HOLLYWOOD, CA — This week's picks span psychological thrillers, legal dramas, family sagas and tragicomedies, with characters confronting difficult truths.
"Digger" and "Verity" place competing versions of the truth at their center, whether through a billionaire confronting the limits of his own mythology or a writer attempting to separate fact from fiction. Meanwhile, Netflix's "East of Eden" revisits John Steinbeck's enduring exploration of family legacy and moral choice, while HBO's "War" transforms a high-profile divorce into a legal battleground shaped by ambition, reputation and institutional power.
Ready to dive in? Scroll on for the full lineup, where the capsules below explore the performances, themes and creative ambitions that make these films and series worth adding to your watchlist.
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Tom Cruise, Sandra Hüller, Riz Ahmed; directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Alejandro G. Iñárritu's "Digger" transforms environmental catastrophe into a tragicomic examination of power, accountability and the fictions people construct to avoid both. Tom Cruise stars as Digger Rockwell, a billionaire oil baron whose confidence begins to fracture when a widening environmental crisis exposes the limits of the reality he has built around himself.
As scientists raise alarm and competing narratives emerge, Digger responds with unwavering certainty, casting himself as both architect and solution. Sandra Hüller and Riz Ahmed provide strong support as figures who challenge the myths sustaining his authority, while Iñárritu balances broad absurdity with a more searching interest in responsibility, self-interest and public perception.
Cruise delivers one of the year's most transformative performances, disappearing beneath prosthetics and a swaggering persona that recalls the excess of Les Grossman while serving a far more ambitious purpose.
Frequently messy and occasionally maddening but rarely uninteresting, "Digger" uses catastrophe not as a target of satire but as a catalyst for exploring how individuals and institutions preserve comforting stories when reality begins asserting its own terms.
Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, Josh Hartnett; directed by Michael Showalter
Michael Showalter adapts Colleen Hoover's bestselling psychological thriller with Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett leading the cast. Johnson stars as Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer hired to complete a successful book series after its author, Verity Crawford (Hathaway), is left unable to continue following a mysterious accident.
What begins as a lucrative ghostwriting assignment gradually evolves into something far more unsettling when Lowen discovers an unpublished manuscript hidden within the Crawford home. As she becomes increasingly entangled with Verity's husband Jeremy (Hartnett) and the family's troubled history, questions of authorship, obsession and truth begin to blur.
Positioned at the intersection of literary mystery and psychological suspense, "Verity" appears interested in the unstable boundary between fiction and reality.
Reuniting Anne Hathaway with "The Idea of You" director Michael Showalter, the film transforms Colleen Hoover's novel into a psychological thriller built around competing versions of the truth, where fiction, memory and perception become increasingly difficult to disentangle.
Florence Pugh, Christopher Abbott, Mike Faist; created by Zoe Kazan
Netflix's limited series adaptation of "East of Eden" reimagines John Steinbeck's American classic through a sprawling multigenerational portrait of the Trask family. Created by Zoe Kazan, whose grandfather Elia Kazan directed the 1955 film adaptation, the seven-episode series places renewed emphasis on Cathy Ames (Florence Pugh), one of the novel's most enigmatic and controversial figures.
Set against the farmlands of California's Salinas Valley, the story follows successive generations whose lives become entangled through love, jealousy, inheritance and moral choice. Christopher Abbott and Mike Faist star as Adam and Charles Trask, brothers whose rivalry echoes throughout the family's history, while Pugh's Cathy emerges as a disruptive force whose influence reverberates across decades.
Rather than functioning solely as a period drama, "East of Eden" approaches Steinbeck's novel as a multigenerational study of inheritance, identity and moral choice, tracing how the decisions of one generation continue to shape the lives of those who follow.
Sienna Miller, Dominic West, Archie Renaux; created by George Kay
HBO's "War" transforms a headline-grabbing celebrity divorce into a sprawling legal drama about ambition, reputation and the institutions built around conflict.
Created by George Kay, the series follows rival London law firms Cathcarts & Sons and Taylor & Byrne as they battle over the dissolution of the marriage between tech entrepreneur Morgan Henderson (Dominic West) and international film star Carla Duval (Sienna Miller). As accusations mount and personal grievances become legal strategy, the dispute expands far beyond the couple at its center.
The season promises a legal drama where courtroom maneuvering is only part of the battle, using a contentious divorce to examine how ambition, power and reputation operate within the institutions tasked with arbitrating them.
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