Watch List Weekly Recap 2/24/23

Con artists ands cocaine bears -- it was that kind of week.

Watch List Weekly Recap 2/24/23

This is the Friday recap of Ty Burr’s Watch List postings for the week. If you’d like to cut down on in-box clutter and receive this weekly email ONLY, please go to your account page and under “Email notifications” uncheck every box except “Weekly Digest.” If you’d prefer to not receive it at all, uncheck just “Weekly Digest.”


In praise of “Sharper” (⭐⭐⭐), a Rubik’s Cube of a suspense drama about con artists conning each other (and us), starring Sebastian Stan, John Lithgow, and a ferocious Julianne Moore (above). Maybe not quite excellent enough to make for a memorable big-screen experience but a tasty amusement indeed when caught on Apple TV+. Plus: More VOD recommendations.

True Grift
After a long-overdue week of beach and birds, I’m back in wintry New England catching up on some of the new movies I missed while I was away from screens. One of them, the phenomenal “Return To Seoul” – the Boston Society of Film Critics’ choice for best film of 2022 – opened last Friday in New York and Los Angeles but is slowly rolling out and won’t ge…

For new-release Friday, there’s a fine new bio-pic of Emily Brontë (⭐⭐⭐) and Skolimowski’s transcendent (and Oscar-nominated) “EO”  (⭐⭐⭐⭐) comes to VOD — so what are people talking about this week? The movie about the coke-addled black bear, of course. (⭐⭐1/2).

What to Watch: Literary Lions, Donkeys, and Cocaine Bears, Oh My.
There’s an extremely varied roster of new films in theaters and on VOD this week – the kind of cinematic slumgullion that’s fun to write about, from Gothic novelists to wandering donkeys to Cocaine Bears. Come with me, won’t you, as we tour the peaks and valleys of the release schedule?

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