10-05-2025
‘The Young Pope,' ‘The Studio' vs. the Golden Globes, ‘Warfare,' and the best to stream this weekend
Welcome to , your VIP guide to the best of award-worthy pop culture for the weekend ahead, curated by the Gold Derby team of experts. (May 9 - May 11)
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'Awards Magnet': 'Hacks,' 'The Studio,' and 2 Emmy-worthy episodes
We'd like to thank The Studio for this week's entertainment.
The newest episode of the acclaimed Apple TV+ comedy (which was just renewed for Season 2) takes viewers behind the scenes of Hollywood's biggest drunkest night. In "The Golden Globes," Matt (Seth Rogen) and Sal (Ike Barinholtz) attend the titular soirée, where the former quickly becomes obsessed with hearing his name called from the stage of the famed Beverly Hilton, not because he's a producer on a project, but because he greenlit a nominated film directed by Zoë Kravitz. The 30-minute episode is a delight for those amongst us who live and breathe all things awards. But it's most memorable for its incredible guest cast featuring some of the biggest names in TV and film getting all dolled up for the show within the show. A strong outing from start to finish, The Studio is the awards contender to watch this weekend.
If you'd prefer something that's a little less inside baseball, we suggest you tee up some of these Emmy-worthy shows.
Conan O'Brien Must Go: Max's Emmy-winning travel series is back with more hilarious adventures. In Season 2, Conan O'Brien travels to Spain, New Zealand, and Austria, where he experiences local cultures and meets fans he previously spoke to on his podcast, Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. Along for the ride are some familiar faces, including Oscar winners Javier Bardem and Taika Waititi. The first of three episodes is now streaming on Max.
Poker Face: Yet another Emmy-winning series is making its triumphant return this week, as Rian Johnson's mystery series starring Natasha Lyonne as a woman with impeccable lie detections skills debuts its highly anticipated sophomore run more than two years after we last saw it. A lot has changed since then — Season 1 guest star Adrien Brody has won a second Oscar, for instance — and yet a lot is still the same, including our desire to see Lyonne's Charlie solve murders, case-of-the-week style. Like everything else this week, the guest cast is also something to behold: Justin Theroux, Kumail Nanjiani, John Mulaney, Carol Kane, Katie Holmes, Margo Martindale, and Cynthia Erivo, are all slated to appear in Season 2. The first three episodes are now streaming on Peacock.
Hacks: And just like that we're halfway through the fourth season of the Emmy-winning comedy series, which means it's time for Ava (Hannah Einbinder) to hit her breaking point at Late Night. Things come to a head in the excellent and balanced "Mrs. Table," ultimately forcing Deborah (Emmy winner Jean Smart) to make a decision about the future. The episode is now streaming on Max.
Our top movie pick this week is , the latest from filmmaker Alex Garland, written and co-directed with his Civil War military advisor, Ray Mendoza. Mendoza is a Navy SEAL veteran, and the film is an attempt to recreate from memory an operation that went bad that he was part of in Iraq in 2006. The film's attempts at journalistic accuracy make it an unusually intense and realistic war film, as well as something of a companion piece to Civil War, Garland's 2024 film about war journalism.
The A24 film stars a who's who of rising young male actors, including D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (Reservation Dogs), Charles Melton (May December), Cosmo Jarvis (Shogun), Will Poulter (The Bear), and Joseph Quinn (Stranger Things), among others. It's a tight 90 minutes, mostly unfolding in real time, and it will knock the wind out of you. It was released theatrically in April, and is now available to rent or buy on video-on-demand platforms including Amazon.
If that sounds too intense, here are some other movies to stream or watch on video-on-demand.
: Vince Vaughn goes toe-to-toe with some iconic Italian American ladies of a certain age in this Netflix comedy. He plays an MTA worker who loses his mother and decides to open an Italian restaurant in her honor, and hires some nonnas — Lorraine Bracco, Talia Shire, Brenda Vaccaro, and Susan Sarandon — to be the chefs. These ladies have nine Academy Award nominations between them, and seem like they're a lot of fun to hang out with. The film is based on the true story of Enoteca Maria on Staten Island, and is a life-affirming celebration of food, family, and culture that your whole famiglia can watch together.
: Academy Award winners Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DeBose star in this John Wick-style action-comedy. Quan plays a middle-mannered realtor who used to be an assassin, and is pulled back into his old life when his former partner (DeBose) finds him and recruits him to put an end to his evil crime boss brother (Daniel Wu) once and for all. Critics and audiences rejected the film in theaters earlier this year, but it's more viable now that it's streaming on Peacock. It's not the kind of movie that's worth going to the theater for, but it's easy to watch on a lazy weekend afternoon.
: This teen sex comedy features Saturday Night Live's Chloe Fineman in her first starring film role. It's about an awkward high school girl, Abby (Sam Morelos), who hires an exotic dancer, Santa Monica (Fineman), to teach her how to seduce her crush before graduation. The Hulu original is the directorial debut of Workaholics' Jillian Bell and was produced by American High, the company that owns a decommissioned high school in Syracuse where it films high school comedies.
: Barbie Ferreira and John Leguizamo give delightful performances in this indie dramedy that won the Grand Jury Award and the Audience Award at SXSW last year. Ferreira stars as Lily Trevino, a lonely young woman who is estranged from her father, Bob (French Stewart). The estrangement was his choice; he's a real piece of work. While looking for him on Facebook, she meets a different Bob Trevino (Leguizamo), who never had kids of his own, and he becomes a father figure to her. It's available to buy via on-demand programs including Amazon.
By now you've heard how Conclave racked up the streams over the past weeks as curious observers, cardinals, and even the future Pope Leo XIV tuned in for insight into the secretive election process. But before Leo became the real first American pontiff in Vatican City, there was a fictional first American pope. Jude Law delivered a delicious performance in the soapy 2016 HBO limited series , with his character, Pius XIII, embarking on a reign of terror after claiming the papacy. The 10-episode series, available to stream on Max, wound up scoring Emmy nominations for production design and cinematography, and Law received a Golden Globe nominaton for Best Actor in a Miniseries or TV Movie.
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