design are where “Turning Red,” directed by Domee Shi, most succeeds. Mei has the relatable swagger of the middle school cool nerd — she’s creative and confident, and also has a perfect report card. The tomboy skater girl Miriam, the deadpan Priya and the hilariously fiery Abby form a funky trifecta of gal pals who are Mei’s emotional safety net. And Ming strikes an impressive balance between dictatorial and doting, dismissing Mei’s friends and interests but also stalking her at school to ply her with steamed buns.Shi finds subtle yet effective ways to illustrate the personalities of even the ancillary characters, from the stiffly applied makeup of Mei’s grandmother (Ho-Wai Ching) to the flamboyant open-toed footwear of the gang of aunties who follow Grandma Lee around. And the animation of Mei’s hair in her panda form — how it lays flat when she’s calm or spikes upward when she’s mad — reinforces her emotional shifts.It’s no surprise that these kinds of expressions are where Shi’s direction most shines; as in her 2018 Oscar-winning Pixar short “Bao,” “Turning Red” lives and breathes on the complex emotional relationship between a mother and a child preparing to leave the nest. And also as in “Bao,” in which a mother raises a steamed bun child from birth to adulthood, here again Shi uses a culturally specific metaphor to convey her characters’ emotions.This is where “Turning Red” gets sticky: though the plot’s red panda magic is rooted in its characters’ cultural traditions (the Lees honor an ancestor who defended her family with the power of a red panda), these details aren’t enough to absolve the film of its kid-friendly version of exoticism. After all, its characters profit off Mei’s cute and foreign transformation.And when it comes down to the movie’s conflict, the antagonists are the women in Mei’s family. Or, more accurately, the suffocating cultural traditions and familial expectations that are embodied by the women. The fact that Mei’s grandmother gets the kind of shady introductory scene that you’d expect of the head honcho in a mobster flick, and that these women share the red panda affliction, means they fall into a formula of cold, emotionless Asian women. Is the film tackling the stereotype or fulfilling it? The line is too blurry to tell. By the end, a bit of understanding, empathy and a pandapocalypse reassures us that the stoic Asian dames aren’t the source of the problem but also victims, like Mei. Though I wonder what the movie would look like if the conflict wasn’t enacted solely in the form of these women.“Turning Red” offers satisfying morsels despite its messiness, like the few throwbacks to the early aughts, including Tamagotchis and pre-BTS boy band mania. (4*Town’s criminally catchy songs, written by Billie Eilish and her brother, Finneas O’Connell, are perfect reproductions of 2000s pop hits.)It’s too bad that “Turning Red” fumbles its storytelling, because at the very least it has fun when it lets its fur fly.Turning RedRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. Watch on Disney+. More

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      ‘The Exorcism of God’ Review: Devilishly Demeaning

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      In this regressive tale of demons and damsels, a priest must admit his sins before he can vanquish a malevolent spirit.“The Exorcism of God” opens with the possession of Magali (Irán Castillo), a nun at an orphanage in Mexico whose nipples get at least as much on-screen attention as her face. As soon as Magali and Father Peter Williams (Will Beinbrink), the priest performing her exorcism, are left alone, he rapes her. Such is the nature of this soulless film, directed by Alejandro Hidalgo and written by Hidalgo and Santiago Fernández Calvete.Eighteen years after that exorcism, Peter, still a clergyman, lives in a village where the residents believe he is a saint. When children start dying from what appears to be an incurable illness, he worries it is “a punishment from the Lord.” Indeed it’s a demon — the same one who possessed Magali has reappeared at a nearby women’s prison. Peter calls upon his colleague, Father Michael Lewis (Joseph Marcell) to help him defeat it once and for all.There’s just one hiccup: Peter, who dodged excommunication by never telling his bishop about the whole raping-a-sister thing, can’t vanquish the spirit unless he comes clean. A smarter film might take this opportunity to dissect its corrupt leading man. “The Exorcism of God” does not. Instead it makes Peter an antihero — mainly by throwing a lot of imperiled women and children into his path to save.At one point, Michael explains the concept of an “auteur exorcism” to Peter, insisting that in order to really outsmart a demon, one must not believe in God — he must believe he is God. It feels like a subconscious confession from Hidalgo, who must think quite highly of his own directorial chops to create such misogynistic nonsense in the first place.The Exorcism of GodRated R for rape, carnage and carnal women. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Google Play, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      Who Will Win This Year’s Wild Best Actress Race?

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      There are cases to be made for and against every contender, and no one has an obvious advantage in this upended season.The best actress category is doing the most.Without a strong front-runner to dominate the field, nearly every awards show is offering a different lineup of ladies as we hurtle toward the March 27 Oscar telecast. Will that make it hard to predict the ultimate winner? Yes, but I’m choosing to revel in the chaos.After all, the only actress who hit every notable awards precursor was the “House of Gucci” star Lady Gaga, who wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar. And while you’d normally look to this weekend’s BAFTA ceremony, the EE British Academy Film Awards, to offer some sort of clarity — as it did last year, when the organization picked the eventual Oscar winner, Frances McDormand for “Nomadland” — not a single one of BAFTA’s best actress nominees made the Oscar lineup this year.Like I said, chaos! But fluid races are often more fun, and each of the five Oscar nominees has some notable pluses and minuses that could keep us guessing until the very end. Here’s my rundown.Jessica Chastain, ‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’The case for her: A big, prosthetics-laden performance in a biopic is exactly the sort of thing that awards voters tend to go for, but even Chastain seemed shocked when she prevailed over a tough field at last month’s Screen Actors Guild Awards. Another win in the best actress category at the Critics Choice Awards this Sunday could give her some serious momentum, and it doesn’t hurt that she recently starred in the HBO series “Scenes From a Marriage,” offering a prestige-TV display of her range that can help contextualize the work she did as the lavish-lashed evangelist Tammy Faye Bakker. Also, after two previous nominations, you could argue that she’s due for a win.The case against her: “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” came out all the way back in September and failed to make much of a splash with critics or moviegoers. And though that SAG victory gave Chastain a nice, televised bump, only one of the last three best actress winners there also prevailed with Oscar, suggesting a recent trend of academy members going their own way.Explore the 2022 Academy AwardsThe 94th Academy Awards will be held on March 27 in Los Angeles.A Makeover: On Oscar night, you can expect a refreshed, slimmer telecast and a few new awards. But are all of the tweaks a good thing?A Hit: Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Drive My Car” is the season’s unlikely Oscar smash. The director Bong Joon Ho is happy to discuss its success.  Making History: Troy Kotsur, who stars in “CODA” as a fisherman struggling to relate to his daughter, is the first deaf man to earn an Oscar nomination for acting. ‘Improbable Journey’: “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom” was filmed on a shoestring budget in a remote Himalayan village. In a first for Bhutan, the movie is now an Oscar nominee.Olivia Colman, ‘The Lost Daughter’The case for her: It isn’t easy to win a pair of best actress Oscars in short succession, but after Frances McDormand snagged two of the past four trophies in this race, why shouldn’t Colman add another to the Oscar she won for “The Favourite”? (I suspect she came very close to winning a best supporting actress Oscar last year for her sympathetic performance in “The Father,” and that will only raise her chances.) It helps, too, that she’s the only best actress candidate from a film with a screenplay that was also nominated — in fact, “The Lost Daughter,” about a conflicted mother, took the screenplay award and two more this past week at the Independent Spirit Awards, including the show-closing trophy for best film.The case against her: Despite all of that love from the Indie Spirits, Colman’s performance wasn’t even nominated by the group, and she was snubbed again by BAFTA even though British actors are ostensibly her main constituency. (I told you this best actress race was screwball!) Some Oscar voters simply aren’t sympathetic to her character’s doll-stealing arc, and there’s always the chance that her co-star Jessie Buckley’s presence in the supporting actress category might dilute Colman’s candidacy, since they play the same woman at different ages.Penélope Cruz, ‘Parallel Mothers’The case for her: The membership of the academy is growing ever more international, which probably helped Cruz leap into this lineup and may even push her toward a win. Sony Pictures Classics is handling “Parallel Mothers,” and Cruz’s late-breaking momentum recalls the studio’s “The Father,” which netted a lead-actor win for Anthony Hopkins last year after it peaked just as his competitors’ films began to fade. And in a field of polarizing performances, Cruz’s well-reviewed work offers a chic choice that Oscar voters can feel good about taking.The case against her: Cruz is the only actress on this list who was snubbed by SAG, BAFTA, the Golden Globes, and the Critics Choice Awards, and though it’s harder to score with those groups when you’re delivering a performance that’s not in English, that still leaves her with no real place to pop before the Oscars.Nicole Kidman, ‘Being the Ricardos’The case for her: Doesn’t Nicole Kidman seem like the sort of movie star who should have two Oscars by now? Her only win came almost 20 years ago, for “The Hours,” and when Colman and Cruz are also vying for a second statuette, Kidman could credibly claim that she’s been waiting the longest for her pair. Kidman’s “Ricardos” co-stars Javier Bardem and J.K. Simmons were nominated, too, suggesting that the academy’s sizable actors branch has real affection for the film. And of all of the best actress candidates who transformed themselves to play a real person, Kidman may have had the highest difficulty curve to overcome, since her character, Lucille Ball, was a once-in-a-lifetime comic genius.Our Reviews of the 10 Best-Picture Oscar NomineesCard 1 of 10“Belfast.” More

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      Conrad Janis, Father on ‘Mork & Mindy’ and Much More, Dies at 94

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      His role on the hit sitcom was just one of more than 100 film and television credits; he was also a fine jazz trombonist and co-owner of an art gallery.Conrad Janis, an actor familiar to television viewers as Mindy’s father on the hit sitcom “Mork & Mindy” who was also a skilled jazz musician and a gallerist well known in the New York art world, died on March 1 in Los Angeles. He was 94.Dean A. Avedon, his business manager, confirmed the death.Mr. Janis, a child of the noted art collectors and gallerists Sidney and Harriet (Grossman) Janis, moved easily between the worlds of high art, jazz and acting, sometimes switching one hat for another in the same evening.“Conrad Janis Is Glad to Live Three Lives,” the headline on a 1962 Newsday article read. At the time he was starring in the romantic comedy “Sunday in New York” on Broadway and, after the Friday and Saturday night performances, playing trombone with his group, the Tailgate 5, at Central Plaza in Manhattan. (On Sundays he’d trek to Brooklyn to play at the club Caton Corner.) When not onstage or on the bandstand, he could often be found at his father’s art gallery.Sixteen years later he found himself on one of the most popular shows on television when he was cast on “Mork & Mindy,” which premiered in September 1978, as the father of Mindy (Pam Dawber), a Colorado woman who befriends an eccentric alien (Robin Williams). On Sundays during this period, he played in the Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band at the Ginger Man, a club in Beverly Hills, Calif., whose owners included Carroll O’Connor of “All in the Family.”The key to juggling three areas of expertise, Mr. Janis told Newsday, was keeping his personas separate.“It just wouldn’t do to tell a knowledgeable art patron that ‘man, I dig Picasso the wildest,’” he said.Mr. Janis, an accomplished trombonist as well as a busy actor, peformed regularly with the Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band. Among the other members of the band, seen in performance in 1980, was his fellow actor George Segal, who played banjo and sang.Ralph Dominguez/MediaPunch, via AlamyConrad Janis was born on Feb. 11, 1928, in Manhattan. His parents had a successful shirt-making business early in their married life, which gave them the wherewithal to begin collecting art and, in 1948, open the Sidney Janis Gallery, which became, as The New York Times put it in Sidney Janis’s obituary in 1989, “a major pacesetter for the art world in the 1950s and ’60s.”Harriet Janis also wrote books with the jazz historian Rudi Blesh, including “They All Played Ragtime” (1950). That connection led to Conrad’s musical expertise. Mr. Blesh’s daughter played trombone in her school’s marching band but lost interest; the spare trombone ended up in Conrad’s hands. He particularly studied the music of the influential New Orleans trombonist and bandleader Kid Ory.“I memorized a lot of what he did,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1988.His acting developed alongside his musicianship. When he was 13, a classmate at the Little Red School House in Manhattan told him that “Junior Miss,” a popular Broadway comedy about a teenage girl, was holding auditions for a road company. He auditioned, got in, and spent two years with the tour, advancing to a leading juvenile role. He started doing radio voice work at the same time.“I played kids of 14 and old men of 40” on the radio, he told The New York Times in a 1945 interview.He landed a role in the pre-Broadway run of “The Dark of the Moon,” which got him noticed by a Hollywood talent scout. He remained with the play when it went to New York, making his Broadway debut in March 1945, but within a few months he was on the West Coast to make his first film, the comedy “Snafu,” in which he played a teenager who lies about his age to enlist.It was the first of more than 100 film and television credits. In the movies, he played alongside some famous names: Ronald Reagan and Shirley Temple in the notoriously bad “That Hagan Girl” (1947), Charlton Heston and other prominent stars in “Airport 1975” (1974), Lynn Redgrave in “The Happy Hooker” (1975), George Burns in “Oh God! Book II” (1980).He was on television from the medium’s earliest days, playing numerous roles in the late 1940s and ’50s, many of them on shows like “Suspense,” “Actor’s Studio” and “The Philco Television Playhouse” that were broadcast live. Some of those roles took advantage of his familiarity with musical instruments.“All through the ’50s,” he told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1981, “I was in so many TV shows as a young musician on drugs, desperately trying to kick the habit, that I’m sure I helped cement in the public’s mind a relationship between musicians and dope. All they cast me in were shows in which I did or didn’t kick the habit. I was always saying, ‘Hey, man, I just got to have a fix.’”He continued to play small parts on TV in the 1960s and ’70s before landing his best-known role, Mindy’s father. His character operated a music store, but although “Mork & Mindy” ran for four seasons, he never got a chance to play his trombone on the show, something he regretted.“The producers wouldn’t go for it,” he told The Albany Democrat-Herald of Oregon in 1990. “We had a really cute script where I got together with my old Dixieland jazz band, but they didn’t think it was funny enough.”Mr. Janis with Thomas Scott, left, and Steven Scott in the 1996 movie “The Cable Guy.”He continued to work in television after “Mork,” with appearances on “St. Elsewhere,” “Murder, She Wrote,” “Frasier” and other shows. His later movie appearances included small roles in “Mr. Saturday Night” (1992) and “The Cable Guy” (1996). He sometimes collaborated with his wife, Maria Grimm, including directing two movies she wrote, “The Feminine Touch” (1995) and “Bad Blood” (2012).Mr. Janis’s acting career also included a dozen Broadway credits, among them the Gore Vidal play “A Visit to a Small Planet” in 1957 and a revival of “The Front Page” in 1969.Throughout his musical and acting adventures, Mr. Janis also kept a hand in the art world.Arne Glimcher, the founder and chairman of Pace Gallery and a friend of Mr. Janis’s for almost 60 years, said Mr. Janis worked for his father at the Sidney Janis Gallery and was responsible for certain artists there, including Claes Oldenburg and Tom Wesselmann.“His knowledge of 20th-century art and Modernism was really encyclopedic,” Mr. Glimcher said in a phone interview.When Sidney Janis reached 90, he turned the Janis Gallery over to Conrad and his brother, Carroll, who kept it going until 1999.Mr. Janis’s first marriage, to Vicki Quarles, ended in divorce, as did his second, to Ronda Copland. Ms. Grimm, whom he married in 1987, died in September. He is survived by his brother; two children from his first marriage, Christopher and Carin Janis; two grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.Mr. Glimcher said that in recent years some of Mr. Janis’s old jazz pals would come to his home in Beverly Hills on Thursdays and play. When his wife died, Mr. Glimcher said, Mr. Janis gave her a jazz funeral, then changed the location of those jam sessions.“Every Thursday,” Mr. Glimcher said, “he took the jazz band to her mausoleum and played there.” More

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      How the ‘Encanto’ Soundtrack Became a Smash

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      With its eighth week at No. 1 on Billboard’s album chart, the LP featuring songs from Lin-Manuel Miranda is a lesson in how fans drive hits from social media to streaming services.The soundtrack to Disney’s “Encanto” had an inauspicious start on the Billboard 200 album chart, arriving at No. 197 after the animated film’s release in November, just below Bob Seger’s “Greatest Hits” and a Notorious B.I.G. reissue.But this week the soundtrack, featuring songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda and a score by Germaine Franco, notches its eighth week at No. 1 — one of only three albums with a run this long in the last five years — while Miranda’s song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” slipped to second place on the Hot 100 singles chart after five times at the top.What happened in between is an object lesson in how songs become hits now, with tracks elevated by fans through streaming and social media, and radio often lagging behind the curve.For “Encanto” and “Bruno,” the key factor was TikTok. Soon after the film became available for streaming on Disney+ on Christmas Eve, fans shared their reflections there and acted out scenes from the movie, about an extended family in Colombia that has been touched by magic.“The first instance on TikTok was people posting that these characters look like me and my family, that I’m seeing myself in this picture,” said Ken Bunt, president of the Disney Music Group. “Then it fairly quickly moved into another phase, where people were doing the dances and singing to it.”Explore the World of ‘Encanto’Disney’s new film, about a gifted family in Colombia, pairs stunning animation with spellbinding songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda.Review: “Encanto” charms with its focus on family dynamics, fantastic feats of wizardry and respect for Latino culture, writes our film critic.The Voice of Mirabel: Stephanie Beatriz, who won over fans with her role in “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” discusses taking on the lead role in the film.An Enchanting Soundtrack: The film’s album of music recently climbed to the top of the Billboard 200, displacing Adele’s “30.”A Slice of His Homeland: A Times reporter watched “Encanto” with her Colombian father. Here’s what they thought.Once ignited on TikTok — where videos tagged #wedonttalkaboutbruno have been viewed 3.5 billion times — “Bruno” and other soundtrack songs, like “Surface Pressure,” began to dominate Spotify, Apple Music and other audio streaming outlets. The soundtrack ousted Adele’s “30” from No. 1 on Billboard’s album chart in early January and has since held that slot every week but one.Since its release, “Encanto” has had the equivalent of just under one million sales in the United States, according to MRC Data, the tracking service used in compiling Billboard’s charts. This week, “Encanto” tops the rapper Kodak Black’s new “Back for Everything” (No. 2) and albums by Morgan Wallen (No. 3), Gunna (No. 4) and the Weeknd (No. 5).On the singles chart, “Bruno” was replaced at No. 1 by Glass Animals’ “Heat Waves,” a song released nearly two years ago that was resuscitated as a TikTok meme and recently got a fresh boost on the radio.Even with the imprimatur of Miranda, the Tony-, Emmy- and Grammy-winning creator of “Hamilton,” “Encanto” might have seemed a long shot as a mainstream pop hit. The album is a pan-Latin fusion that draws on Colombian folk styles like vallenato and bambuco, with touches of salsa, Broadway bombast and rock en Español.In the past, Disney might have leaned on a Broadway-style ballad, with a globally recognized star singing in English, to propel one of its soundtracks. (Think Elton John’s “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” from “The Lion King,” which went to No. 4 in 1994.)“Encanto” flips that playbook, showcasing Colombian stars like Carlos Vives and Sebastián Yatra. “Bruno,” a complex ensemble piece with a classic cha-cha beat, is credited to six of the film’s cast members. “Dos Oruguitas,” the first song Miranda wrote from start to finish in Spanish, is nominated for an Oscar.To record the album, producers brought in Colombian specialists to help bring authenticity to the rhythms and instrumental arrangements; most of the sessions, which took place last year, were conducted remotely.But even with its use of acoustic instruments like the cuatro and the tiple — two relatives of the guitar — the sound of “Encanto” is not as distant from the pop mainstream as it may seem. Mike Elizondo, one of the album’s producers, who has worked with Dr. Dre, Fiona Apple and the band Twenty One Pilots, pointed out the heavy bass that drives songs like “Bruno,” and the presence of synthesizers that would not be out of place on a rap hit.“When we were making the music to the soundtrack, Lin was very encouraging,” Elizondo said in an interview. “‘Let’s not try and water anything down,’” he recalled Miranda saying. “‘Let’s not feel like we have to follow any of the rules of prior soundtracks.’”Even so, “Bruno” was almost entirely absent from radio for most of its ascent. Disney did not begin promoting it to radio stations until late January, Bunt said. In recent weeks, “Bruno” has had fewer than 4,000 spins a week on radio stations. By comparison, in the week that Adele’s “Easy on Me” first reached No. 1, in October, American radio stations played it more than 18,000 times.Videos shared on social media helped contextualize the story behind “Bruno” in a way that radio play never could. TikTok clips show fans enacting the story, while a Disney clip on YouTube translates the lyrics into 21 languages, including Norwegian, Thai and Korean. The latest viral mutation in the success of “Bruno” is mash-ups with Doja Cat or Bruno Mars (get it?).In a sense, those videos capitalize on one of the advantages of any successful soundtrack, from the days of “Saturday Night Fever” to “Frozen,” Disney’s last comparable blockbuster: a story line that links the songs together and lets fans relive the film through its hits. That has become vital in the streaming age, when individual songs are increasingly disconnected from their albums.“They’re like potato chips: you can’t eat just one,” said Gary Trust, Billboard’s senior director of charts. “With ‘Encanto’ songs, you can’t just listen to one. You want to relive the whole story.” More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘The Thing About Pam’ and the Critics Choice Awards

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      Renée Zellweger stars in a new true-crime mini-series. And this year’s Critics Choice Awards ceremony airs on the CW and TBS.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, March 7 -13. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE THING ABOUT PAM 10 p.m. on NBC. The slurp of a Big-Gulp-size beverage becomes something sinister in this true-crime limited series, which stars Renée Zellweger as a Missouri woman, Pam Hupp, who is implicated in a murder that ultimately reveals a larger illicit scheme. It’s a juicy role for Zellweger, who squares off with Judy Greer (as a prosecutor) and Josh Duhamel (a defense attorney). For more true crime, see the two-part documentary UNDERCURRENT: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF KIM WALL, debuting on HBO at 9 p.m., which looks at the killing of Wall, a Swedish journalist, in 2017 while she was reporting a story aboard a submarine.TuesdayTHE GREEN KNIGHT (2021) 7 p.m. on Showtime. You’ve probably already seen a movie about King Arthur — or at least have heard the tales, or baked with the flour. You’re less likely to have seen the tale of Arthur’s nephew Gawain — the subject of the anonymous 14th-century poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” — on the big screen. This aesthetically pleasing adaptation from the filmmaker David Lowery stars Dev Patel as Gawain, who goes on a quest to hunt down a giant. In his review for The New York Times, A.O. Scott called the movie “sumptuous, ragged and inventive.”WednesdayDOMINO MASTERS 9 p.m. on Fox. Ambitious domino builders square off in this new competition show, in which contestants vie to create the most impressive toppling-domino arrangements, Rube Goldberg style. Expect the exactitude required here — where a false move can completely ruin a project — to create some tense moments. Imagine a reality cooking show in which chefs have to juggle their culinary creations before the judges sit down to eat.ThursdayMahershala Ali, left, and Matthew McConaughey in “Free State of Jones.”Murray Close/STX EntertainmentFREE STATE OF JONES (2016) 7:40 p.m. on FXM. The composer Nicholas Britell and the actor Mahershala Ali worked on two notably different movies released in 2016: Barry Jenkins’s Oscar-winning contemporary coming-of-age story “Moonlight” and Gary Ross’s historical drama “Free State of Jones.” In Ross’s movie, Ali plays a man named Moses, who is a close friend and confidant of the film’s subject, Newton Knight (Matthew McConaughey), a Southern dissident who established a homespun army that rebelled against the Confederacy in Mississippi, and whose work on behalf of African American rights extended beyond the war. In his review for The Times, A.O. Scott praised what he called Ross’s “unusual respect for historical truth,” and wrote that he does “a good job of balancing the factual record with the demands of dramatic storytelling.” Another of Ross’s movies, the jockey drama SEABISCUIT (2003), will also air on Thursday, at 4 p.m. on Showtime.FridayJULIA (1977) 6 p.m. on TCM. Jane Fonda plays a fictionalized version of the playwright and author Lillian Hellman in this historical drama. Adapted from a slice of Hellman’s 1973 book, “Pentimento: A Book of Portraits,” the film takes place in the lead-up to the Second World War, centering on a friendship between Hellman and a character known only as Julia (Vanessa Redgrave), a young American woman from a wealthy family who uses her money to aid anti-Nazi efforts. The movie was also the feature debut of Meryl Streep, who has a small role as another friend of Hellman’s.SaturdayRachel Zegler in “West Side Story.”Niko Tavernise/20th Century StudiosWEST SIDE STORY (2021) 8 p.m. on HBO. The last few years have brought two attempts to reinvigorate “West Side Story.” On Broadway in 2020, the Belgian experimental theater director Ivo van Hove presented a version that injected the musical with projected video and skinny jeans. Even more recently, we got this big-screen rethink from Steven Spielberg, which reworks some elements while sticking closer to the original Broadway and Hollywood productions, at least on the surface (take one look at the sets and haircuts here, and you know we’re in mid-20th-century New York City). But this version of the forbidden-love story between Maria (Rachel Zegler) and Tony (Ansel Elgort) still has a lot of new ideas, thanks in large part to its substantial reworking of Arthur Laurents’s book by the playwright Tony Kushner and its ​​new choreography by Justin Peck. In his review for The Times, A.O. Scott wrote that the new movie makes the musical feel “bold, surprising and new,” even as the performances and the transitions between musical numbers and other scenes can be uneven. “The seams — joining past to present, comedy to tragedy, America to dreamland — sometimes show,” Scott wrote. “But those seams,” he added, “are part of what makes the movie so exciting. It’s a dazzling display of filmmaking craft that also feels raw, unsettled and alive.”SundayTaye Diggs hosting the Critics Choice Awards in 2020. He will host this year’s ceremony on Sunday alongside the comic actress Nicole Byer.Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Critics Choice AssociationTHE 27TH ANNUAL CRITICS CHOICE AWARDS 7 p.m. on the CW and TBS. Awards season will continue on Sunday night with this broadcast of the Critics Choice Awards, which this year comes just two weeks before the Oscars. The nominees for best picture at the Critics Choice awards largely overlap with the Oscars — “West Side Story,” “CODA,” “Don’t Look Up,” “Dune,” “King Richard,” “Licorice Pizza,” “Nightmare Alley” and “The Power of the Dog” are all nominated for the top prize in both competitions — with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Tick, Tick … Boom!” taking the place of the Haruki Murakami adaptation “Drive My Car” at the Critics Choice awards. There are also differences in the best actor and actress categories, which here include nominations for Nicolas Cage (“Pig”), Peter Dinklage (“Cyrano”), Lady Gaga (“House of Gucci”) and Alana Haim (“Licorice Pizza”), none of whom will be up for an acting award at the Oscars. Taye Diggs and Nicole Byer host. More