Weekend Watchlist, 2/27: Timing

Happy Friday everyone! I’m back from my brief hiatus, and excited to give you more picks this week. I’ll also have the February version of my Back in Action 1991 series going live next Wednesday – check out January’s if you haven’t had the chance yet.

Now, onto this week’s picks!

It Was Just An Accident

Where to watch: Hulu (added Sunday, March 1)

Two standout awards contenders land on Hulu this weekend, as Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent both arrive on the platform Saturday. They’re both great movies, and very much worth watching, but I have to go to bat for It Was Just an Accident, my favorite new release of 2025. The movie follows a former political prisoner who hears the rattle of the prosthetic leg of the guard who once tortured him, and feels compelled to do something about it. It’s a searing thriller that tackles difficult topics with weight and humor, nesting a deeply moving story within a compelling genre framework. The context in which it was made can also not be ignored: Panahi has been banned from making films in Iran, which means he makes them in secret, without permits or permission and in defiance of an oppressive government. When people talk about the radical potential of art, they’re talking about artists like Panahi.

96 Minutes

Where to watch: Netflix

I’m a sucker for a bomb-on-a-train thriller, and we’ve had a glut of those recently ever since the success of Bullet Train (a movie I wasn’t particularly fond of, but I’ll forgive it for the uptick in train-based movies that followed). 96 Minutes is a strong addition to the sub-genre, a tense Taiwanese thriller that performed very well at the domestic box office in 2025 and is now available to international audiences on Netflix. The movie follows a retired bomb disposal expert called back into action when a bomb is planted on a high-speed train carrying the attendees of the annual memorial service for the victims of an explosion he failed to stop. It hits the marks of the “bomb-on-a-train-thriller” well – the movie looks great, with sharp cinematography and a strong visual motif of using the reflections of train windows as sites for memories – and adds extra depth through the presence of moral dilemma elements that subvert norms of the genre and its typical character types. The people* yearn for mass transit thrillers, and 96 Minutes delivers. 

*It’s me. I am the people.

A Frederick Wiseman movie

The legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman passed away during my hiatus. A dogged observer of American life and institutions, his work is a key to unlocking the way we are and the issues we face, and has inspired many modern filmmakers in their approach to fiction and non-fiction alike. 

If you haven’t seen any of his films, his passing is as good of an excuse as any to dive in. Here is a handy watch guide: