Weekend Watchlist, 8/15: Psychological thriller, action comedy, and a funny new game show
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 just opened up PV Guide’s Premium Tier, for those interested in supporting this work!)
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It’s a relatively light week for new releases on streaming: Superman and Ari Aster’s Eddington arrive on VOD, the fantasy movie The Legend of Ochi lands on HBO Max, and the Vanessa Kirby-starring crime thriller Night Always Comes releases on Netflix. What’s in theaters is more exciting: Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest, Timo Tjahjanto’s Nobody 2, and M.J. Bassett’s Red Sonja, which I hear great things about.
This past week, I watched The Monkey, The Amateur, Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League, City on Fire, Burning, and rewatched Caché, which you can read about here. City on Fire was the other real highlight of the group, although I liked Burning and found The Monkey extremely funny.
Let’s get into this week’s recs!
The Royal Hotel
If you like: Psychological thrillers, Hugo Weaving, “we’re stuck in the middle of nowhere” movies
Watch at: Hulu, Kanopy
Watch trailer here
Julia Garner had a busy summer at the movie theaters, starring in both The Fantastic Four: First Steps and Weapons. It’s a great excuse to revisit an underseen gem of hers from 2023, where she starred alongside Jessica Henwick (The Matrix Resurrections) and Hugo Weaving (Hugo Weaving).
From director Kitty Green, who also directed the Garner-starring The Assistant, The Royal Hotel follows two young Americans travelling in Australia who get a gig working as bartenders at a pub in the middle of the outback. They’re here to make some extra cash to replete their now empty bank accounts after partying it up in Sydney, but have to deal with some unruly locals and the intimidating pub owner, Billy (Weaving). It’s a tense thriller led by some excellent performances, and a great next watch for anyone who was taken by Garner’s role in Weapons and wants to see more of her.
The Big 4
If you like: Unlikely team-ups, found family movies, action comedies that care about the action
Watch at: Netflix
Watch trailer here
Nobody 2 is out this week. I had some major problems with the first Nobody’s narrative and character approach (although I liked the action design), but as soon as it was announced that Timo Tjahjanto would be helming the sequel, I was all the way in.
The Indonesian gore maestro is one of the best action directors working today, primarily known internationally for his bloody and brilliant Netflix thriller The Night Comes for Us, which I highly recommend. I also loved his most recent movie, The Shadow Strays, and talked to him about his philosophy on gore in action movies.
But for this weekend, I’m recommending a more under-the-radar Tjahjanto project instead: The Big 4. More tonally in-line with Nobody 2 as an action comedy, The Big 4 is an offbeat buddy team-up with slapstick influences and fun leading performances. It follows a straight-laced detective who has to team up with four wacky and violent assassins to investigate a murder. While this is Tjahjanto’s attempt at a more “family-friendly” movie, it’s still him, so there’s plenty of intense violence and gore to go around.
Demi Lardner’s new game show
If you like: Absurd comedy, deconstructed game shows, online humor
Watch at: The embed above
Few things made me laugh as hard this week as the first episode of Demi Lardner’s absurd new game show, So You Wanna Win a Penis Pump? Demi is a very funny comedian, and for all you former Polygon readers out there, my former Polygon colleague Patrick Gill directed and co-wrote this first episode, along with some very funny people from the internet.
Comedians Paul F. Tompkins and Alexei Toliopoulos are the guests for the first episode, but Tompkins is calling in from abroad, which means Demi’s partner Tom Walker (who I talked to in May about his very funny GTA streams) plays “Creature,” the body piloting the tablet Tompkins is calling in from. It’s a funny bit that only gets funnier as the episode goes along, and the whole show feels as if the team looked at the structure of a game show and thought “these all worry too much about ‘right’ answers.”
