What to Watch This Week: 'X,' Deep Water,' 'DMZ,' 'Alice' and More

Our picks for the best new movies & shows for March 18-19. A24's new horror film 'X,' the erotic thriller 'Deep Water,' Keke Palmer's 'Alice' and more.

What to Watch and Stream this Weekend: X Deep Water
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Image via A24

What to Watch and Stream this Weekend: X Deep Water

If you don’t have any plans this weekend, you’re in luck. If you do? Cancel them! There are so many TV and movies you catch up on. This week was packed with some of the most anticipated, intriguing, and exciting projects since the start of the year, and we’re sure we have chosen something for anyone on this What to Watch list. If you’re hitting theaters this week, check out X, Aliceor Master (also available on Prime Video). The thrillers will have your eyes glued to the screen as each of the films’ unique stories unfold. X is a slasher film with an edge, and I highly recommend it if you’re into that sort of thing.

On the streaming side of things, Hulu has two big premieres this week, including Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas Deep Water, which delivers all the suspense, sexiness, and thrills the trailer promised. Amy Schumer stars in Hulu’s Life & Beth, which she wrote, produced, and directed, and the comedy-drama focuses on a woman in her late 30s who is trying to figure out what she really wants out of life. HBO Max dropped DMZ and Minx earlier this week, which are two totally different shows but both have a lot of potential for greatness. Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway show us why they are Hollywood royalty in Apple TV+’s WeCrashed. The actors united to tell the tale of the madness that went on as Adam Neumann and his wife, Rebekah, created WeWork. Take a look at our choices for this week and choose the ones that best suit your taste. 

'Deep Water'

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When: Mar. 18 

Where: Hulu 


If there’s anything you watch on this list this weekend, let it be Deep Water. I would pretty much watch anything Ana de Armas or Ben Affleck star in, so I needed no convincing when I first heard they were going to be acting in an erotic thriller together. The movie is about a husband named Vic who pretends he’s OK with his wife Melinda seeing other men outside of their marriage. Having a rich husband who waits on you hand and foot, accepts you as you are, and also gives you the space to do whatever the hell you want sounds like a dream, right? And that’s because it is. Vic can only fake the funk for so long before his ego and jealousy kick in and her lovers start dropping like flies. If you enjoyed watching Rosamund Pike torture the hell out of Affleck’s character in Gone Girl, then you’ll surely enjoy this one. I know I’m going to run it back and watch it again tonight. —KR

'X'

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When: Mar. 18

Where: In theaters

X is everything you could expect from a Ti West-directed A24 slasher film. The movie mixes porn, sex, creepy old people (no offense to the elderly), and gore, all in one. It is just one step away from being cheesy but it somehow finds a balance of being a horror film that’s actually scary while also giving a storyline that’s unique. The film is about a group of adult film stars from the 70s who set out to make the kind of porn flick that is also a cinematic experience. Their plan of making it big in the porn industry fails when they stay at a guesthouse owned by an old couple in the middle of nowhere Texas. Once their hosts realize what they’re up to, things quickly turn violent and deadly for them all. The film stars Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega, Martin Henderson, Brittany Snow, and Scott Mescudi. —KR

'Life & Beth'

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When: Mar. 18

Where: Hulu

Amy Schumer has made a career out of her self-deprecating humor. While it could be offputting at first, it’s sort of endearing in Life & Beth. Schumer has committed to creating movies, and now television, that shows what life is like for the ordinary, everyday woman, and it’s honestly refreshing. Schumer wrote, produced, and directed the new Hulu series, loosely based on her own life, and focuses on how our teenage years can have a lasting impact on us in our adult lives. 

In the show, Beth seemingly has her life together with a steady job, a long-term relationship, and a nice New York City apartment. A life-changing incident forces her to look at herself and her life to figure out if she’s everything she planned on being when she was younger. This show will deeply resonate for people of a certain age, and for younger viewers, it will inspire them to not let life get away from them and pursue a life that’s anything but ordinary. —KR

'DMZ'

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When: Mar. 17

Where: HBO Max

Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli’s DMZ was one of my favorite graphic novels whenever I finally decided to dive into the 72-issue saga. It’s set in a future that doesn’t feel too far away, where the Second Civil War has turned the island of Manhattan into a demilitarized zone, aka that’s where you get the DMZ in the title. If you haven’t read, you should, but also know that you don’t really need to have read it to watch this Ava DuVernay-produced miniseries, which stars Rosario Dawson as a minor character in the DMZ comic series that’s become the main focus of the miniseries.

Showrunner Roberto Patino explained that times have changed, and so should the tale of DMZ. “We decided that this story meant something different 10 years after it was first published,” Patino said. “So we took the most interesting character, a background character with no name, and built her personality and a story around her. We decided to make this as personal a story as possible, about a fearless mother looking for her son.” If you’re a fan of Rosario Dawson and want to see her embody a story that had to change because our world changed, DMZ is your show. —khal

'Master'

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When: Mar. 18

Where: Prime Video and select theaters

Over the last decade, Regina Hall has been an actor that I’ve loved seeing grow. She’s more known for her comedic work in the Scary Movie franchise or in the 2017 smash hit Girls Trip than for the more nuanced performances she’s delivered, like in 2018’s Support the Girls, a performance so dope it earned her the honor of being the first African American to win the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress. In Prime Video’s Master, there’s nothing funny going on. Billed as a thriller, Master is more frighteningly real than other films designed to shock and surprise you. Set at a wealthy university, we are given three women (portrayed by Hall, Zoe Renee, and Amber Gray) in varying positions in this university. Hall’s Gail Bishop is the first Black woman to hold the Master position at the university, overseeing the students. As she works her way through the enormity of the position, she deals with a situation between a teacher (Gray) and a student (Renee) that encompasses the strange racial dynamics at the university on the whole. Not to mention that the student, Jasmine, is dealing with issues of her own with her peers. It’s up to Master Bishop to handle a problem that’s been festering long before any of them set foot on campus.

Master is far from perfect, but I do applaud Mariama Diallo in her directorial debut (from a script that she wrote). She utilizes horror elements to highlight some of the situations that Jasmine ends up landing into intriguing effect, but Master is its best when Hall is on screen. She’s been ready for weightier roles, and it’s dope to see that she’s at a point where she can take on a producer role on a project like this. It’s possibly one of the harder watches for this weekend, but if you’re into films like Jordan Peele’s directorial debut Get Out, Master may be up your alley. —khal

 

'WeCrashed'

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When: Mar. 18

Where: Apple TV+

Apple TV+’s WeCrashed isn’t the first time someone has tried to tackle the bizarre story of the rise and fall of WeWork, but it hasn’t been done like this before. The show stars Jared Leto as Adam Neumann, co-founder of WeWork, Anne Hathaway as Adam’s wife Rebekah Neumann, and Kyle Marvin as co-founder of WeWork Miguel McKelvey. Judging by the trailer, the two Oscars winners acted their asses off in these roles, as they tell the story of how they created the world’s most valuable startups and took it from a single co-working space into a global brand worth $47 billion in under a decade. But its valuation quickly plummeted, leaving the Neumanns to grapple with the effects of their fast success and failures has on them as a couple. —KR

'Minx'

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Where: Mar. 17

When: HBO Max

Minx is another project dropping this week that takes place in the 1970s and it’s about porn... well, kind of. The HBO show is about an eager young feminist named Joyce Prigger who is looking to create an empowering magazine that focuses on women’s issues. When no one wants to support her feminist magazine efforts and after many rejections, she instead joins forces with a low-brow publisher named Doug Renetti to create the first erotic magazine for women called Minx. While it’s not exactly what she has in mind, she takes on the challenge in hopes that it would get her closer to her dream. Sex sells, after all, and if Joyce wants to publish articles about the issues she cares about, she might have to camouflage them behind some men’s naked bodies. Ophelia Lovibond and New Girl’s Jake Johnson lead the ensemble cast of HBO Max’s new workplace comedy. —KR

'Alice'

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When: Mar. 18

Where: In theaters


Keke Palmer’s latest work is the lead in one of the more intriguing film premises to come out of Sundance this year. In Alice, Palmer portrays Alice, a young woman who lives as a slave on a 19th-century plantation in Georgia, only to find out that it’s actually 1973 and slavery isn’t even a thing. After linking up with a truck driver (Common), Alice becomes acclimated with her situation, to which Alice becomes a very different film. Palmer is on fire as of late; she’s been doing her thing in a few Scream series, but it may have been 2019’s Hustlers that made many who were sleeping aware that Palmer had it. Every interview, every viral video, she gains more and more props, whetting our appetites for her work alongside Daniel Kaluuya in Jordan Peele’s next film, Nope. That’s not to say that you should dismiss Alice because something shinier is on the way on July 22; Alice is based on true events. That alone makes this something you need to put your eyes onto, even if it's just for another dope Keke Palmer performance. —khal

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