Weekend Watchlist, 1/2: New Year, New Me

Happy New Year, PV Guide readers! If you haven’t voted in the PV Guide Reader’s Choice Awards, you still have a few weeks to make your voice heard.

This week, I’m celebrating the new year with a trio of “new year, new me” movies, all about deciding to become the person you actually want to be. They were the subject of one of my favorite essays I wrote at Polygon, about some of my favorite movies of 2024.

A Different Man

Watch at: HBO Max

In Aaron Schimberg’s darkly hilarious psychological comedy, Sebastian Stan plays Edward, a struggling actor with a facial disfigurement who agrees to an experimental treatment that completely alters his face to one more socially acceptable. After pivoting to real estate, he discovers his old neighbor (Renate Reinsve) has written a play about him and his former condition. When a different, more charismatic actor (Adam Pearson) with Edward’s same former disfigurement is cast as “Edward,” the real Edward starts to get jealous, as insecurities he thought he left behind with his treatment reemerge.

Hit Man

Watch at: Netflix

Glen Powell’s been kind of everywhere recently, but the dark romantic comedy Hit Man is still the best thing he’s done and the most impressive display of his talents. Powell plays Gary Johnson, a psychology and philosophy professor who works with the New Orleans Police Departments by pretending to be hit men in sting operations catching people looking to hire a killer. Each sting operation means a different hit man persona, complete with a different outfit, background, and style of speech. This gives room for Powell to play a variety of bizarre and goofy characters in the movie, and also causes Gary to question which version of himself he’d most like to be – especially when he starts to fall for one of his “clients” (Adria Arjona).

I Saw the TV Glow

Watch at: HBO Max

Jane Schoenbrun’s psychological drama follows two teenagers (Justice Smith and Jack Haven) who become obsessed with a supernatural young adult TV show in the ‘90s. When one of the two suddenly reappears a decade later, new questions about which reality is more real suddenly surface. 

Many movies in the trans canon aren’t explicitly about the topic, rather read through allegory. TV Glow almost works in reverse, telling a story about identity in a way that anyone can relate to: trying to discover your true self. A lot of that rests on the shoulders of Smith’s incredible performance, which is one of the best of the decade, but it also helps to have a generationally brilliant filmmaker like Schoenbrun behind the camera.

There were two other movies I mentioned in the piece: for bonus watching (or if you’ve already seen these three), check out Carry-On and Sixty Minutes, both more action-centric movies that also deal with this theme of self-actualization. They're both currently streaming on Netflix.