A hot second ago on a website right in front of your eyes, you wondered what the hell should I watch this weekend? Well, it looks like Star Wars actually has an exciting series again with The Acolyte, out now with two episodes. And on top of that there’s a nepo baby directorial debut, a new comedy from Julio Torres, and a couple of bad boys in theaters (non-Sith related). Here are the rest of our picks. —Savannah Salazar
Featured Presentations
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The Acolyte
In the scheme of new installments of giant franchises, optimism for The Acolyte falls somewhere between Andor and The Mandalorian season two. It may just be more Star Wars TV, overly safe and utterly underwhelming. But it’s made by Russian Doll co-creator Leslye Headland; it’s set in a not–Luke Skywalker period of this universe; and it stars Amandla Stenberg, Lee Jung-jae, and Carrie-Anne Moss. Wouldn’t it be fun if it were great? —Kathryn VanArendonkÂ
➽ It’s no Andor, but it’ll do.
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Bad Boys: Ride or Die
Will Smith and Martin Lawrence are back for No. 4 — a mission to clear a police captain’s name after he’s accused of moonlighting for drug cartels. This new Bad Boys is directed by another duo, Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, who also did the third one and whose last film, Batgirl, infamously got shitcanned by David Zaslav. This movie has at least one scene filmed eerily like a video game. —Eric Vilas-Boas
The One-Sentence Review
Hit Man
“Hit Man works simultaneously as an indulgence in and a deconstruction of the basic transaction of stardom: It presents us with a guy we can never be, then makes us believe for a moment that we can be him, even as it tells us that such a guy doesn’t exist in the first place.†(On Netflix, read more here.)
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The Watchers
Dark woods can be scary! Scary enough to hang a horror premise on in a post–Blair Witch world? You be the judge. M. Night Shyamalan’s kid directed it. —E.V.B.
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Fantasmas
After the end of his first show Los Espookys, Julio Torres is back with his unexplainable comedy Fantasmas. The logline is “Torres on the search for a golden oyster earring†and along the way, he’ll encounter a slew of guest stars from Alexia Demie, to Steve Buscemi, Jaboukie Young-White, Emma Stone, and Dylan O’Brien in red lingerie. —S.S.
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Queenie
Candice Carty-Williams’s popular 2019 novel, for which she won the British Book Awards’ Book of the Year, gets the miniseries treatment with the author as creator and showrunner. The story follows a self-described “strong Black woman†(Dionne Brown) whose white boyfriend breaks up with her, leading to a journey of self-discovery with her Jamaican Brit family and friends. —Roxana Hadadi Â
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Am I OK?
Two years after its premiere at Sundance, comedian Tig Notaro and her wife and actress Stephanie Allyne’s coming-of-age feature is finally here for the masses. Dakota Johnson stars as Lucy, a woman in her 30s stuck in routine, but when her bestie, Jane (Sonoya Mizuno), suddenly has to move, it jolts Lucy out of her comfort zone, helping her come to terms with her sexuality. —S.S.
âž½ Also on Max? Hacks (derogatory).
Vulture Sports!
Clipped
It’s natural, if not entirely fair, to compare this FX-produced limited series about the Los Angeles Clippers to HBO’s Winning Time, a two-season drama about the reinvigoration of the L.A. Lakers in the 1980s. Aside from a shared interest in the same sport and city, though, the two are not much alike. For example, Clipped is much more focused on the events within a tight time frame: the lead-up to the 2014 leak of recorded racist remarks by Clippers owner Donald Sterling and the fallout that followed. That specificity is a major storytelling asset. —Jen ChaneyÂ
30 for 30 continues
Possibly the only reason to subscribe to ESPN+ is its 30 for 30 library. That archive grows this summer with five new films of the docuseries, kicking off with an episode about the 2011 riot in Vancouver after the Canucks lost the Stanley Cup. Installments about track star Butch Reynolds, tennis player Michael Chang, and the broadening of professional sports to include video-game players and YouTube stars follow. —R.H.
Reality Bites
Perfect Match season 2
I’ve described this show as Nerds gummy clusters for the soul because it’s true brain rot. But like the clusters, if this is your jam, you can’t seem to get enough. It’s hilarious to see people from Netflix’s vast and WTF-worthy reality shows, from Dated and Related to Love Is Blind, come together to be hot, make sexual innuendos, and pretend to have some sort of game strategy. —S.S.
Cry, You Fools
The Lord of the Rings trilogy
The OG trilogy is back in theaters. Time to lose it all over again. —E.V.B.
Double Feature
Kill Bill: Volume 1
When promoting The Acolyte during last year’s Star Wars Celebration, creator Leslye Headland described her show as “Frozen meets Kill Bill†— an incredible way to get at least me to watch it. I’ve seen a few episodes, and it’s quite fun how Headland navigates the world of Star Wars with a revenge plot. Without spoiling the interesting twist in the first episode, I can say Headland’s description is spot-on, so why not use this as an excuse to dive into Uma Thurman slashing down countless enemies in Kill Bill? —S.S.
Want more? Read our recommendations from the weekend of May 31.