Movie & Television Reviews

In his feature debut, “American Fiction” (Amazon MGM), writer-director Cord Jefferson pulls off an impressive balancing act. In adapting Percival Everett’s 2001 novel “Erasure,” Jefferson successfully blends wry social satire with the serious tale of an emotionally isolated central character.

Capsule reviews of theatrical movies available now for streaming or scheduled for broadcast on network or cable television as well as notes on TV programming for the same week.

In his classic 1945 novel “Brideshead Revisited,” Catholic author Evelyn Waugh charted the intense, quasi-romantic and possibly sexual bond between two male students at Oxford University. The premise of Waugh’s work is echoed in the black comedy “Saltburn.”

Tina Fey infuses her script — ultimately derived from Rosalind Wiseman’s 2002 nonfiction book “Queen Bees and Wannabes” — with some sharply observed humor.

The tangled personal life of composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) provides the subject matter for the fact-based drama “Maestro” (Netflix).

Capsule reviews of theatrical movies available now for streaming or scheduled for broadcast on network or cable television as well as notes on TV programming for the same week.

Long ago, when the world was young, B-52s frontman Fred Schneider warned his listeners to stay away from “a pool fraught with danger.” The virtually bloodless but uneven horror yarn “Night Swim” (Universal) – which is possibly acceptable for older teens as well as grown-ups – offers a similar caution.