THE MANDALORIAN Stream on Disney Plus. A hand on a holster. Animals galloping over parched land. A mysterious, caped figure walking into the sunset. This new Star Wars series from Jon Favreau brings strong echoes of Sergio Leone and John Ford to George Lucas’s galaxy far, far over yonder. Part of a slate of programming Disney is using to introduce its new streaming service, “The Mandalorian” casts Pedro Pascal (best known for getting his skull crushed as Oberyn Martell in “Game of Thrones”) as a bounty hunter. His story picks up several years after Luke Skywalker and company celebrated victory in “Return of the Jedi,” but before the plots of the newer Star Wars episodes of the 2010s. The show’s cast also includes Giancarlo Esposito, Carl Weathers, Gina Carano, Nick Nolte and Werner Herzog — but the secret weapon here may be the Swedish musician Ludwig Goransson, who has followed up recent work on “Black Panther” and Childish Gambino’s “This is America” by scoring all eight episodes of “The Mandalorian.”
THE CHAMBERMAID (2019) Rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. Mexico’s entry in the best international feature category at the Academy Awards centers on a maid at a high-rise hotel in Mexico City. The movie follows that maid, Eve (Gabriela Cartol), through her day-to-day life, including a friendship; a romance; and a window into the lives of guests, who leave behind pieces of themselves in the form of books, bloodstains and more. The film was directed by Lila Avilés, and is a “quietly stunning debut feature,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The New York Times. “Avilés approaches Eve’s inner life with frank and tactful sympathy, and depicts her circumstances with unsentimental clarity,” he added. “The film’s style is austere — there are few camera movements and no musical score — but its visual wit and emotional sensitivity lift it above the minimalist miserablism that drags down so many well-meaning films about modern workers. After you’ve seen it, the world looks different.”
MARADONA IN MEXICO Stream on Netflix. Earlier this year, the famous Argentine footballer Diego Maradona was the subject of an HBO documentary that chronicled his storied career. A different side of Maradona can be found in this docuseries, which follows the athlete during a recent period when he was coaching the Dorados de Sinaloa, a team based in Culiacán, Mexico.
LIFE FROM ABOVE 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). While “The Mandalorian” offers an escape to a galaxy of jedi and starships, this series goes to space to look back at Earth. The previous couple episodes used strikingly detailed satellite imagery to showcase the colors and patterns as seen from above; Wednesday night’s episode uses such images to look at the way the planet has changed over the years, and at humans’ dramatic impact on the Earth’s landscapes.
