Movies On Demand, 3:00 a.m. ET
MOVIE PREMIERE: Judd Apatow, as comedian, producer and director, can be counted on to find and highlight the humanity and humor in even the most absurd of circumstances, and vice versa. Now here he comes, as one of the principal collaborators of a new comedy-drama character study starring Pete Davidson in a film drawing on his own life, and his own father’s death, for partial inspiration. Davidson became a star on NBC’s Saturday Night Live by playing a thinly veiled, highly vulnerable version of himself, talking of his drug use, his romantic ups and downs with famous celebrities, and even his erratic appearances on SNL itself. In The King of Staten Island, Davidson plays Scott, a 24-year-old still haunted by the sudden death of his firefighter father almost two decades before. Davidson’s screen persona, in his starring film debut, is self-deprecatingly sympathetic, a sort of Ringo in A Hard Day’s Night, but with more dialogue. And like any Apatow effort, it’s worth watching.
Disney+, 3:00 a.m. ET
MOVIE PREMIERE: When this film was financed, planned and produced, it was as a big-budget Disney movie aimed at launching a new fantasy film franchise in the Harry Potter vein. That’s the way it arrives, too, with Ferdia Shaw starring as the title character from the Eoin Colfer young-adult novels: there are mysteries and missions, and trolls and faeries. But this Artemis Fowl arrives in the pop-culture landscape smack in the middle of a pandemic – so instead of its planned widespread summer movie release in theaters, it arrives as a streaming TV premiere on Disney+. Kenneth Branagh directs, and supporting players include Josh Gad, Colin Farrell, and Judi Dench.
Netflix, 3:00 a.m. ET
MOVIE PREMIERE: This new Spike Lee “joint” shows up as a premiere on Netflix, one more example of how films once seen in theaters are finding other ways to find audiences. Da 5 Bloods is about a quintet of African-American soldiers who served together in the Vietnam War. One, their squad leader, died there, and the survivors reunite decades later to meet in Ho Chi Minh City and take a bittersweet nostalgia tour up river. Lee’s bold move here is to stage flashback scenes so that the ill-fated squad leader is played by the young and vital Chadwick Boseman (pictured), while the other, surviving “bloods” are played by much older actors, such as Delroy Lindo and Clarke Peters. It’s a dreamlike way to mix memory and the passage of time – and only one way Lee finds a compelling path into this emotionally resonant war movie.
BBC America, 8:00 p.m. ET
Released in 1987. Still one of the two best family fantasy movies ever made – 1939’s The Wizard of Oz being the other. Still haven’t seen it? Incontheivable!!
Freeform, 8:00 p.m. ET
Released in 1964. And Dick Van Dyke’s kooky cockney accent aside, this Disney film, based on the P.L. Travers story and starring Julie Andrews as the titular mystery nanny who arrives to help an imperious banker and his children in turn-of-the-century London, is another family-film charmer. My suggestion: Find the 2013 drama Saving Mr. Banks, which is about the making of this movie and stars Emma Thomson as Travers and Tom Hanks as Walt Disney, and watch it and Mary Poppins as a delightful double feature. In any order. (It's available on Netflix, Amazon Prime, iTunes and elsewhere.)
HBO, 10:00 p.m. ET
Among the guests scheduled for this new distance-appropriate edition of Bill Maher’s backyard talk show, one in particular is perfectly timed, given the week’s news events: Larry Wilmore, the former Daily Show “Senior Black Correspondent” was canceled much too soon in 2016. Larry, have anything to say about the continuing demonstrations, or the push to rename military bases named after Confederate generals, or anything else? Wilmore did an amazing and passionate segment, in 2015 on The Nightly Show (pictured), about the inescapable and inexcusable racism behind the Confederate flag, so expect, among other things, a righteous “I told you so.” Speaking of which: Also this week, Joe Biden made national news, during an interview with current Daily Show host Trevor Noah, when he gave a serious and thoughtful answer to Noah’s hypothetical question: What if President Trump loses the election yet refuses to step down? It’s a question Maher has been asking for a long, long time now, of his viewers as well as his guests – and now, finally, others are taking that question as seriously as Maher has. For those two topics alone, tonight’s Real Time is a must.
