Weekend Watchlist, 2/6: Distinct
What to watch this weekend
Happy February! I published my 2025 favorites earlier this week, including my top 10 movies of the year. Check it out, if you haven’t yet!
There’s also a new episode of Sports Movies That Don’t Suck, talking Bull Durham with the great film critic Willow Catelyn Maclay. It’s a fun one – Willow’s a terrific guest, and Bull Durham’s a fantastic movie.
Now, onto this week’s picks!
Peter Hujar’s Day
Where to watch: Criterion Channel
One of the most intimate movies of 2025 is now available to stream. It’s a portrait of the life of artists, with a fun gimmick: Peter Hujar’s Day is adapted from an interview between writer Linda Rosenkrantz and the photographer Peter Hujar. Rosenkrantz was starting a project of interviewing her artist friends about 24 hours in their life, and this was one of the few she completed. Filmmaker Ira Sachs (Passages) adapted that interview, using the transcript for the movie’s dialogue, and leaning on the two excellent leads (Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall) for one of 2025’s most unique movies.
Waves of Madness
Where to watch: YouTube
Jason Trost is a fascinating indie genre filmmaker who burst onto the screen with the action comedy The FP, about rival gangs who face off via a Dance Dance Revolution-style game. Trost made The FP in 2011 with his brother Brandon (who has since gone on to be a major cinematographer in Hollywood), and has continued making weird, ambitious projects on low budgets in the years since.
His latest project, The Waves of Madness, is an entertaining Lovecraftian survival thriller made for dirt cheap. It’s shot like a side-scrolling video game, has no cuts, and is another one of 2025’s most distinct movies.
Trost just teased the sequel, the Castlevania-inspired The Castellum of Blood, which is another great reason to check out The Waves of Madness.
A Catherine O’Hara you haven’t seen
Where to watch: Netflix
The great Catherine O’Hara passed away last weekend, leaving behind a legacy of decades of excellence, including her recent turn on The Studio. Netflix just added her collaborations with Christopher Guest (Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, Waiting for Guffman, For Your Consideration) to the platform, and there are plenty of others on there as well, including After Hours and The Wild Robot.
