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      ‘Worth’ Review: Appraising Lives

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      This drama starring Michael Keaton is a surprisingly effective movie about a tricky subject — the creation of the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund.The central question of “Worth” is whether it’s possible to reduce a life to a dollar value. The film, directed by Sara Colangelo (the American remake of “The Kindergarten Teacher”), dramatizes the creation of the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund, which the federal government established after the attacks to limit lawsuits against the airlines. The lawsuits’ downstream effects, the reasoning went, could sink the United States economy.“Worth” follows Kenneth R. Feinberg (an excellent, Boston-accented Michael Keaton), the lawyer appointed as the special master of the fund, through the two-year process of defining the project’s parameters and of getting potential plaintiffs to sign on.Notwithstanding skepticism from others, including Camille Biros (Amy Ryan), the business manager of Feinberg’s firm, it takes some time for the film’s Feinberg to understand he has underestimated the grief of the bereaved. Cold and imperious, he barely gets a word in at his first town hall with the victims. He discovers he won’t be able to farm out every interview or clerical assignment. A man who shuts out the world by listening to opera on headphones, he will have to leave his rarefied comfort zone.Even assessing “Worth” as entertainment feels fraught. Only survivors can judge whether its Hollywoodized simplifications are appropriate. The screenplay, by Max Borenstein, substantially funnels the breadth of criticism directed at Feinberg into the character of Charles Wolf (a superb Stanley Tucci), who, as he did in real life, runs a website demanding fixes to the fund. The other potential beneficiaries are composites. Laura Benanti plays a firefighter’s wife whose husband left more obligations than she knew. Andy Schneeflock appears as a man whose same-sex partner died in the Pentagon attack. The deceased’s parents and Virginia law don’t recognize the relationship.With most characters standing in for swaths of people who didn’t fit Feinberg’s formulations, “Worth” itself risks reducing individuals to types. Still, it’s probably impossible to make a mainstream movie without such streamlining, let alone to make a movie like “Worth,” on a subject that is not only challenging but superficially too technocratic for a two-hour movie. There are not many classic films about heroic legal settlements.For all the ways in which it might give short shrift to the politics or policy of the fund, “Worth” is uncommonly moving by the standards of biopics and certainly by the standards of movies that risk addressing 9/11 so overtly. Colangelo directs with what appears to be conscious restraint, in ways by turns calculated and powerful. She keeps the faces of figures who will die in the attacks just out of view as they leave their spouses for work the morning of Sept. 11. She doesn’t re-create images of the burning towers except in a reflection in Feinberg’s train window. A lengthy pan gradually reveals the size of a wall of missing-persons posters.The principal performances are uniformly strong, even with actors who do not resemble their real-life counterparts. Is it possible to reduce such complexities to an absorbing procedural? “Worth” argues yes.WorthRated PG-13. Trauma from the attacks. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘The Year of the Everlasting Storm’ Review: Home Movies

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      Seven directors present their views of the year of pandemic lockdown, but most fall into predictable territory.You can’t blame filmmakers for keeping busy during lockdown. The omnibus film “The Year of the Everlasting Storm” assembles pandemic-made shorts from around the globe. But with just two decent segments out of seven, this anthology uncannily replicates the sensation of feeling trapped.The highlights come first and last. Iran’s Jafar Panahi, who has dealt with the restrictions of filming at home before (he made his extraordinary “This Is Not a Film” in his apartment, defying a moviemaking ban), delivers a sweet, minor document of a cautious visit by his mother, who arrives wearing what looks like full hazmat gear. She video chats with her granddaughter (spritzing the phone with sanitizer first) and negotiates an accord with Panahi’s pet iguana, Iggy.From Thailand, Apichatpong Weerasethakul (“Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives”) closes out the feature with a nonnarrative short that intermingles the reverberations of tube lights and the buzzing of insects. Weerasethakul recorded the sound himself, and at a point the bugs’ fluttering seems to merge with scratchy spoken words.The other segments fall into more predictable territory. Anthony Chen (“Wet Season”), whose chapter is set in China, follows two parents and their young son as stir craziness sets in. In California, Malik Vitthal (“Body Cam”) mixes media, using camera phone footage and animation for a short documentary in which the coronavirus complicates an already complicated custody situation. The Chilean director Dominga Sotomayor (“Too Late to Die Young”) and the American David Lowery (“The Green Knight”) barely make impressions.And Laura Poitras (the Edward Snowden doc “Citizenfour”), working with the London-based research group Forensic Architecture, conjures a paranoia-suffused atmosphere as she shares highlights from an investigation into an Israeli cyberweapons manufacturer. But the brief running time does not allow for sufficient context.The Year of the Everlasting StormNot rated. In Persian, Mandarin, English, Spanish and Thai, with subtitles Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. 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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      ‘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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      ‘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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      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

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ and ‘Yannick’

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      “What We Do in the Shadows” returns for a third season on FX. And PBS airs a documentary about the orchestra conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin.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, Aug. 30-Sept. 5. Details and times are subject to change.Monday8:46 FILMS (2021) 8 p.m. on BET. This program — named for the amount of time that the former Minneapolis police officer, and now convicted murderer, Derek Chauvin was originally reported to have knelt on the neck of George Floyd — collects four short films that explore Black love and joy. The films, directed by Camrus Johnson, Marshall Tyler, Zoey Martinson and Gibrey Allen, include a comedy about three children who play matchmaker for their school bus driver and an animated piece about an older woman who escapes to a dream world. The running time of each film is 8 minutes and 46 seconds.TuesdayFUTURE OF WORK 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). This new documentary series looks at the ways American jobs are changing as a result of cultural and technological shifts (including the increasing prevalence of artificial intelligence and digital nomads), as well as how the pandemic has accelerated such workplace trends. The three episodes are built around case studies of several individuals whose careers have been affected by these larger shifts, and include interviews with experts who talk about them.WednesdayWHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS 10 p.m. on FX. “Humans are so [expletive] stupid and boring and lazy,” the filmmaker Taika Waititi told The New York Times in 2019, “that given the gift of immortality, you’d never get around to doing anything.” He was talking about the logic that drives this proudly silly TV series, which was born of his and Jemaine Clement’s 2015 mockumentary movie of the same name. The show’s plot centers on a group of vampire roommates living on modern-day Staten Island. Its third season, which debuts Wednesday night, picks up where the second season left off: with members of the group facing the realization that one of their own is actually a vampire hunter.ThursdayCMA SUMMER JAM 8 p.m. on ABC. Over two nights in July, several country music stars — including Miranda Lambert, Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton — performed at a large outdoor theater in Nashville. This special combines footage of those large-scale performances with recordings of more intimate ones shot at other Nashville locales, including a nightclub and a pedestrian bridge.FridayYannick Nézet-Séguin, the subject of “Great Performances: Yannick – An Artist’s Journey,” conducting the Metropolitan Opera.Metropolitan OperaGREAT PERFORMANCES: YANNICK — AN ARTIST’S JOURNEY 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Audiences in the Northeast are expected to have many chances to see the star orchestra conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin in person this fall, in performances with the Metropolitan Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra; he is the music director of both organizations. So now is a good time for PBS to air this documentary about him, which charts his background and rise through interviews, home movies and behind-the-scenes moments, like Nézet-Séguin coaching younger artists including the soprano Gabriella Reyes. Given Nézet-Séguin’s astounding number of commitments (he’s also the artistic director and principal conductor of the Orchestre Métropolitain in Montreal), there should be no shortage of backstage footage. “I am very busy and high energy, but I am not hyperactive,” Nézet-Séguin told The Times in 2019. “The loneliness of studying a score is one of the things that attracted me to becoming a conductor.”SaturdayTahar Rahim and Jodie Foster in “The Mauritanian.”Graham Bartholomew/STXfilmsTHE MAURITANIAN (2021) 8 p.m. on Showtime. In his 2015 memoir, “Guantánamo Diary,” Mohamedou Ould Slahi wrote about American national security operatives ripping him from his life as an electrical engineer and telecommunications specialist in Nouakchott, Mauritania, torturing him and eventually imprisoning him at Guantánamo Bay, where he remained for over a dozen years — even as the charges against him fell away. (He’d come under suspicion for having connections to Al Qaeda.) This adaptation of the memoir casts Tahar Rahim as Slahi. It focuses on a period in which a defense attorney (Jodie Foster) is working to get a hearing for Slahi.HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN (2004) 10:30 p.m. on E!. Twenty years ago this summer, Alfonso Cuarón released “Y Tu Mamá También,” his film about a love triangle that forms between two teenage boys and a somewhat older woman during a road trip in Mexico. It was a landmark film for Cuarón and his stars, Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna and Maribel Verdú — and a box-office smash with a sexual openness that generated both controversy and praise. Cuarón’s next move was surprising: The boundary-pushing director helmed this third installment of the “Harry Potter” series. It was a departure, though it could be argued that the dynamic between the emotionally mature woman and two comparatively juvenile young men in “Y Tu Mamá También” also applies to Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, whose complicated friendship is as much a focus of this movie as the fight against evil wizards.Tom Hanks and Helena Zengel in a scene from “News of the World.”Bruce W. Talamon/Universal PicturesNEWS OF THE WORLD (2020) 8 p.m. on HBO. With their 2013 action movie, “Captain Phillips,” Tom Hanks and the director Paul Greengrass pulled thrills out of an actual 21st-century event: the famous 2009 hijacking of a cargo ship in the Indian Ocean. Seven years later, Hanks and Greengrass turned to a historical setting — and a fictional story — with this spare western. Based on a novel of the same name by Paulette Jiles, “News of the World” casts Hanks as a former Confederate captain who, five years after the end of the Civil War, takes it upon himself to escort a young, orphaned girl (Helena Zengel) to a faraway aunt and uncle. It’s a treacherous trip and a classic western setup. Greengrass, A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times, “honors the genre tradition rather than trying to reinvent it.”SundaySINGIN’ IN THE RAIN (1952) 6 p.m. on TCM. When this MGM musical about late-1920s Hollywood debuted in New York in March of 1952, the Times critic Bosley Crowther praised the “music, dance, color, spectacle and a riotous abundance,” which have since helped make it a classic. “All elements in this rainbow program,” Crowther wrote, “are carefully contrived and guaranteed to lift the dolors of winter and put you in a buttercup mood.” It’s still summer right now — but many of us could probably use something to put us in a “buttercup mood,” so in that sense, the timing of this broadcast is quite good. More