Clockwise from top: Wicked, The Piano Lesson, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and Gladiator II.
Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures, Paramount, ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images, Netflix
It’s time to put the term Glicked to rest. Sure, Gladiator II and Wicked are both premiering this weekend, but this is not another Barbenheimer repeat. It’s just a great weekend at the movies! Especially with how bleak the past few weeks have been, this pre-Thanksgiving lineup is so refreshing. It honestly feels wild to have a movie musical penetrate our culture in a huge way again. But if musicals and men in burlap skirts aren’t your thing, sigh, then there’s still a lot more to watch this weekend.
After years of trying to get Wicked on the silver screen, Wicked (Part One; yes, there’s two parts, brace yourself) is finally in theaters. Cynthia Erivo stars as the green-skinned Elphaba, who enrolls in Shiz University and rooms with the effervescent blonde Galinda (Ariana Grande) as Wicked tells the story of the soon-to-be Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch’s friendship before The Wizard of Oz. The look of the film may vary in parts, but getting to see two powerhouse singers do their thing is so exhilarating. Woo!
➼ So, where do the musical numbers rank on our list?
A month ago, Denzel Washington went semi-viral for saying about his Gladiator II role, “I’m putting this dress on, these rings, and I’m going crazy.” And crazy he did. To no one’s surprise, Washington is magnificent in Ridley Scott’s sequel as Macrinus, a former gladiator who climbs up the ranks of Rome by buying and training his own crop of gladiators, which includes Paul Mescal’s revenge-hungry Lucius (also known as Hanno), the secret son of Maximus (Russell Crowe’s character from the original movie) and Lucilla (Connie Nielsen). Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn, and Fred Hechinger also star.
➼ In case you had any questions about the monkeys, sharks, and rhinos (oh my!) in the movie, we asked an expert.
Adapted from the August Wilson play of the same name, The Piano Lesson is filmmaker Malcolm Washington’s feature directorial debut. Set after the Great Depression, the film follows the Charles family (made up of Samuel L. Jackson, John David Washington, and Danielle Deadwyler) as they discuss what to do with a family heirloom, their piano.
➼ An incredible week for the Washington family with Denzel in Gladiator II, while his sons Malcolm and John David team up for The Piano Lesson.
It’s low-key criminal that this Max show only gets a handful of episodes a season, but at least it’s finally back. Season two of The Sex Lives of College Girls had Kimberly (Pauline Chalamet) getting with Whitney’s (Alyah Chanelle Scott) ex, and Bela (Amrit Kaur) ready to leave Essex College. Meanwhile, in season three, Reneé Rapp is gearing up to depart Sex Lives, but not without a few-episodes stint to tie up some loose ends.
Rachel Zegler singing a few songs is always welcome. In Spellbound, she voices a teenage princess named Ellian who has to reverse a curse placed on her parents (Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem).
Ted Danson and The Good Place creator Mike Shur are back together again for this pleasant and amusing comedy, based on the Academy Award–nominated Chilean documentary The Mole Agent. Danson stars as a widower and former professor hired by a detective to go undercover at a nursing home. But it’s hard for someone charming to be inconspicuous, and Danson is definitely charming. —Jen Chaney
Another sacred millennial property is getting an update. 1999’s Cruel Intentions was one of many spins on the 18th-century French novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses, but this series is explicitly an adaptation of that iconic erotic thriller starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, and Reese Witherspoon. There are changes here: The leads are college students in Washington, D.C., and the cast is more inclusive. But can this remake capture the original’s intense sensuality and perfectly acted archness? — R.H.
Documentarian Ken Burns is tackling famed artist Leonardo da Vinci in his latest film, a two-part PBS special on the painter.
Nothing rings in the holidays quite like Charlie Brown and the gang. The Peanuts specials aren’t running on network TV anymore, as they are now exclusively on Apple TV, but the service lifts the paywall for these specials at certain times. This weekend, you can watch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving for free, no matter if you’re a subscriber or not. Keep those traditions alive.
Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photo: Vanessa Armstrong
Outlander continues on! Read more of Vanessa Armstrong’s piece on the evolution of the series here.
Fede Álvarez’s take on Ridley Scott’s extraterrestrial franchise proved to be a hit for Disney. It’s Alien by the numbers as a new team of teenagers find out the dangers of an abandoned spaceship. Even if it’s not revelatory like Scott’s Prometheus series, Romulus is still pretty fun to watch.
➼ Plus, Steve McQueen’s period drama Blitz is now on Apple TV+, and Smile 2 and We Live in Time are available to rent on digital platforms.
There’s a few obvious double-feature options for the theatrical releases out this weekend (like Gladiator and The Wizard of Oz), but with Wicked gaining some awards buzz, let’s revisit the Oscar-winning musical Chicago. Rob Marshall brought the Broadway hit to the big screen with terrific performances from Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere, and Queen Latifah. Chicago won Best Picture, and Zeta-Jones nabbed the Best Supporting Actress award.
Want more? Read our recommendations from the weekend of November 15.
