Weekend Watchlist, 10/10: Trust
Including the streaming debut of one of the best new movies of the year
Happy Friday, PV Guide readers! I hope you have a great weekend ahead of you.
Every Friday, I’m recommending a few great things to watch that the algorithm might not be pushing at you right now, with a focus on variety, so every reader can find something they’re interested in. The Weekend Watchlist will always be 100% free. (But I have opened up PV Guide’s Premium Tier, for those interested in supporting this work!)
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First the new on streaming round-up this week: the excellent thriller Cloud premieres on the Criterion Channel and on digital rental platforms (more on that movie in a moment), and is joined on VOD by other new arrivals The Conjuring: Last Rites, Freakier Friday, Him, and A Little Prayer. On streaming platforms, the live-action How to Train Your Dragon premieres on Peacock, Lurker lands on Mubi, and the documentary John Candy: I Like Me debuts on Prime.
Over on the podcast front, consider voting on what movie we'll cover in the first episode of Sports Movies That Do Suck. Will it be an NBA icon's failed attempt at movie stardom, an "underdog" story where the main character's problem is "being very bad at the thing he wants to do," or one of the Friends playing baseball with a chimp? That's up to you.
Let’s get into this week’s picks!
Cloud
If you like: Taut action thrillers, movies about the digital age, dirtbag protagonists
Watch at: Criterion Channel and for rent on VOD
Watch trailer here
One of the best new movies of the year finally makes its streaming debut, as Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s scintillating digital thriller Cloud premieres on the Criterion Channel. The movie follows an online reseller whose shady business practices come back to bite him when frustrated past clients team up to exact revenge. Read my full review here.
A John Carpenter you haven’t seen
If you like: Genre movies that are both fun and impeccably constructed, horror, great soundtracks
Watch at: Criterion Channel (many are also available elsewhere)
In the spirit of last week’s “A John Woo you haven’t seen,” let’s highlight another great Criterion collection featuring the work of a director who delivered banger after banger in the back half of the 20th century. I don’t know which ones you’ve seen, but I’ll recommend my favorites from the collection: Assault on Precinct 13, Prince of Darkness, They Live, and In the Mouth of Madness.
Play Dirty
If you like: Heist movies, the character Parker, Shane Black’s quippy action comedies
Watch at: Prime Video
Watch trailer here
Play Dirty is the latest film adaptation of Donald E. Westlake’s Parker novels. Parker has been played by Lee Marvin, Jim Brown, Robert Duvall, and Jason Statham, among others, and even Jean Luc-Godard made a Parker adaptation (Made in USA) in 1966.
This time around, Mark Wahlberg plays the master thief, in an adaptation by action comedy vet Shane Black. It’s Black’s first movie since the mess that was 2018’s The Predator, and it’s a solid return to form for him in a more familiar genre setting.
With the caveat that I haven’t read any of the Parker novels, I quite enjoyed Black’s Play Dirty as a breezy caper with typically clever and quippy dialogue and a particularly strong supporting performance by Lakeith Stanfield as the struggling theater practitioner/thief Grofield. The movie went straight to Prime without much fanfare or seemingly any marketing effort, but is worth checking out for those that like the caper genre.
