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      Stream These Movies and TV Shows Before They Leave Netflix in June

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      A handful of great titles are leaving as early as the first weekend of the month. Catch them while you can.Oscar winners and tasteful trash get equal footing among the titles departing Netflix in the United States next month, alongside a compulsively watchable crime show, a pitch-perfect Jane Austen adaptation and a cult classic in the making. (Dates reflect the first day titles are unavailable and are subject to change.)‘Beginners’ (June 1)Stream it here.The writer and director Mike Mills crafts a lovely, lively combination of memory play and serio-comic romance, weaving together two tales of complicated romance. Oliver (Ewan McGregor) is a modern man, scruffy and sensitive, who falls for a French actress (Mélanie Laurent); his father, Hal (Christopher Plummer), a recent widower, has just come out as gay at the tender age of 75 and is rapturously in love with the much younger Andy (Goran Visnjic) when his health takes a turn. Mills’s sharp and sensitive screenplay gracefully sidesteps the clichés of both the coming-out movie and the disease-of-the-week movie, with a big assist from the talented cast. Plummer took home a well-deserved Oscar for his memorable supporting turn, Laurent and Visnjic are lovable but not overly idealized, and this is one of the best showcases to date for McGregor’s cozy charm.‘Burlesque’ (June 1)Stream it here.Critics were not exactly kind to this 2010 ode to the pleasures of contemporary burlesque from the writer-director Steven Antin — a world in which that old time hoochie-coo has been reclaimed as a rich text of performative femininity, peekaboo voyeurism and good old-fashioned camp. And it’s easy to see why; little in his screenplay is particularly original. But that familiarity is part of the movie’s appeal. Without winking at the audience or condescending to the material, he cheerfully borrows and deploys the standard narratives of such lower-rung showbiz tales. Christina Aguilera is charismatic as that old chestnut the naïve Midwestern girl with big dreams, while Cher plays the wise old veteran who shows her the ropes with offhand wit and seen-it-all wariness.‘Pride & Prejudice’ (June 1)Stream it here.The striking success of the recent 20th anniversary theatrical rerelease of this 2005 award winner is even more surprising when reflecting on its presence on Netflix — viewers could quite easily have stayed home to stream this adaptation of the Jane Austen classic, but its admirers love it so much that they plopped down their ticket money all over again. It’s not hard to understand why; Joe Wright’s direction is both sweeping and intimate, tender and evocative, while Deborah Moggach’s screenplay captures succinctly the wit and romantic longing of Austen’s text. Throw in a peerless cast (including Brenda Blethyn, Judi Dench, Tom Hollander, Keira Knightley, Jena Malone, Rosamund Pike, Donald Sutherland and a pre-“Succession” Matthew Macfadyen) and you’ve got one of the finest Austen adaptations to date.‘Two Weeks Notice’ (June 1)Stream it here.Once upon a time, the multiplexes were filled with affable little romantic comedies, in which great-looking stars bantered gamely and pretended not to be perfect for each other for 90 minutes before finally realizing what we all knew during the opening credits. Now, when those films are made at all, they often go straight to the streamers, rarely showcasing stars as bright as Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant, who shared the screen in this 2002 rom-com from the writer and director Marc Lawrence (one of the writers of Bullock’s 2000 treat “Miss Congeniality”). The plot is negligible and the complications silly; all that matters is the chemistry, and Bullock and Grant have chemistry to spare.‘Trap’ (June 11)Stream it here.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Harry, Hermione and Ron Are Cast for HBO’s ‘Harry Potter’

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      After tens of thousands of auditions, three newcomers were selected to play the television show’s leading roles.Accio Harry, Hermione and Ron!After years of intense speculation and tens of thousands of auditions, three young actors have been cast for HBO’s upcoming television series about the boy wizard. The newcomers Dominic McLaughlin, Arabella Stanton and Alastair Stout will play Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, Warner Bros. Discovery announced on Tuesday.Last month, HBO announced it had cast John Lithgow as Albus Dumbledore, Janet McTeer as Minerva McGonagall, Paapa Essiedu as Severus Snape and Nick Frost as Rubeus Hagrid. The show, which will air on HBO and stream on Max, still does not have an official title or air date.“The talent of these three unique actors is wonderful to behold, and we cannot wait for the world to witness their magic together onscreen,” Francesca Gardiner, the showrunner of the series, and Mark Mylod, who will direct several episodes, said in a statement about the child actors. They added, “It’s been a real pleasure to discover the plethora of young talent out there.”This is Stanton’s first onscreen role, but she previously starred in “Matilda” on London’s West End in 2023. She was one of four girls who played the title role.The “Harry Potter” film franchise accelerated the career of Daniel Radcliffe, who has since anchored movies like “Swiss Army Man” and won a Tony Award last year for his work in “Merrily We Roll Along.” Radcliffe starred in eight “Harry Potter” films from 2001 through 2011 alongside Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, who played Hermione and Ron.HBO has said the new television series will be a “faithful adaptation” of the seven books written by J.K. Rowling that were published between 1997 and 2007. More

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      On ‘Will Trent,’ Ramón Rodríguez Shoots and Scores

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      “My first dunk was on that basket,” the actor Ramón Rodríguez said. This was on a drizzly weekday morning in May, and Rodríguez was revisiting former haunts in the East Village, where he grew up. He began with the Tompkins Square Park basketball courts.“It’s a little low rimmed,” he admitted, pointing at the basket. “But it was a big deal.”At an inch or two under six feet, Rodríguez, 45, is plenty tall for an actor, though short for a basketball player. Still he kept at it, and that tenacity has served him in Hollywood, where he spent years watching great shots hit the rim.”How many times was I told no and cut from a team?” he said. “I mean, countless. Rejection, it was always fuel for me.”It fueled him until 2022, when he was offered the title role in “Will Trent,” an ABC procedural about a dapper, damaged investigator and Chihuahua dad. The series is based on books by Karin Slaughter. In those books Will is described as tall, blond and lanky. So Rodríguez wasn’t an obvious choice. But despite his skepticism — he had been burned by network shows before — he signed on. “Will Trent” was renewed for a second season.Ramón Rodríguez, with Erika Christensen, plays the damaged but gifted title character of “Will Trent,” based on the book series.Zac Popik/Disney“I was like, OK, that does not happen to me,” he said. But it did. A third season followed, ending in May on a cliffhanger (two characters may not survive) that presumably will be resolved when the show returns in January.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why I Find Comedy in Difficult Places. Like My Dad’s Stroke.

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      Mike Birbiglia’s father didn’t want him to become a comedian. But after writing a comedy special about him, he understands his dad better.There’s a story in my new Netflix comedy special, “The Good Life,” where I’m fiercely arguing politics with my father at his house about 20 years ago. The conversation got so meanspirited that when I walked out to my car, my dad didn’t even say goodbye.I said, “Bye, Dad.”And he said, “Well, you’ve gone another way.”At that point in “the special I say, “My whole life I wanted to be my dad, and at a certain point I decided I wanted him to be me.”But if I’m being honest, that’s not what I thought in the moment. I thought something along the lines of, “What is he thinking? He’s just wrong.”About a year ago, my dad had an acute stroke that put him in the hospital for months and now he’s home with care. He can’t stand up. He can’t walk. He can speak, but he doesn’t remember anything that’s happened in the last 12 months. This is a huge change for my family. My dad has always been a big personality. Sometimes too big. When I was a kid, he’d sometimes fly off the handle. So in my special, I make the joke that the silver lining is that as horrible as the stroke has been, “if I’m being completely honest, it has calmed him down.”One night, after I made that extremely dark joke, the audience didn’t know how to feel about it. It sort of sat there. I think the audience thought, Are we allowed to laugh about this guy’s ailing father? So I improvised a line: “Most of the jokes tonight are for you, but some of the jokes are for me. This is a coping mechanism. And I hope it is for you too.” That lit up the crowd. There was an acknowledgment that this was something I was really grappling with. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      There Are Problems for Sure. But ‘Étoile’ Has Humor and Heart.

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      Amy Sherman-Palladino’s new series, created with her husband, takes ballet somewhere it doesn’t usually go: the world of comedy.Like the art of ballet, “Étoile,” a television show about ballet, has its ups and downs. Sometimes you want to toss confetti in the air to celebrate how deftly it dives into the intelligence and humor of ballet culture. It lives largely in the world of comedy, which is rare for a ballet story. Yet it also shows a commitment to world-class dance, with snippets from classic works like George Balanchine’s “Rubies.” And it arrives with a narrative miracle — nary an eating disorder in sight.But then comes a scene, or sadly a dance, that makes you want to throw that confetti in the trash. The first time the show seesaws between paradise and purgatory happens in its first five minutes. “Étoile,” on Amazon Prime Video, begins on a poignant note as a young girl, alone in a dark studio, follows along to a ballet class saved on a smartphone. A cleaning woman appears in the doorway to let her know that she has only one more floor to get through. This is the dancer’s mother, who has been secretly recording company class for her.“I’ve barely gotten to frappés,” young SuSu (LaMay Zhang) says to her mom. With a heavy heart, SuSu fast forwards to petit allegro, and an overhead shot pulls back, rendering her tinier and tinier as her feet cross back and forth in springy jumps. Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” its beat echoing her rhythm, takes over, and we’re dropped into a pulsating nightclub.A scene from “Étoile,” which often has observant, real-world details about the ballet world.Philippe Antonello/Amazon MGM Studios There, a tipsy and inane conversation about Tchaikovsky and Aaron Copland ensues: Who would win in a fight? (Who cares?) And that generates a new topic: famous composers who had syphilis.SuSu, come back! (She does eventually. And her part gets better and better especially after Cheyenne, the leading French ballerina, sees in a studio “this little girl who appears only at night like a fairy” and takes her under her wing.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Rehearsal’ Argues That Cringe Comedy Can Save Lives

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      The second season of “The Rehearsal,” Nathan Fielder’s ambitious exercise in comic social experimentation, ended on Sunday on HBO. It focused on one topic — air safety — but did so with an astounding array of props and stunts, including replica airport terminals, cloned dogs, a fake singing contest and enormous, breastfeeding puppets. James Poniewozik, chief TV critic for The Times, and Alissa Wilkinson, a Times movie critic, discussed all of the above and more.Spoilers and some simulations of Fielder’s simulations follow.HOW TO IMPROVE COMMUNICATION To help airline first officers navigate challenging interactions with co-pilots — and potentially save lives — a simulation recreates a typical day on the job.Steps: Build full-scale replica of airport terminal (fig. 1). Hire actors to portray actual crew members likely to interact with first officer (fig. 2).Simulate real-life cockpit scenarios with actors (fig. 3). Optional: Amplify tension by casting significant other as captain (fig.4).Simulation may reveal deeper emotional and relational challenges.JAMES PONIEWOZIK Alissa, the last time we convened to discuss a Nathan Fielder project, “The Curse,” it ended with his jaw-dropping ascent into the air. Today we’re talking Season 2 of “The Rehearsal” and I will not bury the lead: Our boy flew a damn passenger jet.I will say that the ending, which reveals that Fielder has been moonlighting as a commercial jet pilot, caught me by surprise (though not eagle-eyed Redditors, who noted weeks ago that Fielder had obtained a commercial pilot’s license). It also assuaged my worries that this audacious premise would fizzle out. The previews for this season suggested that it might build to Fielder bringing his ideas before a congressional subcommittee. Instead, that scene proved be a rehearsal, and the host only managed an awkward meeting with one actual representative, Steve Cohen of Tennessee.Turned out there was nowhere to go from there but up. I don’t know if the final flight of “The Rehearsal” proved the thesis — essentially, that cringe comedy can save lives. But just as Season 1 was a striking exploration of how to live with doubt and regret, Season 2’s high-concept stunts, and its combination of social commentary and personal (quasi) revelation, suggest that what might have been a one-off is in fact a spectacularly repeatable format.How well did it work for you? Please be Blunt. I’m Allears.ALISSA WILKINSON Co-pilot Blunt here, clocking in for duty. Or whatever pilots say.

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      The ‘Summer House’ Reunion, Plus 9 Things to Watch on TV This Week

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      The ninth season of the Bravo show wraps up, and Jesse Armstrong’s movie “Mountainhead” airs on HBO.Between streaming and cable, there is a seemingly endless variety of things to watch. Here is a selection of TV shows and specials that are airing or streaming this week, May 26-June 1. Details and times are subject to change.When fiction mirrors reality.The series “The Handmaid’s Tale,” based on the 1985 Margaret Atwood novel of the same name, is wrapping up its sixth and final season this week. The dystopian show, which follows the residents of Gilead, a totalitarian society where women are treated as property of the state, has been airing since the start of President Trump’s first term, and the show’s costumes of red cloaks and white bonnets have been used in real protests for women’s reproductive rights. The finale will be directed by Elisabeth Moss, who has starred in all six seasons of the show. Streaming Tuesday on Hulu.From left: Jason Schwartzman, Steve Carell, Ramy Youssef and Cory Michael Smith in “Mountainheads.”Macall Polay/HBOJesse Armstrong certainly knows a thing or two about portraying the ultrarich when the world around them is crumbling — he was the creator and showrunner of “Succession.” Now, he is making his full-length film directorial debut in his TV movie “Mountainhead,” which follows Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Cory Michael Smith and Ramy Youssef, four men worth a combined half a trillion dollars, who are on a boys’ trip when a violent crisis erupts at home. Along with snowmobiling and playing poker, they also field calls from the president of the United States and keep an eye on the mayhem unfolding on their screens. Saturday at 8 p.m. on HBO and streaming on Max.From the mid-90s to the 2010s, we had shows on air, including “Friends,” “How I Met Your Mother” and “New Girl,” that illuminated the pitfalls and absurdities of 20-somethings stumbling into adulthood and managing to the best of their abilities. There hasn’t been a new show of that genre in a while, so “Adults,” which follows a group of codependent housemates in their 20s, is filling that gap. Malik Elassal, Lucy Freyer, Jack Innanen, Amita Rao and Owen Thiele star as friends who crash in one of their childhood homes, as they navigate dating in a world of apps, try to figure out the health care system and strategize how to climb the corporate ladder. Wednesday at 9 p.m. on FX and streaming the next day on Hulu.When reality is reality.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Last of Us’ Season 2 Finale Recap: The Monster at the End

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      Dina learns the truth. Ellie learns a hard lesson about the unintended consequences of vengeance.‘The Last of Us’ Season 2, Episode 7In an interview with Collider last week, “The Last of Us” co-showrunner Craig Mazin estimated that it will take four seasons for him and the video game’s co-creator Neil Druckmann to adapt the two “Last of Us” games properly. I found this comment a bit surprising. Mazin and Druckmann covered most of the first “Last of Us” game in an action-packed Season 1. After this week’s Season 2 finale, is there enough story left in “The Last of Us Part II” for two more seasons?Having never played the game, I do not know the answer to this. But I do know that Season 2 — as good as it has generally been — has raised some questions about where this show is ultimately headed. Season 1 was something of a quest saga, about a one-of-a-kind hero traveling to the place where she was meant to sacrifice herself and save the world. Then Joel ripped up that script. In the Season 1 finale, Joel didn’t just move the narrative goal posts, he tore them down.So what’s the endpoint now? What does a “chosen one” do when she is no longer chosen?The Season 2 finale wrestles with these questions in ways both exciting and somewhat perplexing, before ending in someplace unexpected and potentially promising. If nothing else, the episode does have a strong arc for Ellie, as she realizes that missions of vengeance are messy and unsatisfying.We begin with Ellie’s return from Lakehill Hospital, where — contrary to how it appeared in last week’s episode — she did not club the infected Nora to death. As Ellie explains to Dina, she beat on Nora until she gave up clues Abby’s location. (The words “whale” and “wheel” were mumbled.) Then Ellie took off, leaving Nora to get zombified.Ellie says all this in hushed, even tones, admitting that torturing Nora was easier for her to do than she had expected. Still in a confessing mood — and in an especially vulnerable place, as Dina is washing the wounds on her bare back — Ellie finally tells Dina why Abby and her crew came after Joel in the first place. Dina’s icy reply? “We need to go home.”After this opening, much of the first half of the episode follows Ellie and Jesse as they head out to find Tommy so that the Jackson contingent can get the heck out of Seattle. This is not a happy journey. Jesse, understandably, is in no mood for Ellie’s flippant attitude; and Ellie does not have much use for Jesse’s sanctimony.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More