A mystery lover’s guide to what’s new to streaming this weekend.
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New and Returning Mystery and Thriller Series
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Scarpetta
(Prime)
The long-awaited adaptation of Patricia Cornwell’s bestselling novels finally begins streaming, with Nicole Kidman in the lead role and Jamie Lee Curtis supporting. The action follows a forensic pathologist (Dr. Kay Scarpetta) solving crimes with her cutting edge techniques. Initial reviews for the series are pretty lukewarm, but hardcore crime fiction fans have had this one circled for too long not to give it a shot.
Marshals
(Paramount+)
This new installment to the Yellowstone universe (not to be confused with the even more recent new spinoff, The Madison) follows an elite Marshals team taking on militias and insurrectionists in the wilds of Montana. In the vast spectrum of Taylor Sheridan shows, this one skews more towards the action and adrenaline end of things, but with all the lush scenery and complex family and colleague dynamics viewers have come to expect.
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Movie Night
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The Now You See Me franchise is one of the more confounding things to happen in recent movie history. I really don’t know quite how to explain even my own experience of these movies. They’re at once not very good, and yet quite watchable, and somehow even entertaining, and with a new one hitting streaming, I find myself, against all reason, quite looking forward to seeing it. If you’re not immediately familiar, these are the movies with the very good cast playing magicians who perform outlandish heists, or sometimes they solve a heist, or they do both. Jessie Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson always seem to be enjoying themselves – I guess maybe that’s why we, or I anyway, enjoy them, too? Who knows? The newest movie in the series, Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, starts streaming on Starz this weekend. And since we’re already in the realm of the ridiculous, I’ll also draw your attention to Fackham Hall over on HBO Max: it’s a sendup of the English country manor show, in all its iterations, with a special focus on epic romance and murder mystery. Ben Radcliffe, Thomasin McKenzie, Tom Felton, and Damian Lewis lead the cast, and everyone’s having a good time playing up the farce of it all. If you’re still squeezing in Oscar contenders before the awards air on Sunday (I know I still have one more film I need to see), then probably don’t spend your Saturday night on either of these. But if you’ve exhausted other options and want to have a little bit of crime-and-mystery related fun, you could do worse. (Quite a recommendation, eh?)
And 5 more movies new to the streaming libraries:
Bling Ring (2013) (Tubi)
Boyz n the Hood (1990) (Tubi)
Blow Out (1981) (Prime)
Twelve Monkeys (1996) (Prime)
Misery (1990) (Netflix)
