MOVIES
— “Army of Thieves,” coming to Netflix on Friday, is set in a world where there are zombies but it’s (asterisk)not(asterisk) a zombie movie. This prequel to Zack Snyder’s “Army of the Dead” invites viewers to join a new Europe-trotting heist. The safecracker Dieter (played by Matthias Schweighöfer, who also directed) is just a small-time bank teller who is recruited by “Game of Thrones” alum Nathalie Emmanuel to pull off a series of robberies across the continent.
— If you missed Lin-Manuel Miranda’s joyous musical “In the Heights” in theaters earlier this summer (most people did) or during its limited time on HBO Max, worry not because the Jon M. Chu-directed adaptation is coming back to the streaming service on Thursday. Star Anthony Ramos, Noveck wrote, “eases into leading-man duties with warmth, humor and charm.”
— A new documentary tells the story of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Nick Ut, the man who captured the horrors of the Vietnam War with a single black-and-white photo of a 9-year-old girl in 1972. Ut was only 21 at the time he took the “Napalm Girl” photo and after the fall of Saigon was transferred to the Los Angeles bureau of The Associated Press, where he would take many thousands of photographs — covering everything from the riots to celebrity trials — before his retirement in 2017 (after 51 years). Ut gets the chance to tell his own story in “From Hell to Hollywood,” available on VOD starting Oct. 26.
MUSIC
— Ed Sheeran always equals something interesting. The fourth full-length album from the singer-songwriter — titled “=” (and pronounced Equals) — is due Friday and he has a lot to cover, including his marriage, fatherhood and loss. “I see it as my coming-of-age record,” he said in a statement. The 14-track album includes the hits “Bad Habits” and “Shivers.”
— The War on Drugs are back this Friday after four years with the 10-track “I Don’t Live Here Anymore.” The title song is a shimmering, ’80s-influenced grand affair: “Is life just dying in slow motion/Or getting stronger every day?” sings the band’s frontman and guitarist, Adam Granduciel. But there’s versatility, too: The first single, “Living Proof,” finds the band vulnerable and restrained. The album is described as “an uncommon rock album about one of our most common but daunting processes — resilience in the face of despair.”
— The weather’s getting colder and the holidays are right around the corner. That can mean only one thing: Pentatonix with a new Christmas album. It’s only sort of true this time. “Evergreen,” the Grammy-winning a cappella group’s sixth holiday album, out Friday, is timed for winter but the two songs revealed so far aren’t especially Christmas-y: Jule Styne’s “It’s Been a Long, Long Time” and Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called To Say I Love You.” Perhaps they’ve run out of traditional songs, but they’re sure to add their vocal magic to anything Christmas-adjacent.
-AP-