‘Pachinko’ Returns, John Woo Reimagines ‘The Killer,’ Pilot Error on FX, Meet the ‘Supremes’

Season Premiere

Winner of a Peabody and American Film Institute award for its first season in 2022, the sprawling saga (based on Min Jin Lee’s acclaimed novel) about a Korean family displaced in Japan before, during and long after World War II returns for an engrossing and often heartbreaking second season. (See my review of the first season, which is essential viewing.) The central figure is Sunja (Minha Kim as the younger and Oscar-winner Yuh-Jung Youn as the elderly version), a Mother Courage figure with a soul of steel, who in the 1940s war years moves her extended family into the Japanese countryside far from Osaka, provided for by a benefactor (Lee Minho) whose secret history with Sunja could destroy her family’s hard-fought harmony. The older Sunja looks back on this time of sacrifice from the late 1980s, when her ambitious grandson Solomon (Jin Ha) schemes to make his name in high finance. (He’d be right at home on HBO’s Industry.) Anna Sawai, so remarkable in Shogun, co-stars in the modern-day section as Solomon’s cautionary colleague. Pachinko’s sweep is impressive, though toggling between the two time periods can be challenging. Ultimately, it’s a story of resilience. And as older Sunja reflects, “Why do some people in this world manage to survive while others do not?” Episodes drop weekly.

Movie Premiere

Action-film legend John Woo revisits one of his earliest Hong Kong hits with a gender-reversed reimagining of 1989’s propulsive The Killer—this time with a female assassin (Game of Thrones’ Nathalie Emmanuel) in the crosshairs. She’s Zee, aka the infamous “Queen of the Dead,” who puts a target on her own back when she declines to kill her latest assignment, a blind woman in a Parisian nightclub. No good deed goes unpunished, and soon she’s being pursued by her most lethal rivals and forges an unexpected alliance with a “good cop” investigator (Lupin’s Omar Sy). Expect trademark Woo carnage in a barrage of action sequences.

Special

10/9c

The documentary series’ latest installment exposes a “culture of concealment” within the aviation industry regarding airline pilots’ mental health protocols. The issue became front-page news last October when off-duty pilot Joseph Emerson, having consumed psychedelic mushrooms to deal with depression, allegedly tried to shut off the engines of an Alaska Airlines passenger plane mid-flight while sitting in the cockpit jump seat. Lie to Fly explores calls for reform of strict FAA rules that lead pilots to lie about or avoid treatment for mental-health issues at risk of their careers.

Movie Premiere

Emmy winner Uzo Aduba, Sanaa Lathan and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor are Clarice, Barbara Jean and Odette, known locally as “the Supremes,” a formidable trio of BFF sisterhood in director Tina Mabry’s adaptation of Edward Kelsey Moore’s novel. They’ve stuck by each other through years of happiness and heartache, and as those other Supremes once sang, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” to bring these women down because “Love was our glue.”

INSIDE FRIDAY TV:

• Nelly Knows Mysteries: A Fatal Engagement (9/8c, Hallmark Mystery): When Calls the Heart’s Pascale Hutton and Kavan Smith moonlight in a light mystery, in which Nelly (Hutton) works with a local detective (Smith) to prove her childhood friend didn’t murder her unfaithful boyfriend.
• Vienna Philharmonic Summer Night Concert 2024 (9/8c, PBS): Bask in the open-air splendor of Vienna’s Schönbrunn Palace gardens for the annual orchestral concert, with soprano soloist Lise Davidsen joining guest conductor Andris Nelsons.
• The Braxtons (9:30/8:30c, WE TV): The reality-TV family is still recovering from grief counseling when the late Traci’s son, Kevin Jr., goes missing.

ON THE STREAM:

• Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1 (streaming on Max): Director-star-producer-cowriter Kevin Costner’s (Yellowstone) cinematic passion project, a Civil War-era Western epic, makes its streaming debut. (The movie premieres on HBO Saturday at 8/7c).
• Lady in the Lake (streaming on Apple TV+): The evocative mystery series concludes with the victimized Cleo (Moses Ingram) and the ambitious Maddie (Natalie Portman) each determined to tell their story on their own terms.
• Hell Hole (streaming on Shudder): The horror-filmmaking Adams Family (not to be confused with the other one) presents a body-horror creature feature about an American-based fracking crew in Serbia that digs up an entombed soldier carrying a parasitic monster that’s seeking new hosts.
• Incoming (streaming on Netflix): Four freshmen experience their first high-school party in a raunchy teen comedy. Kaitlin Olson (ABC’s upcoming High Potential) and Bobby Cannavale appear as, purportedly, the adults in the room.
• RuPaul’s Drag Race Global All-Stars (streaming on Paramount+): Comedian Matt Rogers is the guest judge when the global cast prepares jaw-dropping looks for the International Queen of Mystery Ball.