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What to do this weekend: Watch ‘IF,’ stream ‘Bridgerton,’ listen to new Billie Eilish

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What to do this weekend: Watch ‘IF,’ stream ‘Bridgerton,’ listen to new Billie Eilish

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Loverboy had it right: Everybody is working for the weekend. And this one, you’ll need to catch a breath because “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” and “The Garfield Movie” roll into theaters next week for the long Memorial Day weekend and the summer movie season really gets revved up.

But don’t sleep on a slew of fresh entertainment options before that ball gets rolling, from watching the family film “IF” and the decidedly more adult “Bridgerton” to jamming to new Billie Eilish tracks. There’s a lot to experience in films, TV, books and music, and that’s what we specialize in: telling fans what’s good and what’s worth their time.

Here’s what you need to put your Big Entertainment Energy toward this weekend:

See ‘IF,’ ‘I Saw the TV Glow’ and ‘Back in Black’ in theaters

After scaring the bejeezus out of us with two “A Quiet Place” movies, writer/director John Krasinski went a more PG route with his fantasy comedy “IF,” a movie about imaginary friends starring Ryan Reynolds. Krasinski told my colleague Patrick Ryan that he was inspired by his kids. During the pandemic, “all the imaginary games that my girls were playing became fewer and fewer,” he says. “I genuinely saw their lights starting to go out, and they started asking big questions like, ‘Are we going to be OK?’ ” But the movie definitely leans thematically more for grown-ups than little ones, as I point out in my ★★½ review.

Also in theaters: I dug the horror movie/trans allegory/pop-culture deconstruction “I Saw the TV Glow,” which blows your mind (in a good way!), while my pal Marco della Cava interviewed Marisa Abela, who plays famed songstress Amy Winehouse in the biopic “Back to Black,” even though she didn’t sing beforehand. “Amy had one of the most distinctive voices ever, so I had to listen hard to her influences and patterns in order to get close,” she says.

Stream the first half of a saucy Season 3 of Netflix’s ‘Bridgerton’

The “Bridgerton” hive is excited about a third season of the historical romance show arriving on Netflix, and it sounds like you’re going to need a feather fan to cool yourself down from all the spiciness. The new season focuses on the star-crossed love affair between Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) and Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton), and TV critic Kelly Lawler writes that the first four episodes (with four more coming June 13) are funnier and feature more sex than Season 2, plus make Coughlan “a bona fide star.” That said, Kelly concludes that the new season “will never re-create the magic” of the show’s debut four years ago, “which had all the right amounts of love, sex, intrigue, duels, honor and shirtless men to create a phenomenon.”

Never seen “Bridgerton”? Well, we have a catch-up guide for that!

Listen to Billie Eilish’s latest album ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft’

This spring has been a boon for music lovers, with new albums from Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Dua Lipa, among others. Now it’s Billie Eilish’s turn for a high-profile reappearance: Fresh off an Oscar win for “What Was I Made For?” the mistress of breathy, moody pop releases her third album “Hit Me Hard and Soft” as a “female-centric journey through friendship, love, sex and anguish,” writes music critic Melissa Ruggieri in her ★★★ review. The effort finds Eilish continuing “to navigate young adulthood while embracing her recently disclosed sexuality” with songs like the quirky “L’Amour De Ma Vie,” dreamily introspective “The Greatest” and intoxicating anthem “Lunch.”

Melissa’s fave track? “Birds of a Feather,” a bop that she says is “a classic take on the ‘I’ll love you until I die’ trope.”

Even more goodness to check out:

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