Weekend Watchlist, 7/25: Life, death, and baseball
Here's what to watch this weekend
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 recently opened up PV Guide’s Premium Tier, for those interested in supporting this work!
A quick programming note – we have officially hit our first subscriber goal of 10 paid subscribers! Thank you to all of you, free and paid subscribers alike, for your support of PV Guide. That milestone means we can move off of Substack to a different platform! I will be exploring my options and making that move soon (my target is in August, giving me time to make the move as seamless as possible), but it shouldn’t mean anything for you – I’ll be able to transfer my subscriber list over to the new platform.
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New to streaming and of note this week: Wes Anderson’s latest, The Phoenician Scheme, arrives on Peacock (more on that shortly), the Until Dawn movie lands on Netflix (as does the Netflix original Happy Gilmore 2), the dark fantasy comedy Death of a Unicorn streams on HBO Max, the rom-com A Nice Indian Boy is now on Hulu, and romantic comedy Materialists and post-apocalyptic thriller 40 Acres land on VOD. The Tour de France also wraps up (on Peacock) this weekend, and I’ll be tuning in.
This past week, I watched The Iron Claw, Opus, and Ghost Killer. Ghost Killer was fantastic, and I highly recommend it to everyone reading this: read my review here.
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The Phoenician Scheme
If you like: Wes Anderson, stories that know they’re stories, goofy espionage thrillers
Watch at: Peacock
Watch trailer here
I’ve really appreciated how willing Wes Anderson has been to fully embrace the artifice of his work in recent years. With Grand Budapest Hotel, The French Dispatch, Asteroid City, his shorts for Netflix, and now The Phoenician Scheme, Anderson has leaned even further into the theatrical aesthetics he’s always been enamored with, intentionally showing the seams of his sets and his worlds to remind you that you are watching a story.
In The Phoenician Scheme, arms dealer Zsa-Zsa Korda (Benicio Del Toro) reconnects with his daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton), now a nun, after yet another failed assassination attempt. The two go on the run together with Norwegian bug enthusiast Bjørn (Michael Cera, a terrific addition to the Anderson ensemble) in an absolute romp filled with many of Anderson’s regular repertory of great actors.
Eephus
If you like: Community stories, leisurely storytelling, baseball
Watch at: Mubi, for digital/rental purchase at VOD vendors
Watch trailer here
I went to my first baseball game of the year this week (with my dad, it was a blast), and I couldn’t stop thinking about Eephus. Carson Lund’s movie instantly cemented itself in the all-time baseball movie canon when it came out earlier this year, and it just made its streaming debut on Mubi. The movie follows the final game in a long-running New England amateur baseball league before the field they play at is demolished. As the game progresses and the end nears, the players balance their desire to never say goodbye to the game they love with their need to get home. Less focused on the minutiae of what happens in the game, and instead more about the atmosphere you can only find at community sports events, Eephus understands the core of baseball: It’s about the moments in between.
Jigen Daisuke
If you like: Movies that ooze “cool,” clever action design, the world of Lupin the Third
Watch at: Prime Video
Watch trailer here
With Ghost Killer out this week, I wanted to make sure to recommend a prior Kensuke Sonomura joint. He’s my favorite action designer working today, and everything he’s worked on has been a hit in some sense for me. He didn’t direct Jigen Daisuke, a live-action spin-off from the Lupin the Third cinematic universe, but he did design the action, which includes this incredible sequence:
I hope that alone convinced you, but if it didn’t: Jigen Daisuke follows the legendary marksman (Tetusji Tamayama, reprising his role from 2014’s Lupin III) as he travels to Japan to fix his gun, and uncovers a nefarious scheme that he feels compelled to stop. It’s a fun, vibes-based hang that requires no knowledge of the franchise or character (I had none going in), and the strong action sequences are supported by striking cinematography.
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