Zac Efron and Jeremy Allen White starring in the family wrestling dynasty in “The Iron Claw” and Brooke Shields playing the unwitting title role in the romantic comedy “Mother of the Bride” on Netflix are some of the new television, movies, music and games headed to a device near you.
New movies to stream
Whether you know anything about the tragedies that befell the Von Erich family wrestling dynasty, “The Iron Claw” is well worth a watch. Zac Efron stars as one of the brothers, Kevin, in an ensemble cast that includes Harris Dickinson and Jeremy Allen White as his brothers, Lily James as his wife, and Holt McCallany and Maura Tierney as his parents. It’ll be available on Max on Friday.
Brooke Shields is the titular “Mother of the Bride”in a new romantic comedy coming to Netflix on Thursday. The conceit here is that her daughter (Miranda Cosgrove) is getting married and she doesn’t find out until she arrives at the island resort where it’s happening that the groom is the son of the guy who broke her heart in college, played by Benjamin Bratt.
— Lindsey Bahr
New music to stream
One of the best alternative albums of the year may very well be the soundtrack to the A24 thriller about two teenagers watching a mysterious late-night television show, “I Saw the TV Glow,” available Friday. The official trailer for the film arrived with a spooky rendition of the Broken Social Scene track “Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl” as performed by Yeule — the perfect introduction to an ambitious compilation. Other highlights that may not get their shine next to big names like boygenius’ Phoebe Bridgers and Caroline Polachek but very much deserve the nod: Philly twangy-emo greats Sadurn, the ascendant power indie-pop of Jay Som and the experimental compositions of L’rain.
With work well beyond a perfect sync in the “Barbie” blockbuster, where Margot Robbie’s Barbie and Ryan Gosling’s Ken scream-sing along to their hit “Closer to Fine” while exiting the paradise that is “Barbieland,” Indigo Girls have long been ahead of their time. “Indigo Girls: It’s Only Life After All” is a new documentary detailing the duo’s rise and subsequent marginalization by the press as a political group of queer performers. This doc, available via video-on-demand on Tuesday, tells their story in new, critical detail.
— Maria Sherman
New shows to stream
Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly star in the new limited series “Dark Matter.” Edgerton plays Jason, an unfulfilled physics teacher who is attacked one night by a masked man who also drugs him. When he comes to, Jason finds himself in an alternate timeline of his life where he’s a world-famous physicist. Jason’s wife, Daniela (Connelly), and son don’t exist in this alternate version, and he fights to return to them. “Dark Matter” is based on the book by Blake Crouch. It premieres on Apple TV+ on Wednesday.
If you’re counting down the days until school’s out for summer, the new “Pretty Little Liars” returns Thursday on Max. The teen slasher series picks up at the beginning of summer vacation where our five final girls have to attend summer school for falling behind while they were being targeted by a serial killer. The “Liars” do find time for summer jobs and summer romances. New cast members include Antonio Cipriano (“National Treasure: Edge of History”) as a love interest for Bailee Madison’s Imogen.
After bringing the world of Anne Rice to television with Season 1 of “Interview With the Vampire” (and later, “Mayfair Witches”) on AMC, the series returns Sunday. It’s about Louis de Pointe du Lac, who sits down for a second interview with a veteran journalist named Daniel, played by Eric Bogosian. Louis says he’s a vampire and had years prior given Daniel an interview that was off-the-record. Louis claims he was seduced and turned into a vampire in the early 1900s by Lestat de Lioncourt. Season 2 begins with Daniel viewing Louis as an unreliable narrator because his details from the two interviews don’t match. It also explores the love affair of Louis and vampire Armand, played by new cast member Assad Zaman, and how the vampire Lestat still has a hold on Louis. “Interview With the Vampire” also streams on AMC+.
— Alicia Rancilio
New video games to play
Video Games 101 teaches us that if you have to go underground, you’re going to be attacked by all sorts of ghastly beasts. Animal Well, from indie publisher Bigmode, takes a different approach. This cave has some creatures you might not expect, like flamingos and kangaroos, and some of them are helpful rather than hostile. “It’s not that you’re not welcome,” says solo designer Billy Basso. “It’s just that they were here first.” The result is a combat-free but still tricky labyrinth with more than 250 puzzle-filled rooms. The graphics are refreshingly weird, coloring old-fashioned pixel art with an eerie bioluminescence, and the soundtrack is filled with spooky echoes. Start spelunking Thursday on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and PC.
— Lou Kesten