Weekend Watchlist, 10/16: Lights, Camera

Happy Friday, PV Guide readers! I hope you have a great weekend ahead of you. 

In case you missed it earlier in the week, I published the Back in Action: 1991 report for September, featuring Joan Chen smiling with a gun while a helicopter explodes behind her!

Here are this week’s picks.

Street Fighter

Where to watch: Free with ads on Tubi and Pluto TV

There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of the new Street Fighter movie, but there’s always the sweet chaotic bliss of the original. It’s an absolute fever dream, featuring fantastic costumes and sets, one of legitimately my favorite performances in any movie ever (Raul Julia as M. Bison), some genuinely dreadful performances (including an admittedly very coked-up Jean-Claude Van Damme) and awful fight sequences for a movie purportedly about fighting. Somehow, these elements mix together into an electric movie.

For more, read (or listen) about the troubled production, my interview with cinematographer and #1 Street Fighter fan Devon Scott about why the movie is an accidental masterpiece, and Sophie Bee’s brief history of live-action fighting game movies.

The Rehearsal season 2

Where to watch: HBO

I am extremely excited to see You Can See Everything, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s new documentary following Elizabeth Holmes. I was hit or miss on Nathan For You, but Fielder’s latest projects (The Curse and The Rehearsal) have really hit for me. I thought about recommending The Curse (because it’s October, after all), but we just finished season two  of The Rehearsal and I haven’t been able to stop thinking or talking about it. In season two, Fielder uses his “rehearsal” method from season one to try to improve airline safety through a series of ambitious experiments and recreations you have to see to believe. Fielder is a one-of-a-kind filmmaker who creates visceral, experimental art that challenges conventional forms and norms, and I’m counting down the days until I can see You Can See Everything.

Collateral

Where to watch: Prime, Peacock, Paramount Plus

I did promise a scary-ish recommendation each week of October, and with Digger in the air, I thought I’d recommend the Michael Mann thriller Collateral. It’s the closest Tom Cruise has ever come to playing a slasher villain – he’s icy cold and terrifyingly dangerous in the role of a contract killer who takes a cab driver (Jamie Foxx) hostage, as he executes jobs around the city. Mann’s a master of genre filmmaking, and combined with the two excellent lead performances, it’s a great time.