What to Watch This Week
The 5 movies, TV shows, and events everyone will be talking about, for the week of July 23 to July 29.
Let’s be real: If you have weekend plans, they probably involve The Odyssey. Or rewatching The Odyssey. Or watching a dozen YouTube videos about The Odyssey. Or grabbing brunch with friends where you, inevitably, will end up discussing The Odyssey. But as much as the Christopher Nolan epic is due for another monster box office, it isn’t the only thing hitting our screens worth watching or talking about this week. Far from it!
If you feel like hitting up a movie theater for non-Odyssey purposes, there’s Motor City, an inventive action-revenge flick with minimal dialogue. If you’d rather stay closer to home, there are new installments of fandom-loved TV shows, including sci-fi hit Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and the conclusion of popular anime Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War. There are also new TV entries like Furious, a gritty serial killer crime thriller that has “obsession-worthy” written all over it, and the wild true crime documentary A Toxic Love Story, which is best watched knowing as little information as possible.
For the week of July 23 to 29, here are the five movies, TV shows, and events that will have everyone talking.
Furious
When to watch: July 27
Where to watch: Hulu
True crime lovers and murder mystery fans never have to look far when they’re craving something new in their preferred genre — there’s always something new and twisted and, at minimum, passively entertaining to check out. But Furious takes things to the next level. The crime thriller follows FBI agent Alice Black (Emmy Rossum) who’s on the hunt for a female serial killer (Lola Petticrew). The deeper Alice gets into the case, the more she starts to realize she’s not all that dissimilar from the killer and her sense of right and wrong is thrown off-kilter.
Furious was created by Elizabeth Meriwether, who is known for New Girl, The Dropout, and Dying for Sex — all shows that deftly portray complicated women and their experiences in very different ways. (Yes, even New Girl!) Based on early reviews, this series follows in that same tradition, with Rossum and Petticrew getting raves for their performances. Ultimately, Meriwether goes deeper than your usual cat-and-mouse thriller by unflinchingly exploring female rage and the myriad ways in which the justice system too often fails women. The result is a compelling show that entertains while offering plenty to chew on in between episodes.
Motor City
When to watch: July 24
Where to watch: In Theaters
It’s always exciting when the team behind a movie or TV show takes a huge creative risk. That’s exactly what the cast and crew of Motor City did. The action film is set in 1970s Detroit and follows a working-class man named John (Alan Ritchson), who lands in the crosshairs of a violent gangster because he fell in love with his girlfriend (Shailene Woodley). John then gets framed for a crime he didn’t commit and emerges years later, set on seeking revenge.
The catch? There is barely any dialogue in the movie (there are reportedly only about four or five spoken lines). Instead, action sequences and a rock-heavy soundtrack move the plot along. It’s the kind of experiment that could make a movie feel gimmicky, but here, with generally positive reviews, it’s bold and refreshing. You’ll leave the theater feeling like you’ve just discovered the next cult classic.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4
When to watch: July 23 (new episodes drop weekly on Thursdays)
Where to watch: Paramount+
When it premiered in 2022, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds quickly became a beloved addition to the storied sci-fi franchise. A spin-off of Star Trek: Discovery, the series follows Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) and his crew aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise about a decade before the OG Star Trek series takes place. (Its cast of characters also includes iconic characters like Spock, played here by Ethan Peck, and Number One, played here by Rebecca Romijn.) Fans and critics alike appreciated how its episodic storytelling evoked old school Star Trek, but with a bit of contemporary flair. That favorable impression faltered in Season 3 — which only has a 52% on the Popcornmeter — as the show strayed from its original format.
But the creative team has promised that Season 4, which follows Pike and co. as they explore new and mysterious worlds across the galaxies, will return to a more traditional Star Trek format that’s focused on sci-fi adventures and emotional storytelling. Season 4 is also the penultimate of the series, which has been confirmed to end with its fifth season, so it sounds like this one will offer a welcome reset to get Trekkies ready to say goodbye to some of their favorite characters.
Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – The Calamity
When to watch: July 25
Where to watch: Hulu
Bleach is one of the foundational anime series of the 21st century, with the original series (which followed Ichigo Kurosaki, a teenager who gets special powers and starts defending humans from evil spirits while helping souls get to the afterlife) running from 2004 to 2012. But the manga that the show is based on was ongoing at the time, so its final arc was never fully adapted for the screen. That changed with Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War.
The four-part anime series, which first premiered October 2022, tackles the final arc, which finds Ichigo jumping into a battle that puts the Three Worlds at stake, and The Calamity is the grand finale. In this fourth and final installment, the war is nearing its end, but Ichigo still has one last battle — and his most consequential — ahead of him. This marks the end of a definitive era of anime, one that has shaped fans and storytelling in the genre, so it’s only fitting that it goes out with a huge splash.
A Toxic Love Story
When to watch: Now Streaming
Where to watch: Netflix
A true crime documentary doesn’t need to be complicated to be good. A shocking story filled with hard-to-believe-they’re-real twists is more than enough to send someone to their group chat asking, “Have you seen this yet?!?!”
Enter A Toxic Love Story, which chronicles the story of California residents Michelle Hadley, as well as Angela Connell and her husband Ian Diaz. In 2016, Connell began receiving violent emails, including graphic images and threats made against her unborn twins. Hadley, the ex-fiancée of Diaz, was the main suspect for the harassment, and was served with a restraining order before eventually being arrested when Connell was allegedly attacked by a strange man. It turns out, this is just the beginning of the saga. As the doc illustrates, it takes years for the entire truth to come out, but we’ll leave it at that to keep things spoiler-free. One thing is for certain: This is a riveting true crime story that you’ll want to watch immediately, both because you won’t want to know what’s coming and because you’ll want to join in on the conversation that will explode around it.
