Hopefully, you’re enjoying your last few days of Pisces season or maybe a spring break. The sandworms and pandas of Dune: Part Two and Kung Fu Panda 4 are dominating the box office, but it’s not like there’s any other splashy new in-theater releases this week, unless a drama about Mark Wahlberg and a dog sounds like your speed. I’ve been spending the week watching a handful of films that premiered at SXSW 2024 and being in the presence of Ryan Gosling. And on streaming this weekend: the return of a fictional pop girl group, the (Disney+) return of a real pop girl, and some girls on a bus. —Savannah Salazar
Featured Presentations
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Girls5eva
The first two seasons of this hilarious series streamed on Peacock, which perhaps explains why not enough people saw or appreciated this portrait of an all-female pop group reuniting 20 years after their prime. But now that the whole thing, including a brand-new third season, has moved to Netflix, hopefully Girls5eva will finally become the phenomenon it deserves to be. If you haven’t watched yet, truly: What are you waiting five? —Jen Chaney
âž½ Unrelatedly, can you guess a Hugh Grant movie that begins with a vowel?
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Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (Taylor’s Version)Â
Blondie is taking over Disney+, and now you can, I assume, rewatch The Eras Tour to your heart’s content, especially since (Taylor’s Version) includes four additional acoustic songs. Because like with everything Taylor drops, she will drop again, and again, and with more and more bonus content. — S.S.
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Manhunt
We’ve all read about the murder of the Great Emancipator in history books. But this Apple TV+ series, which focuses on his killing at the hands of actor John Wilkes Booth (played by Anthony Boyle) and the attempt to track down the fugitive assassin, brings history to suspenseful life with help from a stellar cast including Tobias Menzies, Hamish Linklater, and Lili Taylor. —J.C.
➽ ASMR to our ears: Menzies’s timbre is as graveled as ever.
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Apples Never Fall
What did Big Little Lies beget? Among other things, more limited-series adaptations of Liane Moriarty novels, including this, her most recent one, about a wife, mother, and former tennis-academy owner (Annette Bening) who goes missing. Her mysterious absence prompts her children — played by Alison Brie, Jake Lacy, Conor Merrigan-Turner, and Essie Randles — to figure out where she is and why their dad (Sam Neill) is being so cagey about her whereabouts. —J.C.Â
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The Girls on the Bus
It would be nice to forget the 2016 election, but this show won’t let us. Based on Amy Chozick’s 2018 memoir, Chasing Hillary, about reporting on HRC’s campaign trail, The Girls on the Bus puts a live-laugh-love spin on the narrative with a focus on female friendships, the inevitable “female reporter sleeping with a source†story line, and — most wildly — Hunter S. Thompson’s ghost. —Roxana Hadadi
➽ Remember the dumbest scene ever? That’s the bar for journalism as TV.
Points for Longevity
Grey’s Anatomy season 20
Feels insane to think I was a high-school freshman when this show debuted. Congrats to Shonda, Ellen, et al for making network TV that lasted as long as it has. (Ellen’s only back as the eponymous Grey in four episodes this season, though.) —Eric Vilas-Boas
RIP, Toriyama-sama
Vulture Recommended: Dragon Ball
Spent an inordinate amount of time this week Slacking about how bummed I was about manga master Akira Toriyama’s passing, so Daniel Dockery’s roundup of Dragon Ball’s roughest, rowdiest, “Kamehamehaaaaa!!!â€-iest episodes was a balm. (And no shade to Grey’s, but I’ve been watching and rewatching DBZ for years longer.) —E.V.B.
Reality Bites
Love Is Blind’s season 6 reunion
Love Is Blind will never nail a reunion but at least they have Laura grilling Jeramey and Sarah Ann from Spain. —S.S.
âž½ We did our best to unpack the mess.
Animation Station
The End of Evangelion
You’ll want to go in at least a base knowledge of Neon Genesis Evangelion before you pony up for tickets to see Hideaki Anno and Kazuya Tsurumaki’s 1997 film finale to the TV series, but it’s rare that a movie this trippy and this freighted with backstory gets any theatrical release Stateside. There are still limited tickets available. —E.V.B.
One Great Quote
Now that I have seen Netflix’s latest film, Irish Wish, I realize I have been but a hapless pawn in a larger sociopolitical plot to maintain the status quo, quell dissent, replace much of the workforce with AI, install a permanent Christian theocratic dictator, and make Ireland look weird for some reason.
Rachel Handler’s analysis of this batshit movie is a must-read.
Want more? Read our recommendations from the weekend of March 8.