A “Star Wars” spinoff is on TNT. And Brad Bird’s superhero family sequel hits Netflix.

What’s on TV

ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY (2016) 7 p.m. on TNT. Disney and Lucasfilm may have marketed this “Star Wars” story as an offshoot, but fans of the galaxy way, way out there will find many familiar things here: Yes, there are impossibly big spaceships looming over the plains of far-off planets; yes, our heroes have smaller, rustier laser guns than their clean, evil opponents; and yes, there’s a witty robot chiming in at inopportune moments to tell them the odds. (He’s played, through motion capture, by Alan Tudyk.) Felicity Jones stars as Jyn Erso, a young woman who becomes involved with heroic resistance fighters while the Death Star is being built. Forest Whitaker plays Jyn’s mentor, a galactic extremist. Jyn’s rebel crew includes: Diego Luna as a resistance fighter, Riz Ahmed as a pilot and Donnie Yen as a blind monk. “The cast is wonderful,” A. O. Scott wrote in his review for The New York Times. But the movie that this fine ensemble operates in, Scott cautions, is “thoroughly mediocre.”

THE WOLVERINE (2013) 5 p.m. on FX. The director James Mangold brings an artful, small-scale sensibility to the X-Men franchise with this film, which stars Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, the clawed antihero, in Japan, where he battles samurai and a guilty conscience. “A modest superhero picture may sound like a contradiction in terms,” A. O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times. “But really it is a welcome respite.”

WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT (1993) 10:30 p.m. on Showtime. Angela Bassett won a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of Tina Turner in this biopic, which centers on that singer’s tempestuous relationship with Ike Turner, her onetime husband. (Laurence Fishburne, also nominated for an Oscar, plays the role.) “In less confessional times, the tale of Ike Turner’s stormy, violent relationship with his long-abused wife and star attraction might not have had the makings of a Hollywood biography,” Janet Maslin wrote in her review for The Times. “Depicted by this broad, savvy, entertaining film as a survivor and a victim in equal parts, Ms. Turner becomes an emblem of contemporary tell-all dramaturgy.”

What’s Streaming

INCREDIBLES 2 (2018) Stream on Netflix; rent on Amazon, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube. Brad Bird’s crash-bang follow-up to his 2004 computer-animated hit sees Mr. Incredible (voiced by Craig T. Nelson) left to take care of the house and kids while Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), his wife and the matriarch of this superhero family, heads off to take on the evil villain. “Few can rearrange the world as artfully and as enjoyably as the Incredibles, except of course their creator Brad Bird,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The Times. “Like his superheroes, Mr. Bird is extraordinarily good at destruction, which is very much in evidence in the virtuosic, often delightful ‘Incredibles 2.’”

Source: Read Full Article